We were lucky to catch up with Iliriana Balaj recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Iliriana thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I didn’t start Live Healthillie because wellness was trendy, I started it because I was frustrated. For years, I was doing everything “right” or so I thought. I was a personal trainer, tracking calories and macros, enjoying “everything in moderation”, working out and moving my body and yet I was still struggling with cystic acne, chronic bloating, migraines, fatigue, eczema and more. I found myself in a system that had no real answers for me beyond “everything looks normal.” That disconnect shook me because how could I be struggling with so many issues and be told this is normal? That’s when I realized something bigger was contributing to my health issues – the quality of what i was using daily and consuming. There was a massive gap between what the wellness industry markets as “healthy” and what is actually supportive for the human body. So I went deeper. I started researching ingredients in supplements, personal care, home products, everything. I learned how to read between the lines of labels, worked with practitioners, and built my own internal filter: what is now the Healthillie Standard, and the more I learned, the more I couldn’t unsee it. “Clean” didn’t mean non-toxic, “natural flavors” weren’t transparent, and convenience was often coming at the cost of our biology. At the same time, I was experiencing something very real: even when you know better, it’s still hard to live this way. Sourcing truly clean products was overwhelming, expensive, and honestly exhausting. That’s when the idea for Live Healthillie clicked. I didn’t want to just educate people, I wanted to solve the problem. A place where everything is pre-vetted, where you don’t have to second-guess ingredients, and where functional health meets real life. Because most people don’t need more information, they need better access. From a business standpoint, the logic was clear: people are becoming more ingredient-aware, trust in traditional health systems is declining, the “clean” market is growing but lacks true transparency, and no one was curating products through a strict functional-health lens. It wasn’t just a store, it was infrastructure for a new way of living. What excited me most wasn’t just the products, but what this could represent: a shift from reactive health to proactive health, from confusion to clarity, from overwhelm to empowerment. Live Healthillie became my way of saying you shouldn’t have to be an expert to take care of your body and over time, it’s grown into more than a marketplace—it’s a community, an educational platform, and a movement toward raising the standard of what we accept as “healthy.” Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it and once you know better, you deserve better options.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Illie Balaj, founder of Live Healthillie, which I started five years ago after a very personal turning point in my own health. At the time, I was a personal trainer doing everything I thought was “right: tracking calories and macros, staying fit, and eating what I believed was healthy but behind the scenes, I was dealing with eczema, painful periods, migraines, cystic acne, and constant bloating. Every doctor told me I was fine because I looked healthy on paper, but I didn’t feel healthy at all. That disconnect pushed me to take matters into my own hands.

As I started digging deeper, I realized that what I was consuming and using every day, from food ingredients to personal care products, was likely contributing to hormone imbalances and gut issues. That completely shifted my perspective. I went from focusing on calories and macros to focusing on ingredient quality, toxicity, and how things actually impact the body. What started as a personal journey quickly turned into something bigger, because I saw how hard it was to find truly clean, trustworthy products without spending hours researching.

That’s how Live Healthillie was born. I created it to be a one-stop shop for products that meet a higher standard, things I would personally use and feel confident recommending. Today, we offer curated supplements, personal care, and home products, along with education to help people understand why these choices matter. What sets us apart is our level of discernment, we don’t follow trends or allow greenwashed ingredients, and everything is vetted through a functional, root-cause lens.

What I’m most proud of is building a brand that actually helps people feel better. We’ve grown into a multi-million dollar business with a strong, loyal community, but more importantly, we’ve helped people connect the dots between what they’re exposed to daily and how they feel. My goal has always been simple: to make this lifestyle more accessible, less overwhelming, and to raise the standard of what we accept as “healthy.”

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I actually built my audience very organically without any real strategy in the beginning. I started out posting typical fitness content as a personal trainer—workouts, macros, that kind of thing. But behind the scenes, I was struggling with my own health issues and didn’t feel like I had clear answers or anyone I could really turn to. So I just started sharing what I was going through in real time. As I began researching more and making changes—swapping out products, paying attention to ingredients, learning about gut health and hormones, I shared everything I was learning along the way.

People started to resonate with that. It wasn’t polished or “expert” content, it was just honest and curious. The more I learned, the more I shared, and the more questions I got. People wanted to know what I was looking for on labels, what I was swapping, why it mattered so I kept going deeper and bringing them along with me. Over time, that built a really engaged audience because it felt like we were learning together. It naturally evolved from fitness into a broader conversation around wellness, ingredients, and living a lower-tox lifestyle, which ultimately laid the foundation for Live Healthillie.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

For the first several years of Live Healthillie, I focused solely on curation, sourcing and vetting products that met my standards because that was the biggest gap I saw in the market. We still do that today, but over time I realized there were certain products that simply didn’t exist in the way I believed they should: one of them being an adrenal cocktail.

Minerals & Chill started very personally. I was trying to support my own stress response, hydration, and mineral balance, and I couldn’t find a single option that checked all my boxes. Most products on the market were either basic electrolytes focused mainly on hydration with high sodium and not much else or “cortisol” drinks loaded with trendy ingredients, adaptogens, sweeteners, and vague proprietary blends that didn’t actually address the root issue. I wanted something different: a simple, functional formula rooted in how the body actually uses minerals to support the nervous system and adrenal function.

Minerals & Chill is built around key foundational nutrients the body depletes under stress: vitamin C (from whole-food sources like acerola), potassium, sodium, and magnesium, in forms and ratios that actually support cellular hydration, energy production, and stress resilience. Instead of masking symptoms or overstimulating the body, it focuses on replenishment. It’s intentionally free from “natural flavors,” artificial additives, and unnecessary extras, which is surprisingly rare in this category.

I didn’t come from a manufacturing background, so that was one of the biggest challenges, finding a manufacturer willing to meet my standards without cutting corners but I stayed very hands-on and clear on my non-negotiables.

Launching Minerals & Chill allowed me to go beyond curation and actually fill a gap I knew firsthand existed. It’s now our hero product and a true reflection of the Live Healthillie standard: intentional, functional, and no compromises.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://livehealthillie.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/healthillie

Image Credits

@lenanikolajphotography