Jesse Golden has spent decades exploring the connection between beauty, wellness, and how we care for ourselves. A former ballerina and model turned holistic health practitioner, formulator, mother, and founder of The Golden Secrets, her approach today is less about rigid rules and more about learning to listen to the body.
We spoke with Golden about the rituals shaping her life now, what living with rheumatoid arthritis has taught her, the lessons behind building The Golden Secrets from the ground up, and why her approach to beauty continues to evolve alongside science.
For more from our Living Well series, read our conversations with Hillary Peterson on the balance between science, nature and ritual, Jeanette Thottrup on bridging nature and science in skincare, and Elissa Goodman on graceful aging and holistic wellness.
Living Well with Jesse Golden
You’ve described yourself over the years as a mother, model, ballerina, yoga teacher, holistic health practitioner, formulator and founder. At this point in your life, which of those identities feels most like you, and which one has changed the most?
Without hesitation, mother. I always say I really came into my own when I first became a mom 22 years ago. Then, 2.5 years ago, I was blessed with another little miracle, and I’m relishing every moment of getting to experience motherhood all over again in this season of my life.
The identity that has changed the most is probably yoga teacher. I haven’t taught in a few years, and while so many of the beautiful teachings and philosophies of yoga still flow through my everyday life, a formal yoga practice isn’t as present for me in this season. I think that’s one of the gifts of yoga, though. Eventually, it becomes less about what happens on the mat and more about how you live.
You’ve been studying and practicing holistic health for well over a decade. What do you believe now that you did not fully understand when you first started?
Although I always understood the meaning of holistic, or “whole,” because that’s what originally drew me to this work, I don’t think I fully understood just how nuanced that could be. When I first began studying holistic health, Western medicine was often positioned as the villain. But over time, I realized that thinking in absolutes actually contradicts the very idea of holistic health.
I will always believe in looking for the root cause first and supporting the body through nutrition, lifestyle, natural medicine, and the incredible healing intelligence it already possesses. But I’ve also learned that two things can be true at once. Natural medicine can be incredibly powerful, particularly in supporting everyday health and chronic conditions, while conventional medicine can be absolutely lifesaving. There is wisdom in both Eastern and Western approaches, and to me, being truly holistic means knowing there can be a place for both. You don’t have to pick just one.
Walk us through the wellness rituals that shape your day right now, from the way you start your morning to how you wind down at night. Which ones have the biggest impact on how you feel?
I’m in a season of life where I don’t get a lot of “me time” because I have a toddler, which has made the little rituals of self-care even more meaningful to me. I literally cherish them now.
I always try to get outside and let my eyes see natural light within the first few minutes of waking, even if it’s cloudy. Morning light is one of the most powerful signals for setting our internal clock. It helps regulate our circadian rhythm, supports that natural morning rise in cortisol that helps us feel awake and alert, and helps set the timing for melatonin production later that night. It’s such a simple practice, but I notice a real difference in my energy and sleep when I’m consistent with it.
After rinsing my face with cool water, I facial dry brush and do a quick lymphatic flow technique. It only takes about two minutes, but I love the feeling of getting everything moving first thing in the morning.
I also try to eat within 30 minutes of waking, before having what I call my “loaded coffee,” which has raw milk, collagen, colostrum, pearl powder, ghee and honey. It’s become one of my favorite morning rituals.
Nighttime is really where I find more space to take care of myself. I’m very diligent about my skincare and oral care, and depending on the night, I’ll exfoliate, do a mask and finish with gua sha. I also love taking baths with my Royal Codes Bath Soak, which contains magnesium sourced from the ancient Zechstein seabed. Magnesium plays such an important role in the body’s stress response and relaxation, and periods of prolonged stress can increase our magnesium needs, so I’ve been especially diligent about my magnesium rituals lately. That bath is where I feel myself release the stress of the day. The combination of the warm water, magnesium and simply having a few uninterrupted minutes to myself helps me unwind, relax my body, destress and let go of the day. Plus, it helps me sleep like a baby.
Right now, I think the rituals that have the biggest impact are actually the simplest ones: morning light, nourishing myself early, moving lymph, and creating a real wind-down ritual at night. None of them take hours. They’re just small ways of coming back to myself throughout the day.
Are there wellness habits you think people should adjust based on their age, hormones, or season of life rather than doing the exact same thing forever?
Yes, absolutely. I think it’s so important to listen to your body in whatever phase of life you’re in. There are so many wellness recommendations, protocols and trends coming at us now that it can become incredibly overwhelming, and I really encourage people to tune some of that noise out and pay attention to what their own body is asking for.
What worked for you in your twenties may not be what you need in your forties, and what works during one hormonal season may need to shift in another. Sometimes that means more rest, more nourishment, changing the way you exercise, adding more hydration to your skin, or simply doing less. Other times, your body may be asking you to do more.
I don’t believe wellness should be a rigid set of rules you follow forever. To me, true wellness is developing enough connection with your body that you can recognize when its needs have changed, and giving yourself permission to change with it.
You were creating formulas for yourself long before The Golden Secrets became a brand. Do you remember the point when you realized that what you were making could become something much bigger than a personal ritual?
Yes, there was actually an exact moment. A friend whom I really admired said to me, “You should start bottling your Golden Secrets.” But for years before that, people had already been asking me to share my “golden secrets,” so not only did the name come organically, the entire brand did.
It took years of people asking before I finally gave in. I never dreamed of owning a business or starting a skincare brand. But once I saw how much what I was creating was helping other people, and knowing how profoundly some of these formulations had already changed my own life for the better, I felt a responsibility to share them.
I wanted to show women that there was another way to approach beauty. That we could care deeply about how we look and feel without compromising our health in the process. That belief ultimately became the foundation of The Golden Secrets.
You personally made and shipped thousands of bottles in the early years. What did doing everything yourself teach you about the product that you would never have learned from simply starting with a manufacturer?
This is a loaded question because when I think back on those years, I realize how crazy I was and also that maybe you have to be a little crazy to be a founder, haha. I learned so much by doing everything myself.
Being that hands-on with the formulas made me obsessively care about every detail. When I eventually began working with outside formulators and manufacturers, I was surprised by how often I was encouraged to make substitutions or take shortcuts for the sake of cost, scalability or ease of production. I already had my core bestselling formulas, and I wasn’t willing to compromise what made them special. It ultimately took me two years to successfully transition those formulas into manufacturing at the standard I wanted. Mind you, two years is a very long time for formulations I had already created, but they had to be perfect. Otherwise, I was willing to continue literally sacrificing my hands and making them myself.
Packing and shipping thousands of orders myself also taught me something I never could have learned any other way: the importance of the entire customer experience. I used to pack every single box as though it were going to the editor of Vogue. That became the standard, and when I eventually transitioned to a fulfillment company, I made it very clear that I expected that same level of care.
The greatest gift of doing every job myself is that as we’ve grown, I’ve been able to speak from firsthand experience about what I expect at every level. The Golden Secrets isn’t just a brand to me. My name and my integrity are attached to it, and I want that to be felt in every detail, from the formula inside the bottle to the moment someone opens their order.
It was an incredibly hard road, but none of it was in vain. Those years taught me the standards I refuse to compromise on today.
You have had to move between being creative, operational, strategic, and customer facing. Which side of entrepreneurship came most naturally to you, and which one was the most challenging?
The creative side has always come most naturally to me. I think that’s why so many founders start businesses in the first place. We’re passionate about something we feel called to create, bring forward and share with the world. I could formulate, create, dream up products and tell stories all day long.
It’s everything behind the scenes that has been the biggest learning curve for me. I’ve gotten much better at the operational side, but I still don’t love it, and managing a team has probably been one of my greatest challenges, especially with everyone working remotely. Thankfully, I have an amazing operations manager now who has taken so much of that off my plate and allows me to spend more time in the areas where I’m strongest. I’ve learned how important it is to surround yourself with people who are great at the things that don’t come naturally to you, because otherwise the mechanics of running a business can start to take you away from the passion that made you build it in the first place.
Strategy is something I’ve developed over the years through a lot of trial and error. Every year I get clearer about where I want the brand to go, what deserves our energy and, just as importantly, what doesn’t.
I’ve also always been the face of The Golden Secrets, but since having my youngest son, that part has naturally taken a back seat. It’s actually been beautiful to lean more on our community, customers and affiliates to help tell the story during this season. I do genuinely love connecting and sharing, though, and I’m excited to step back into that side of the business more as the timing feels right.
If someone came to you with a beautiful product and said, “I want to build a brand around this,” what would you tell them to figure out before they spend money on packaging, branding, or marketing?
Love this question. Before spending money on any of it, start building an audience. There really is no way around social media anymore. I was telling my son the other day that even our lawn guy was filming himself cutting our grass for social media. Everyone needs to be a content creator these days.
Start sharing what you know, what you’re creating and why you’re creating it. Give people a reason to listen to you and trust you. And if you don’t feel like an expert yet, document the process of becoming one. Bring people along for the journey. You don’t need a perfect brand or beautiful packaging to start telling your story.
The truth is, you can have the greatest product in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, you won’t sell anything. Build the community before you build the perfect aesthetic. Attention, trust and connection are incredibly valuable currency when you’re starting a brand.
You recently wrote about how natural does not always mean safe, particularly when it comes to phototoxic citrus oils. As someone who has worked with botanicals for so many years, how has learning more about formulation science changed the way you evaluate natural ingredients?
The longer I’ve worked with botanicals, the more nuanced my understanding of “natural” has become. Early on, I think I instinctively equated natural with better and safer, but formulation science taught me that it’s never that simple. Natural ingredients are incredibly powerful, and that’s exactly why you have to understand how to use them.
Essential oils are a perfect example. Certain citrus oils can be phototoxic depending on how they’re extracted, how much is used, and whether the product is leave-on or rinse-off. Cold-pressed citrus peel oils can contain naturally occurring compounds called furanocoumarins that increase the skin’s sensitivity to UV exposure, potentially contributing to irritation, pigmentation and uneven skin tone. The extraction and processing method matters too. The same botanical can have a very different safety profile depending on how it’s produced. Some botanical oils are also more prone to oxidation and instability than others. So simply seeing a beautiful natural ingredient on an ingredient list tells you very little about the quality or safety of the finished formula.
That knowledge drives everything I formulate. I look at concentration, extraction method, sourcing, stability, how ingredients interact with one another, and most importantly, what they are doing to the skin over time. I’m much less interested in an ingredient creating an immediate sensory experience or surface-level glow if it could potentially compromise the skin barrier, increase sensitivity, or contribute to pigmentation and uneven tone long term. For me, formulation is about balance and intention. Every ingredient has to earn its place in the formula and support the long-term health and resilience of the skin.
When you first created Youth Beauty Face Oil, what were you looking to address in your own skin, and why did you choose to build the formula around a blend of ten botanicals rather than one hero active?
When I first created Youth Beauty Face Oil, I was really inspired by ancient beauty rituals. I became fascinated by the botanicals women had been using for centuries to preserve the vitality and beauty of their skin, and I wanted to bring together the ones that had not only stood the test of time, but were especially powerful for supporting rejuvenation, elasticity, visible cellular renewal and aging well.
I think we’ve become so conditioned in the beauty industry to chase the newest ingredient. Every time something new launches, it’s positioned as though everything that came before it suddenly stopped working. I love innovation and modern formulation science, but I also think there’s incredible wisdom in ingredients that have been used successfully for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. New doesn’t automatically mean better, and time-tested doesn’t mean outdated.
I never wanted the formula to revolve around one hero ingredient because, to me, every ingredient in Youth Beauty is a hero. Pomegranate, sea buckthorn, helichrysum, or the everlasting flower, frankincense, rosehip, jojoba, carrot seed, vitamin E, lavender and rose geranium were all chosen intentionally. Each one is powerful in its own right, and together they create something much more complete than any one ingredient could on its own.
You can actually see and feel that concentration in the oil. It has this naturally rich, golden-orange color and luxurious feel that comes from the botanicals themselves, particularly the carotenoids and antioxidants in ingredients like sea buckthorn and rosehip. There are no fillers or ingredients added just to make it look or feel a certain way. What you see in the bottle is the richness of the plants themselves. That was always the intention: ten exceptional botanicals, each powerful enough to be the hero, brought together in one formula.
If someone could only add one THE GOLDEN SECRETS product to their routine, which one would you recommend starting with and why?
Heal All Oil, without question. Youth Beauty Face Oil is our bestseller and will always be one of my most beloved formulas, but if I could put only one The Golden Secrets product into someone’s hands, it would be Heal All. It’s our most universal and multifunctional formula, and truly one of those products I believe every household should have on hand. It can be used from head to toe and across so many different skin needs, ages and stages of life. It’s also EWG Verified, has earned the National Eczema Association Seal of Acceptance, and is Think Dirty Verified and award-winning, which makes me especially proud because those recognitions reinforce the standards I’ve always held. It’s the bottle I find myself reaching for over and over again, and the one I’m constantly recommending to friends and family.
Heal All Oil is such a versatile product. What are the three ways you personally reach for it most often?
It really is. I’m still amazed when I read our customer reviews because people are constantly sharing new ways they use Heal All Oil. The versatility of this one product and the love people have for it is incredible.
Personally, I use it daily as a facial oil, especially when my skin needs extra nourishment after too much sun exposure, travel or dry air. I also use it as an overnight hair and scalp treatment the night before I wash my hair. It leaves my hair looking fuller, healthier and gives it a beautiful shine. And lastly, it’s my go-to for all of those little everyday skin emergencies like minor cuts, scrapes, scars, aches and pains. It’s one of those products that lives in our bathroom, my bag and our family first-aid kit.
What does living well mean to you now?
Two things immediately come to mind. The first is something I’ve always tried to live by: leave people better off than you found them. Whether that’s through my work, my relationships or simply how I make someone feel, I want my presence in people’s lives to have a positive impact.
The second is the life I’ve created with my family. I came from a broken home, and I always dreamed of creating a harmonious, loving home and family of my own. I have that now, and I don’t take it for granted for a second. To me, living well isn’t just about taking care of your body or how long you live. It’s about how you live, how you love, and what you leave behind.
