The Story Behind Abundant Earth Labs: 10 Questions with Founder, Tiffany Gieser

Hi Friends, I’m Tiffany, the Founder of Abundant Earth Labs. 

As we kick things off on the blog, I wanted to start by sharing some of the more intimate details of my own journey, as it relates to the creation of Abundant Earth. 

Our team prepared the following questions, and while it still feels vulnerable to answer some of these, it’s important to me that our customers and supporters learn the heartbeat behind Abundant Earth.  Thank you for joining me here!

 

1.  Can you give us a brief bio and background?

Absolutely. I’m a Pacific Northwest native, currently living outside Seattle, WA with my family. 

I’m a proud military spouse to Steve, aka “Captain America”, an Army Ranger and Iraq War veteran currently serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves.  Together, we share the adventures of raising identical twins, Avery and Bella (13), and our newest addition, Henry (1)!

Pre-kids, I worked for a thinktank in Oxford, England and then as a Special Investigator within the US Intelligence community in Washington, D.C..  I absolutely love to learn, am incredibly curious by nature, and resonate deeply with the term “old soul”.

I’m currently the Founder and CEO of Abundant Earth Labs, a whole food and nutraceutical supplement company on mission to help people heal from the physical and emotional effects of stress and depletion.

 

2.  What is a fun fact about yourself?

I am the oldest of five (four girls and a brother at the end!) and basically grew up in the movie, “Little Women”.  We were homeschooled by brilliant, yet completely opposite parents. My mother is from the east coast and studied physics in Switzerland.  My father is from small town Oregon and is basically a mad scientist who can build and fix anything.  My mom ensured our exposure to travel, languages, music, and art, and my dad taught us how to fly fish, shoot shotguns, and paint fences.  I grew up with a zoo full of animals and siblings that are my best friends to this day.  Three of us are entrepreneurs, one of us is a nurse, and the other is a biomedical engineer! 

 

3.  Did you always want to start a supplement company?

Ha ha, no! After my time in the intelligence community, my plan was to go into International Law (hello, Amal Clooney), or be a foreign correspondent journalist.  I’m more shocked than anyone that I’ve found myself in this space, but life is funny and wonderful like that.  (Even so, I’d still love to have Diane Sawyer’s job someday.)

 

4.  What led you to start Abundant Earth Labs?

Our family went through a massive transition after the birth of our identical twin girls in 2009.  My husband left active duty military service after returning from a dangerous 15 month deployment and I quit my challenging job in D.C.  – all so we could build a more “family friendly” life without further deployments.  Unfortunately, nothing about our transition out of the military went according to plan.

Unmet expectations, career confusion, three moves, twin parenthood exhaustion, and unprocessed deployment stress brought us to a gridlock of confusion and fatigue.  We both had enjoyed such a sense of purpose before, but now felt like our lives had lost direction.  My husband eventually found his grounding again but only after I had silently slipped into depression.

I fiercely loved my family and worked hard to care for my beautiful babies, but inside I didn’t recognize myself.  Capable women weren’t supposed to feel hopeless.  But I did. Depression hit me slow and steady until I no longer recognized my thoughts and emotions.

I was physically depleted from caring for my young twins while my husband was often out of state, and I was mentally exhausted from my mind attacking itself relentlessly.  It came as little surprise when spiritual exhaustion followed next.  God has always been such a beautiful part of my life, that watching my faith slip away was my last leg. 

I eventually learned of a renowned naturopathic doctor, Dr. Jonathan V. Wright, a pioneer in natural medicine, who operated a holistic medical clinic right here in Seattle.  I made an appointment.  That decision changed my life.

I felt safe and understood by my doctor, who surprisingly mentioned how many people only reach out for help after they “lose their religion” or touch point with God.  An existential crisis can be a powerful motivator for healing!

My education on the interplay between depleted bodies and depleted minds revolutionized how I viewed health.  I learned that by prioritizing my nutrition, I was also prioritizing my mental health.  I was put on a wonderful regimen of supplements and herbs for nutrition, stress support, and sleep assistance and the results were absolutely shocking to me.  Soon, I was giving my favorite supplements and vitamins away as gifts to other friends in stressful seasons. 

With my body no longer fighting against the angst of depression and anxiety, my soul was able to relax back into a new and more expansive walk with God.

I am a firm believer in the powerful role nutritional and herbal supplements play to combat the epidemic of stress and fatigue because they were the first tools that offered me relief when I didn’t know how to help myself. 

My journey set me on a passionate path to set others free. 

It wasn’t long before my investigative nature started dissecting the supplement formulas and brands that I saw on the market.  What I found was alarming and disheartening.  I was having to plug and play dosages and products together in order to get the quality and quantity of ingredients that I knew were effective.  Finally, a family member in the medical profession encouraged me to take a stab at creating something better myself.  And, here we are!

 

5.  What do you hope that Abundant Earth provides to people?

I created Abundant Earth Labs to set others free with the supplements I believe in the most.  My journey testing and researching the most effective ingredients for stress support led me to create Abundant Earth Labs with the goal of simplifying the path to relief and restoration with solutions that truly work. 

When someone is overwhelmed, the last thing they need is more data to decipher and decisions to make.  We promise to be a source you can trust completely. We won't offer you a product unless the scientific research confirms its excellence and effectiveness. Our commitment to quality includes multiple rounds of testing, including third-party verification, to confirm absolute purity before we offer them to you.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the greatest gift we give those we love is our own health and wellbeing.

 

6.  Why the name Abundant Earth?

I come from a large Scottish family and adore Celtic authors (the late) John O’Donohue and John Philipp Newell.  I looked to their works for inspiration when naming my company and was struck by how many times I read phrases referencing the “abundance” and “nourishment” of the earth.  “Abundant Earth” felt instantly right for what I was seeking to build and invite others into.

I also discovered a hidden love of gardening during my depression, which only confirmed the choice of “Abundant Earth” for the name.  Watching plants seemingly die during the winter only to burst forth with new life in the spring has so many parallels to the human journey. When, at my lowest, I felt like I couldn’t make myself grow and flourish, it was tremendously healing to help plants grow.

 

7.  Why are food and plant-based supplements (nutraceuticals) so important to you?

I’m not passionately against pharmaceutical aids for depletion and depression and anxiety.  Instead, I am passionately FOR the practice of functional and naturopathic medicine first, in conjunction with natural supplements.  Natural solutions can be so powerfully effective, and they come with very little side effects. Too many people don’t know that there are other options available as it can be so overwhelming when you’re already down and navigating how to get the help you need. 

 

8.  What is the best thing to happen in your venture so far?

Seeing the amazing success of our first product! I can’t express how proud I am that our first product, our comprehensive, all-in-one Whole Food Multivitamin Elite has been so well loved by our customers.  

It was always designed to be the MVP of our product line up, as it is the foundational product that fills in all the gaps of nutritional and energy depletion, and our entire team is so proud that customers vividly experience its effectiveness (read reviews here).  It took a year to formulate and then four iterations to get it exactly where we wanted it.  I personally read each and every review and nothing brings a bigger smile to my face than hearing from the real people who we’ve helped.  It makes all the hard work worth it!
 

9.  What are some of your favorite wellness tools or practices?

• As a northwest native, I swear by the use of Light Therapy Boxes in the winter.  They are sometimes known as SAD (seasonal affective disorder) light boxes.  I use light therapy for 15 minutes every morning from November through March and it’s a life changer.
• Weighted eye mask pillow for sleeping.  Must be weighted.
• Walking.  Walking is a miracle exercise that is so simple, yet often overlooked.  20-30 minutes a day can be transformative for mental health, let alone physical.
• Massage. When you’re overwhelmed and in your head, nothing puts you back into your body like a skilled massage.  I think massage therapists do the Lord’s work!
• Read “beautiful books” before bed.  I’ve learned to choose beautiful words to read before bed as they affect both my ability to fall asleep and the quality of my sleep.  Some of my favorites are:
• Anam Cara, by John O’Donohue.  Any of David Whyte’s volumes of poetry. Poetry of Place  and  The Home Within Us by architect Bobby McAlpine. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon VanAuken with letters from C.S. Lewis.  An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor.

 

10.  How do you define success?

In one word:  PEACE.

To choose decisions and actions that bring my soul peace.  Peace is living MY values and My truth, not anyone else’s.  Peace is loving MY life and my family and my story – just as it is in this present tense.  Peace is knowing that the small things are the big treasures.  It's remembering over and over and over again each day that I am dear to God, I am loved, and I am being compassionately guided at all times.  If I can live in peace and in so doing, invite others to live in peace as well …. This will be success to me.