Surround yourself with people who are where you want to me — there is nothing more inspiring than seeing “to believe” what you want is possible.
Today, more than ever, wellness is at the forefront of societal discussions. From mental health to physical well-being, women are making significant strides in bringing about change, introducing innovative solutions, and setting new standards. Despite facing unique challenges, they break barriers, inspire communities, and are reshaping the very definition of health and wellness. In this series called women in wellness we are talking to women doctors, nurses, nutritionists, therapists, fitness trainers, researchers, health experts, coaches, and other wellness professionals to share their stories and insights. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Kasia Stiggelbout.
Kasia is the Founder of In Flow, a women’s wellness brand dedicated to helping women reconnect with feminine cycles. Our first product, an OBGYN-backed planner, allows women to tap into optimized productivity by aligning their schedules with their cycles. Kasia also hosts The Other Way, a podcast featuring guests who share stories of alternative paths in spirituality, wellness, and business.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
I’m excited to be here! As a personal development enthusiast and recovering Type A personality, my journey took a dramatic turn after a significant health scare. In my past life, I have spent over a decade leading software development teams at companies like Microsoft and organizing TEDx events in San Francisco, but I have found myself repeatedly burning out. Despite immersing myself in personal development advice about optimizing my schedule and embracing hustle culture’s “no pain, no gain” mantra, I hit rock bottom with a severe health crisis — a full-body autoimmune flare coupled with endometriosis that left me bedridden.
This pivotal moment forced me to reassess everything. I dove into nutrition and women’s health, eventually graduating from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Through this journey, I discovered a transformative approach to productivity, especially for women. Unlike men, whose energy and hormones reset every 24 hours, women experience hormonal cycles over 28 days. I restored balance and discovered ultimate productivity by aligning my diet, schedule, and exercise routines with these natural rhythms. This cyclical approach not only revitalized my energy but also led to unprecedented levels of productivity. It’s my mission to design holistic productivity tools that support women in aligning with their own feminine flow.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
Pivots, pivots, pivots, and never saying “no” to early-stage grunt work. Have you ever heard the O.G. tech development term: “Fail fast, fail often”? This approach, which emphasizes fast failure as key to business success or finding product-market fit, is the same attitude we need in our own careers and lives. I have had several major life-career pivots, and diving into these headfirst has been a major differentiator for me in my career. Frankly, it has allowed me to achieve the success I’ve had so far.
I graduated from college with an English degree, dreaming of being an Editor in Chief. Though I ended up working for Hearst Magazine (the conglomerate behind Seventeen Magazine and Cosmo) while still in school, I couldn’t have predicted that I would jump from publishing to marketing at a CPG company, then to working in tech, and finally to leading teams that build software. I followed what interested me most and wasn’t afraid to be a beginner.
One pivotal experience for me was discovering Product Management at the first tech startup I worked at. I pitched and led the build of a piece of software in our company hackathon and discovered that this “role” (the person discovering innovation, bringing it to market, and leading the software teams behind it) was an actual position! I went straight to our VP of Product, took him out for coffee, and asked what it would take for me to be considered for this job. It took six months of grunt work, working two jobs (my original job and doing product work on the side) to prove that I had the skills to become a PM. This career shift changed my life, enabling me to be where I am today — financially and with the skills to build new products from scratch.
I have many such examples of career changes and pivots. My main lesson here is: don’t be afraid to change your path and don’t be embarrassed to be a beginner again when you do.
P.S. For any Human Design experts out there, I’m a 3/5 projector, so I guess these pivots and experiments make sense!
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I have made SO many mistakes (and continue to make them almost every day, if not every week!). Mistakes are crucial to learning, and to me, they are a sign that I am doing something new. In the early days of running my business, I found myself spending/investing in things that were truly unnecessary — from spending more than I needed on design or marketing resources to paying for professional photoshoots for our products before we really needed them. The main lesson for me here is to be scrappy and release perfectionism. If my first version doesn’t embarrass me, I’ve waited too long to ship or I’ve spent too much time perfecting it. This has become my new motto.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
At In Flow, our mission is to revolutionize the concept of “productivity” for women by helping them embrace their natural feminine flow. Shockingly, 50% of women will experience burnout at some point in their lives. This alarming statistic underscores the flaw in our cultural perception of productivity. Unlike men, who experience a 24-hour hormonal cycle, women have a 28-day cycle that significantly impacts their energy, creativity, and productivity.
In Flow’s products are tailored to align with female cycles and energy patterns. Our flagship product, a planner, begins on Day 1 of a woman’s menstrual cycle rather than a conventional Monday. It provides daily, personalized tips to optimize her schedule, diet, and exercise in harmony with her natural rhythms. Backed by OB-GYNs, our planner is a game-changer, redefining personal development and productivity tools for women. By honoring these natural cycles, we aim to combat burnout and foster a more balanced, sustainable approach to wellness and productivity.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
1 . Women specifically: become aware of how your energy shifts not just over the course of the day — but over the course of your cycle. Optimize for these changes via more effective scheduling, creativity, productivity, working out, and more.
2. Sleep and rest more: our Western society is extremely focused on productivity and “doing” yet we can only “do” as much as we balance the productivity alongside rest. The “no pain no gain” mentality is false: we can push hard but A) do it in sprints and B) balance the push with rest. Not doing this will lead to health breakdowns and ultimately, less productivity.
3. Meditate: most of us experience so much noise day to day! Emails, news, social feeds, texts, phone calls — we’ve completely become imbalanced in terms of our ratio of consumption to creation AND consumption to quiet. Meditation has absolutely changed my life: mental health, emotional reactivity, creativity, and it’s my top recommendation for all.
4. Move every day: this is cliche but a biggie. It doesn’t have to be a high intensity workout, but just prioritize movement.
5. Spend time in nature as often as you can. In a study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3) of 20,000 people, a team led by Mathew White of the European Centre for Environment & Human Health at the University of Exeter, found that people who spent two hours a week in green spaces — local parks or other natural environments, either all at once or spaced over several visits — were substantially more likely to report good health and psychological well-being than those who don’t.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I’d choose one specifically for women: cyclical living, also known as the art of adjusting your schedule, diet, and movement routines to align with where you are in your cycle. Research shows how our bodies and minds change over the course of our cycles, and I’d love to bring cultural awareness to this rhythm — both the benefits of honoring it and the ailments that come with ignoring our cycles.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
1. It will take twice as long and be twice as expensive — in fact, it took me at least twice as long to bring my product to market (and twice the initial cost!).
2. This experience will be the highest of highs and lowest of lows — every day, every week is a roller coaster of emotions
3. The real test is not the finish line, but how you experience the journey. Why? Because cultivating resilience and a strong bounce-back rate seems to be the key to success (from other successful founders… I hear ;)).
4. First time founders think about product market fit, second time founders think about distribution — I think I over-indexed at first about the perfect product. I think we did deliver that, but the tough part now is a scalable distribution system. Think about it from the get go!
5. Surround yourself with people who are where you want to me — there is nothing more inspiring than seeing “to believe” what you want is possible.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Oof, all of these causes are incredibly important! If I had to choose, I would say mental health. Without sound mental health, everything else suffers. Our mindset and emotional state dictate our relationships, creativity, work, and even our ability to effectively address other important causes like sustainability and environmental changes. As someone who has spent over a decade in tech, I have firsthand insight into how addictive, distracting, and anxiety inducing the tools we use throughout nearly every waking moment of our lives can be. I recently read “Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt, which resonated deeply with me. Our culture has evolved towards being more isolated, more distracted, and more “noisy” (news, social media, etc.) than ever — this environment is not conducive to a healthy mind and heart and we are starting to see the effects of this as anxiety and depression skyrocket. As a global community, we need to start to prioritize mental health — not just treatment of mental health, but prevention through shifting how we live our lives day to day including the tools we use, the media we consume, the practices we have for spirituality and wellbeing, and the connections we have in our lives to support us.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
The best way to keep up with our work is by following us on Instagram @inflowplanner and visiting our website inflowplanner.com. We’d love to have you join our community and stay connected!
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com .
