Marnix Troudes Reveals The Truth On Holistic Wellness As An Entrepreneur

00:00
you

00:06
We'd like to say every day is a vacay. Welcome to the Vacay Podcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your co-host. Joined by my friend, business partner, and vacay co-host, Chris Hansen in Miami. We're excited today. We've got an e-commerce badass, an entrepreneur, and we're gonna call him a wellness guru, even if he doesn't wanna be one. Marnix, what's up, brother?

00:35
How are you? Thanks for having me. I'm very good. I'm in Spain right now, so I can't complain. The weather is good. The business is going. Yeah, working hard. There you go. Anytime Chris goes, we need to have Marnix on. He's a really big wellness guy. Like, all right, get him on. Let's make it happen. He's spoke highly of you. Sounds like you guys met last year and have been friends from another mother ever since. Is there anything to say? Brothers from another mother?

01:04
What's happening in Spain these days?

01:09
Spain, not that much people. I guess that's an interesting aspect. I always in my own health, try to go back to the blue zones. I don't know if you heard about this concept. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Blue zones are these couple of places around the world where people become under plus, and then there are different criteria that are related to these areas and I think this area is.

01:36
comes really close, just like you Chris in Miami, 300 plus days of sun a year. People are more lounging. I guess this is also a difference between the US and Europe. Like in the US, you go out for dinner and it's like you're rushed through the process. I feel like it's like Jack go. Especially by my wife. Yeah. And then, but if you're here, it's a more slow way of eating. So I guess.

02:02
that's going on in Spain and apart from that it's high youth unemployment and I don't know what so it's not the best but to live or to be it's great. There it is. What's happening in Spain? Are we there for work or pleasure? I would say work. Yeah I'm here with my family it's very nice but right now it's Tuesday I'm just working the whole day and then after maybe six or seven you can hang out a bit by the pool that's nice but

02:31
Apart from that, just like you guys working hard, I sell leather gloves. So it's September now. Our big months are obviously October, November, December, January, February. So it's all coming up. How's your entrepreneur journey been? I think that's what maybe bumped you and Chris together a little bit, but I know for most entrepreneurs, like there's this struggle between getting it all done, keeping your

02:57
keeping you from pulling your hair out, so to speak, with the stress and anxiety and everything else. What's that journey been like for you? Yeah, it's interesting. I started, well, actually, and when I was studying, I figured I was studying business administration, a general business degree, and it was pretty clear to me that if I wanted to make money and not be directly involved with it, I needed to have a website.

03:27
So it's not related to your hours, but you can grow it on the side and it keeps breaking money, even though you're sleeping or something like that. And I saw that in my studies, there was nothing about online marketing. So I was like, this makes no sense. And I got a small book and it was like basics of online marketing. And then in the book, it was like Google analytics is an analytics tool. And that was it.

03:52
And I was like, this is not how it should be. I did all my internships in online marketing and I went to study more myself. And in that actually, I went to Malaysia where I did my internship, also in online marketing, and later I went back there because I made some contacts. After I finished studying, there was a guy, he said, why don't you come work here in a startup, best idea ever, right? No salary or almost no salary and you'll just come learn and work and stuff.

04:22
I'm like, yeah, sure, let's go. And then I was placed in an agency. So there I worked for a couple of years, learning the basics of online marketing and mostly SEO and content. And while I was there, I also met my now business partner who was doing this leather gloves brand. And he was like a friend of us, where my roommate connected me to him because they both studied in the same course or whatever.

04:50
And it turned out he was also from the Netherlands, which is interesting. So we connected and then later we said, he said to me, Hey, why don't you help me out because my business partner just quit. He wanted to have a stable job, salaried employee, nothing wrong with that. And he didn't want to work at night. So it's maybe you can help me because I'm all alone and I don't know, I don't know how to do the online marketing.

05:16
Super like that. So I said, no worries. I'll write you some report on how you can do it. And then he quickly realized that, yeah, this is great, but he had to manage all the other sides of the business too. And an e-commerce business is not easy. You have to, a lot of things to, to manage like from logistics to production, to Instagram, all these things. So he said, why don't we, why don't we team up instead and grow from there. And then I, over a long period, now seven years ago.

05:45
We grew it together. And I think when he was, he, to his credit, he started 11 years ago. So he's already doing it next to us while he was studying. He was like, I'll actually, like I went to learn online marketing. He actually executed on a web shop. So that's next level stuff towards what I, compared to what I was doing. But yeah, it was a good match. I met, or we, he sold, I think 3000 pairs of gloves when we started.

06:13
per year or 5,000, something like that. And last year, I think it was 50,000 plus. So in seven years, we doubled every year and we're still a small team. It's me, him, one other business partner now for finance and logistics. And then we have one for customer service and yeah, people related to us. My wife, for example, does the social media. Everyone's helping out. So it's been a very interesting journey. And like you said.

06:41
time to time you're pulling your hair out especially when you're waiting for like those November sales and are people gonna buy on Black Friday and stuff like that but in the end it also always plays out but even when you're a weather related business like us we sell leather gloves mostly right so that is sometimes really frustrating because then in September all the sudden it's nice weather then in October it's supposed to get cold but then the weather is also good sometimes

07:09
I guess that's a bit that's a bit like, yeah, the background. You've never you pray for snow and cold a lot. Yeah, yeah. It's actually it's interesting. It's interesting psychology because outside the weather is is shit. And then you're like, I remember you messaging me last winter about sales going really well. And you're like, hopefully there's another winter storm coming.

07:37
Hopefully that'll be another bump in sales. And this is, yeah, yeah, sorry. Oh, I think it's funny too, just while the world, everyone's selling rubber gloves, you're selling Italian fine made leather gloves. Yeah, that's interesting part about the journey too, because we started with a European brand, it's called Swartz and Von Halen. And we grew that and it actually came from...

08:04
A simplified version, let's call it lettergloves.com. He had the Dutch version of that, which did very well in the Google rankings. From that, he created the brand because he realized you need a brand. He just created the brand when I joined. So we grew that brand together and it grew steadily every year. And now we sell that brand all over Europe and we're gonna enter US this year. And then along the way, just before COVID,

08:33
January 2020, we were talking to, we were actually looking at the US market because you're a great economy and the market is unmatched. 300 million English speaking people. So we looked at the competition and there was a company called letterglovesonline.com and they were like the biggest player in the space basically. And we saw that they had gloves from Italy.

09:00
But they had very competitive pricing and we just couldn't understand why. And it was all on sale. And then we, my business partner was very entrepreneurial guy. He was like, we got to figure out where to get these telling gloves, because otherwise we can't compete in the U S market. So he did some Googling and find, found out all the gloves are made in Naples, Italy, we went to Naples, met with a supplier and then he was like, oh yeah, leather gloves online. We know them. They, they buy from us all the time.

09:29
But the owner actually sick or like, Oh, that's not so good to hear. Of course. But on the other hand, we were like, maybe that explains why either the products aren't still and stuff like that. Maybe they're exiting the business or whatever. So we emailed them and turned out they were exiting the business. And even though we were quite a small company at the time, we managed to acquire them by negotiating. So we acquired letter gloss online.com.

09:58
and a brand called Fratelli Orsini. And Fratelli Orsini is all the gloves made in Italy. So they had leatherglovesonline.com with multiple brands underneath it. And Fratelli Orsini was the last one for sale, including a big stockpile of gloves and the domain. And then we actually negotiated all the way down and they were like, now it's really low, so you better get here. So we were like, okay, we've got on a plane. We were in Naples, 5th of January.

10:26
And I think by the 10th, we were in US five days later in San Francisco. There, that's where the owners were. They were in Oakland and yeah, we met them, saw the warehouse, everything. And on the monitor, it already said the flu virus from Wuhan, watch out, whatever. Don't go to Chinatown. I was like, I guess not. And yeah. And interestingly, we bought it. It did everything with the lawyer and stuff, which was of course very complicated to do for the first time.

10:56
when you're a young person. And then what happened then? Yeah, then COVID happened. So can imagine how that went. So they had the stock, they shipped it to some warehouse that we rearranged. Then the stock is there. Then you have to get the website live, improve everything. So it's quite a journey, but now I'm happy to say it's 45% or something like that of revenue. So it's a very, US is a big market for us. So we're very happy. Wow.

11:25
What a journey. You went through it all there in the early phases of entrepreneurship and buying companies. And I had my first memory of leather gloves. This is both good and bad. It's maybe funny, but there was a big trial in the US when I was growing up over a gentleman named O.J. Simpson. If the glove don't fit, you must have quit. And it was a leather glove that did not fit on his hand. So anyway. Yeah, leather gloves. I'd have that in your social media somewhere.

11:55
I don't know if it's appropriate or not. No mentioning of this. Yes. Some guerrilla marketing. Yeah, exactly. I have to ask, having living in South Chris in Miami, I'm in South Carolina, the least likely to wear gloves states, probably in the US for the most part. But people use driving gloves. There's probably other. Yeah. You sell you guys sell like things that aren't just cold. Weather. Yeah, for sure.

12:25
For sure. We saw a lot of driving gloves actually in the U.S. Yeah. I think I always, I'm surprised by the amount of people that buy them. So I am assuming not everyone drives a Porsche. Cause they're more like, they're more like for a sports car, but no, we sell lots of driving gloves and they sell all year round. So it's a really great business. I guess they're very useful for people. I guess the happiest part about being an e-commerce owner is the reviews you get.

12:51
in your mailbox, we have all, we all get the reviews with photos and everything. And people really happy with the product. And I guess, yeah, that, and of course, when things sell, it's great. And then all the reviews come and that that's just awesome. But we sell, yeah, leather gloves for winter. And then you have different linings, right? So you have cashmere, which is nice and warm, but we have also fur lines gloves or sheep fur stuff like that, which even warmer.

13:20
And then, yeah, like you mentioned, the driving gloves are just in between, I guess, with Chris could drive it in his car. He could wear it in Miami, give some extra grip on the wheel. Yeah, it's usually not Porsche owners, but Honda Civic owners here in the U.S. mainly, they wear the driving gloves, I think. Yeah, like the taxi and the Uber drivers, perhaps. Yes, it's funny. You get the most random photos, for example, there was a review.

13:47
And there was this guy, he was driving a Mercedes as an Uber driver. And he was like posting with his gloves and a suit on and he was so happy. And then you're like, wow, this is really awesome. But it's very random. Yeah. Cool. So morning professional. So Marnix, so talk about what do you do to keep saying being an e-commerce? I know you're big into health and wellness. Like what's you talked about the Blue Zones. What are some of your like wellness philosophies?

14:14
Yeah, I guess it starts with sleep, right? You just get normal sleep. That's very important. I try to go to the gym like you guys, I think I talk about all the time. Now I'm in Spain. It's a bit less frequent, I'd say. But at home, I try to just, yeah, I guess I'll just take you through the routine. It's just, I wake up. Don't really think about it. Put my gym clothes on and drive to the gym. And then I live in a very small town in the north of the Netherlands. And there's nobody in my gym who likes to work out early. So I'm.

14:44
all alone in the gym at seven until about eight or eight thirty something like that depends on the sets you're doing right and then then you feel all good and pumped and then go home i make mostly start work and then have some water tea stuff like that and after a while i'll make yeah mostly eggs i just eat i make five six eggs with

15:14
Yeah, salt scrambled salad and some sort of yogurt like Greek yogurt, put some fruit in there. And then I tried to, yeah, recently I tried to not eat carbs, not the bread. I did bread before, but I skipped it now and I don't really feel any difference. So it's good. And then I have my coffee. Another thing I have is magnesium water. I don't know if you guys know about that. No, I talked to us about it. I've heard of supplementing magnesium, but talk, yeah, talk about the water.

15:43
Yeah, so it's a bit sounds a bit complicated, but if you find a YouTube video, it's not that hard. You can get a soda stream and then you can get something called magnesium hydroxide, which is a powder and you can put yeah, you need to have cold water. You put the cold water under the soda stream, stream a bunch of CO2, I guess. So right. You stream the bubbles into the water, basically put two spoons of the magnesium hydroxide in the water.

16:13
you shake it five minutes, leave it in the fridge for a day, and then all of a sudden you have a very high concentrated magnesium water, which is the benefits is that it's because it's in water and the way it's what it turned into, the chemical reaction you made makes it so that your body absorbs it instantly and very effectively. So for example, if you have a magnesium supplement, you generally you'll, you'll how do you say that?

16:42
you'll use 30% of the supplement or something like that. But with the water, you use like 100%. So it's a very effective way and also a very cheap way actually, because this magnesium hydroxide powder, it's five dollars or $10 or something. You have a huge powder bag. I don't bring it in the airline, I guess, looks a bit weird, but. But to make the water, it's incredibly cheap and they sell it also online. I can send you guys after the show, but.

17:11
that you can buy this water made and then it's dollars a bottle or something, but that's just people screwing you over. So yeah, look at a YouTube video, how to make magnesium water, then people will find it for sure. I've heard a lot of positive things about magnesium. I think it's in a couple of the subliminal plants I take, but I've heard a lot of positive benefits. Magnesium is responsible for over 10,000 processes in your body. And...

17:38
Yeah, magnesium is a mineral that used to be in high concentrates in the spring water, in the soil and things like that. And you guys know what we did to the soil, right? We depleted the soil completely with the new ways of farming and stuff like that. So naturally now magnesium isn't as much in our food. And then the question is, where do you get it? Meat and stuff is still a good place because cows eat grass and that's generally pretty good.

18:08
Apart from that, it's difficult. You gotta drink like good sparkling water. I guess you guys have some spring water brand that's out there, but apart from that, it's difficult. And most people don't know, and they're just in a state of, they're always in a state of not feeling that great. And then once they try to remineralize their body with magnesium, and I would also say Celtic sea salt, like get your minerals back up, then you just start feeling completely different. It is really interesting.

18:39
That's especially the process of making it. I had a friend last week actually send me a link for the Celtic Sea Salt. Like I've been seeing that kind of gain some traction. Even Instagram, same with magnesium. I've had it coincidentally, it's been a lot of my female friends have been like raving about taking magnesium supplements. Actually, I just started taking one. It's like a liquid pouch actually that I had taken. Okay. That's good. Yeah.

19:09
But I know there's a brand here called Calm, and it's literally a drink mix at night that people take. And it's basically magnesium to relax, but I know it's good for your digestive system as well. It's digestive, it's muscles, it's brain. It takes a bunch of different, it hits your whole body. It does 10,000 processes or something like that. There's a book called The Magnesium Miracle, I think. I read it like halfway and I was like, okay.

19:39
completely convinced to do this. You're like, I don't need to read the rest of this book. I'm sold. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hear the first couple of facts and you're like, yeah, this makes complete sense. When you first started to describe making it, I was like, this sounds a lot like my mineral friend, Alka Sulzer that I take after I drink too much. And, but the effervescence of, but. Yeah, sorry, continue. No, yeah, I just, that's where I thought you were going a little bit.

20:09
you got into the a little more in depth with the soda stream and all that. So, yeah. Yeah. It's a bit when you describe it to people, they're like, what are you doing? When you do it, you're actually like, wow, this almost costs nothing. Supplements are, I don't want to say that all the supplements are bad. Of course they help. And the powders are great too. My mom has those as well. But yeah, if you tell me it tastes like a cherry coke zero, I'm in.

20:35
No, it doesn't taste great. Actually, it has a special taste. You see a lot of comments from women or their parents. They are like, I try to give it to my kids. They don't like it. I have to mix it with orange juice and stuff like that. But I don't try that. I mix it with orange juice. It's not great. Yeah. It's all good. Yeah. Supplement supplement wise, I take Lion's Mane, too. Maybe you guys talked about that before. Oh, yeah. Did you? It's definitely come up. Yeah.

21:05
How do you take it and what have you what benefits have you seen from it and what convinced you to start it?

21:13
Yeah, what convinced me to start it. I've been taking, I don't know, there's a guy called Paul Stemmert and he's very big in the mushroom scene. I followed him for a while and I saw this documentary that actually your cousin recommended to me. I'm not sure about the name, something about mushrooms, how great they are and all that stuff. Then I looked up his supplements and he has a complete mushroom supplement which has everything. So from lion's mane to turkey tail to all this stuff.

21:40
and I started taking it with my wife, but it finished. And then I got into a period where I was like, I guess just wanted to improve my brain. So then I was like, lion's mane is the way to go. And your cousin and you, Chris, talk about it all the time, how great it is. I went through the research with your cousin and we were like, yeah, this is pretty good. So I've been just testing it out for, I'd say three months now. I don't think there's any research against it.

22:08
I feel like I'm very sharp. Yeah. I can't really describe it anywhere else or any other way. So I want knowledge. It's right there. But to be fair, I also didn't drink alcohol for seven months. So that might also, so that helps get some clarity too. Was it, yeah. Was it the alcohol? That is a big, that's a big topic of conversation lately in general. And then we've had a guest on recently. That's a kind of a quit drinking coach.

22:37
for lack of better word. Why don't you talk to us about that? What made you reevaluate your relationship with alcohol? Sure. Yeah, it's interesting. I got into, I had a phase, it sounds maybe bad, but I had a period of, let's say six months where it was from January until May-ish. And it was a period where we traveled for work a lot. We sell Italian gloves, right? So we go to Italy.

23:07
meet with the suppliers, stuff like that. Then I went on a trip with my wife and a trip with my parents and it was all back to back. And at some point I realized I've been drinking almost every day and it's not that much, but I've been drinking one to three and then sometimes with your parents here, enjoying life.

23:29
lounging a little bit at the afternoon, you have some wine, then there's dinner, you have some wine, and then all of a sudden you had six glasses of alcohol and you didn't really think about it. So after a while I was like, I guess I'm at a point where the business is very important to me and also my relationship and everything in my life. And I want it to be more steadily focused on it. And I don't want this off time that I keep giving myself, because also it makes you feel bad. So it was like.

23:59
I had six wine, then I have a bad sleep. You have some, I sometimes had a heat spell. Like you have, you could come a little bit hot. You wake up a couple of times, you go to the toilet. A sleep is the backbone of a healthy body. You know, that ain't happening on alcohol. So I wouldn't say I never really had problems with it. It was always like one or two and I can leave it if I want to, it didn't really matter. But I was like, I think it's actually a good test to see if I can just not do it.

24:28
and I'll try it for a year and see how it is. So now seven months and yeah, I feel really good. Do you see yourself going back?

24:40
Yeah, that's always a good question. Being in Spain here, I can tell you, it's very difficult to not drink something. You have my mom's birthday, they're all like, I don't know, you get a three course meal and there's a free glass of champagne, right? This is just how it is. Start with champagne, get some wine, get some more wine. Ask you in six months. Yeah, ask me in six months, yeah. I guess I will still enjoy the occasional glass of wine because with dinner, it's really nice.

25:10
If you have a good dinner and you're paying for the dinner, I was recently in Milan with my business partner. We both are into not drinking that much. You're having a good dinner, but you're looking around and you're like, Oh, all these people are having the completely different experience. So. Yes, it is part of the experience. And it's so ingrained into certain experiences for good, bad or indifferent. And which makes it difficult to cut cold turkey. Anything else on the supplement?

25:40
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. For alcohol, you have to say no, it's difficult. Yeah. And then you have to say that every time. And with the same with the friends that you're with and all that stuff. I would say in my culture, it's so normalized that, for example, I play futsal. I don't know if you could solve it's soccer indoor. And even with outdoor soccer that I used to play, it is about the match, but it is just as much about after the match.

26:06
And after the matches, when you have a beer, luckily there's alcohol-free beer now. So that makes things a bit easier. It feels like you're still part of the experience, but you're not. But I'm not missing it. So anyways, yeah. You're right. It's more of a societal pressure than anything. Like it's so ingrained. Even you're in Spain, you're from the Netherlands, even

26:35
the other side of the Atlantic. And this is what our other guest talked about was she was a rugby guy. In post rugby match. That was the after party slam in beers with the boys. So it's definitely, this is the thing. And it definitely helps that one of my best friends in the Netherlands, he's a doctor and he's, I don't know, very much into this research into alcohol and he reads books about it.

27:05
And he was actually around the same time we realized that maybe we should see how it is without alcohol. And it's actually nice to have that because if you're the only one, it's very difficult, I think. Yeah. And it helps that my wife also doesn't drink. So we never had that. Some people you have a relationship, you get into it, you drink wine, then you have a date night and you drink wine. And then that's what you do.

27:33
then it's very difficult too, then you need to decide together.

27:38
For sure. I think you're gonna see more, I don't know. I think the tide's turning a little bit, where, yeah, I don't know if it's gonna go away completely, but you're gonna see more acceptance of it. I think there already is. And so I think you're going to see it. I'm starting to- So how is it in the US? What is the trend? Because for example, in Europe, there's lots of alcohol-free alternatives. I'm actually surprised because now you've noticed, like, hey, I can also order that thing or-

28:05
It's definitely more common now. Most restaurants have a separate alcohol-free cocktail menu, like a mocktail. Nice. And I'll order those from time to time, just to change it up instead of water. But I find every day it's becoming more and more common to run into someone. And like you said, that didn't have a problem, but they're just, you know what, let me take a breather from this. Let me just.

28:33
see what I'm capable of if I cut this out. So I think that's being talked about more too, just from a health perspective of, hey, maybe the one glass of wine a day isn't as healthy as doctors told us it was. Because that was the big selling point years ago was, oh, it's great for your heart. The one glass of red wine is great for your heart. So. Yeah, true.

28:57
I think it might be, but the problem is that one glass leads to three, the four, the five. Who the hell wants one glass? Exactly. I'm more like a one bottle guy. Yeah, me too. So I don't drink anymore. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess it's the ultimate self-control, right? If you can have one glass with a fancy dinner. I would rather not drink at all. So that's why probably I'm teetering on this line of probably.

29:25
doing some kind of sabbatical myself from it all is because I'd rather just not do it than have money and ass like, than have one. Yeah, people would say to me, don't you just want to have one? And I'm like, no, what's the point of just wine? Yeah, that just definitely makes you tired. If alcohol has a sedation effect, one just totally makes you tired. Like, I'd rather take a sleeping pill because that's just going to put me to sleep.

29:54
Yeah. I guess one is okay if you have it an afternoon for lunch, then, you know, it gets out of your blood, doesn't ruin your sleep and stuff. Maybe. But yeah, you're right. Maybe, maybe just skip it all together. I don't know what's easier. That's that Spain lifestyle, having a nice glass of wine at lunch. It is Spain and Italy. They're all like that. Here in America, they're like, you're fucking fired. You're drinking on your lunch break. Yeah.

30:24
Well, at Radical, we encourage margaritas. Yeah, that's true. You're right, Marnix. I'm on Wall Street. Yeah. And Brian, maybe even in the ad world when you're up in Manhattan, was that like martini lunches? Was that a thing? Of course it was. Wait, I don't know if it's martinis, but it's like whatever. Like five beers, three martinis, two lemon drop shots, whatever. And then back to the office. Yeah, back to the office. And I don't know.

30:53
Or just never back to the office. Like you're with the client, you're with the client and you're working the rest of the afternoon at the standard hotel or whatever. It is such a, it is really, that brings up a good point. How intertwined alcohol is with even doing business socially, taking clients out. I know for me, that was something that I definitely considered when I stopped drinking was like, what about my clients that want to go.

31:23
to the lounges and have a few drinks, which is fine. Obviously still go do that. I just have a sparkling water instead. I've realized they care a lot less than I thought they would. They're still drinking, having a good time.

31:38
Yeah, that's true. I'm pretty fun without it anyway, so I'm lucky for that. How do you feel Chris, because you have been you haven't been drinking for a while. I feel great, man. It's been over three years now and. I have no desire to drink. I've got a bottle of wine in my fridge right now, and. Obviously, that's I was.

32:02
for like guests and whatnot. Don't get me wrong. I don't have, I don't have a bar cart in 10 bottles of booze here for catering. If someone really wants to drink, they can burn booze to my house. But yeah, I just feel health wise. I feel so much better. And now with all these, the research and data that is all over the internet getting shoved in our faces, it's like, why would I? It's just inflammation in your whole body. If you drink a glass of alcohol, so inflammation is not good. We know that.

32:32
Yeah. Ruins all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Marnix, what else is on the, the master list for you as far as any other supplements that you talked about lions main. Lines. I have zinc actually. See a zinc supplements. Zinc is also one of these minerals that is like, and anyways, just to say I'm not a doctor or anything, so it's just, that in a footer of our nodes that.

33:01
None of the stocking advice. So we got you covered. This is not medical advice. Okay, then we know. Okay, so zinc is also very good. It's interesting, I followed this guy for a while and I think for Chris it might be interesting for you guys. It's very random how I stumbled upon this guy, but it's called Matt Blackburn. And he has a supplement line called Mitolife. And his whole thesis is that your mitochondria should work properly.

33:28
And that's the stuff in your body that keeps your body healthy and alive. And you feel energized. And he, he talks a lot about several supplements and he has like a step plan where he's like, you're feeling like shit, start here and then magnesium is the start and then you can go down. One is, one is that you shouldn't have too much calcium, which is in every type of tap water way too much in relation to magnesium. So that's.

33:58
also to get back on the magnesium train. If you have a bottle of sparkling water, for example, I don't know if you guys know some Pellegrino is a common bottle. Okay, you have some Pellegrino, you have a calcium ratio and a magnesium ratio. And then you have to look at the calcium to magnesium ratio and it should be one in three, one in four, something like that. Then you have a proper balanced water that gives you calcium and magnesium.

34:26
without calcifying your body and making it bad basically. So this is something I look out for all the time. Most sparkling water in Europe is quite okay, but you'll see occasionally if you look at the bottle, you'll see a better ratio with more magnesium and then you should probably go for that. But yeah, for the people that drink tap water, I have no cure for you. It's just terrible. If you're still drinking tap water in this day and age, you're in some trouble.

34:55
But to be fair, you guys, not, not a nice comment, but in the U S the tap water is insanely bad because in my country actually it's not great, but it's a thousand miles ahead of the U S so you can drink it. It's fine. You can do anything with it. Give it to babies, all that stuff. But I don't, is there a recommendation to give your tap water to babies? I hope not. No, I don't know if it's a recommendation. I mean, most people do it in what the irony is. Like.

35:25
We live in a city that promotes their water all the time, like in Greenville. It's been shown to be clean, but I don't know that it's got the minerals, the mineral content. I think it's the bigger issue, right? Yeah, the mineral content is definitely an issue. Yeah. And when you get some Pellegrino, obviously they took it from some source, which is like straight from some mountains, which is nice, obviously. But then you have the second thing to think about, which is plastic.

35:52
Because if you then have it in a plastic, some Pellegrino bottle from the supermarket, then that bottle has been in a warehouse, it's been outside, it's been anywhere, especially here in Spain. And it reacts with the plastic, right? And then you're just drinking also a bunch of plastic, but yeah, I get it, what's better. We have, for example, in our drinking water, they, and the Dutch drinking water in the Netherlands, they have small traces of something called PFAS.

36:20
And that's something in the nonstick plants. I don't know if you know that. Yeah. It's not good. It's just, it's called a forever chemical. And we had some buyer or some big company that leached it into the water. And then now it's in our drinking water. Can't really do much about it. Except by a reverse osmosis filter. I don't know if you guys know about that, but that's very expensive. Yeah. But yeah, the zinc I take because zinc is naturally, it's still found in meat and stuff like that.

36:49
Unfortunately, lots of people skip the meat so then you don't get it at all. One of the biggest sources of zinc is oysters. So oysters have thousands of milligrams compared to a steak. And yeah, so a lot of people recommend some like designated oyster supplement or something like that to get your zinc. I just got one random webshop, organic, all that stuff and then just hope for the best. EU labels are pretty good.

37:19
I take a, what I was calling like ancient minerals or something like that. That's, it's got zinc and magnesium and something else. And now listening to you talk, it makes sense. Like what you're talking about, like with the way minerals used to be in more things and it's built on that same premise. I just started it a couple of weeks ago. So I don't really know that I'm feeling that different yet. But. Yeah, it's always difficult to say what was it.

37:48
that made you feel this great. But yeah, you want to go back to the basics. What is the basics? What are the basics that your body needs? Okay, I'm sweating, so I need salt. That makes sense. There was no magnesium in the, or there's not much magnesium in the soil anymore. Okay, that makes sense. Doesn't mean that it's everywhere. For example, if you're in, we go to Italy for business, then you're in Amalfi Coast, for example. It's beautiful, it's like farm to table. You see the tomato and it comes to your plate almost, right?

38:18
this stuff is still good, but yeah, how good is like this? For example, in the Netherlands, I don't know if this is an interesting fact. We're the second, I think second biggest agricultural exporter in the world, even though we're this big, like we were nothing right on the map. And we have all these indoor, I don't know what the English word for it is. Glass houses, huge greenhouses, fields long.

38:47
It's insane. And we're very advanced in the technology to grow stuff indoor. So we grow tomatoes indoor, for example, we're very good at that. I can tell you they taste like absolute shit. It tastes like water. And it's the same for the cucumbers and stuff like that. And you may notice it. You if you have a garden, try plant a tomato and then taste that tomato and compare it to what you get in the supermarket. It's a huge difference.

39:16
Yes. This is, and that's a big thing of nutrient loss because how natural is it that a tomato grows inside some greenhouse with fake lights and all that stuff. Yeah. But then you get into the discussion, how are you going to feed people otherwise? It's very difficult. Yes. Nothing better than a, and a tomato from the garden.

39:40
I grew up eating those. We always had a garden in the backyard. I'd have to pick it. And that was not my favorite exercise. But damn, that food was some okra and cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans. I had to start my garden back. Make my kids pick it. Put the kids to work. Yeah. Had to get my 20 acres first. Yeah, for real.

40:06
It is at that point, you can tell the difference in the taste with food now. Tomatoes is the perfect example. Yeah. It really doesn't. It doesn't taste how I remember tomatoes tasting as a kid. No, they're just these massive. Fucking growth enhanced water balls. Yeah, yeah, but it's the same. It's but it's also.

40:33
weird how it's not consistent. Sometimes you have a strawberry and you're like, amazing. The other time you have a strawberry, I guess it makes sense, it doesn't all taste the same. But you're like, yeah, it's just weird. But to be fair, I never knew a cucumber could taste like anything until I grew one. Yeah, that's true. You grow one, you eat it, you're like, a cucumber has taste, I didn't know that. Hey, you put it in, it's called a dill pickle.

41:01
That's what it tastes like. Pickles are great. Yes. Marnix, I know we could talk for hours. Probably we'll let you go. Really appreciate you telling some of your background, some of your wellness stories and things like that. Where can everyone fall along with what's going on with you and where can they get the best gloves ever made? Sure. Yeah. So if you want to buy the best gloves.

41:28
you go either to leatherglovesonline.com or to Fratelli. And those are the Italian made gloves, they're hands down the best. Then we have the other brand which is also amazing quality and they're a bit lower price for people more accessible. And that's Swartz.

41:56
They can check that all out or just Google on leather gloves. You'll probably find it somewhere. And yeah, for me, I'm not really on any social media. I don't have time. That's great. We'll have all the links in the show notes, but we really appreciate you coming on the show.

42:12
Yeah, no worries. I just want to say also that VK, the brand is awesome. And I've been following Chris obviously for a while. So I hope for the best. I can tell you personally, I'm, I don't consume the products that much, but the vape has been traveling to Europe and the vape is much loved in people that I let them try. Great. Maybe a new market for you. Yes. Marnix had a little VK sampler at my cousin's wedding in Lisbon.

42:39
some party favors for the wedding guests and VK was a hit amongst the Europeans. Ah, very good. It's something else. I'm not that much into smoking myself, but it's a different experience because obviously we didn't really talk about it, but I'm from the Netherlands. We are the country that shall not be named for the reasons of the YouTube guidelines or whatever. But yeah, I have to say...

43:06
to you guys kudos and to Chris and for the formula and all that stuff. People really love it. So it's a different thing than what they usually deal with. And yeah, it's just good. And I look forward to see all the merch and how you guys expand the business is exciting. We appreciate that feedback and we'll keep the samples coming. I'm sure. Hey guys, find us the vacaypodcast.com. You'll find all the episodes, including this one with Marnix and links.

43:36
to the best Italian leather gloves you could find for Ryan Alford and Chris Hansen. We'll see you next time on the VK Badcast.