Enhancing Brain Health Through Science | Lauren Alexander from Qualia Life Sciences

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Alright everybody, welcome to today’s episode of Pathmonk Presents. Today we are joined by a special guest. We have Lauren Alexander. She’s the CMO of Qualia. Lauren, welcome to the show.

Lauren Alexander: Thanks. Happy to be here.

Rick: Of course. We’re happy to have you. Let’s start with the basics for a second. This is something we ask everyone, but what’s the big idea behind Qualia Life Sciences, and if you were explaining it to a friend over coffee, how would you describe what you do exactly?

Lauren Alexander: Yes. Qualia Life Sciences is the full name of the company. We’ve been around since 2015. We launched our flagship product, Qualia Mind, then, and it literally was unlike anything that was on the market. It was a brain supplement and is continued to be perceived today as the gold standard of brain supplementation.

The science team and advisory team surrounding the company’s formation just took such a novel approach to thinking about supplementation, really looking at synergies within ingredients and synergies within the body, using a type of science called complex systems science. I lead with all that, but the mission and the goal is really to improve quality of life and to make things that are super effective to help people think faster, feel better, and live longer with greater meaning and purpose.

The word qualia is a philosophical term. It actually is the subjective experience of being you. It’s very deep if you sit and let that sink in a bit. The reason we’re named that is we want to help you experience your fullest subjective experience of you and not override or change any aspects—just highlight and let you flourish.

We really invest heavily in the quality of ingredients that we put in all of our supplements. We really invest heavily in the research and science team. We have an extremely large and quite impressive team of scientists behind our formulas, and those two things combined really create such unique formulas and unique offers to the world for people looking to improve their health.

Rick: That’s amazing. I love the focus on improving thinking because I’m sure many of the people that listen here are knowledge workers at the end of the day, so they’re definitely benefiting from whatever they can use to improve the way they think, the way they focus, and all of those things. Just a quick one—is it fine to call Qualia products nootropics, or is it something else?

Lauren Alexander: The definition of a nootropic has to do with the cognitive brain effects, and Qualia creates products in longevity, sleep, gut health, and all kinds of areas. So calling Qualia a nootropics company is a little too precise. Our Qualia Mind supplements are nootropics, and so that would be how I would classify it.

Rick: Got it. Okay, so it’s more than that. Thanks for clarifying. My question really as a segue was: what types of customers are the best fit for your products, do you think? And what kind of key problem does Qualia solve for them?

Lauren Alexander: We serve customers who are deeply invested in mental performance and improving their health on a cellular level. So that attracts a lot of biohackers, executives, health practitioners, doctors, athletes—people who understand how important quality and science are in their formulas.

We are higher priced because we’re higher quality. And so because of that, there is a certain kind of customer that naturally—once you become educated at a level—you understand that you need to spend at a certain level in order to get the quality that you want.

Rick: Okay, makes sense. Let’s get a little bit more technical because obviously, at the end of the day, I would love to talk about Qualia and its products, but we would love to talk marketing here on Pathmonk Presents. Could you share your most effective customer acquisition channels at the moment, and maybe give us a glimpse into how, over time, you’ve optimized them to drive consistent sales?

Lauren Alexander: Yeah. Qualia’s main acquisition channel remains, to this day, Meta advertising, and I think that has a lot to do with my background. As a marketer, I’ve made my meal on Facebook Meta advertising since like 2009, and I bring that expertise of customer acquisition to this company. It is a big spoke in the hub of acquisition and remains that.

Every year, I make this resolution—I’m going to diversify meaningfully off of Meta. I really do, because it is a roller coaster of keeping up with the competition and the changes they make. They just recently made a lot of changes in the algorithm. A lot of people are crying about the changes, and yet it continues to deliver high-quality customers. I keep coming back and going deeper and scaling that traffic source.

I will say that this company does a lot of education, because of the nature of our products and our company. So other channels like podcast interviews, podcast advertising, long-form education with partners on similar publications, websites, etc., are very good means of acquisition as well.

Rick: Okay. What you said about Meta and having this resolution every time to diversify your portfolio makes me think—that’s the proverbial “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” There’s no need necessarily, but it’s good to diversify of course. If it’s working really well, why change at the end of the day? But it’s interesting knowing Meta is your main acquisition channel.

What about the website? How much of a role does your website play in your overall e-commerce strategy? If you could speak to the strength of the website as you see it right now and maybe where you see room for improvement, could you share that with us?

Lauren Alexander: Yeah. The website is the core of our acquisition strategy. It’s an education hub. It’s a transactional bedrock. Our model is built around offering a subscription to our products because our products you need to take every month, and so hosting that on our website is absolutely critical.

We publish a lot of educational articles, so again, it’s a hub where people learn to trust us and then ultimately make a purchase. Our weakness—there’s a challenge that I am constantly working on. Because we had a lot of unique needs, we chose to not have a Shopify or plugin experience, and we are on a custom integration. I think that was ultimately the right choice for our business, but I constantly have a little bit of FOMO going on because I do see the enhancements and plugins and cool features that are very easy to implement in a Shopify environment that aren’t as easy in a custom stack.

Rick: I see your point. It’s easy to fall prey to FOMO when it comes to that. Maybe we can touch on that for a second. You can draw from your experience at Qualia or your experience in general, but what are the key elements you would implement to make the website even better and make it a really high-converting e-commerce website? To that point, if you have any tools or tactics or tricks you can share with us, that would be great, because I’m sure many people will love to learn from you and the work you’re doing.

Lauren Alexander: If there’s any breaks—our company and our product really center around education. The more education we do, and the more ruthless I am about not allowing us to get distracted by non-educational distractions, seems to be what our customers really want and what they really ask for.

There is constantly this tension from creating branding-heavy videos that are not performance-oriented but are gorgeous. There are a number of examples in the space that have these almost artwork websites that aren’t very performance-oriented when it comes to mobile or user experience, or you’re downloading enormous PDFs to read more or things like that.

As a value, I am constantly putting myself through the experience and thinking about how do I make this lightweight and educational and deliver unique education when I can.

Rick: Okay. Education is essential, obviously, and at Pathmonk, the tool itself works based on the buying journey. I guess that would fall in the awareness stage of things, but it’s always helpful, right? You always want to educate your users and in a way influence them towards something that they need at that point but they may not know yet. So that’s a good one for sure.

When it comes to education—and I’m sure you talk about your products a lot on the website—are there any new products you’re excited about, that you maybe talk to your friends about, that you’re excited to share?

Lauren Alexander: Yeah. We have recently had some really great launches. We launched a really high-quality magnesium product late last year, and it launched and literally we’ve been struggling to keep enough inventory. We keep ordering more, going on back stock, ordering more, getting back stock—and it’s been really rewarding.

That was a product that I personally had been taking magnesium for years but was never really satisfied with the quality. When I shared this with the team, they did research and said, “We can innovate here,” even though it is a saturated space. There are a lot of magnesium products to choose from, but there isn’t one that combines all these forms with minerals and has the quality that meets our standards. So we launched it, and personally, I work here so I can get magnesium as an employee benefit, but also seeing that the world really wants it as well and that it’s been a great seller has been really rewarding.

We have a number of exciting launches this year that I’m working on that aren’t live yet, such as a stem cell supplement that will complement our senolytic formula that we launched now three years ago, which has been a huge hit in the space.

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Rick: Oh, wow. That’s amazing. Speaking to the magnesium side of things, I’ve been trying to really improve my sleep lately, and I know it’s one of the staples, right? Besides, obviously, I have two kids on the floor, one on the way, so there are different, bigger blocks I need to worry about, but magnesium is one of those. So it’s great to know—I’m definitely personally going to dive deeper into Qualia magnesium, and hopefully it’s in stock, right?

Lauren Alexander: Yes.

Rick: Okay, very good. Lauren, let’s talk about you as a leader for a second. I want to switch gears and talk about you. What do you do on a daily basis? What’s a day in the life like as a CMO at Qualia, and what are the main things you focus on?

Lauren Alexander: Yeah, I always laugh because when I think about my role and how big it is, I have so much empathy with marketers these days, no matter where you’re at in your head-of-marketing journey. The customer acquisition gig is so vast. I’m in charge of content, branding, partnerships, paid acquisition, email, SMS. I contribute to product development—the label, the color, so much. It’s such a cool gig when you think about it, but at the same time, it’s completely endless and vast.

Learning how to prioritize and optimize my time has been the biggest theme of my career. It’s been really awesome that I got connected with the neuroscientists at this company because there’s so much about the brain that, once you understand, becomes super useful at being a productive leader and being able to not get caught in time—because time is just so precious.

I think about this all the time—even if you’re a campaign manager and you have sole responsibility of just managing Meta campaigns—that in and of itself is massive. There’s bid management, there’s pushing new ads, there’s cloning, there’s making sure your links work. It’s just so much, even in the most specific of lanes. So I would say time optimization.

So then, okay, let’s zoom out. I named a lot of things, but really, strategic planning, performance analysis, and creative direction are three big buckets. And people—I have the luxury of having a small team, and the people management aspect is actually really important but also a lot of times gets left off in terms of talking about my deliverables as CMO.

Rick: But it does sound like you are very operational, right? You’re hands-on as a CMO. It’s not just about the leadership side of things—you get your hands dirty, so to speak, right?

Lauren Alexander: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Rick: That’s really good. And to your point about time—I don’t think people realize, and I’m sure speaking to the neuroscientists on your team, I don’t think people realize how much distractions actually play a role in feeling overwhelmed at the end of the day. Just unfocused, feeling so tired. I’m sure they shared a couple of good tricks to make sure you stay on track, you stay focused, and you’re able to churn out as much work as possible—or at least quality work, right? If it’s not the volume of it.

Lauren Alexander: Yeah. There’s a couple things to know about the brain. I think once you understand a few aspects of the brain, you can make it work for you.

Principle one is that thinking takes a lot of energy. Anytime you’re thinking, you’re using up your resources. I talk about this all the time—how you wake up and you have this bank account of mental bandwidth, and every time you think or you read something or you stop to make a decision, you’re making withdrawals. Depending on how you slept the night before and how you eat and how healthy you are, you start out with X amount of dollars. Sometimes if you sleep really well, you have more at the start, and if you don’t, you have less.

It’s all about managing that budget throughout the day, and you can save. So being efficient, having habits, being disciplined—these are ways to conserve energy. The brain loves habits because they use less energy than doing stuff from scratch. The more you can habitualize and automate aspects, the fewer calories you’re going to burn and the fewer transactions you’re going to make with your mental energy.

There’s a lot we could talk about on energy conservation beyond that, but let’s just leave it at that—habitualize what you can and you’ll save bandwidth.

Another way to balance the budget is to make more “money,” right? So how do you make more brain energy? One way is to take breaks or naps or walks—things like that. This is free, but actually resting during your day builds your bank account back up.

Super hard—I have tried for almost 10 years to take a nap for 20 minutes in the afternoon, and I have done it once. So it just doesn’t work for me. Even if I calendar it, it doesn’t work. But walks do work for me, and I do feel rejuvenated from a walk. There’s something about just letting your mind do its thing and then bringing it back—it’s like meditation for me.

Another way to build it up is nootropics. They are actually studied to build up that capacity. Thinking takes a lot of energy, so how do you reinfuse that through eating energy sources for the brain? Without diving much deeper than that, those are my two pieces of advice on thinking about the brain and how to optimize what you do.

Rick: That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that. It’s something to think about—habits remove friction. That’s what I’m hearing, right? Remove friction, make it as lubricated as possible, automate. And obviously, you have nootropics if you want them, you have supplements, you have something you can take alongside your nutrition that can help you with that. And you may know a company that specializes in that, right?

Lauren Alexander: Yeah.

Rick: Lauren, I want to thank you for being on the show with us today. As we wrap up, I want to launch into our rapid-fire segment, if you don’t mind. It’s just a couple of questions to keep things light and engaging, and the only spoken rule is that for a concise question, we expect a concise answer. You ready for that?

Lauren Alexander: All right.

Rick: All right, let’s do it. Do you prefer watching or reading?

Lauren Alexander: Reading.

Rick: Okay. What’s the latest book you picked up, and were there any gems or ideas that really stuck with you?

Lauren Alexander: I read parenting books. I have two small children, so a little bit off-topic. The most recent is The Yes Brain by Dan Siegel. It actually does fit in—it’s about being positive versus negative when you’re interacting with your kids, is how I would summarize it.

Rick: I like it personally. I think I’m going to take a minute offline to talk to you about it because I’m definitely interested. Very good. So if you had a magic wand, Lauren, and you could fix one frustrating thing in your marketing life with tech, what would it be?

Lauren Alexander: Oh my goodness.

Rick: Just one.

Lauren Alexander: I don’t know how to articulate this concisely, but seeing things that we can’t see—detecting problems that exist without such manual detective work that goes on.

Rick: Okay. If you could automate, or let’s say put on autopilot, a repetitive task that you do every day, what task would you choose?

Lauren Alexander: Yeah, I thought a great deal about this one when you asked. You sent this to me ahead of time. I’m very conflicted because I’ve done a lot of optimization on this front already, and one aspect of my role where I spend a lot of time that I don’t think I can ever automate is the people management aspect.

You get good at being creative and good at business, and if you’re decent at managing people, you’ll start rising up into your role. But this relationship aspect takes so much time. As a practical, acquisition-focused person, I always look at this and think, “Man, I spend so much time on what doesn’t seem like work.” But it actually is a really important part of the work. I don’t know how you could automate that, but it would be great if we could speed some of that up.

Rick: Oh, I agree. People have too many variables, so it’s hard to automate in that sense. Okay, last one. If you could go back and give your past self a quick pep talk at the start of your journey, what advice would you drop?

Lauren Alexander: This has a lot to do with the brain stuff I brought up earlier. In the early part of my career, I would be struggling—and it was just the natural struggle of taking on too much work, not sleeping enough, or not fueling myself properly. I internalized that as weakness of me as a person instead of just a limitation of biology.

As I’ve become more mature, I understand that the body needs fuel, the body needs rest in order to perform at its peak. I think I would have saved myself a lot of personal pain. So my advice is that if you’re truly struggling—like you want to cry at the end of your day—go look at your biology. Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Are you exercising? Get some labs done. Look at basic markers, because a lot of that is a chemical thing, not a personal “Oh, you just can’t cut it.”

It’s really hard to understand where one line ends and the other line begins, but life gets so much easier. Really big problems aren’t big problems when you sleep well, when you eat well, when you’re balanced in your biology. That would be my advice.

Rick: Physiology drives psychology, right?

Lauren Alexander: Yes.

Rick: You elaborated beautifully on that. This is just what I’m hearing—my brain synthesizing. Lauren, I want to thank you again for being with us on the show today. I really appreciate the lessons about the brain, marketing, and life in general. If anyone wants to check out Qualia Life Sciences, where can they go? And do you have any sales or promotions going on?

Lauren Alexander: Yeah. We have really great content on our Instagram channel, so check us out at Qualia Life on Instagram. Our website is qualialife.com. I made a coupon for our listeners—it’s PATHMONK. That will give you an additional 15% off on top of any sale, on top of any discount. So it’s a really great chance to try something out if anything looks good.

Rick: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for that. We’ll make sure to share that in the show notes and when we post on LinkedIn and social media, so everyone gets to take advantage of this. Thank you so much again, Lauren. I wish you a wonderful day and hope to see you again soon.

Lauren Alexander: Awesome. Thank you.

Rick: Bye everyone.