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| Immigrant entrepreneur: | Fiona Gilbert |
| Company: | Quanta Therapies JSYK Consulting Devas Being Devas Haumea Health Fiona Gilbert |
| Place of birth: | Malaysia |
| Employees: | 10 |
| Age started business: | 42 (Quanta Therapies) |
Show notes
Fiona immigrated to United States in her early 20s and landed in Silicon Valley. Shortly after coming immigrating she fell tremendously sick. She was so sick she had to get a service dog that helped her move around. She tried many different treatments and nothing helped.
But with her sickness came a blessing. She was able to find something that allowed her to feel absolutely amazing, and Quanta Therapies was born.
Not only that, her creativity launched her to create several different companies and now she manages 5 of them. Fiona is so full of creativity and helps people every step of her way through many various stages of their lives.
Quotes by Fiona
The entrepreneurial process is learning all the parts of the business that youâre not good at, but even if youâre not good at it, you need to learn it.
People ask, âWell what motivated you to do this?â and I say, âSurvival.â
When your biologically family is not there to support you, you need to create a community. Thatâs the first thing you need to do.
Be prepared to be uncomfortable.
People talk about work/life balance, and I donât think that exists.
I work for the most part, 7 days a week.
Surround yourself with people who understand what youâre going through.
Having everything in house is a luxury and itâs not the best thing for a startup.
Where to find Fiona
Quanta Therapies | Instagram | FionaGilbert.com
[read more] Alina Warrick (1s):
Welcome to the Immigrant Entrepreneurs Podcast, episode 36.
Fiona Gilbert (6s):
The White Australia Policy started in 1901 and ended in the 1970s, where if you were a non-white person, you are not legally allowed to move to Australia. You are not legally allowed to live in Australia. And so my parents were one of the first, when the doors reopened to the world, my parents were one of the first colored immigrants into Australia.
Alina Warrick (29s):
My name is Alina Warrick and I’m honored to have Fiona Gilbert on my show. Fiona was originally from Malaysia, but when she was young her family moved to Australia, where she spent all of her young adult life. Shortly after immigrating to the United States, Fiona fell tremendously sick and unable to work or function properly. And in fact, she had to get a service dog to help her around, but with her sickness, she was able to find Quanta Therapies where is she became the founder and build a successful company. Not only that, she’s managed to open several businesses and currently she manages five completely different companies.
Alina Warrick (1m 14s):
She’s so full of creativity and always finds a ways to help people through her business passion. So let’s dive right in. All right, Fiona, thank you so, so much for coming onto the Immigrant Entrepreneurs Podcast. I truly appreciate your time and I’m really excited to hear all about your journey. So welcome to the show.
Fiona Gilbert (1m 36s):
Thanks Alina. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here.
Alina Warrick (1m 39s):
Lets talk about your immigrant journey. Tell us where you’re from and when did you come to the United States?
Fiona Gilbert (1m 46s):
I think I’m a serial immigrant as well as a serial entrepreneur. I was born in Malaysia and I moved as a child to Australia. So I grew up in Australia and I would say I’m Australian before anything else. And then when I got married the first time, we moved to America and my husband was Californian. So we move to the Silicon Valley. So that’s been kind of my immigrant journey, but I’ve lived all over the world and my children are actually adopted from Nepal. So we spent a lot of time in South Asia as well during that journey.
Fiona Gilbert (2m 28s):
So there’s been a lot of movement and I think 2020 with no travel was just kind of the weirdest year I’ve ever had in my life.
Alina Warrick (2m 36s):
And so growing up in Australia, did you always know that you’re going to end up in the United States?
Fiona Gilbert (2m 42s):
No. This was the last place I
Alina Warrick (2m 48s):
Because Australia is beautiful.
Fiona Gilbert (2m 50s):
It is beautiful. I had thought that I would be living in Europe. I had all these plans to move to the UK after I finished university and I was going to be working there and traveling to Europe. And then just before I moved to America, I actually had a job opportunity in Dubai teaching at the American University. So America was not on my list to go.
Alina Warrick (3m 19s):
So what was it like growing up in Australia?
Fiona Gilbert (3m 22s):
So I was an immigrant child in Australia and my parents moved to Australia just at the end of the White Australia Policy and my parents were not white, so it was a really interesting time because Australia was moving into this concept of multiculturalism. And.
Alina Warrick (3m 41s):
And what is that policy?
Fiona Gilbert (3m 43s):
So White Australia Policy started in 1901 and ended in the 1970s, where if you were a non-white person, you were not legally allowed to move to Australia, you are not legally allowed to live in Australia. And so my parents were one of the first, when the doors reopened to the world, my parents were one of the first colored immigrants into Australia. And it was really interesting because there wasn’t any Asian stores or there was like one Chinese restaurant and one little Asian supermarket. And you learn how to make everything, like if you wanted traditional food, my mom is Malaysian Chinese.
Fiona Gilbert (4m 27s):
And so if you wanted traditional foods, you had to make it yourself and the immigrant community was a very tight-knit because you were either related to them or you knew them and you all came in at the same time. And you know, you really stood out because we actually grew up in Perth, Western Australia, which was even more isolated than anywhere else in the country. And so we assimilated into the wider Australian community very easily. And then, you know, my parents in particular really wanted to make sure that we assimilated and became Australian. So they sent my sister and I to one of the oldest girls private schools.
Fiona Gilbert (5m 10s):
So essentially we grew up very, very privileged. Like we went horse riding, our friends all had yachts, and we grew up at the races and then Australia went through this multicultural phase where they opened up the country to a lot of immigrants of any color. And that was really interesting for us to sort of start seeing people who are darker than us or the same skin color as us and just learning about different cultures. And that didn’t exist when we were growing up and when we were little. And, so now Australia, you know, 20, 30 years later, it’s nothing like how I grew up.
Alina Warrick (5m 49s):
Oh yeah, I bet. And so why did your parents decide to move to Australia?
Fiona Gilbert (5m 54s):
They decided to try something new and there was a business opportunity for them. So they thought why not? And they did. And so their families at that point, there was also a lot of political upheaval in Malaysia at the time. So their family members were moving. So we have family all over the world, living in the middle East and Europe in the UK and New Zealand and America. So we start spreading out as a family, as a big extended family. We started spreading out all over the world. So I always joke now that, you know, there’s really no way that you can go with someone being related to me.
Alina Warrick (6m 33s):
I love it. I love it. And so did you experience any racism during the time when you were growing up, at all?
Fiona Gilbert (6m 43s):
We did. Racism is a very interesting thing because it’s so loaded and it’s so different. I always tell people I’m much more comfortable with people actually in my face telling me they don’t like me because of my perceived culture or the perceived color of my skin. Like when you’re up front and you are kind of aggressive about it, I find myself much more comfortable because I know where I stand. It is when they are pretending everything’s fine. I always say, you know, I particularly get concerned about people who say, everything’s fine. They’re not concerned about it. They had no question about it, but God forbid one of your children date outside their own race, or having somebody of a different color in your home.
Fiona Gilbert (7m 31s):
I think that kind of undertone or when you’re doing business and you kind of have that gut feeling, something’s not right. That kind of undertone, I struggle with a lot more.
Alina Warrick (7m 44s):
Got it. And so you get married and you’re husband is from California. Did you guys meet in Australia?
Fiona Gilbert (7m 53s):
He was an exchange student in Australia. We met and then we did this whole long distance thing. This was before the internet. This is how old I am. This was before the internet so we would save up money for phone cards to call each other.
Alina Warrick (8m 8s):
Yeah, that’s a cute, I love it. And so you finally get married and then your telling your parents that your moving to United States?
Fiona Gilbert (8m 20s):
Right. So we moved to the United States because at that time I was finishing, I was working on my PhD thesis at that time and he was working in the Silicon Valley and it just made sense because I did not actually physically need to be anywhere. And the plan was we were going to spend three years in California, go through the stock option thing, make money and go home to Australia. And well that was 20 or something years ago, and 20 something years ago, couple of children. And that was my previous marriage. So, and I’m still here.
Alina Warrick (8m 58s):
And what was it like transitioning to United States? You knew the English language, but were there any struggles when you first immigrated?
Fiona Gilbert (9m 9s):
I was so unprepared for the immigrant experience in the United States. I assumed America was very much like Australia. I mean, we’d kind of watch the same TV programs. We technically speak the same language. The cultural makeup is about the same and you had things like credit cards and banking and all of that. And I just assumed it was just going to be like moving across the country.
Alina Warrick (9m 36s):
To New Zealand?
Fiona Gilbert (9m 37s):
Right. To New Zealand or to Sydney or, and then I showed up in America and I just went, what is this?
Alina Warrick (9m 46s):
And what do you mean by that?
Fiona Gilbert (9m 48s):
You know, things like getting a social security card. So one I had to get a social security card, then I had to get a new drivers license and like drive on the wrong side of the road. Go to a driving test. But the most interesting thing was I couldn’t have my own credit card and I couldn’t have my own bank account because I didn’t have an American credit score. So for the first two years of my life in America, everything was reliant on my husband who is American. And that was a huge shock to the system. We then were told by the bank that I needed to establish a credit score for myself.
Fiona Gilbert (10m 31s):
So we had to go through this whole process of establishing me as a human, like a person. And that was really difficult. And then when I started my first business in America, my husband had to sign on as a guarantor because my credit score was still not built up. My credit identity was not built up. And the people who are in America, building a life who may not be here legally, I cannot imagine what they go through for their survival because I was here legally and I literally spend two to three years going, Oh my God, what is this?
Fiona Gilbert (11m 17s):
I can’t do that. And it was such a huge process. And I remember crying a lot.
Alina Warrick (11m 24s):
It especially moving to Silicone Valley that is, I don’t know about this city where you’re from. I mean, it’s huge. San Francisco’s is huge and, you know, using the public transportation or even driving around, even walking in the streets you can get lost so easy.
Fiona Gilbert (11m 39s):
And this was before GPS and then people in America would give directions differently. Right. They would say things like the north side of the street or standing on the northeast corner. I’m like, I don’t even know what that is.
Alina Warrick (11m 52s):
Yeah. Oh my goodness. What a different world. And so how old were you when you move to the United States?
Fiona Gilbert (11m 59s):
I was 20. I want to say 24, between 24 and 26. I feel like.
Alina Warrick (12m 8s):
That’s super young, that’s super young. And what were you studying in your PhD program?
Fiona Gilbert (12m 15s):
So I was looking at surprisingly, I was actually looking at Australian Immigration History, in my PhD program. And that ended up not being finished because I got sick after I moved to America, which I think added to the stress of moving. And then I had to learn how to navigate the medical system in America with the insurance and everything else in addition to navigating credit scores. And that definitely, I think, added to the challenge of it. And I found myself flying home to Australia a lot for things like physical therapy and chiropractic and alternative medicine, because I just couldn’t figure out how to do it in California.
Alina Warrick (12m 60s):
And so did you finish your PhD program from Australia?
Fiona Gilbert (13m 3s):
No, I didn’t. I got so sick that I just didn’t want to do it anymore. And I actually went back to school in California and became a physiologist because I needed to learn how to take care of myself . The thought of being in a wheelchair or being on all those medications for as long as they told me I was going to, you know, for the rest of my life, it didn’t quite work for me. So I went back to, because I knew nothing about anatomy and physiology. So that actually propelled me to the life that I have now. So that’s when you look back, it really wasn’t a bad thing. It was just a very unexpected thing.
Alina Warrick (13m 40s):
Okay, so you came to America and then it was shortly after you got physically sick?
Fiona Gilbert (13m 46s):
Yeah. It was really interesting because, oh, actually in addition to moving America and not having a credit score. Remember I said, I was born in Malaysia. Malaysia is technically a Muslim country. And even though I was an Australian citizen, I moved to America just after 9/11. And they had restrictions against people who are coming from Muslim countries. So it was very interesting because I never had a Malaysian passport. I had an Australian passport, but they kept asking for your place of birth. And every time I put down my place of birth, it would red flag immediately. And luckily, when I was in Australia, I interned with a few politicians and they intervened on my behalf at the US embassy in Australia.
Fiona Gilbert (14m 34s):
To say that she’s not Muslim, she’s Australian, you need to process her visa. So it was kind of the whole moving to America thing, really stressful.
Alina Warrick (14m 45s):
Yeah, it’s quite a journey. And you know what, like everyone I talked to on the show, it’s a long process. The immigration process is just broken. Anyway, you slice and dice it. People wait 10 years to get their citizenships, people volunteer for a period of time because they’re not able to work. So yeah, I totally get it. And I wish that the immigration process is so much easier because all of these people are coming. They’re talented. They have PhDs like you’re talking about, they are extremely passionate and they’re really smart.
Fiona Gilbert (15m 23s):
I mean, the great thing was the first three, four years, I spent volunteering at food banks in different places just to be out there because I had literally was not allowed to work. My social security card said not valid for work.
Alina Warrick (15m 37s):
Oh my goodness. How crazy. All right. So lets move on with the journey. So you get completely sick. What kind of ailments did you have?
Fiona Gilbert (15m 50s):
I was diagnosed with something called demyelinating neurological condition and basically the myelin sheath that my brain and spinal cord were eating itself. It’s an auto-immune condition, collectively it’s, a lot of people call it Multiple Sclerosis because, and I had lesions in my left temporal lobe and my spinal cord, C two, three, four, five and six. And I was in pain all the time. I couldn’t walk. I had trouble moving the right side of my body. So all of this was happening and we were trying to raise kids and you know, there was just a lot going on and I just felt like I, every day it was a struggle.
Fiona Gilbert (16m 34s):
So I went back and learned anatomy and physiology with no prior experience and no plan of making it a career or what I have now.
Alina Warrick (16m 45s):
So you want to just to learn it just for yourself to heal your body.
Fiona Gilbert (16m 49s):
I wanted to learn it so that when I’m caught up in the medical system where they are telling me, I need to do this and this and this, I want it to be a more informed consumer.
Alina Warrick (17m 1s):
That’s very smart.
Fiona Gilbert (17m 3s):
I was lucky enough that we were financially to the point where I didn’t need to work full time. So I could take the time, you know, the priority was to take care of myself. And I will say to everybody that that was really the greatest gift my ex-husband ever gave me, was that we, I had this time to take care of myself and build my protocols. And the fact that it evolved into where it is now was not expected. So what happened with that was I became, I’m an American College of Sports Medicine and Exercise Physiologist. That’s my official certification.
Fiona Gilbert (17m 43s):
And people started calling me and saying, so-and-so met you and you’re doing so well, can you see my friend? Or can you see my cousin. So I started seeing people privately and I would be then introduced to different, being in the Silicon Valley, I was being introduced to a lot of Biotech and we went through that period where everyone was wearing a wearable. So I was lucky enough to be in that environment. And so companies would ask me to test their products. Companies would ask me how I would use their product to treat my particular condition or other neurological conditions like stroke and Parkinson’s and Fibromyalgia and things like that.
Fiona Gilbert (18m 30s):
So also being in that area, I was exposed to some really high net worth individuals who became my clients. So I just started building this little business and the sole business was suppose to take care of myself and I would be exposed to biotechnology and protocols that would help my healing.
Alina Warrick (18m 50s):
And the physiology, is that a certificate, a license? Is it a doctor’s degree?
Fiona Gilbert (18m 55s):
So at the moment, because I’ve done it for so long, you actually need to have a minimum of a master’s degree plus passing the exam with the American College of Sports Medicine, and exercise physiologists. And then if you’re a clinic, they had different levels. You can also be a clinical physiologists, and that requires a PhD, I believe at the moment.
Alina Warrick (19m 19s):
So you kind of just started this on your own, for your own journey and all the sudden, little by a little people started asking you, how did you do it? How did you heal yourself? And you kind of started to see clients on the side. Did you open up your business at that point or you’re kind of just doing it on the side? Because you just wanted to help people.
Fiona Gilbert (19m 42s):
Oh, it was kind of a lot of it was doing it on the side because I was also trying to raise my kids and be with my kids and take care of myself because my full time job was keeping myself moving, but I kept getting exposed to Biotech and different companies and people wanting to have help building their business. So I started doing that because if I can do it with a laptop in the hospital, when I was getting treatment, that was extra bonus in my life. And it actually wasn’t until 2017, that I came across the piece of technology that changed my life. And I knew I had to put my life into this because I had gone through 15, 20 years of different protocols and different bio-tech and none of it had the same response.
Fiona Gilbert (20m 32s):
So an opportunity came up for me to start my own company and to introduce this biotech to the world. And my feeling was at that point in my life, I was actually going through a phase where I was shutting all my businesses down because I was that sick. I was doing great. I had all these clients and they were coming to see me because my protocols were helping them, but I was getting sick. And then I got so sick to the point that I was shutting everything down. And I was actually on Instagram shutting my entire life down. And I saw a friend posts about this technology and I contacted him. And I’m like, you have got to be crazy. That can not work and he goes, what have you got to lose?
Fiona Gilbert (21m 14s):
So now he laughs at me because he kind of took me kicking and screaming to introduce me to this technology. And now I’m the CEO of a company that only does this technology.
Alina Warrick (21m 27s):
Got it. Okay. Okay so that’s how Quanta Therapies was born.
Fiona Gilbert (21m 31s):
Yes, Quanta Therapies is a fairly new company because of all this huge journey that I was on to get to Quanta Therapies.
Alina Warrick (21m 41s):
Okay, so what does Quanta Therapies offer that you were amazed by it?
Fiona Gilbert (21m 48s):
It is a wearable product and it works on subsonic, subharmonic, sound frequency. So everything that exists in the planet, vibrates, everything has a frequency. Everything has a sound to it, and you can measure the sound. They can measure that when you get a cold, what level of frequency your body vibrates at. So it was very interesting and kind of mind blowing that this technology has existed since World War II. Its technology has existed because after World War II a lot of people were really worried about how many people died during the war through weapons.
Fiona Gilbert (22m 30s):
And so they were looking into subsonic weapons that can disable people. So if you, you know, when you hear a really horrible sound, your whole system just cringes. So it was kind of that level, but subsonic where your ears can’t here, you can’t audibly hear it, but your body can respond to it. So that’s where that kind of technology comes from. So when you think about the remote control that opens your car door, it knows which car door to open, it knows which frequency and it has a soundwave that you can’t hear. So that is basically the type of technology we’re talking about, but for the human body and for living things and for things like liquids and pets.
Fiona Gilbert (23m 13s):
So I started, this technology was expensive and very inaccessible to a lot of people. So I started Quanta Therapies to make this technology as accessible and as cheap as possible because it works. And it works because the human body is designed to heal itself. The problem is it needs to have the right stimulus to heal itself. And this product can do that for you. So is this a bracelet? A necklace? How do you wear it?
Alina Warrick (23m 48s):
You can wear it in several ways. You can wear it as a bracelet, we started off as a patch company.
Fiona Gilbert (23m 56s):
So these patches are programmed with the sound and you can wear it for three to seven days. Then the engineers introduced me to the bracelet and I was like, really? bracelet? No. We really like the patches. So since 2017 to now, when I’m actually in clinical practice, I barely use patches anymore because what I’ve discovered, and it’s been a learning process as well. So the part of all of this is, this technology has existed, but not very many people have had access to it. Now that we have access to it, we’re starting to see patterns and how things work because frequency medicine is so new because you can’t see it, a lot of the times, you can’t feel it.
Fiona Gilbert (24m 42s):
And it’s so subtle. It’s not like you get a jolt, you just go in a day or two, you just start feeling better like your sleeping better. And you’re not as irritated. And so it’s very, very subtle. So it’s very hard for people to kind of wrap their head around it. But we’ve used this on enough people that we’ve kind of seen this pattern and the pattern is it’s exposure to frequency. So for example, you get sick slowly. You know, you age slowly, you don’t feel it. You don’t feel the aging process until you wake up one day and your heads hurt, and your back hurts. So this is it in reverse. And we find that people who wear the bracelet, so the bracelet can be programmed exactly, so everything gets programmed, exactly like a CD or a flash drive.
Alina Warrick (25m 28s):
Oh, okay.
Fiona Gilbert (25m 30s):
So the bracelets can be programmed with the frequencies and you can wear it for a year. And then at the end of the year, we reprogram them and just recharge them again. And what we’ve discovered is that constant exposure to the frequency lets the body get that stimulus all the time. And it has a better chance of healing, but we’re still selling the patches. So the patch protocols are available, actually because of COVID, we’ve gone retail. So now everybody can buy it because previously you could only get it through a practitioner because I really wasn’t sure, I hadn’t figured out the protocols and I hadn’t figured out how much you needed and how to make the price point so that you get benefit without having to spend a lot of money.
Fiona Gilbert (26m 17s):
And once I figured out those protocols, it made it a lot easier. And because of COVID, a lot of people couldn’t go in to see their practitioners, but you can self apply the stickers or you can just get a bracelet. And for a lot of people, the price point for the protocols is easy for them to try the technology and then they will buy a bracelet because the bracelets are about $350, which is quite a bit of money to put out for something that you may or may not know if it will or will not work. But with the patch protocols, you can get pain patches for $16 and you find out it works then you are going to switch to a pain bracelet. Or if you have a lymphatic, I think the lymphatic is about $48.
Fiona Gilbert (27m 1s):
So you can try the lymphatic patches and then move on to a lymphatic bracelet. Even though a lot of people will, I will say that the bracelets are superior in their ability to help you heal because you are exposed to the frequency 24/7, the entire time. You don’t have to have stickers on you. You just wear a little bracelet.
Alina Warrick (27m 24s):
Yeah. So accessible too. What kind of ailments does it heal or what are the top ailments does the technology heal?
Fiona Gilbert (27m 34s):
So remember what we are trying to do is we are trying to change your body’s environment of healing. So when the body is vibrating at optimal frequency, it heals itself. So we’re not actually healing anything, we’re just supporting systems that you need and our top bracelets, we have about 20 of them. But I can tell you the sleep bracelet, the sleep bracelet is our top seller. And then we have pain, arthritis, performance, which has a sound frequency for testosterone. So that is amazing for recovery. And then I designed a bracelet called fertility, for my female fertility clients.
Alina Warrick (28m 15s):
Oh, nice.
Fiona Gilbert (28m 17s):
We call it fertility, but it’s actually really great for PCOS and endo and supporting anything female hormone related. And then of course, there’s the menopause bracelet, which I gave to every single one of my girlfriends for Christmas two years ago, and I can tell you it is, well I was impressed by.
Alina Warrick (28m 38s):
That’s awesome. Okay. So really, you can buy it just to feel better and to sleep better, you don’t really need to have any disease or sickness per say right?
Fiona Gilbert (28m 51s):
No, I mean, the interesting part about my situation at the moment is people say to me, do you think you’ve been healed from your condition? And I say to them, I don’t really know how to answer that question because the MRIs still showed the lesions in my brain and in my spinal cord. But I have not been on any medications since 2017. And I was on a ton of them. My body has repaired itself to the point where there is, I don’t have a limp anymore. I have full function of my hands. I have full sensation. I have full taste. I have full vision. There’s really no symptomatic trace of my condition.
Fiona Gilbert (29m 32s):
But if you MRI me, I still have the lesions in my brain and spinal cord. So I don’t know how to answer that question.
Alina Warrick (29m 39s):
So you’re feeling a lot better. And you’re not feeling any of the side effects from what you were diagnosed from, but it’s still kind of lingering there.
Fiona Gilbert (29m 50s):
Well, it’s lingering only if I go into an MRI machine. So if I don’t go into an MRI machine.
Alina Warrick (29m 56s):
Don’t go.
Fiona Gilbert (29m 58s):
Right. And I do my, you know, because of my age, I do my annual blood work. I get my cholesterol checked, I do the annual thing and I actually have better blood work now than I did when I was 30. And I do post that on social media. And I do tell people that I was like, look, here’s me when I was 30. Here is me now. I don’t know what else to tell you. This is it. And it’s the same thing for the people who use our products. And it really depends on what you want, you know, if you have a lot of inflammation, have the lymph bracelet. I developed the vitality bracelets for my client’s, that we’re going through chemotherapy and it’s just loaded with antioxidants.
Fiona Gilbert (30m 40s):
So I also call that my beauty bracelet, because if I wear that bracelet, everyone just tells me that my skin glows. So I’m like, oh have a beauty bracelet. So, you don’t have to have a condition. This is about wellness. This is about checking your body’s vibration and your body’s systems functioning optimally.
Alina Warrick (31m 0s):
Got it. Okay, awesome. So Fiona, I want to go back to that story, you were saying about you’re about to shut everything down, your own Instagram and all of the sudden your friends post something about this. What happened? What transpired you to kind of take action? And did you get the patch from him or her and put it on and say, Oh my goodness, it’s working, let’s put this on the market. Or what was the story behind that?
Fiona Gilbert (31m 28s):
So there was this patch and that was actually by a different, same manufacturer, different company. And he was teaching a course on it in New York. And I was in San Francisco and I was really sick. And the thought of getting on a plane to go to New York was not going to, like, I was just like, Oh, I can not do this. And I just got a service dog because again, if I drop something on the floor, I couldn’t pick it up. I couldn’t stand up and keep balanced. So the thought of going to New York was just ridiculous. And I called the dog’s train and the trainer said, just go do it, trust the dog, the dog will get you there.
Fiona Gilbert (32m 12s):
So my dog and I are still a team, but I don’t need him any more. But I tell everybody, this is the dog that saved my life because I would not have been brave enough to go to New York if I didn’t have him. And so I went to New York, I attended this workshop and they put four patches on me. And I just remember thinking what is happening, something’s happening. I don’t know what’s happening, but something is happening to my body. And I have a photo that I show people and it’s actually, I think it’s on the website and it’s me treating myself with the patches, six weeks apart.
Fiona Gilbert (32m 51s):
And you can not tell it’s the same person.
Alina Warrick (32m 54s):
Wow.
Fiona Gilbert (32m 55s):
So I was very excited about that technology. And I contacted the company and I said to them, I want to help you. I need to learn more about this. Let’s figure out, I have all these connections in the Silicon Valley, let’s take this to the world and that did not fit into their business model. So I started learning more about the technology and I started just really having to figure out how do I keep, one, keep having access to it myself. But on this level of being as sick as I was for as long as I was and something, this simple could help, I want it to get it to as many people as possible.
Fiona Gilbert (33m 37s):
Because a lot of the times when I had a lot of treatment and I was very privileged to have that treatment because we could afford it. And if this technology could be so cost-effective and had such an impact, people need to have this because you know, you see people who can get certain therapies or they can’t get certain medications because they don’t have the financial resources to do it.
Alina Warrick (34m 3s):
Right.
Fiona Gilbert (34m 3s):
And I would see that and I understood how privileged I was. So to have access to a technology that can help reset the body and to help the body do what it’s supposed to do, which is heal itself. I really wanted this out in the world. So some research and I actually found the original manufacturers of the product and that’s how Quanta started. And I’ve gone through to make the product even more efficient and more cost effective. So instead of wearing 40 patches, you now only need two or three. And instead of having six bracelets, you only need to have one.
Alina Warrick (34m 44s):
Got it. Okay. So you found the manufacturer, you contacted a few people and then did you go back to the original post from Instagram who launched it or who introduced you to it and said, okay let’s get this going and get it off to the ground and to get it to everyone, to be able to.
Fiona Gilbert (35m 5s):
We got investors, we got a small collection of investors who are predominantly practitioners who had been exposed to this technology.
Alina Warrick (35m 14s):
Got it.
Fiona Gilbert (35m 14s):
And we launched probably a lot sooner than I would have liked, but I was so excited about this and I really wanted to get this. And the company has really evolved and slowed down to be a little bit more precise about what we do, because we made a lot of mistakes along the way. And the protocols are now very accessible. Going retail was a really good idea because it really meets our criteria of getting this to as many people as possible. And the ability to ship this all over the world is great. It’s all made in America, but we can ship it all over the world.
Fiona Gilbert (35m 54s):
COVID put a little bit of a hiccup on that. We’ve had a lot of packages go missing during COVID.
Alina Warrick (36m 1s):
Oh my goodness. And so that’s been a little bit of a nightmare, but I’ve learned so many lessons and it’s not just that this technology saved my life, but this technology has really grown me as a business person.
Fiona Gilbert (36m 15s):
This process has grown me as a, just a much more resilient individual.
Alina Warrick (36m 22s):
Yeah, yeah. What a genius product, but it’s also healing people as well. That’s amazing. And how much capital did you guys raise on the first round?
Fiona Gilbert (36m 31s):
So in the first, what I really wanted was to raise 600,000, but I was so excited to launch that I actually launched the company on $225,000.
Alina Warrick (36m 41s):
Wow. Oh my goodness. Amazing.
Fiona Gilbert (36m 46s):
I would say on hindsight, don’t do that.
Alina Warrick (36m 48s):
So Fiona how old were you when you started Quanta Therapies?
Fiona Gilbert (36m 52s):
I was 41, 42 around there.
Alina Warrick (36m 58s):
Okay. But before then you had several other companies, right?
Fiona Gilbert (37m 1s):
Yeah. I think Quanta is probably my seventh or eighth company.
Alina Warrick (37m 7s):
Oh, wow. Okay. So when you first immigrated, you didn’t have a job, you created a company, right? So were kind of an entrepreneur from the very beginning.
Fiona Gilbert (37m 16s):
Yes. Yes. Because you had to because you couldn’t work.
Alina Warrick (37m 20s):
Right. Right.
Fiona Gilbert (37m 21s):
You had to do something because I would try to get a job that, you know, just a simple job, like someone’s assistant or a secretary, I think at that point that they were still called secretaries. I couldn’t do that because I had no American experience. And they would say things like, you have no American experience. And I’m like, well, yeah, I just got here.
Alina Warrick (37m 42s):
Okay. So Fiona, how long did it take your businesses to start seeing some real traction in the beginning stages for Quanta Therapies?
Fiona Gilbert (37m 50s):
We went international straightaway. It took a while for us to evolve from a practitioner only company where I didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to get this product out. So I would say it probably took two or three years to sort out what I call corporate hygiene. We have to get our accounting down pat. We had to get our online e-commerce online, we’re still, I mean, clearly with COVID we’re still trying to figure out shipping. We had to figure out how to explain this technology and what it does to people who might not know, like, who would like me when I first started, who didn’t know their knee from their nose.
Fiona Gilbert (38m 35s):
So we’ve had to find that voice. We had to find what we were trying to tell people we were going to do, because if you sit there and just go, well, it’s by a resonance and vibration and bar, people would sit there and look at you and go, what are you talking about?
Alina Warrick (38m 51s):
Yes, absolutely. Just break it down in the most simplest terms. Yeah awesome. Awesome. And so did you have any mentors that helped you out to start your business and maybe in any of your businesses in the past?
Fiona Gilbert (39m 4s):
I have been a Rotarian since I was 17. And the amazing thing about being a Rotarian is that I think there’s like 2 million of us around the world. And other than all the service projects we do, Rotarians all on their own businesses and they’re a part of big businesses. So when you are part of a Rotary community, people we’ll just, over a cup of tea or glass of wine, will offer help. And I would say that’s been one of the things that has been great for me, is my Rotarian friends, in my Rotary Club.
Fiona Gilbert (39m 47s):
And I’ve actually just moved to Tennessee from San Francisco. I haven’t contacted the Rotary Clubs here yet or moved my membership. Actually, what I’m actually thinking of doing is I don’t want to give up my old rotary membership with my own club in Menlo Park in California. So I think what I’m going to do is have my partner join the Rotary Club here, and then we can keep our Rotary memberships on both coasts.
Alina Warrick (40m 17s):
So you eventually just tapped into all of the Rotary friends that you already had to kind of help you out with different stages of your entrepreneurship career, right?
Fiona Gilbert (40m 29s):
Right. And you have to, you really have to, and there are times where you take help where you can. And I have to say my biggest challenge, doing something as big as Quanta where it’s across different texts, nexuses and different counties and countries and moving goods around was my accounting firm. I actually went through four of them before I got to this one. And the thing I love about my current accounting firm is that I called them and I said, listen, I’ve realized that this is the thing I struggle with most, I need you to teach me the process, and they did.
Fiona Gilbert (41m 12s):
So it’s really the entrepreneur process, I think is not just about the passion and the idea, the Entrepreneur process is learning all the parts of the business that you are not good at, but even if you are not good at it, you need to know it.
Alina Warrick (41m 29s):
Yeah, absolutely. And so what do you think most prepared you to become an entrepreneur? Is there anything that you can look back and see specifically that prepared you in any way?
Fiona Gilbert (41m 40s):
My parents, my parents were immigrants and they went through that same experience where when they move to Australia, they couldn’t get work because they don’t have local experience, which I do find really strange in this global world that we live in now that when you do still apply for a job, people do say, do you have any local experience? Do you know the local, and you go like, well, no, I just got here. Oh, it doesn’t matter on now. And so watching my parents go through that and go through small businesses. I mean, my parents own things like a gas station and they owned a donut shop with Chinese takeaway on the side.
Fiona Gilbert (42m 26s):
They did things like that. Or my mom actually started home catering and she would just cook Asian meals and sell them to neighbors. So having seen that, you kind of know that that is a path and that sometimes survival in a new country requires that kind of commitment. And that kind of daring, I suppose, because there’s no other option.
Alina Warrick (42m 56s):
Right. And then you become so creative all of a sudden, like overnight, now you’ve got to think of ways to make money.
Fiona Gilbert (43m 2s):
Exactly.
Alina Warrick (43m 3s):
Because you don’t have any resources. You’ve got nowhere to go. You don’t have any friends, any family here. You’re just solo by yourself trying to figure out life in a brand new country. And all of a sudden you’re making amazing products and it just works.
Fiona Gilbert (43m 21s):
You just have to and because people are like, what motivated you to do this? I’m like, survival. And it wasn’t just, especially with Quanta, it wasn’t financial survival as much as it was the survival of my body. I needed, I wanted this technology and I didn’t want to get sick again. Like, you know, you have, when you’ve been sick for a very long time, I tell people I still wake up in the morning and I lay in bed. And like the first five minutes I do this little scan of my body. Can I still feel my feet? Can I still feel my hands? And I talked to pained patients all the time and they say to me, I am so scared to say I’m not in pain anymore, because what happens when it comes back and I said, look, I know, I know what that is.
Fiona Gilbert (44m 2s):
So for me, the technology in itself was for my human body survival. And then the business part just came and we just keep going because we have to.
Alina Warrick (44m 16s):
So Fiona, I wanted to talk about the beginning stages of Quanta Therapies. What are some struggles that you had to go through? What is it marketing? Was is getting out there? I know you’ve mentioned capital, of course, that’s the very first struggle, but what other struggles did you have to go through?
Fiona Gilbert (44m 33s):
Because a version of this product was on the market. The other company did not take lightly to the fact that a new company had started. And they posted, I actually contacted several lawyers to ask what I could do about defamation and libel because they started posting these videos about me. Me, the person, not me, the CEO, but basically they would say things like if you go to this company, you need to know that she slept with all of her investors. And that’s how she got money for her company.
Fiona Gilbert (45m 13s):
And at that point, I had two teenage daughters. And I remember having to sit my teenage daughters down and go, if you go on the internet, you may hear this. And I think that was aside from business, the fact that it impacted my personal life so much and such, I think that was something I was not prepared for. And I basically had, you know, you don’t think when you are starting a business that you have to sit your kids down and go, well, you might be hearing these things about me. It’s not.
Alina Warrick (45m 48s):
Yeah, that’s so hard.
Fiona Gilbert (45m 49s):
We had to do that. And I, as a woman at that point, didn’t know how to manage that. I spoke to a crisis management company because this is a family product that’s a health product. It’s got nothing to do with my sexuality or my perceived sex life. And it was really interesting. I had an assistant then and she looked at me, she goes, look at it this way. She said, you got $225,000 for apparently sleeping around you’re the best hooker on the planet. And I went, Oh, okay.
Alina Warrick (46m 27s):
Put a little sense of humor in that. Come on.
Fiona Gilbert (46m 30s):
That’s part of the Entrepreneur process that you don’t think about or you don’t expect.
Alina Warrick (46m 35s):
Yeah. Yeah. And you’re not prepared for the unknowns because you don’t know what’s coming your way, but that, I mean, that’s the first I’ve heard on this show. So, Oh my goodness. You are a warrior out there. So Fiona, let’s switch gears and talk about successes. Are there any successes that you would like to outline from your Immigrant Entrepreneur journey?
Fiona Gilbert (46m 59s):
I think building family communities around the world, that is one thing I’ve learned living in so many different places is when your biological family are not there to support you, you need to create community. That’s the first thing you need to do. And it doesn’t matter whether your volunteering or you go to a rotary club or you just start knocking on your neighbor’s doors. You have to form people who will support you and be that family. And I had people around the world who are not biologically related to me, but who I call brother, sister, mother, father.
Fiona Gilbert (47m 45s):
And I treat them the same way I treat my biological family. They are the foundations for what you do in your life. And they help you in ways that it might not be money. It might not be them showing up and taking care of your kids, but it’s that level of moral support. So I moved to Knoxville last year and my brother, who is not biologically related to me, drove his whole family down for over a week, just to see how I was settling in here. That’s family, that’s community, that’s tribe. And as an immigrant, you need that.
Alina Warrick (48m 22s):
The support definitely helps us. And in many, many ways, because there’s so many struggles and we can’t do this alone.
Fiona Gilbert (48m 29s):
No. No one could do this alone.
Alina Warrick (48m 31s):
We need that love and support from other people. Yeah, absolutely. So Fiona what does the American dream mean to you?
Fiona Gilbert (48m 41s):
I think the American dream is that the dream is always evolving and you’re not stuck. This is a lot of options and it’s not so much a country of opportunity. It’s a country of options because I look at the businesses I’ve started since I’d been in America and some have closed, some I’ve sold, some have gone on to evolve into different things, and I’m not necessarily involved with them. And in addition to Quanta, I own four other businesses.
Alina Warrick (49m 15s):
Oh my goodness.
Fiona Gilbert (49m 16s):
For so many different things. So Quanta is my main company, its my baby, but I own four other companies and I am involved in the four. So, I own a wholistic fertility company called Haumea Health with my friends, Sarah and we helped people get pregnant. Literally we help people get pregnant in a holistic manner. And so we, I have that business. I have a company called JSYK Consulting and its a web design branding company and.
Alina Warrick (49m 49s):
Wow.
Fiona Gilbert (49m 50s):
It’s teaching people how to be their voice and manage their public. Having gone through the stuff that I went through with Quanta managing public relations, managing branding, managing corporate hygiene.
Alina Warrick (50m 2s):
Through web designing?
Fiona Gilbert (50m 4s):
We do it through the web design. Because most people come in and they go, I need a website and you go, well, okay, what do you want your website to say? And how does the website represent you and your story and the community that you were trying to build. So instead of just saying here’s $3,000 for a website, what they do is they buy into a subscription. And within usually, within the first three months we do build them a website. But in that process, it’s about learning about branding and learning how to share your message with the world. So then it becomes like a two, three-year commitment as the web design is just the start of what your brand is going to be.
Alina Warrick (50m 45s):
And what is that consulting company? What is it called?
Fiona Gilbert (50m 49s):
JSYK Consulting. So, then my third company is Devas being Divas. Devas, spelled D E V A S in goddess. And this is a retreat company. 2020 has made us pivot, but it was a retreat company for women in their forties and fifties and sixties who might be going through a divorce are going through being an empty-nester who basically don’t know who they are anymore. And you just need to find a new tribe and find what their next act in life is. So we take them on retreats to foreign places and we do vision boards and we do spiritual energy healing and whatever the local spirituality is, we get involved in that and we helped them connect with other people who can maybe help them build their businesses or help them decide what they want to do with their next stage of their lives.
Fiona Gilbert (51m 45s):
And the reason I started that company with my friend, Leslie, is because I realized after my divorce, I had no idea who I was. I had been a mom, I’d been a daughter, I’d been an executive wife, I’d been a wife, but I forgot how to do things for myself. And I had a group of girlfriends who basically showed up one day, put me on a plane and took me away. And again, I am so lucky. I have been so lucky in this life to have had these experiences. And when I came back, I was telling other people about what my friends did and they are like, Oh my God, I wish I had friends like that. And then I thought, you know what?
Fiona Gilbert (52m 25s):
You can have friends like that. Let me help you get friends like that.
Alina Warrick (52m 29s):
So during COVID are you guys still traveling?
Fiona Gilbert (52m 31s):
No we can’t travel. So that was, we had to refund everybody for COVID. And so we pivoted and what we are actually trying to do at the moment is try to form these online like basically, helps you find friends online that you can have, we are going to try and have a virtual retreat online.
Alina Warrick (52m 50s):
Zoom retreats.
Fiona Gilbert (52m 51s):
We’re going to try to have that and because one of the things we do on the retreats is Leslie and I both herbalists. So we teach them how to brew their own potions, like the potions you saw behind me. So we usually teach them how to blend something for themselves and how to take care of themselves that way. So, because we can’t do that. What were actually going to do is for Valentine’s day, we’re launching a love potion and for the same Valentine’s day, we’re also launching what I’ve been giving my clients as the diva blend, which is a menopause support blend. So we’re doing that for Valentine’s just so that people who might not be able to leave the house or go do stuff like that can still sort of get a sense of what we do.
Alina Warrick (53m 36s):
Okay. So Fiona, I got to ask, normally people in my show have maybe one or two companies, you have four different companies and it seems like wherever you go, you’re creative with all these business ideas. Where does that come from? And how did you develop that?
Fiona Gilbert (53m 55s):
I don’t know. It just happens and I’m not. So I actually spoke to a lady who reads Taro in Sedona, Arizona. And you know, I was telling her what I did and she starts pulling these cards out and I was like, what are you doing? He says, some people paint, some people garden. So this is how you express yourself.
Alina Warrick (54m 21s):
By developing business ideas?
Fiona Gilbert (54m 23s):
Yeah, by developing business ideas and hoping to make a change in the world that way. Because all of the companies are about helping people achieve what they want, but in different ways. So she says to me, you know, don’t ever be concerned about having too many companies. She goes, they will come and go. And she says, I know how you, what she said, you want to grow them and let them go. And then someone else can keep growing them, but they’ve made some impact in the world along the way. So she says, but that is how she, because she said, you know, do you paint? And I’m like, Oh my God, no, I can’t draw. And she says well, do you garden?
Fiona Gilbert (55m 5s):
We might be lucky if we keep a few plants alive. I do. When the kids were little, I would crochet them blankets, but they are not perfectly square or rectangular or so I definitely don’t have that arts and craft thing going. And my partner paints and he does little drawings and that is his outlet. And I don’t have that, but I think everybody needs to have that. And so for me, my businesses are my creative outlet.
Alina Warrick (55m 37s):
Wow. That’s amazing because they are so completely different from each other too. It’s not just like a subsidiary from another company and just, you know, on this side and then branches out. Web designing branding is completely different from Quanta Therapies and then its completely different from the retreat that you are doing. So all of these is such a beautiful blend and you’re right. It’s helping people, it’s bringing value to the world and you’re just so full of creativity, which is amazing. So Fiona what are some things you would advise the next Inspiring immigrant that wants to start their own business listening to you right now?
Fiona Gilbert (56m 18s):
Learn how to eat and live cheaply. Because there are going to be a lot of lean times, be prepared to be uncomfortable. You become obsessive about this. And then you look at your bank accounts and you go, Oh my God, why am I doing this? Work hard, like when people talk about work life balance, I don’t think that really exists because when you run your own business, you can’t just take three weeks off. We just don’t. And I, for the most part work seven days a week, I’m doing something every day, but it doesn’t take away from my life. What I’ve learned to do is what I call micro reset.
Fiona Gilbert (57m 2s):
And because I have four or five companies, I’m doing something and you have to shift between them and the brain shift. So I have a different half a day for each thing. And in between each different half a day, I’ll go do something like go to the gym or get a massage or do something for myself that’s small. So it’s not like I need a whole six hour spa a day, but I will go do things to take care of myself and have fun. Or we go on a date night, two nights a week where we don’t bring our phones. So that’s really good too. And I think surrounding yourself with people who kind of understand what you are going through.
Fiona Gilbert (57m 45s):
So my partner runs his own businesses and he’s just so obsessed with it. And sometimes we really do have, we have to have rules, like there’s no cell phones at the dinner table, it’s gonna get out of control.
Alina Warrick (57m 60s):
Right, right. Yeah. And thank you so much for that advice because living cheaply is not what we normally set out to do. But you know, in the first couple of years of an entrepreneurship, that’s essentially normally what happens and then it starts moving and growing. So that’s such powerful advice we all need to hear. And so, Fiona, I want to wrap up with some super fast questions if that’s okay with you.
Fiona Gilbert (58m 28s):
Of course.
Alina Warrick (58m 28s):
What time do you normally start your day?
Fiona Gilbert (58m 31s):
5 in the morning.
Alina Warrick (58m 33s):
Okay. How many employees do you have?
Fiona Gilbert (58m 36s):
Across the board, we have probably about, there’s probably about 10 of us.
Alina Warrick (58m 41s):
Okay. And what about.
Fiona Gilbert (58m 43s):
Doing different things? Quanta actually, we work on contractors, so we have contractors and we sell out things that, so we basically have about six people in our accounting team, but they go through a third party company, which for a small company is very, very good in terms of managing your cash flow because you cannot have a full time staff that does that. So don’t be, I would say at first, when I first started Quanta I wanted everything in-house and that was, that’s a luxury, having everything in house is a complete luxury and not necessarily the best thing for a startup company.
Fiona Gilbert (59m 23s):
So then we started just outsourcing a lot of things and by outsourcing it’s just change, I mean, cause you actually really do get the expertise because that’s all they do, all day, every day. You’re sharing them with all these other companies. So your cost comes down.
Alina Warrick (59m 43s):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so critical to outsource and to get labor on a smaller penny. And then the next question is that, how often do you watch the TV in a week?
Fiona Gilbert (59m 56s):
I don’t know. I don’t have a television.
Alina Warrick (59m 58s):
Oh good. I like that. Okay. And the last question is, how many hours of work do you normally you put in on average in a week?
Fiona Gilbert (1h 0m 6s):
Oh God, I don’t know because I am mobile. Like we’re all so mobile. We are on our phone and if I run out to run an errand and someone texts me, I would say easily, we put in 12 hours a day, but you don’t really keep track of it.
Alina Warrick (1h 0m 25s):
And did you say you work seven days a week?
Fiona Gilbert (1h 0m 29s):
Yes, I do.
Alina Warrick (1h 0m 30s):
Not. It roughly around 80 hours? Yeah.
Fiona Gilbert (1h 0m 34s):
Yeah.
Alina Warrick (1h 0m 34s):
Okay. Well Fiona, thank you so, so much for coming onto the Immigrant Entrepreneurs Podcast and Oh my goodness, what an amazing journey you have reinvented yourself in so many different ways. And I absolutely love all the companies that you’re running and changing the world one day at a time. So thank you so much. And I wish you all of the best of successes.
Fiona Gilbert (1h 0m 58s):
Thank you. Thank you for having me on. It was fun.
Alina Warrick (1h 1m 1s):
All righty guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. If there are any links that were mentioned in this episode, make sure to check them out on my website under this episode to find all the links conveniently located in the show notes. I just wanted to ask a quick favor. If you could please leave a review wherever you’re at listening to this podcast. Also if you’re an Immigrant Entrepreneur and would love to be on my podcast, please email me and we’ll get connected. I’ll see you guys all next time for another exciting and impactful episode, take care.
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