Liz Wolfe and Noelle Tarr are self-proclaimed “early adopters” of the Nutritional Therapy Association’s Nutritional Therapy Practitioner certification, and they’ve never looked back! Hear how their NTA education shaped their lives and careers, and how they built businesses (and how you can shorten your learning curve on a new career).
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome, Liz, to our show. Welcome Noelle. In turn to our show. How are you? This is the mashup I’ve been waiting for. Let me be honest. I’m like, when can I do, when can I do a, it’s mashup with Liz Subject matter. It’s not just the mashup. I was, I was on my way to a speaking engagement yesterday, moms of preschoolers, and it was really lovely and I was like, Well, I, I was supposed to speak about some of my projects.
I was like, I’m gonna turn on one of the most recent interviews I did, and I turned on our interview for well-fed women to listen to myself talk to see , if I could just recapture some of that magic for the crowd at mops and Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t really recapture the magic, but they were very gracious and kind to me, and, and it worked out well.
It was a lovely group. Did you, Was this a talk that was like nutrition specific to nutrition or was it just I’m an entrepreneur, here’s how I do it? No, it was mostly centered around athletic mom and actually mostly the concept that moms are athletes and how that unfolds in day to day life. But I wrapped in the nutrition stuff, talked about the NTA a little bit, and where I came from and, and all that.
So it felt, it feels like it’s going to resonate with our podcast. Yeah, I think so. Okay. But I need more info. So did, did they ask you, did they ask you to do this? Or is this something that you’ve been like trying to seek out and do more of? I’ve been, I have not been seeking out MOS groups to speak at, and only because I didn’t know that was a thing.
Yeah. And maybe I will now, but no, someone who has been following me for some time, I hate that word following me. Someone who has been in my community for quite some time and purchased my book, Kimberly, she invited me to come do that back in, back in the summer actually. And this was the first chance we really got to actually, actually do it.
And it was fun. Got to go to a beautiful, beautiful church. Meet some really, really cool women and just talk to people about some of the stuff that I’m, that I’m passionate about and, and answer questions. I really love the q and a. I’m not, I, I said this during the talk. I said I’m not a headliner, but I really do fit the q and a where people are asking me questions and I’m shooting it back, and it was fun.
We actually got some really good. Really good wisdom from some of the moms in the room. One of the moms from who of an older daughter. We were talking about how we talked to our daughters about stuff like this, which is yet another thing that I think you and I talked about in our podcast together. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s still a big topic for me. I, I feel like that’s gonna be one that we keep talking about, we’ll be doing more mashups talking about how to raise daughters to have a healthy relationship with ness and their bodies and nutrition and all the things. Yep. Yeah. So that’s cool. So hopefully today what we wanna do with this.
Podcast as mashup is. Talk a little bit more about, and most many of you have been in my community, have been asking for something like this, but we kind of wanna spotlight a little bit of our journeys through being nutritional therapy practitioners, choosing to change direction of what we were doing and our businesses.
I don’t exactly even know what Liz was doing before she became a nutritional therapy practitioner. Became. Liz Wolf, as we all know her, but I was working in retail. I was working a lot of hours and in retail management and kind of had a moment where I was like, I don’t wanna do this anymore. I wanna work for myself, or I wanna get into nutrition.
I really love health and fitness. Like how do I do this? And that’s a question that I get all the time. And I know, Liz, you do too. And Liz, you were the one who really inspired me to look into the NTA because it was the first time I ever found like a female talking about. Nutrition and like paleo. I was like into Paleo back then.
Mm-hmm. . But it, that introduced me to the NTA and like how women can actually. Coach people and work with people, and we’ll talk about the the ways in which you can diversify your business and all that kind of stuff. But that was the first time I was like, Oh, I’m doing what She’s like, I’m doing that for another brand or another business.
At the time I was working for a triathlon store and I was like, I could be doing all of this social media marketing events for myself. I don’t need to do this for somebody else. So I’m super excited to dive into. Both of our decisions, like kind of the pulling back the curtain a little bit and looking behind the scenes and, showing you a little bit of the decisions we made and why we made them.
So I would love to ask you first, what were you doing before the NTA and becoming a nutritionist came on your radar, and what made you finally take the. Oh my. So military spouse, you know the drill, you know how that goes. Mm-hmm., I was a military spouse. I semi was able to stay with the same company when I moved halfway across the country.
When I got engaged to, my husband stayed with the same company, but it was in no way like a career track. I was working at a field office filing papers. Whereas before that I had been working in like leasing, land management, like some really fun stuff with the, an office component. I had like office corner office with window.
I guess it wasn’t a corner office, but it was a nice big office with Windows kind of like, oh. I feel like you made it a little bit. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about my job at Lane Christensen Company and I had a good indoor component, but we also got to go out in the field sometimes. Learned a lot about cold bed, methane, all that type of stuff.
And of course, not the most environmentally non-controversial thing I could have been doing, but it was interesting to me at the time. I had come out of advertising. Before that job, I had worked as a, a media buyer and media buying assistant at a really cool company that was completely run by women. So I actually came out of several iterations of employment first in Washington DC as a political intern at an all women’s company.
Decided politics wasn’t for me. Then went to this media buying company thinking you go to college and you’re like, I wanna be in media and communications. Mm-hmm. , I wanna be advertising whatever it is. Yep. It’s, there’s, there’s some glam there. And even though in the back of my mind, I always knew I am my core.
I’m a writer and I wanted to have a book, but who actually gets to do that? So that’s, but that’s always in the back of my mind. But I went from to media buying, and then I went to this completely random, At an energy company that was actually really, really interesting. But then of course, you fall in love and you decide that you.
Mission is you, you’re gonna be a military wife, so you better get used to it and being neither a, a nurse or any other kind of profession that can court uproot and move to the next place and be really useful. I found myself floundering a little bit fun working in the field office with Betty Low and Joe and all the, the guys from from up in the New Jersey, Pennsylvania area.
But around that time is when I ended up with a little more free time than I was used to having. So in adjusting to that life, that uprooting and moving halfway across the country. My husband and I started getting really into CrossFit and Paleo together, and true to form, I started writing about it first in a blog just for family and friends, and then realizing that people were actually really interested in what I was talking about, interested in the implementation of Paleo, asking a ton of really great questions.
I remember being in a really detailed email thread with someone from. College who was asking me all about canola oil. And what’s funny is I was able to repeat everything Lauren Cordain had said about canola oil because at the time it was like, Oh, it has the most balanced omega three, omega six profile, whatever it may be.
And I was able to repeat that really effectively. But it wasn’t long before I realized I didn’t have a really good grip on the why. Why is that important? Why does this matter? And that type of thing is really important to me. It’s a personality thing, I guess. Probably many people that find themselves in similar situations to you and I, and I decided I needed to get some education to put behind my name so I would really, really understand some of these things and all of the other questions that pop up as a result along the way.
So, So, yeah. At the time, I had also gotten into Western a Price. I went to a West, a Price Foundation conference in Philadelphia by myself wearing my Vibram five fingers and feeling like a complete, just a whack job. Just, I don’t know that they’d ever seen anything like that before. And that was where I believe I first encountered either Norge Gauss, the author of Primal Body, Primal Mind, who.
Received one of the early iterations of their certification, the Nutritional Therapy Association certification, and I either spoke to her and she encouraged me to reach out or I had already enrolled. I can’t remember what the timeline was, but somewhere around there. As a consequence of all that, I did enroll to become a nutritional therapy practitioner, and now here we are.
And just like that and the rest is history. Yeah. That’s super interesting that you found What, how did you find the We A price? Because that is such a niche thing. I understand CrossFit and Paleo, cuz I had the exact same experience. My husband and I were into CrossFit and Paleo and all of a sudden Rob Wolf wrote this book.
But how did you. Fine. We a price. Oh man, that is a good question. I actually can’t remember. I’m gonna have to rack my brain about that. I imagine it probably came along with, I’m like a relentless Googler. Yeah, so it’s the same way I got into the repeat stuff. I got interested in repeat and what Danny Roddy was talking about, and even at the time, the specific carbohydrate diet, all these little rabbit holes that you can go down.
But I imagine it started with maybe, Rob Wolf talking about grass fed beef and then looking for grass fed beef and realizing, hey, this organization says some really similar things and you can eat bread, , . I imagine that probably had a little bit to do with my, with peaking my interest, and of course they have some alternative views around medicine and self care that I just found interesting.
I like to hear. People have to say, especially when they say they have the evidence to support it. So it was very compelling in that way. Chris Master John was doing a lot of writing for the Western, a price foundation at that point, and I follow him to this day. So just a lot of interesting people and interesting things came out of that time in my life.
I find it so interesting and I just long for that time where you could get online and write and people found it like, Oh, I don’t even remember what that was like. What was that like? I dunno. Like now everything I feel like, and the landscape has changed, but now everything is, you have to be very thought out in what you’re doing and you have to have a bunch of lead time and there’s strategy to everything.
Whereas there’s a little bit back in the day, we’ll say about 10 years ago. There was a little bit of, I’m just doing this. It’s a hobby. Yeah. And then it turned into more, So yeah, and this is what works. But what’s, I think what’s interesting is that we really got an education in how to establish loyalty and connection, and I think that that is still missing a little bit right now.
I mean, it’s easy to get a follow, but it is not easy to get someone who is really. Engage with your mission, who feels like they know you, who will trust your recommendation on things and who is really with you on the journey. And I know we’re gonna talk about all of this during the course of this episode, but we, I feel like we got that education.
I mean, I don’t know if this was you, but at the beginning I was like, Man, what I wouldn’t give to just sit down and pick. Nora g Nora, g Gauss’s brain, or somebody who came before so I could know what do I need to do and how do I need to do it to be successful? We really had to blaze that trail and sometimes I think, gosh, is my knowledge outdated?
I don’t think so. I think actually the knowledge that we have on building these types of things, the businesses that exist both online and offline, is actually really. Comes with a solid foundation because we have all of that experience in building that type of community that is just really at a premium these days and tough to build.
Would you agree with that? I would, and I actually was just thinking about it. It was very hard for us. To grow back then in the same way that it was easy and not a lot of people were there so hard because there was no, there were no resources. Mm-hmm. , it was like to figure out exactly what, how to build a website and hosting and all that.
Nobody, there wasn’t like this vast education, here’s how to get started online. There was nothing. Yeah, so it was very slow. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of Googling, so maybe one or two people were teaching about it. But even to start a podcast for me, I felt like the field was full. Yeah, I can’t even imagine when you started, but it, and it’s not full at all, but.
It was hard. It was hard to figure out where, What am I doing? I’m hosting it here and then this has to talk here and how do I get it to Apple? Like it just, it was so, there was a lot. And likewise today it is a very, It’s equally as difficult, I think, because to connect and to grow because there are so many people there and it is so easy and it’s so crowded.
There are so many people. So when you have this skill to. Connect, you know what you want and you, you do understand some principles of marketing, like really understanding your why and being of service and really connecting. I think that that’s still what sets people apart. So I agree. And you mentioned there were a couple of people teaching, like the marketing and the business stuff.
I took Marie for Leo’s course, which was really great at the time. I don’t know what it looks like now, but it was so expensive even 10 years ago. And you just at the. Money is, It’s not grown on trees. I mean, it’s not grown on trees now either. It’s a little, it’s a little better now, but I could, noting , I had to, I mean, I had to put it on a credit card and I was not, I’m still not comfortable with that, with that type of thing.
So I don’t know. Obviously this will lead into what we wanna talk about later. Ironically, what we wanna talk about is actually related to what I’m talking about now. Yeah. But the expense of that was really, really tough to justify. And there weren’t a whole lot of, I needed to quit if this, then that. If you wanna do this, then focus on this if you, But I feel like we had to make all the mistakes and do all the things, and I still to a degree, struggle with that.
Now, what I should be doing, but at least now I’ve got you. I’ve got a community of people that we all came up together to bounce these ideas off of, and we didn’t have that at the. When you became an NTP or you finally graduated, was your goal or was when you were thinking of, what do I wanna create with this?
Or what do I wanna do with this? Were you thinking I’m gonna work with people one on one, and did you do that? I was thinking, I want what I say to be valid and backed by something. I don’t know that, And this is, it goes back to some personality stuff. The type of person that I am. I want to oblige people.
I want to deliver what people want from me, and I wanna do it well. So really once I was done with that, realizing that people actually desired a consultation with me and I thought, Okay, how can I make this the best that it can possibly be? So it was really one person at a. And serving in the capacity that I felt like my community wanted me to serve.
Plugging in there and trying to be the best I could possibly be, the best NTPA I could possibly be on a one-to-one. And I did do, I did do a lot of one-on-ones, in particular in my CrossFit gym. I was not a coach there, but I was CrossFit certified. I always planned to maybe coach as well, maybe, maybe not.
But I wanted that tool in my toolbox. But really what people were asking really centered around Nutri. So I would do meetings in the gym. We would get a plan together there. After a while, I opened my own office, shared an office with a, with a chiropractor, which was really great cuz we could refer to and from each other.
And met with people there, did some group coaching, experimented with all those different things and really just tried to be responsive to what I felt like people wanted from me. Now that said, I will always, again, will always wish I had more business tools available to me because I did not have the vision or that personality where I was like, I could turn this into this.
It was more like I will respond to whatever people are asking for and hopefully it can make some money. If I had started out a little bit differently, perhaps I could have built an empire by now. I like to think kind of Uncle Rico myself right now. Oh, what could have been if I, if we’d gone to state, I would’ve been the, or quarterback, but I think I just lacked a, a scaffolding for even knowing what was possible.
Hmm. Interesting. Are we done talking about, Can I ask you ? Yeah. I wanna hear your, I wanna hear your story because I actually don’t think I’ve ever asked you this question before. No, it’s not super insightful either. I feel like my story is very common to a lot of people, whereas I was, I was doing a lot of work.
I was working in a triathlon store and running marketing for them and they eventually expanded and were doing a lot of, had many stores. So I was doing the thing, I was doing Facebook and managing marketing and then doing a lot of in-person events and diva nights and run clubs and like I was creating all the graphics and stuff that all the stores would use.
And it was fun, but I got to a point where I could see myself and, and this will relate to what. Was happening with me at the time and what I became known for. But what was happening is I was overdoing it. I was becoming really, really tied. Tied. My worth was really tied to my fitness and I was just, I was just overdoing it.
I was exhausted. I had really hurt my back. And that is when I started. I had always listened to Rob Wolf’s podcast, but that’s what I was laying there on the couch and I was like, Okay, let me see if I can find some women who are talking about nutrition. because I really like this stuff and I feel like it’s changing my life.
Cuz I went from being vegetarian and vegan and cavities and pain and all the, you know, things to really learning about nutrients and fat and protein and all like things. My mind was being, my world was shifting, My world view was shifting. So I found you and I found, like I said before, and I was, I found some other NTPs.
I started really exploring what people were doing and I looked at the three options, which is like the institute, Integrative Institute for Nutrition. Mm-hmm. . I found a nutritional consultant program that was not about college, and then I found the nta. I really dove deep into each one, the curriculum. I compared them all, and the college CL course and the NTA were the most like each other, but one was like twice the cost.
Mm-hmm. . I was like, Okay, we go with the nta. And I looked at what other NTPs were doing, and I. I think I could do this and like you, I wanted to add credibility, but I also knew from the get go that I wanted to create a business. So I started the blog while I was doing the course. When I came out of the course, I initially started working with people one on one, but after 10 people, I was so drained,
I was like, I dunno if I wanna do this. Because I would, I would be on calls every day and the follow up calls. And one of the things that I learned from doing a lot of the interviews with how she grew is why I got so burnt out is because when you charge, this is what one of the, our doctors. Recommended, but do not do packages up front.
Do not say, Here it’s a $600 package. You get five sessions or whatever. Because then you are, you have to show up and they feel like they can, They can your clients own you. Yep. And so they feel like they own you for this. This long period, and that’s what was happening was I was getting emails and text messages and then I was like preparing a lot for our calls and it’s, it’s a lot of work.
Whereas I highly recommend more just doing one off consultations. Like here’s our initial consultation, this is the fee. If you wanna do follow ups, great. Then they’re gonna be this reduced cost and then it can be like ad hoc. But anyway, I was exhausted and burnt out and I couldn’t do it. And. Immediately started, that’s when I started looking for other things, which was like, and this is when I was living in Annapolis.
Ken was stationed, my husband was stationed at the Naval Academy. It was a fun, really fun, cool place to be. But I was in my upper twenties, about to turn 30. I was just trying to figure out what to do. I knew I was good at my job, but I just was like, I need to do something that I enjoy and God bless him.
My husband was like, Cool, Just do whatever you want. So I wasn’t really making that much money anyway, but I definitely, I found. Everybody’s, Oh, you gotta take the leap and just jump and do what you wanna do. But I actually slowly pulled myself out of my job. To the point where I was working 40, then 30, 20 and 10, and I had a job that allowed me to do that, and I slowly ramped up my thing.
So then when I jumped out of my thing, I still had some in and did my own thing. I had some income. So then I had, I wrote an article called, Why I Don’t Want Six Pack Abs, and that kind of blew up. And then that’s what, That was very scary. But that’s what, that’s what kind of put me on the map and I connected with people and then I started a podcast and started doing a little bit more and became, I guess more well, So, so what did that, that journey of starting a business look like for you in terms of, Well, no, we’re gonna talk about this.
Let’s, let’s save that. Actually, I hate to do this in the podcast, but we’re gonna talk about this. We’ve got, Noelle and I have multiple interviews scheduled with each other today, , and we, we, Well, you’re just gonna have to check out how she grew for the actual nitty grit, how you built your business. But I guess what I’m wondering is, Coming out of the nta, I felt like I had all the tools.
I really did. It was a phenomenal program. I knew how to consult with people. I mean, even down to increasing compliance. I mean, we even studied that as part of the program. So I felt like I had all the tools to be a great one-on-one or group. Coach and I definitely leveraged that. It was great. I had all of the evaluative materials, everything I needed to make people really feel like I was getting a full picture of where they are now and and could track where we wanted them to be.
That said, there’s always that, What’s next moment where you’re like, Okay, I’ve been trading time for dollars. I haven’t been charging enough, which is nobody’s fault. Yeah. I don’t even wanna say it’s our fault. We just don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know. Mm-hmm., so you get to that. And I was just talking to Kelly Leveck for one of our, how she grew interviews about this.
You get to that point where you’ve either gotta charge a lot more for a one-on-one, or you have to figure out how to scale. Right. What resources did you use to figure that out, or were you literally figuring it out on your own? Hmm. I found myself, oddly enough at a dinner table with Simon Sinek who wrote, Start With Why?
Who’s this like big guy? No idea. I had no idea who he was. Where were you? I never read the book. He ended up speaking at the Naval Academy and Ken being Ken, became friends with him and they were talking to friends with everyone. Even if he’s not friends with them now, he will be in the future. Yeah, so we were out to eat together and one of the pieces of advice he heard that I, I had just, Oh my gosh, now looking back on this, I feel so embarrassed by it, but I was like, Oh yeah, I just wrote this article about like 20 things that you can do with coconut oil and it like blew up and it went viral.
I had 4,000 people visit my website cuz I shared it on Reddit. Okay. It wasn’t, you didn’t go viral in the well, but he was like, Okay, cool, okay great. And so I was like, I just, I’m trying to start a website, I’m trying to get people to visit, visit my website and I. I wanna be a nutritionist. I kind wanna coach people.
And so he was like, the number one piece of advice, I still remember it was we were walking in downtown dc, not downtown DC but now they built casinos there, whatever. So. We were walking and on this like cobblestone street, and he was like, The one piece of advice I will give you is you charge what you are worth because if you don’t, you will be resentful about the time that you put in and you won’t be passionate about anymore.
And so I ended up charging myself what I thought I was worth. I never felt like I was charging too little. I was more like, I wanna do a lot of. So how do I do a lot of things and also coach people? Cuz coach people is very, very time sucking. It’s also emotionally draining. Mm-hmm. , it’s wonderful. I love working with people, but how can I work with people in a bigger capacity?
It’s important too, you have to do that. Like you have to have that one-on-one experience to be, that’s to leverage that into something broader. Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s when I was, I had, you’ll notice very quickly that I think a lot of people who grow and the grabbing on the coattails of somebody else and somebody pulls them up for a little bit.
Mm. And that person for me was Stephanie, my co-host. And I reached out to her because I could tell she needed help and she needed help with bargaining and I was. This is what I do. Let me help you. And we grew such a good friendship and I was like, You need to start a podcast and you need to do it with me.
And she was like, Yes, I do. And so we started and because she had that kind of people already following her and loving her, we started this thing together and it was so fun. Just like you did with your coach. It was fun. We got to grow together and, and. Our connection, which still exists to this day. I’m just so grateful for it.
Like our connection was so incredible. So like we were able to grow together and that’s why I love using and networking and learning from other people because she was teaching me a little bit, I was teaching her a little bit cuz I was like up and up on the marketing and the changing field of Facebook and what’s Instagram and stuff like that.
And that really got me to a place where I felt like, okay, we’re, we have a podcast. We, we did it for a year before we got a sponsor. And we, so it’s, it’s always just testing out what’s the next step. Okay, maybe we get a sponsor. And then it became, for me, I just keep, I watch what other people are doing. So I never had a manual, but I, I could see other people were putting out online programs.
So I was like, I would love to do an online program. How do I do that? So then you have to follow people who teach you how to put out an online program. And it’s a lot of. But then I ended up putting out strong from home all the while still trying to write articles for my website just to try to drive traffic to, to the website.
So no manual, but I feel like at the whole time I learned from other people who were doing it and really what I, in essence now looking back, what I was trying to do, but I didn’t do it that well, was trying to diversify my income so that I wasn’t so strapped to one form of making money, which I think that that’s what, what gets a lot of people hung up is that.
They get starting a side hustle’s great. I love that. I love that idea. And sometimes it is just one thing. If you wanna do direct sales, you wanna be an affiliate or you wanna maybe sell your designs on the side. Awesome. , but you have to really be thinking about creating a solid foundation with what can I do?
How can I bring in money in, in a variety of ways from what I’m doing? Not just the one thing, not just that purchase, or not just coaching, but like, how can I diversify this business so that it’s strong? Mm-hmm. and it’s not, Then you. You won’t get so burnt out, right? I mean, obviously you’re gonna be doing more, but that you really have to protect your peace because it can get really exhausting, especially if one of those things gets taken from you or the market changes, which it will.
So, yeah. Yeah. And thinking about. Don’t think about your income stream as your business. I think I really have fallen into that trap multiple times where yes, you have to know that whatever it is that is bringing in money could change at any time. Less so if you really have more ownership over it. So, you know for.
I mean in how she grew. We talk about email list versus affiliate versus all these different ways that you can bring in money. Right? And who owns that? Does Mark Zuckerberg own it or do you own it? That type of thing. Yes. But rather than thinking about the thing that brings in money as your business, think about.
I don’t know. Think about, This is probably not the right way to think about it, but think about you as your business and what are maybe one or two things you can do that can compensate for each other and, and elevate each other. Mm-hmm. . And you can rely on one when the other’s not going so great and vice versa.
I don’t know if that’s, I don’t mean to say plan for the worst. Obviously you wanna plan for the worst, expect the best plan for the worst. But this idea. on the internet, you can put all your eggs in one basket, I think can be dangerous if not approached the proper way. Yeah, I totally agree. I, and I think we approached it from different, we come from different places.
You and I have very different personalities. Mm-hmm. , but I think we both have been able to, Have an element of longevity to our careers in this space that would not have been possible otherwise. We still drilled down on certain things and yeah, and were really smart about certain things, but there are not many people, like there’s a lot of flashes in the pan.
In, in business online, if you structure something appropriately and intelligently, you don’t have to do all the things, but structure it in a way so that you have a few irons in the fire such that if one goes out, you can stoke the the other one while you get the other one going again. And that can be done intelligently and in a way that’s not draining you so completely.
And it can also overlap. One thing can feed the other and vice versa. I wish I knew that earlier on, but I think even if it was by accident, I think I was able to construct something like that so that even eight years into my business, I was able to literally piece out from the internet for two years and was still able to maintain some residual income, some passive income around that, and then come back when I was ready.
And that’s, that’s, that was pretty. What’s, what’s an example of something that you think you did well, or how did you diversify in the beginning when you were like working with people and you’re like, Okay, this is what people want. This is what I’m gonna do. Mm-hmm. , how long did you do that for? And then what, How else?
How did you start making money elsewhere? Ooh. So one of the things that ended up being a sort of a, in the plus column just around my personality, was really wanting to be responsive to what people were interested in. And what I ended up doing was while building a list, I got that really good advice about, you wanna be building a list.
And at the same time talking on social media and on podcasts about natural skincare. Mm-hmm. , So I’m talking about this. I’m making some money just as an affiliate for different companies that I was recommending, stuff like that in the, so a little bit of money here, building a list, which is a for free endeavor over here.
And then finally putting it all together in a book. So not only had I, I don’t like to say groomed, that’s a terrible word. Not only had I prepared my audience for me talking about these things that I was interested in while making a little bit of money as an affiliate, becoming a really trusted voice around natural skincare.
Building a list of people that wanted to hear more from me whenever it came out, and then finally building the thing, the product, which was a skincare guide that at the time was unprecedented. I guess there’s a lot of that stuff out there now, but little did I know that I was gonna be the first one in that arena, and least at least an our little bubble.
And then I was able to sell that. Immediately out of the gate. I sold that immediately out of the gate after several years of work, laying the groundwork, but then was able to sell that really well. And then from there, as that was selling, I was also nurturing relationships with another company that was creating a skincare product based on my specifications.
So all of those things layered up. And at the same time, building a list, continuing to build a list of people that were interested in my product recommendations, not just my regimen recommendations, but my product recommendations, which then enabled me to have success with Beauty Counter, which was basically the brand that I would’ve created for myself if I was more like you , if I was more of a business woman and more dedicated and organized and driven in that way.
So all of those things fed into each other. Perhaps accidentally at the time, but looking back, they’re all related to each other. Yeah, but they’re different income streams. Affiliate income, a product that I 100% own and sell income and income, that is also enabled through an email list. Yeah. How are you building your email list?
Like how, Cuz this is something that I think Liz, so Especi in our, our, like you see a lot of young influencers now and all their eggs are. Let me build, Yes. My Instagram let me build my followers so that I can drive them to my product as opposed to, And so the, the whole, there’s this massive missing component of like, How are you building your own foundation?
How are you building your own list? Cause all you’re doing is building your followers on somebody else’s land. And that could be taken from you in a second, much less, Like eventually your, your reach is gonna go down. It happens. It’s always, it always is gonna happen. You’re gonna be doing great and then you’re not.
And it’s just the way it goes. But like then you’ve lost touch with people. So one of the things that I’m so happy I did from the beginning and I got that advice. How am I getting people on my email list? So how were you? Mm-hmm. , Walk me through how you were doing it and where you were telling people. To get on your list.
Okay. I’m gonna go and then you go. Cause I wanna hear from you on this one too. Yeah. So, and this is probably a little bit different than how I would do it now, but at the time I chose to create, well, it’s not entirely different. I chose to create subscriber only content every week. So I knew what people wanted to know about and I would put it in email and send it out.
And next week I’m talking about this. And then you can have access to the archives if you sign up. At this point, my recommendation would be much more scalable where I, cuz I remember I didn’t have kids then, and I would sit there and I would write, I would take the whole week to write these emails. They might as well have been books.
And the important thing to me now is being able to repurpose, reuse and scale content. So I have one really great thing that I can offer over and over and over to new subscribers. You opt in and you get this, like for example, I just recently created a brand new skincare vault, like an anti-aging skincare vault.
When you sign up for my list, you get these like secret pages where I’m basically keeping up with my favorite recommendations around like safer. Where is that? I want you on access to my vault . It’s going out in my next subscriber email. So there’s, I know you did a really good interview, or at least several really good interviews for how she grew on like building a list and stuff.
And I was able to talk to Matt Molin, who was like the email list guy for how she grew, and that was really amazing. So there’s a ton of it in there, but at the time I was doing that now, I would do it a little bit differently. But what’s the same is that. Every single subscriber is like a win. Like every single person that signs up be like, Yes.
Now I get to serve that person. Because at times it feels like, gosh, just one here, one there. Onesies, two Zs is taking so long. But no, when somebody opts into your list and starts opening your emails, it’s like, I got her to say yes. Like I get take her out on a date. I’m taking the girl, it’s a prom, whatever it is.
It’s a big, it’s a big, big deal to have somebody opt into your list and one of the. That I’ve noticed recently, and you’ve probably noticed this too, is Instagram is now offering paid subscriptions. Yes. Which to me feels a little desperate, feels, oh gosh, we gotta keep people on our platform. So anytime Instagram or whatever platform you’re using to reach people that you don’t own , that Mark Zuckerberg owns, or meta owns, or whatever it may be, but just have like a, a discerning eye.
Wow, this sounds really cool. But are they trying to get me to stop pulling people to my list? Like they’re really trying to get you to live on that platform. So the challenge becomes applying that discerning eye, but also providing enough value to people to want them to come over. And I also, Sorry, now I’m rambling.
I did a really great interview with the Jordan Basser for how she grew talking about SEO and how. Important. It is like you’re, you don’t grow Instagram on Instagram. You go Instagram from sel. And she talked all about that. It was so good. I mean, it’s going to literally change the way I run my business.
Just that interview, So, Okay. Your turn. Okay. So in the beginning, In the beginning I started coconuts and kettle bells. I wrote one article and then somebody had somebody who was actually trying to start a, a friend who was starting to start a website to talk to real estate agents and help with design and selling homes was like, Oh, you have a website?
Cool, Great. And she was always asking me about my progress and she said, Are you collecting email addresses yet? And I was like, I have like one article and she’s, You need to get an opt-in up now. And I was like, Okay. So I prioritized getting people on my list before I even had a second article written.
Nice. And, and I, and I’m, I’m happy about that. But was it the best opt-in? No, but it, it worked. So I had it in my little sidebar. I took a graphic of that I found on, I scrapped off Google Images. Don’t do that. And that looks like an iPad. Right. And then I like put. Meal plan recipe or whatever that I was giving away.
I think it was a meal plan template like in there to look like, Oh look, you’re getting this digital thing. And I said, I said it in a really, I was always, I’m always good at, I think one of my strengths is making marketing things properly. I mean, obviously that’s what my degree’s in, but so like one of my things that I said was download my free meal plan templates, and I was like, also get a two week example.
What I eat and I said, Hint, I’m not perfect. And at that point, that just peaks people’s curiosity. So I did really steadily start growing because anytime somebody heard about coconuts and CATA balls, or I had posted it on my own Facebook or my Coconuts Cata Balls, Facebook and or read it, when I posted the 20 ways to use coconut oil, gosh, that brought people to my website.
And then they saw, Oh, she’s got meal free meal plan templates. So it’s just something I created in a Word document with lines and. Times and weeks and it just, it was nothing fancy. Saved it as a pdf, uploaded it to WordPress and my media files and that’s what it was linked. So somebody basically came to, I used a plugin.
That on my website was just like apps for phones, and it said it was just some sort of like email opt-in plugin. And, and that’s, that’s how people gave me their email address and I sent them the meal plan templates. So that became my coconuts and Kettleballs list. And over time I realized the importance of diversifying my opt-ins.
So I. I’ve sat down once. I don’t know if you remember this. What was it called? Not parachute . What was it called? Oh, what was like the thing on a submarine? Yeah, the Twitter bought it. It was Periscope. Periscope Parascope. Periscope started. I jumped right on there cuz I was like, I’m not gonna be behind this time.
And it did work for me for a little bit. So I used to do live workouts on. And when I was on there, I was like, You know what I should do? I should do some sort of short. Home workout guide where I show people exactly what they need. I’ll give them free workouts, I’ll show them how to do the exercises. So I launched it on Periscope.
I was like, It’s live now. Get it? I got three or 400 people to opt in. I had launched it on my website and all this. The home workout guides here and I started building a separate home workout guide list. And so now I had Coconuts, cobalts, and home workout guide. Then I started writing one like You, Cuz I, Now I remember you doing skincare stuff.
But one of the things that I had written about was apple cider vinegar, like a toner recipe. And that was doing really well. And using some of my SEO skill, I realized that a lot of people who were searching. Apple cider vinegar, hair was landing on that post. And I’m like, Well, let me write an article about apple cider vinegar for your hair and doing a hair rinse.
And that to this day is still the most trafficked blog post on my website cuz Healthline links to it. So anyway, it pays to be early, but I noticed that I started getting a lot of traffic for skincare. So that’s when I created. Separate. Here’s a video for how to clean your face with coconut oil, By the way, don’t do that.
And I showed people how to do it, and so I got that B list, became my most popular one. So it just became what’s doing well, How can I capitalize the traffic that I’m getting to my website and give them something for free so that I can get them, convert them into an email supplier. So as Instagram and stuff has grown, I’ve now really, I still, to this day, I’ll say I created a new opt-in about a year and a half ago.
That’s like a whole bunch of cookie recipes. So just because you have an opt-in doesn’t mean that it’s gonna last forever. You’ve gotta be on your toes and be thinking about what kind of content am I creating and how can I, how can I attract my ideal client or my ideal community with my opt-in? And so I knew I wanted to really.
I knew I was about to start doing more recipes, so I created an awesome recipe opt-in. I launched that two years ago on Instagram, and I still link to it regularly. So that is essentially how I’ve built a pretty large email list with not a large following, and it does convert pretty well for me with like when I wanna talk about affiliates or Anything like that. I just, I’ve gotten to the point, what I’ve done really bad is actually email consistently. So 2022 has been, Noel use your list. Like you built it, like you give people all these things, like now actually email people about what you’re doing. So, Yeah. Okay. Well, well this is like, this is like in depth stuff.
We, we don’t have to get like super in depth to it. Yeah. But, but. Looping it back around to the Nutritional therapy Association, which by the way, this is, we’re not sponsored by the nutritional therapy. Yes. We just wanted been in the past. I, It’s true. Yes. But it’s interesting because I like to think about, what’s that one thing?
What was the thing that really, that started it and it was still, That’s still what it was. It’s still a nutritional therapy practitioner thing. I wouldn’t have written my book without that. I wouldn’t have. Felt compelled to be talking to people online about anything if not for that. Yeah, and I actually, I don’t know that I talk about nutrition now as much as I should because I do still think it’s very, very important, but I also probably wouldn’t have realized how important stress management and sleep.
Mm-hmm. and all of the other things are, especially through my journey in parenthood. And on top of that, I really still feel like I could take it back to one-on-one stuff if I wanted to. Yeah, If I needed to. And having that flexibility to come back to something like that. As a busy parent and as someone who you know right now this, this internet business, this business I have is basically full-time.
But it’s also flexible. And if I needed to take it down to a couple hours a week, I could take it down to a couple of one-on-one sessions with people. I would know how to do that. I would know how to find those people. I would know how to scale it back or scale it big, and all of that kind of centers around the fact that I made that decision to go through that program in the first place.
I just don’t know that I could. That I could have done it otherwise, So I’m super, super grateful for that. And I don’t know where, Where does this fit in for you now and in the future? What does, What fit in the nta? The The Nutritional therapy Certification. Oh, yeah. It’s interesting because I just had a conversation with somebody from my church, one of the pastors there.
He was like, If you worked one on one with people, I’d have people lining out the door for you. Right. I have so many people, just even on STAT and, and I, and I’m like, I love that, but , that’s really nice of you, but I also don’t want that. And they do not. They don’t, Nobody really in my real life knows.
They’re like, Oh, you have a podcast. Oh, that’s cool. Maybe they find me on Instagram, one of my closest friends, but nobody has any idea that I’m some quote unquote, like business owner or influencer. Right. They just know that I talk, that it’s something that I’m passionate about, that I might eat a little different, that I, I bring different desserts.
I’m not bringing Doritos like I’m bring. Different things to, to whatever gatherings and they can quickly tell that we’re into health and fitness and we, well, that’s what we’re passionate about. And so the questions start very early on, and I think that that’s one of the nice things about. Putting yourself out there or, or that becomes part of your identity, which is a good and a bad thing, but in, in real life.
Arl not on online. That people, you, people know you for that. And you can always, like you said, shift back to that, doing one-on-one coaching. I don’t know if I ever wanna do that, but I do envision what I’d like to do maybe in the future, or nutrition. I’m always gonna be talking about nutrition.
Probably it does, cuz I like recipes and stuff like that. I’d actually like to talk about it a little bit more. I get a lot of talking for my podcast though, because I’m doing so many interviews and stuff like that. And so I do feel like I get my nutrition fixed that way. I don’t know, I, I obviously brainstorming.
I do feel like we’re at this point where, We’re we’re both getting close to 40. I was like, Wait, are you there yet? No, you’re not. Why do, why is this always a topic of conversation? I hate it. I was watching an episode of Bluey. They have little kids, and Bandit was like, Welcome . Bandit was talking to Louie about how he was picking a nose hair, and blue was like, That’s disgusting, and he’s welcome.
A middle aged kid, . And I was like, We’re not middle. Anyway, Please continue. We are, so it’s like we, I’m getting to this place where I’m almost, I’m, I’m approaching 40. My hairs are falling out and gray. We talk about this personally on our Vs all the time. I’m like, Oh my gosh, what’s going on? And. You hit a place where you’re like, Cool, I’ve done the things, but now what do I wanna do in the future?
And now what I want for my business? And I would love to still scale my business in a way where I’m able to help people but not work one-on-one for now. Okay. I just don’t think that that’s something that I want to come back to, but I’d like to have maybe a program or an online program or a course or something.
I just can’t quite. Nail it. It hasn’t, it hasn’t fully materialized yet. Yeah. And I truly do think my, I would like my, my, my 2023 motto to be dules. God bless, because.
I would like to do less. I would like to do less, and that is what this is. What this affords me is, is I can, I will, I can, I do anticipate taking a little bit of a step back and just maintaining maybe my emails and maybe trying, I’m getting some help with my Instagram because it’s historically that’s just been my afterthought and, and still staying connected with my community.
But being able to take a step back is really, really important to me at this stage and would for little kids, and I don’t wanna miss out. And so I think that that’s what I love about having an online business. I do feel like I’ve built it to a place where it can exist and I can pull back. There’s a lot of hard work that you have to do in the beginning.
You can be pretty efficient at it. And that’s what I love about all these interviews that we’ve been. Doing is that I’ve learned so much about doing it the right way and not messing up and so, but it’s, it’s still hard. I was just thinking of brainstorming about this being, being a business owner, starting your own thing, starting your own brand.
It’s, it’s hard work because you’re constantly putting time into something that you don’t know if it’s gonna be successful or not. Yeah. Whether it’s a reel that you thought was gonna do well and you post it and it tanks, or you create a product and you put it out and nobody wants it, like you’re always in, in, you could be awesome and it could go viral.
Like you could have an amazing month, right? Or. You could have crickets. And so it’s, it’s, you’re always putting your effort into something that you actually don’t know if it’s gonna do well or not. But I do think with a lot of the things that we’ve learned, now, I’m rambling. I do think with a lot of things that we’ve learned, there’s, there’s definitely things that you can learn from others that will set you up for success.
So, Well, what Kristen Beamer said in my interview with her, my hash, You interview with her, she was like, What? I wouldn’t have given for something like this. Yeah. 10 years ago when I was starting out and I was like, Amen. Well, that’s why we’re doing it. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. So you wanna talk a little bit about why we decided to do how she did?
Yeah, we probably should. Yeah. I mean, well for me it wasn’t my idea, but I think maybe I was like, Hey, I’m available for this. Are you guys available for this? Cause we’ve been talking about something like this for a long time and really, again, goes back to just the way I process information. I, it was over the summer, I had some just thoughts about what I wanted my business to look like in the future.
And I thought to myself, there are a lot of people out there that are just starting out that are where I was. Mm-hmm. 10 years ago, and we have the power to give them a leg up. and I was like, We should do this. And you guys were all like, Yeah, we should definitely do this. Yeah. This idea that we can give people a survey course and how to start nurture, grow a business online to whatever point you wanted to grow.
We had a webinar, you, myself, and Elena Haber, where I talked about a big moment for me is when I felt like I could go to the grocery store and buy the Cher. because cherries are so expensive. And just knowing I wanted to cover that part of the grocery bill, whether that’s what it is or whether you wanna, What I finally did last year was buy my dream minivan, whatever it is, like having a survey course where you can go through and say, That sounds like me.
I didn’t realize that, but I’ll incorporate that. These are the things I need to know. These are the things that I don’t, And to be able to take that and, and start confidently with a little bit of that information would. So huge for me 10 years ago, it would’ve shortened, the learning curve would’ve given me such a leg up.
And that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s what we wanted to do. Yeah. I think what we have, we have lived through, I’m gonna say it unprecedented times where , where 2020 was a cluster and so many people had their lives rocked and now we’re doing this cool inflation thing and it’s rough out there, y’all. It’s rough.
So, I think that what, for me, what really hit was like so many people are trying to do this, and we get so many questions of like, how do I start a side hustle? How do I, how do I diversify my business? Or I have a brand or I have a product, or I just, I even wanna grow my Instagram. How do I do that? How do I make use, how do I build a business?
How do I make, how do I monetize? What I’m passionate about because so many women are spending way too much time doing things that they hate or they’re not in jobs that are fulfilling or they need a little extra income because cherries are more freaking expensive now. Everything is. So that is really why I felt a pull to do this with you was like, we’ve got, I think that this could really, really help a lot of people and truthfully, as much.
On the outside, as it looks like I, we have these businesses and we have it all together. We really don’t. And I learned, I wanted to do this for myself too. I would, I really, all the people that I interviewed were people that I really wanted to ask all these questions and take to coffee and be like, Okay, what are you doing?
And tell me about how you use your master class to. Funnel people to your online course and what even is a funnel. So that was super insightful to me because I’m seeing women who are of all ages and. Of all abilities. These are not, these are not like super savvy, smart business course. I have a degree from Harvard kind of women.
These are women who have a passion for what they, they are doing, whether it’s helping children or being a nutritional therapist or being a fitness trainer, a variety of things, fashion, blog, or whatever it is. They have turned that into a way that they can provide for their families. And you do have to be a little savvy.
You do have to learn the ropes if you wanna do it right, cuz there’s plenty of ways to do it wrong. And you and I have done it. Mm-hmm. . And so I am really excited about getting, like, peeling back that curtain. So many people that I interviewed were like, Wow. I’ve never talked about this before. Before I started hitting record.
I don’t know about you, but every before they’re like, I love all these questions. I’ve never had anybody ask me this before. And I’m like, Yes, this is exactly what I want. Because these are women who are authorities in their industries, but have never actually talked about how did they become that? So it’s super exciting for me.
I wanna, I gotta listen to your interviews too, but I learned so much and I think that hopefully many nutritionists and fitness, personal trainers and PTs and people who want to move, whether it’s you wanna have something, you wanna work with people virtually and work one on one, or you wanna diversify your business with affiliates or an online program or downloadable eBooks or whatever like you, all of that, it’s easy.
It’s not easy. If you follow the steps, you will learn how to do that, and you can definitely diversify your income. So, And that’s, that’s a huge win. Yeah. So I mean, even if you just like putting your recipes on Instagram and you wonder, Hey, could I actually eat out a living from this? Could I buy the cherries with this?
Can I buy the cherries? Could I buy the cherries? It’s, let me tell you what it was for me, it was doing my first Stitch Fix order because I. I never had money to spend on clothes until really, I became in my thirties, I was always just scrapping it and like I got ordered my first Stitch Fix box. And for me that was like, Oh my gosh, I’ve made it now.
I really didn’t keep anything from it, but it still, it still was pretty amazing for me to be able to do that. So, yeah. And it was a business expense. Hmm. Hmm. Well, I’m excited about this. I, I, we’re wrapping up all of the interviews and it’s available. What, when does this podcast. So for me, it’s coming out.
This is October 24th, but if you’re listening to this, so if you’re listening to this now or into the future, how she grew.com. Basically, Liz and I came together and we decided to interview many of the people that you have heard on. Well-Fed women are being interviewed for this. Lisa Hendrickson, Jack, Dr.
Jolene Brighton, Rachel Mansfield, Like so many people are being interviewed. In a different capacity, but for this project, and you will have unlimited access to it if you buy the trainings, the interviews. But we also have included, because Liz and I are very detail oriented, and so as our team, we’ve also included downloadable notes for every training session, and we have a resource guide that you can get and that’ll have like the popular apps and tips and tricks.
Where you can host a website and stuff like that, so you don’t have to go searching the webs for that. And then we also will have a private Facebook group. So if you are interested in nutrition, you’ve thought maybe I wanna be a consultant, or maybe I wanna be a trainer and I’d like to do it online, or I, gosh, I, I do have a thriving business and I don’t know what to do next.
This is for you and we’d love to have you. So can’t wait to see everybody and how she grew. Okay. Anything else from you? I’m done. Okay, great. , awesome. Thanks Liz for being on this combo chat Again, How she grew.com is where you can find all of the things that we’re doing now. I’m coconuts tals.com, No tar and Liz, are you real food liz.com.
Is that real food liz.com still? Yep. I got that blue check. I can’t, I can’t change my email. that blue check. Oh my goodness. Thanks for being here, guys. We’ll, we’ll talk to you next week.
