Episode 1: Protein Balls and Horse Stalls with Amy Gurske, CEO of Sayhii

In our debut episode, I sit down with Amy Gurske, founder and CEO of sayhii, to explore the roots of her entrepreneurial journey. From cleaning horse stalls as a child to selling trained horses to pay for college, Amy’s early ventures shaped the resilient, creative mindset that drives her work today.

We talk about the founding of sayhii, her experience with burnout, and the reset that led her to build healthier habits — including protein-packed routines and structured meal prep that now anchor her busy weeks. Tune in to hear what Amy is building in Rochester, NY! 

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Transcript

Heidi Knoblauch: 0:05

Hi, everyone. My name's Heidi Knoblauch, and I'm the host of Founder's Fridge. Founder's Fridge is a podcast where we talk to founders about what they eat while they're building their companies. On this week's episode, we have Amy Gurske. Amy is the CEO of SayHi, and we talk about getting enough protein, meal prep for traveling, and a whole lot of soups. Let's look inside Amy's Fridge. I am super excited to have you on the podcast and that you're the first podcast. It's going to be amazing. First, can you tell me a little bit about sayhii and how you're building the company now?

Amy Gurske: 0:48

sayhii actually came to be because of a couple of things that I ran into in corporate America. But the premise of sayhii is through one question a day, we can help optimize the health and well-being of every employee in the company. Through my own journey in corporate America, I realized that a lot of us don't even know what's happening, what we need in our time of need, when we're stressed, when we're tired. And so we need something outside of ourselves to help guide us in the right direction. And that's the goal of sayhii, is create the healthiest, most productive and efficient workforce that want to stay at your company because we're doing all the right things by them. So is this your first entrepreneurial endeavor, would you say? I would say a first official. I say this because when When I was younger, I was raised by a single mom after my dad passed away. When I was four, four years old, my mom said, What do you want to do? I said, I want to ride horses. She said, Well, we can't afford that. I had to wait until I was eight years old, but I got a job working in a barn. For me, it was always figuring out how to do things. I cleaned 32 stalls a day to ride horses growing up, and I did it for about 10 years. But then I realized, Okay, well, I can do things and get different outcomes. I actually turned it into my own little unique opportunity. I got to board horses for free by cleaning stalls. It turned into me actually buying horses off the track, breaking them and selling them, and that's how I paid for college. Although I will tell you, I did not think this was entrepreneur because I was under 10, and then I was 14 and 16. The truth was, even in corporate America, 22 years, any job I took never existed before I was like, Have we thought about doing this? Have we thought about trying that? They're like, Yeah, go run with it. Probably because I was annoying. But I was an entrepreneur, always creating divisions, departments, different processes, structures, outputs.

Heidi Knoblauch: 2:37

So, yeah. Yeah, true entrepreneur. So in fourth grade, they had us do one of those just projects that you take home about your life. And one part of it was what you want to be when you grow up. And so I have this great image because it says that I wanted to be an inventor and that the salary was between zero and a million dollars.

Amy Gurske: 3:02

That's amazing.

Heidi Knoblauch: 3:04

So I think true entrepreneur from the start, even in fourth grade, really willing to take those risks, for sure.

Amy Gurske: 3:09

I'm not going to lie. A funny story. Do you remember they used to have us do those career assessments or whatever in sixth grade? Mine came back that I was supposed to own a greeting card shop. I was like, I love math and science, but if you actually think about say hi, we say hi once a day and we turn your answers into action. It's literally a giant greeting card company. I went full circle. I love that. Thank you, Ms. Misham for sixth grade. I love that so much. She knew.

Heidi Knoblauch: 3:39

So what did your eating habits look like while you were building sayhii? How old is sayhii, first of all?

Amy Gurske: 3:44

sayhii is four and a half years old. Yeah, half birthday right now. I should count it in months, I guess. I don't know. I'll change to that. She's officially like, 68 months old. I'll lead with humor because the truth was my eating was terrible. I don't know if people are going to want to hear this, or maybe they need to hear this, or maybe they're in the same boat. But when I started to sayhii, it went zero to crazy, really fast, and my eating went normal to zero. I was skipping meals. I'd wake up, drink coffee until about 2:00, maybe sneak something in, probably not. I can count multiple days where I did not put real food in my mouth. It was just liquids, just coffee, just whatever. I wasn't taking care of myself. The reason why I ended up leaving corporate America at the end of 22 years was because I burned out and couldn't even recognize what was happening in my body. The first year and a half, two years-ish, I would say, I wasn't eating not eating enough, barely eating, not getting the right nutrients. It manifested in me being in calls just like this, and then mid-sentence, just losing it, losing everything. My brain went blank. I was getting brain fog. I wasn't sleeping well. Confusing, very simple thing. These things that you wouldn't think that someone who is running a company is running into. But when you're not fueling your body, you can't operate as a human. I sat back after a call and I was really disappointed in myself because nobody else caused this to happen besides me. I had to take a real big look at what I was putting in my body, how I was treating my body, how I was taking care of myself, and was I prioritizing my own well-being because I can't burn out of my own company. So for the last couple of years, I've really been able to turn that around. So what does it look like now? Boring. But effective. No, I'm fine with boring. I don't mind. I jokingly say I'm the boringest person in the world, which I do often feel like. But it's very structured. The way that I have to plan is, A, I stay in the day. I am such a in the moment person, which I also never used to be. I was always a couple of years ahead. Planning things that I didn't even know existed. Every Sunday, I pull up my calendar. I live and breathe by my calendars. I'm sure most founders do. I literally look at my week. Am I in office? Am I traveling? Am I traveling via plane, car? What is it that I need to plan around? I cannot be that person that's like, I'm just going to go to the airport and find something. I'm not going to find it. If I don't plan for it, it's not going to work. This week, I open my calendar on Sunday, and I'm traveling Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I have to be able to plan my food for the week. This week, I start my day every single day with mushroom coffee. I know it sounds weird, and if anyone's asking which one I use, because that's the next question I get from everybody, I use everyday dose. I have tried all of them. I prefer everyday dose. Just personally, I have friends who like others, but a huge fan, and I put 15 grams of collagen in it with my Ripple milk because I don't do a ton of dairy and have that right off the bat in the morning. I also do, and I just started doing about six months ago, it's a program called... It's not program, it's a vitamin mixture, but it's called AG1. I'm also doing that in the morning to make sure that I'm getting all my daily vitamins, nutrients. I should say first, I do that with five milligrams of creatine because I'm in my 40s. I am a huge fan of AG1. It literally keeps me on track. So my personal goal is if I can have a glass of water and AG1 before I have coffee, I've succeeded for the day. I felt like I literally just did this backwards because the truth is I come downstairs and I have to have my AG1 on an empty stomach. So I let the dogs out. I have three dogs that also help keep me active. Let the dogs out, mix my AG1 down it because I'm a fast drinker, and then immediately take my dogs for a walk, skip that, and then come back, make my mushroom coffee. And that's when I drop into meditation. I do have a very structured morning routine that I do. Totally. All right. So what is this? So you're doing meal prep, essentially. So are you doing this? You look at your calendar on a Sunday, and then you're starting to do meal prep for the whole week. Is that what it looks like? Oh, yeah. I have to get all of my groceries, plan ahead what's for each day in my fridge so I know what I'm grabbing. So right after this, I'm jumping and running to Buffalo. On my counter is already my little... It's not a pale. It's fabric, but it's But it's a cooler thing. I already have my protein milk. I've got my water container ready to go because another thing is I'm terrible at hydrating. I will not drink, especially if I'm traveling, because I don't want to have to stop to use the ladies room. But We also have to stay hydrated. Everybody on the SayHi team has a 40-ounce Stanley tumbler. We have challenges. We all need to drink at least to a day, and we will report back to each other whether we do. My tumbler is ready to go. My protein meal is ready to go, which is essentially milk with a coffee mixture that helps me get a little caffeine in. I did throw some string cheese in, which is not like me, but they're in the fridge, so I have them, and some protein bars, and then a pack of almond. And that's in my bag ready to go, literally sitting on my counter for me to walk out the door and grab it, because if not, I'll forget it. Do you make your own protein bars, or are you buying them off the shelf? Both. So the problem with making your own is keeping them refrigerated. So the other thing that I do do, Sunday, typically this week's a crazy week because I'm traveling every day, but I still food prep. The things I food prep on Sunday were protein balls. I make those peanut butter protein balls with protein Oats and all that chia seeds. I make protein balls. I bag them in sets of two, and they're sitting in my fridge so I can grab a pack, throw them in. I have packs of those for each day. I think it's 34 grams of protein between both. Perfect. I have those for the rest of the week. Normally, I make a soup on Sunday. If I'm going to be in office every day that week or even three out of five days, I'm going to make soup. And it couldn't be more simple. Sunday, turn the bills game on. Sorry, if you're not a bills fan, your loss. Turn the bills game on. And literally, it's a giant pot. You put a ton of water in it, buy some chicken breasts, throw them in, boil them up. And then literally, you just don't bin any vegetables. I'm an avid gardener. And so recently, I had a ton of zucchini come up. I had string eggplants. I put in any vegetables. You can put in frozen vegetables, canned vegetables. And I always dump in a couple of cans of beans. Again, easy. I'm not growing the beans. Can't open, dump, rinse. Soupe takes less than five minutes. Cokes for 30 minutes, put it in five different containers. You got 20 grams of protein in each bowl. Fantastic. I'll send you to work. Perfect. Are you sending or sharing the soup with your partner? It depends on the soup. It does. Yeah, it needs to have a high enough fat content. So typically, I will make my soup, and then I'll just throw in a ton of noodles, and then he'll eat that. So I don't put the noodles in mind, but he'll eat it if it has noodles. So chicken vegetables or meat and vegetables, noodles, then he'll eat the soup. Oh, and I have to get salt bread from the village. Dairy. It's a process. It's a process. It's a whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that food for me, why I like talking to founders about food, is that just shows so much about the growth of their company. And even what you've described right now, not eating, that can lead to just such burnout. And it's like once you start to have a routine about it, then... I don't know if I'm in the routine phase yet. I'm still in the burnout phase yet, so maybe that's why I'm starting this podcast. You have so many transitions, though. I know. I've been working on Say Hi for four and a half years. That's four and a half years of consistently unconsistent. But I can plan for that. When When you're switching roles, when you're moving geographies, when you have big changes in your life, we all need to recenter. But what we realized, and what I very clearly realized in that moment was me starving myself was starving my company. It wasn't even that I was meaning to. The same thing applies to anything else in your life, really. If you're starving yourself, you're probably short and snippy with your partner, so you're starving your relationship. If you can't fully show up to meeting, you're starving your coworkers. All these things, we're like, Well, I don't What I eat doesn't matter. As long as my team has food, as long as they have snacks, as long as my customers have macaroons, everything's fine. No, it's not fine. Amy needs to take care of herself so that this is still standing here. So I would challenge founders. The way that you eat, the way that you manage your life is really probably how you're managing your company. And if it's not, it's slowly going to become that because you can't keep them separate forever. So what do your dinners look like? Are you meal-prepping dinners, too? Interesting. I do have some evening events that I do, but for the most part, my partner does a lot of cooking. He's also an entrepreneur, so he's working full-time, too, but he loves to cook. He also won't eat what I make because it's too healthy, hence the noodles. So he loves to make dinner every night. And then we have an unwritten rule that I can pick around what I want to eat because I don't necessarily eat as much or everything that he does. And so he doesn't take offense if I eat parts of the meal and not the others. So the other... Well, what was it? Yesterday, he made tacos, and I didn't want tacos, and he bought me hard-shelled tacos. I just wanted a taco bowl. And so I didn't touch it. He doesn't get it. I just eat what I want when I want it. But he's always cooking dinner in some way, shape, or form. However, I always have extra soup. And so if he's just doing something, he's running late, he's tired, right? I'll just eat one of my soups. I love the extra soup. It's just such a hack. You know what I mean? It's just such a good hack for sure. At home, we make stock and then just put the stock in the freezer. So smart. Do you bag yours? We put it in little quart containers. So very similar to a restaurant feel. Very smart. I love that. So if we looked in your fridge right now, are we seeing a lot of leftovers? Are we seeing protein balls? What's in your fridge at this very second? Literally a container of protein balls, a bunch of protein milk. I made two I'm going to fish this week with diced celery, which is a quick and easy one for me. I have little containers, like little pre-containered containers of that. I did end up, my protein balls will come with me. I did make soup this week, but it was only to switch with my sister who also makes soup because it's her first week of school. I gave her soup for her first week of school. I still have half my soup in there. Then you're also going to see all my milk. I use Ripple milk. Like I said, my protein milk that are in there. I constantly have chicken breasts just sitting there in case I need it. String cheese is in there. I do keep my almond in the fridge. But what I will say is the majority of the stuff that I eat is also in my pantry and on my counter because I need to supplement with extra things. So like I mentioned, my collagen in the morning, or if I'm adding in chia seeds to something, those cans of beans I always have stocked. My pantry outside of my fridge is always stocked to be able to make soup. I love I love it. This episode is so about soup, and I'm all about it. People are going to be like, I'm never eating soup again. Do I have to eat soup as a founder? Yes, you have to eat soup as founder. No, you don't. A hundred %. I think soup is just such a good call for sure. It's It's easy, too. It's easy. I mean, even in my fridge right now. So I will say- What's in your fridge? Enough about me. Do you guys eat the same? I got to know. Yeah. So I am actually incredibly I'm really spoiled. So after the restaurant, I got very burnt out from cooking. So I similarly have been just a pantry eater. It's bad. I'm like, Give me a chompstick. Give me some almond. If I'm feeling feisty, give me a thing of tuna. And so it's really bad. And I'm just one of those people that I don't even open the drawers in my refrigerator to see what's in them. If something is not right in front of me, I'm very unlikely to eat it, which is much to my wife's chagrin because she loves to cook. Listen, she did all the cocktails at Plum Moisture Bar, and so she didn't make up the food menus. When I was there, I was doing the food in conjunction with our chef, but I was doing the food and spent a little too much time in the kitchen. So I just got very burnt out from cooking and from creating food because all I think of is of goods sold and feeding. It's all really... It's still business for me. The food is still business. But now, if you look in my fridge, because my wife just loves to make things, she made the insides of stuff for pot pies. So she just like, we had made a chicken, so she made half... It was half-thigh chickens that she made for dinner, not last night, but the night before. And then yesterday, she She just took all the meat off the bone, made the inside of pot pie, inside of what you would put in a pot pie, and then just put all of the filo dough puff pastry in the fridge so we can just make individual pot pies in skillets. The chances that I will ever do that are zero. So she's going to have to make me those pot pies, which is terrible. But she's helping herself, she's helping herself, too. I know. Oh, Oh, yeah. And she's making... It's crazy, the stuff that she makes. For instance, around St. Patrick's Day, she took some beef and she corned it herself and then smoked it on the big green egg for 13 hours. So we had homemade corned beef. She is just very into it. So I just totally ride on her coattails and then grab a Fair Life and a chompstick when I need to, which is bad. This morning, so I've had AG1, so I feel like I'm fine for the day. So it's fine. I've had AG1, and then I've had a chocolate Fair Life. 26 or 42 grams? I had the 26 grams. So you tell me, can I absorb 42 grams of protein? Because I drink it so fast. So I drink mine slower. Here's one right now. So I mix It's the vanilla with... I was mentioning there's a coffee collagen protein-y thing that gives you an extra 15 grams. So instead I do the AG1 mushroom coffee, then this. I put a giant ice cube in it. It will take me three hours to drink. So I know that I am actually probably taking it in, I'm not chasing this. I chase the AG1. I get down quick because I'm thirsty in the morning. This, I'll let noodle sit throughout the day. And then I have my Stanley that I'm constantly sipping, too. I'm always double or triple fisting. Yeah, totally. It is. Even at restaurants, I went out this week for a restaurant. Do you go out to eat, actually? That's a good question. When Josh doesn't feel like cooking, we typically will order out, and we go one place, which is a Mediterranean place that I can walk to. But I don't love going out to dinner. I don't know what happened, but food has been ruined for me because it is fuel. I genuinely don't eat a ton in one sitting. So going out for meals is so not fun for me because I'm full after 10 minutes, and then I have to sit there while everybody else eats their meal, and then I'm hungry an hour later. So I don't love going out to eat because I just eat. I don't eat large meals a couple of times a day. Yeah, we had friends in town, so we went to some Hudson Valley restaurants that were just like that fresh farm to table. So it felt good. But just generally, we just don't go out to eat anymore. We split our time between upstate New York and Philadelphia. I don't know if I told you that. But when we're in Philly, we will eat out because it's great restaurants. We live in Fishtown, which is all of the great restaurants. I lived in Rittenhouse. There you go. Perfect. So love Philly, love the restaurants there. But just generally, we're not really going out to eat so much. It's not really a thing for us. I hate to say it, but But the food we make is better than pretty much what we eat out between, it sounds like your partner and your ability to open the fridge, not the drawer, but the fridge. Josh loves to cook. I love to cook, and I love to garden. And so I would rather just eat fresh when I can. The other thing is for 20 years, I was forced to eat out pretty much every single day because I traveled for 22 years on a plane. So I never had the option. And that was actually when I started going to grocery stores. I was traveling every single week, leave on a Monday, get home on a Friday. And Monday, I would literally go to find a Whole Foods, find a Wegmans, find a Safeway if you're out West, whatever, and Trader Joe's, and you have to buy your food for the week. I got so sick of eating out every single night sitting at a bar, ordering a salad, getting a soda water, coffee or whatever, going back to my hotel. It was miserable. And so I just started buying groceries for the week. And my boss, I remember, called me. He's like, Why do you have an expense to Wegmans for 85 $5. And I was like, That's my entire week's worth of food. And he's like, What? I was like, You're not going to have dinner is out. You're not going to have lunches. I said, Moving forward, I'm buying groceries. I'm getting my waters. I'm going to get everything I need to make myself feel comfortable during that week. And he was like, Okay. I ended up saving him thousands of dollars because I never went out. For sure. I know. And I think for Kelly, for my wife, it's meditative for her to be cooking. She loves shopping in the grocery store. Loves it. Who does Josh this It makes no sense. I know. It makes no sense to me either. I think they both need to go see someone because that's not normal. I know. It makes no sense to me either. It's just really bad. I don't know where anything is in the grocery store. If she's like, Hey, could you pick me up, I don't know, something. Can you pick me up this type of vinegar? I'm like, Yeah, I have no idea where that would be in a grocery store. Can I Instacart it? I Instacart it this morning. Yeah. Efficiency, I'm telling you. I just don't like the grocery stores because of the inefficiency. I do love new technology and being able to get what you need when you need it without having to go experience parking lots and massive lines and crap. I just don't want to deal with it. I also never thought that I would be the one that trusted somebody else to pick my produce, but I'm okay with it. Yeah, 100 %. Although we got giant leaks the other day. I was like, Where are these coming from? It's an odd choice for this person to pick. All right, so you're going to Buffalo tonight. What are you doing for dinner tonight? 00, and so I'm going to go to that meeting, and then I have a couple of meetings after that. And then I'm going to stop, likely, there's a yoga studio I stop at in Buffalo that has an acai bowl that I love. But if I don't get to do that, I have all of my snacks in my bag, but then 00. 00, and then drink my sleepy time tea and go to bed. All right, so what's next for SayHi? Well, we're expanding a lot of ways. I think you know, but we expanded into Australia. And so we have a focus right now on both Australia and New Zealand. But we have a huge need within health care. So just like we're talking about, optimizing our own cells, showing up, well, our hope is to help the healthcare industry as well optimize their own workforce. And so I'm zipping off Buffalo to go talk to a hospital system to go do that. But we're just excited. We're forming a lot of new partnerships and just really looking forward to partnering with organizations that want to start saying hi. Awesome. Tell our listeners just where they can find you, Mark, and where they can find more information about SayHi. Yeah, you can find Amy Gershky on LinkedIn. You can find SayHi at sayhi, s-a-y-h-i-i-2-i. Io. That's our website. But feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me a message. I'll be more than happy to get back to you. Awesome. Thanks so much, Amy, for being the first guest on the show. It's just awesome. You got it. I love a fridge. You better send me those recipes, though. Absolutely. I will. You send me yours for sure. Will do. Awesome. Thanks, lady. Yes, bye.