What Your Gut Knows That Your Brain Doesn't
- May 6
- 2 min read
By Jeff Frese
Founder Eat My Face
There are more neurons in your gut than in your entire spinal cord. And your gut sends more information up to your brain than your brain sends back down.
When people say "trust your gut," they're not talking about a feeling. They're talking about a second nervous system — one that's been refined over millions of years of evolution specifically to keep you alive, moving, and making good decisions. The ancient wisdom isn't mystical. It's biology.
I built a skincare company on it.
A decade ago I started rubbing beef tallow from my kitchen onto my face as a moisturizer. No magazine told me to. No influencer. Just a gut pull that it made sense — and then my skin started telling me I was right. People noticed. Compliments came in. Something clicked: maybe this is a product.
Five years of building later, that hunch is now Eat My Face, a grass-fed tallow skincare brand. Our entire product philosophy runs on one rule: if you wouldn't eat it, don't wear it. Your skin is your largest organ. It absorbs what you put on it. Most of what's on the skincare shelf is either white-label product from overseas or overpriced domestic stuff that's too greasy, too small, and not worth it. We do it differently.
The R&D lab: my family
Three of my daughters grew up with what doctors eventually labeled eczema and rosacea. I say "eventually labeled" because that's all it is — a name they give it when they've run out of explanations. I knew tallow could help. I just needed to prove it.
Some brave parents let me test early formulas on their kids. It worked. They came back asking for more. That's the clearest market signal you'll ever get — someone wanting more of something that didn't exist two weeks ago. Baby Momma was born: our gentlest, cleanest formula, built for postpartum skin, sensitive babies, and anyone whose skin has been through the wringer.
After Sun came the same way. Too many afternoons on the golf course, too much sun, and nothing on the market that actually repaired rather than numbed. So I made it. You can go from a real burn at 10pm to feeling fine by morning.
It doesn't just soothe — it rebuilds.
The actual innovation system
I have a hypothesis. I make a small batch. My wife and daughters use it. They tell me the truth — sometimes brutally. I iterate until they stop complaining and start hoarding it. Then it's ready.
No focus groups. No surveys. Feedback never killed a product — it just sharpened it, over and over, until it was right. The market doesn't tell you what to make. It tells you whether you're done yet.
That's the system. It starts with a gut instinct you can't fully explain, runs through the people who trust you most, and ends when the product earns its place.
Your gut evolved to guide you. Let it.
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