Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Thurston.
Hi Jacob, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I started out my life with health complications. Major pain and agony with stomach issues for the entire first year of my life. My parents said I would cry all day and all night.
I guess that’s what started it all. I then, later in life, while attending Ithaca College in NY (next to Cornell University) I fell in love with natural health. I no longer utilized medicines or pharmaceuticals to stay healthy. Actually, relying on natural products and foods as my pharmacy.
So, I started really taking care of myself and I watched so many health issues start to disappear. It was like magic. I no longer had to go into the Dr for the seasonal sinus infections, no more constant visits to the Chiropractor for chronic pain, and I definitely felt and looked amazing.
This was the time that my life completely turned around. I left college and became absolutely obsessed with natural health. So, I started a research blog that was all about gut health. I was writing 20–30-page research articles with 20-40 references per article on different aspects of gut health. Once we were named one of the top 40 gut health blogs on the internet, I decided it was time to put it to use.
So, I started helping people. At first, it was family and friends of course. Then, I started helping people I didn’t know. Our first client was in Canada! It was amazing to watch someone transform. I became certified as a Holistic Health Practitioner with even more study (200 credit hours) and finally walked away with all of the knowledge I needed to change someone’s life.
Now, after 7 years of serving, I wake up every day and I can’t wait to help people transform. There is nothing like taking someone suffering with horrible digestive issues and seeing how their demeanor changes after several months. Their face lights up, their smile becomes contagious and they can’t stop talking about how good they feel. It really is the light of my life.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of the major obstacles and challenges I’ve faced since starting this business has surely been imposter syndrome. Everybody has it.
When you have a skill and you can really watch someone’s life completely change it’s easy to say, why me? Why do I get to do this? There’s nothing more special about me than anyone else.
So, it comes down to believing you’re worthy to make an impact in someone’s life. That is really what it comes down to. You know you can do it; you want to do it but the last piece to the puzzle is knowing you were made to do it.
I’ll never forget when I got off the phone with one of our youngest clients ever, an 8-year-old little girl. Her parents and her were on the call telling us the Dr’s couldn’t believe how much she had changed after a few months of working with us. This little girl was close to death before she met us. She was diagnosed failure to thrive with major gut disorders.
After a few months her voice changed, her energy transformed and she was actually laughing. I got off that call and cried. I couldn’t contain it. In that moment, I had to accept that this was what I was made to do. Even if at times it felt like too much for me, the reward was so much more than I could have ever asked for, I had to accept the responsibility.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I see business as an art form. It truly is a spiritual thing. The greatest function of business is to serve other people. Usually, that has to be in a creative way.
So, when you look at manifesting what’s in your head to something that is tangible that will change somebody’s life, that can be a long road.
What we do is help people with digestive disorders. We help people when the doctors have given up on them. We help them when they’ve tried everything else.
The way we do that is by educating them on the latest cutting-edge research and science that has shown us what causes these digestive issues. So, we empower people to find the root cause of their issues instead of putting a band-aid on this problem.
In doing that, we’ve literally changed lives. We’ve worked with people that are trapped at home and haven’t been on vacation in 25 years. It’s amazing to help someone find that kind of freedom from an issue that is so embarrassing yet so pervasive in our society.
Over 25 million people suffer from digestive issues such as IBS or IBD in the USA alone! It’s a massive number and they all need help.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Natural health is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Over the next 10 years, I see a HUGE shift in this industry. People are no longer fooled by the snake oil sales techniques of the latest and greatest pill that will solve every ill.
The truth is that consumers are getting smart. They know that to have great health, like anything else, takes hard work. It truly takes diligence and effort.
So, in the realm of health and gut health, I believe consumers are going to stop purchasing from these companies that sell the latest popular supplement. They’re getting too intelligent and smart for that. They’re going to begin to look for comprehensive systems with support strategies in place to get them where they want to be.
That is the future and in the next 10 years, people are going to get smarter and smarter. They’re going to want real solutions not empty promises.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@jacobthurston.com
- Website: jacobthurston.com
- Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/jacobthurstonHHP - Youtube: https://www.youtube.
com/channel/ UCuKMgVNILjeodrkQU3qrilw
