From Personal Mission to Global Impact: The Whole30 Community Story

All right, welcome to this next session. My name is Darrell Vesterfeld and I am so excited to be here today and to be hosting this next session with Melissa Urban, the founder of Whole30. Melissa is has a very inspiring story, has had a global impact with Whole30 across the globe through her community. So I'm excited to talk to her today about that global impact and personal transformation. Whole 30, if you aren't aware of it, is everywhere you go. Every grocery store you walk into is going to have the impact of Whole30. Several restaurants that you may walk into on a regular basis are going to be impacted by the Whole30 message and community. Melissa, I'm so excited to have you here today. That's going to be super fun and good to see you. I haven't seen you in a couple of years and it's really good to see you again.

It's so good to see you too. I was so excited to hear that we would be in conversation because we go so far back, especially in talking about community. So this is going to be really fun, super fun.

Well, give me just a couple minutes here and I know if you haven't heard about Whole30, you are living under a rock somewhere because you guys have had such a global impact. But just give us like 60 seconds, two minutes on the genesis of whole 30 and where it all started. Sure.

I mean, it didn't start where you thought it might start, which is, you know, know me being super healthy and paying attention to my food and diet. It started when I got out of recovery for my drug addiction for the second time and realized that I had to change everything about my life if I was going to maintain my recovery. And that's what led me to the gym and fitness and paying attention to what I ate. Which led me to this 30 day self experiment in 2009, self designed, where my co founder and I decided we would do this 30 day kind of removal of foods that are commonly problematic for people based on the research he had been doing and just see what happened to our athletic performance and our recovery. And those 30 days were so profoundly transformational for me, for my energy, for my sleep, for my mood and self confidence, of course, my performance, my recovery. But it also really impacted my emotional relationship with food and transformed it in a permanent way. So I had that experience. It was so incredibly powerful. I decided to write about it my little CrossFit training blog in July 2009 and maybe 100 people said, yeah, we would love to follow along. And I led people through in that Month. What was to become the very first Whole30 program.

I love that arc. Okay, so individual transformation. I tried something. I had a transformation myself. And then I invited a small group of people. Like, this is the theme. If you just listen to Seth's session, it was like turning the funnel upside down. And so it started with a small group of people. Tell me about that first group. Like, what happened and then what caused you to continue to go. Building a community.

Yes. So, you know, when one, or in this case, two people get really good results with a protocol, you're like, that's interesting. But one or two people don't make a trend. Over the course of that month in July, I wrote a rudimentary set of rules for this elimination and reintroduction program and followed along with people. Every day. I would check in, in the comment section. This was like a free blogspot blog, not monetized or anything. I was just leading and guiding people through it, checking in, how are things going? I started to notice commonalities in people's experiences and sort of what they were going through on any particular day or phase of the program. At the end, when they reported back, remarkably similar, equally profound results in so many of the same areas that we had experienced. That was the moment where I was like, oh, this is something. We have something here. And so that's what I think led us to, you know, grow the program, to start traveling around and talking to CrossFit gyms about the Whole30 and creating our first little ebook pamphlet about the program. It all sort of started there.

It's so refreshing to remember those early days, Melissa, because that it's like all of this is formed on those early days of, like, the first people coming in, the first people having transformations. I'm curious to know, like, what you have learned about the importance of community when it comes into personal transformation like that. Because I've gone through Whole 30 protocol several times at different phases of my life. It's not the easiest thing that I've ever done. And I think that, you know, the connection of people together is a really important part of what Whole30 has become. So what have you learned since 2009 about the importance of being together in community in this kind of personal transformation?

I. I mean, I've learned so much. Very often people will ask me what my Strategy was in 2009, 2010, to grow and build this community. And I laugh at that because I'm like, I don't. In retrospect, the things I did are backed by marketing research. And you'd probably read about in your favorite marketing book. But at the time, I didn't know any of that stuff. What I knew was that I wanted to. I needed to test my material. First of all, right? I had this program. I thought it worked well, but I needed people to do it and to tell me what they were missing and what the pain points were and. And where they were struggling so I could create additional resources to help them. As you're going through this, you mentioned the whole 30 is hard. It's an elimination protocol where for 30 days, you give up a lot of foods and drinks that you probably really like. And so creating that sense of community, letting people talk to each other and staying very closely connected personally to their experience, you know, it helped people feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves. It helped people to know that they were not alone in what they were experiencing. If on day three, they were reporting how tired they were, there were a thousand other people on day three that were equally tired that could offer each other that accountability, that motivation, that support. And I also knew very early on, maybe instinctually, that trust and loyalty with your community is, like, the most important thing. And that trust and that loyalty takes a very long time to build. It requires patience and dedication, and it requires, you know, saying no to certain maybe deals that would have been financially lucrative, but not right for the program or right for the community. It really requires, like, a very kind of strict North Star, and it can be lost in a split second. It can be lost with one decision, one brand partnership, you know, one monetization. So I really paid attention to giving things away for free, testing my material and making it as good as possible, and staying incredibly closely connected to the Whole30 community, which I still am to this very day, despite how large we've grown.

That's amazing. Yeah, that. That the courage to be so narrowly focused to your core values and to who you are is something I really admire about you and admire what you've done in whole 30. Like, what gave you the courage to do that? Like, how in those moments, Because I can imagine you kind of have like. Like an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder, like, talking through it. Like, how do you think through that. How do you. Like, how do you build that loyalty? What. What was the thought process along the way as you're. You're kind of in those circumstances?

I. Since day one, I have had one question that I ask myself when it comes time to make a decision, and it has been my North Star question. And the question is, does this feel gross? When a brand approaches me, when someone invites me to speak at their, on their podcast, when whatever the decision is, I ask myself, does this feel gross? And I really rely on my intuition and my knowledge of the Whole30 community. And if it feels gross, we just don't do it. We just don't do it. I remember being offered a huge partnership a very long time ago. This would have been the biggest partnership we'd ever had from a company that like, kind of aligned with what Whole30 did, but didn't fully align. And I remember going back and forth with one of my team members about it and I was like, we're going to be crying like BPA filled tears at saying no to this, but we have to say no to it. It doesn't feel right. It feels kind of gross. And so that's kind of the metric that I use. And yeah, we've had to make some decisions that, you know, it's like this, this money would be really awesome in helping the business grow or keeping us financially solvent. But if it doesn't feel right, I don't know, I, I, I don't want to run a business if I can't run it like that, I guess is the way that I think about it.

Yeah. And what even struck me in that is like, it was a community of people that helped you have the courage to make that. Like going to a group of people, your team, and saying like, hey, we've got to do this together. We've got to have the courage. We've got to stick here.

Yes. Yeah, we still do that to this day. Absolutely. I don't make any unilateral decisions.

Yeah, I've been in meetings with your team. I know that's true. They're a great team. So another reason I think people really have deep Trust with the Whole30 community is your personal transparency. It's something that I again, really, really admire. Through hard stuff and through ups and downs, like you've just been transparent publicly about yourself and your life. Talk a little bit about your thinking behind that and like showing up as Melissa to the community in ways that people probably can really relate to. Like you mentioned your, your struggles with addiction previously and like, just talk about the transparency and how that has been a big part of building the community as well.

You know, it wasn't always like that. I will say. I went through a period of many years in the earlier days of Whole 30 where I was insecure. I had a lot of imposter syndrome. There were like, personal things happening in my life that were really stressful and making me unhappy. And I felt like in order to succeed, I had to show up as Whole30Melissa. This was the, like, Persona that I built. Whole30Melissa was perfect. She ate perfectly. She worked out perfectly. Her morning routine was perfect. She always had an answer to the question. She was always groomed and her makeup was done, and her hair was perfect. And, like, this was. I felt like this was how I had to show up so people would take me seriously, so that I would be respected, so that I, you know, could show up as the face of this brand. And I ended up creating an image of myself that I couldn't even uphold. And it was completely unrelatable because nothing about it was real or true. And so in 2015, 2016, I went through some really major life changes, a very public divorce and business split. And that was the point where I was like, I'm not going to do that anymore. The only thing I know how to do really, really well, better than anybody else is be Melissa. And so I started showing up more transparently. I started showing up talking about the ups and the downs. I don't. I don't always share what is intimate. There are certainly strong boundaries I have around what I share and what I don't. But I. I don't sugarcoat it anymore. I don't show up in any way other than as I am, because that's the only thing that feels good. And I think that's the only way that I've been able to maintain this close relationship with the people that I talk to through the community.

Yeah, I think it's so good. What's really striking me here is, like, feels like this internal compass. And you call it, like, does this feel gross? Or, hey, this actually feels good. How have you developed that over the years and over time? Like, how does somebody who's watching this say, hey, Melissa, that's really great, But I sometimes have the, like, the two competing voices on my shoulder. Like, how do you develop that internal compass to say, does this feel good? Is this gross? And then being able to build that courage to really protect the community.

I mean, one thing I want to point out is that I do. I did have a lot of privilege coming into building my brand in that I had a nest egg. I had a little savings from my last nine to five jobs. So, you know, knowing that I at least had, like, some money heading into it did make it a little bit easier. I never had to, you know, make the decision about keeping the lights on or saying no to the brand deal in my integrity. It was never like that serious. So that's something I want to point out, too. I think I learned that in my recovery. First I was in recovery. I relapsed after a year. I got out the second time, and I thought, I have to strip everything down. I can't sugarcoat anything. I can't. I can't pretend. I can't try to justify. I have to be as real as possible in this. And I had to learn to trust myself again. You know, there are so many factors, especially for women, that tells us that we can't trust ourselves. Right. It's the patriarchy and stereotypically rigid gender roles. Sometimes it's religious influences, sometimes it's trauma. It can certainly be diet culture. But we get all these messages that we are. We can't trust ourselves, and we have to look to someone else to kind of tell us what to do. And I had to, kind of, out of desperation, learn to trust myself again and really tune into my body. I think my movement practice helped with that. My meditation practice helped with that. But learning to trust my gut and going with my gut and seeing what happened when I didn't, I think were some of the best, if not painful, lessons I learned along the way.

Yeah. Another thing that's. That's interesting to me is like, as the community has grown, maybe to, like, more eyeballs and a larger scale, you've actually gotten better at that, like, openness and alignment, which is interesting to me. Like, there's something that maybe feels corollary to me that's interesting. But what have you learned about community? So again, from, you know, two people to a small group of people now to having global impact, like, what are the through lines? Like, how are. How is community the same as those early small groups? And then the same with kind of more of a global impact where there's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people participating in challenges and groups and all kinds of things. What do you see as corollary or the same?

In the earlier days of Whole 30, even up through, say, 2015, I was talking to one specific group of people, and it was CrossFitters. The brand and the program grew in the CrossFit community because they were incredibly well connected on forums and message boards, and the program worked really well for their performance focus. And talking to CrossFitters is very different than talking to my mom or your sister. And so as the program grew and as the community grew, we started to notice that, you know, I'd go to a Whole30 nutrition seminar in a CrossFit gym, and half of the people would be like, my parents age. And I would always walk around and say, oh, you know what? How did you hear about us? Why are you here? And people would say, my kids told me I had to come. My do, I'm here with my daughter. My nephew told me that I'm in your, you know, in your town, or you're in my town, and I need to go. So as the community grew, we really had to change the way that we talked to the community. We had to change the words we used. We had to change the way I connected. You know, I have been famous for a very long time for my tough love approach, and I still have that. I can still pull that out. But I had to learn to be far more empathetic. I had to gain an enormous awareness of the concept of privilege and other people's lived experiences and how things like culture play into their habits and their barriers to the whole 30. All of those, I think, have helped me and the team be able to continue to share what I think is still a pretty intact message, even with people far and away. And, yeah, it's challenging, you know, like a game of telephone. The wider the community grows, the more misinformation about Whole 30 kind of is hanging out there in the ether. But I think we do a really good job of staying closely connected with our community and empowering them to share the Message of Whole 30 with others in a way that stays true to the brand and also helps them feel like they're advocates and evangelists and maybe even mentors. And I think that's also a big part of how the community grows. Our best marketing avenue right now still to this day is word of mouth. Our best. We do very little paid advertising, and.

It'S word of mouth because people are actually having transformation. Right. Like, it's a real transformation. And it's like when I have that kind of transformation, I can't help but be an evangelist for it. Right. I want other people to experience it, too. So it's like what you were saying, hey, my kids told me about this. My neighbor told me about this. I needed to come to this group. Like, maybe I'm not a crossfitter, but here I am. I'm going to show up and, like, do this thing because it actually worked for me.

Yes.

And so I think that the core of that kind of scale is personal transformation.

It is personal transformation, absolutely. And if the program didn't work as well, as it did, I don't think the community would have grown in the way that it has. But I will also say that over the years, especially over the last six, seven years, my team has worked very, very hard to make sure that when you tell somebody about the whole 30 and that person comes to our social media feed, a book, our website, they see themselves reflected in what we are doing. We work very hard with our recipe creators and our influencers and our graphic designers and our, our language and our, even our vendors and the people that we work with behind the scenes. We really want to make sure that people feel like we are building this community with them, not just for them. And that's really important to us. And I think that also is what helps the community grow, is if I go somewhere and I see myself reflected and like I personally see myself reflected everywhere, but there are a lot of people who don't. And it's nice to walk into a target or go to a website and see yourself there. That makes you think, like, yeah, maybe this is for me. And I think that's a huge part of how we're going to continue to be successful.

Yeah, that's so fun. You and I have talked about specifically bringing community online for several years. I remember our first meeting in Manhattan. Yeah, I don't know how many years ago that was, but, you know, and the phrase we use here is people magic. And this idea of connecting people together, what have you learned about the ability to do that online, specifically when it comes to accountability? Because it feels like what you're saying here is, hey, Whole 30 is not the easiest. When people do it together, they have a more highly likelihood of having that transformation. Once that transformation happens, then the community grows because people can't help but talk about it. What have you learned about connecting people together and accountability groups or cohorts and bringing this all online? Talk about that a little bit.

Yeah. So our cohorts have been incredibly successful. It's like, you know, a closed, private community space where we guide and lead people through the whole 30. They have access to, you know, special resources. And my HQ team, I do ask me anythings with them once a week. So they really are guided and led, but at the core, they're talking to each other. And that's really what we have found is the magic and the money. They're there to support each other. They are there for accountability. They have formed like little buddies or little teams within the group. People come back to our cohort month after month because they want to be the Person who is now leading and guiding other new folks through it, providing recipes, sharing resources. And for a long time we were able to accomplish that on social media. We were able to accomplish that on Instagram, on Facebook. But over the years, and especially now, people don't want to share vulnerably on social media because who knows who's going to see it and who knows what they're going to comment. And I can't necessarily create a safe space on social media even with all the content moderation we do and as you know, quick we are with reviews and such, it's kind of the wild west. So to be able to say to people, come into our house, it's crafted, it's curated, it's cultivated, but it's private. So you can talk about the things that you don't want to talk about on Facebook or Instagram, you can talk about your digestion issues, you can talk about your cravings, you can talk about your mental health. And that's all we talk about in that space. Anything tangential to Whole30 and that's it. And that's been a huge draw for people.

Yeah, it's, it's so key. Like I for many, many years believe this myth that I had to like, content had to be the core of these communities. And while that is sometimes important, right, because the transformation happens from having a different experience or a different program like you've introduced, like the actual real part of this is people connecting to each other. Right. So cool. If I have the content and it's just a content based community, I come in, I read it, I maybe am transformed by it, but I don't come back. And the reason people are coming back is, oh, I was led by people or I was connected to people. Now I want to do that for other people and I want to stay connected to the community. That feels so important. What are, what are things that you all do to keep people coming back over and over again?

Cohorts and in the community, I mean, it's funny, you know, we, we have offered discounts to people who want to come back. So that's a bit of an incentive. But we're not marketing hard for people to come back. We find that they are doing it on their own. When you're done with the whole 30, we have this sort of off ramp program to help you maintain your healthy habits, essentially, you know, forever a sustainable, joyful, expansive diet based on what you've learned through your whole 30 elimination and reintroduction. We call that your food freedom. And so People in order to stay more connected to their healthy habits and their food freedom, they come back because it keeps them focused on making conscientious, deliberate food choices. Trusting your body to tell you what's right for you in that moment, being kind to yourself, being graceful with yourself, letting good enough be good enough. All of those are themes in our cohort. So people get through the whole 30 and then they come back so that they can stay connected to those vibes, they can stay connected to that energy. And every time they come back through a cohort, they learn something new. They pick up something that will help them in their next whole 30, in their next reintroduction or ongoing in their food freedom. So we find people come back, yes, for the community and for the connection, because it's just wholesome and good and supportive in a way that social media often is not right now. But they're also coming back as a tether to their healthy habits to keep them in their growth mindset and help them, I think, stay on track with their own food freedom plans.

Yeah, that's really great. If you could talk to 2009 Melissa about community, what would you say to her?

I don't know that I would say anything because I feel like if I had tried to be very strategic and markety about it, I probably would have messed it up, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I, I would have talked to her about not having to show up perfectly, but that was also part of my journey. So, you know, I wouldn't change anything. But I, I think doing it the way that I did it, without having strategy, without having outside marketing help, without doing paid advertising, that led to something that just still to this day, as large as we've grown, feels good and simple and connecting. And I would not change that for anything.

Yeah, I want to double click on this again because the second time you've mentioned it, hey, we don't have huge ad budget. Hey, we're not like crazy, like, we're not leading with like marketing strategy. We're leading with creating transformation for people. We're leading with connecting people together where, where, where. That's the strategy. And that is like so refreshing. I hope is so refreshing for so many people here to say is like, I don't have a big ads budget. I don't know how to be super strategic. Although get Seth's book and maybe you can learn a little bit about it.

We have definitely more strategy now. Trust me. 2009 Melissa didn't, but we do today.

But like, but, but like that's not what it takes. Like, what it takes is like, the commitment to the mission, the ability to be like, unwavering and helping people transform and connecting people together. Like, that feels like the core of all of it. What I keep hearing from you over and over again here, it's like, great, like, hey, I've learned this stuff over time, and it took the journey for me to learn about marketing and to be more strategic. But the reality is, like, all of the foundation that was built was on helping people transform personally, connecting people together, doing it in community.

That was the core of was and it still is. Our mission is changing lives one whole 30 at a time. That's our mission. We don't get into policy, we don't get into change at the government level or the school level there. You know, we're. We're changing people's lives one at a time. That's how we started and that's what we are continuing to do. And we're a very mission driven organization. And I'm really lucky that people on my team, I mean, I'm lucky, but they. That was also, I think what drew them to work at Whole30 is they love knowing the impact they have. Every single person who works at Whole 30 can go to bed at night thinking, I changed lives today. People's lives are different, are better. The success story that we shared today, I had a part in that. And that's really energizing and motivating for everybody that I work with.

Yeah. How have you transformed the. I mean, the mission is still essentially the same from day one. I'm sure it's transformed a little bit. But, like, this was you. It was you having a transformation, and then it was now you introducing that transformation to so many people. Like, I think that is the core of, like, any movement that I have, like, has a global impact that I have tons and tons of respect for. It starts from that. It's like an individual having a personal transformation. But now as it's grown, how has that transformed and how has it stayed the same of, like, this mission of like getting myself healthy now to bringing it kind of globally?

Yeah. I mean, so over the years, you know, I don't have a. I'm not an rd. I'm not a medical doctor. So over the years, we have brought on, you know, advisory board of medical doctors, registered dietitians, outside researchers to really shore up the science of Whole 30 and our meal template and the rules just to make sure, you know, that everything is healthy for people and that we have that sort of seal of approval from experts in the field. But I've always been, I think, the voice of Whole 30. I've always done all the writing for Whole 30. So it's very hard for me sometimes to separate myself from the program. It's also really hard for me to see how far we've come, because in my head, we're still this sort of scrappy little word of mouth program. And honestly, that's something that my team and I have, I won't say struggled with, but gone back and forth with a lot is how much do I show up for whole 30? Because I want the program to exist and continue and thrive without me. If I get hit by a bus Tomorrow, I want Whole30 to continue, and it will. And also me showing up has real impact. It has impact in metrics and watch time and engagement and interest. So there's always this tension of, like, everything can't rest on my shoulders. But I'm also still heavily involved in the day to day and closely connected to the community. So where is that balance? And I think that's something we're always exploring.

Yeah, that's good. That's really good. Well, Melissa, this has been really great. I'm curious, like, I want to connect this to somebody who's watching this today, who's like, man, I really want to help somebody hit this transformation piece. Like, what kind of advice? And advice is maybe the wrong word. What kind of thoughts or advice or what message do you have for somebody who's like, hey, I want to. I want to build something. I want to connect to people similar to me and have similar transformations to me. Like, what kind of story do you want to tell somebody who's at the very, very early stages of doing this?

I think. I mean, this is hard advice to follow, I recognize, but in this sort of side hustle culture, we have an idea or we have a transformation. We want to share that with everybody else, and we immediately monetize it immediately. It's my mastermind, it's my course, it's my whatever. And I feel like that can definitely generate some quick revenue. But that's flash in the pan stuff. That's not community building. I would absolutely spend time giving things away for free. And I now know, based on marketing books I've read that that's very sage advice. But that's what we did with Whole30. That's what we still do with Whole30. The program is still free. When you do that, when you focus on making sure your material is good and sound and making sure. That people are benefiting from it and listening to their feedback. And when they ask for something, giving it to them, that's what builds trust. That's what builds loyalty. That. That's what builds community. And so when you get to the point of saying, hey, I have this thing. Do you want to buy it? They'll say, yeah, I would buy anything you put out. At this point, I just feel like you've done so much for me. Like, yeah, I want to support you like that. That's how it's worked for us. And I've seen that be very successful with other communities as well. But it's hard. It's hard advice to follow because that means you need another source of income, and it means you need to be really patient.

Yeah, I think. And I think the core of that. That is trust. Right. Is a part of it. Part of what you're talking about here is, like, you know, giving it away for free, but it's really about trust building. And it's like, hey, you cannot monetize before you've built that trust. You cannot monetize before you. Like. Like, that's the key piece of it, right? It's like, if trust is the foundation of everything that you're doing, you're building a good foundation. Like, you have a solid foundation that you can build something that has the global impact of Whole30. If you start with trying to, like, just get money out of people, that's the wrong approach. Right. And so I love the, like, it's. It's. Your story is so organic and so grassroots. It started with yourself, which all of my favorite businesses start with a founder having a personal transformation. Like, you were your own ideal customer. You did it for yourself. And then it was small groups, and it's just grown. It's 16 years later, and it's like a global impact from, like, you making a change for yourself. And so I think that's the key here is, like, trust is the foundation. So what do we do to build trust for people? How do we present ourselves as trustworthy? You know, you talked about being transparent and open. You talked about, like, serving people and giving. All of those are, like, key elements to building trust. Creating safe space is something that you mentioned. Like, hey, guess what? Social media is a lot less fun than it used to be. Because it's like, you don't know. Is it like, are these, like, a bunch of bots? Are people just mean, like, what's going on? Like, so creating safety for people representation, you've mentioned matters a lot you know, and so there's a lot that goes into trust, and trust being the foundation of something, I think is what gives the ability to build something that has the scale that the whole 30 has.

So, yeah, I fully agree. And I think another thing that's really nice is you've got this big, you know, you've got this community that you're building and you're building trust. But what's also nice is to create a group of insiders within that community. We have an email list of our most engaged customers, and they get previews of new stuff. They get discounts first, they get special news first. They get book tour announcements first, because they are the Most engaged whole 30 years. So we give them a little something special. You know, our community cohorts here on Mighty Networks is another way of taking our larger community and shrinking it down and getting that more close, one on one direct relationship. They get stuff ahead of time. They give us really important feedback that they then see we apply to the community at large, which feels really good, you know, So I think taking a bigger community and having a little bit more of an intimate connection with a smaller community in some aspect. Maybe it's your close friends list on Instagram, maybe it's a paid substack, maybe it's a community on Mighty Networks or just an email list of the most engaged. That can also be really helpful in you taking the temperature of what people want and need and them feeling like you really do care. Because we do. And it's a way to just kind of give them a little something special.

Yeah, I'm all about demystifying what seems mystical a little bit. And it's like, hey, you've built this global brand, but at the core of all of this is like, hey, it's just about connecting to people. So even what you just said there, that core group of people, it's like, hey, what gets them excited? What gets them pumped up? Like, how do they want to stay engaged? And it's more of a human connection. It's a people question more than it is like a strategy question or like, you know, an answer that we'll find in some sort of book. Like, it's not this mystical answer that we have to find. It is like, hey, let's stop and slow down a little bit. Like, how do we connect to people better even in those smaller groups? I think that's like at the core of this entire conversation, it's not some mystical answer of how to build a community, like Whole30. It really comes down to Giving opportunity for personal transformation, connecting people together, and just thinking about people first is really key. So people first seems to be a message that I hear you talk about all the time, which is really refreshing and I think is really good news for anybody who's getting started. Is there isn't some, like, magic strategy that you have to learn. You just have to learn to be good with people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's as simple as that.

Sixteen years in the making, right? Yeah. You also don't have to be perfect. I love that you even mentioned that. Like, hey, what would you say to younger Melissa? Like, I don't know. She kind of needed to go through all that journey to get where she's at now. So it takes time to learn, and that's. That's really good too. So.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

I want to, like, maybe give a couple minutes if people have questions for you about Whole 30 or about the community. I'm gonna. I'm gonna monitor the chat here. We've got a few minutes that I'd love to open up for a couple questions, if you're open to it.

I would love that. I love Q and A.

Awesome. Cool. Cool. So if you have questions, feel free to drop them in. One thing I do want to say really quick. If you have questions about the plan, specifically, if you could email chatightynetworks.com we can probably do a better job of helping you out there. If you have specific questions about the plan or the offer that's happening today, I'd love to keep the chat here about this conversation about building trust about Whole 30. And by the way, we have an awesome resource here with Melissa. So you have questions, please drop them in here. And excited to do that. But if you have questions specifically about the plan, I don't want to talk that on stage. So email chatightynetworks.com and we'll go from there. But Lane is saying, hey, talk more about transparency. I'm all about it. You mentioned something that I think maybe we could double click on is the difference between transparency and then, like, just sharing everything and having boundaries?

Yes.

How do you think about. How do you think about transparency publicly so people can connect with you, but also, like, having boundaries around personal things?

Yes. I borrowed this from Brene Brown, who is, of course, genius. I share what is personal, not intimate. That's how I think about my boundaries for sharing on social media or online. So I will tell you what I had for lunch. I will tell you how my recovery from foot surgery is going. I will Talk about something that happened in therapy that I have already processed myself and maybe shared with friends and family. And I feel like it's okay to be sort of out there in the wild. I never share anything until I've fully processed it myself. And I feel like I can make it not just about me, but something that hopefully can connect with other people. I don't share what is intimate. You, my son, his photos or pictures or name. Not on any social media. We don't share him at all. My husband and I got married, and I didn't tell anybody for six weeks. I said to him, I need to keep this just for us for a little while, and I'll let you know when I'm ready to share. And he was like, cool, that's great. So that's the line that I think about. There are some things in I do have. I do share a lot of my life online. And then there are some things that I just need to keep for me. And I don't feel bad about it, and I don't apologize for it, and I don't tell people, like, oh, I'm gonna go offline for a couple days. I need a break. I just do it. And I think that by enacting those boundaries and sharing them so free so frequently and holding them so confidently, hopefully I empower other people to do the same. So, yes, I'm very transparent, but with guidelines. And those guidelines are really important to me, being able to continue to show up transparently.

Ah, that's really great. That's really great. I think those boundaries are key. I think I've seen too many people who they get confused between, like, themselves as a person and then the brand that exists in the world. And those two things are completely two separate things.

Well, also, people will take as much as you are willing to give, and that is not a dig on anybody, but they will take as much as you are willing to give. And you have to be the one to set the limits. So when people ask me a question that I don't want to answer, I don't answer it. When people ask me for a detail that I don't want to share, I don't share it. Right. I have to be the one to hold those limits.

Yeah, that's good. Gina, who I love, is in the chat because she's a really busy lady, but she asked, what are you most excited about right now, Melissa, like, as you're looking at 20, 25 and whole 30 community, what are you most excited about?

Well, I'm really excited about continuing to build out the Whole30 community on Mighty networks. And that's not. That's like not a marketing thing. I really am. That's what I'm focused on full time right now, which is really, really exciting. I'm not writing a book right now, which is fantastic. I have been in book writing mode since October of 2020, so it's really nice to kind of have that break. I'm doing a few more speaking engagements, which is really fun. So, yeah, you know, it feels a little bit like I'm more in my sort of normal day to day routine where I'm writing and I'm answering questions and I'm posting content. And that just feels really nice right now.

Awesome. This one's from Cynthia and she says, melissa, you changed my life. Thank you so much. If there is one thing I need to do to make my group and community more magnetic, what is it?

Oh, I mean, I'm gonna say this. My philosophy has always been, I'll go first. I'll go first. I know that people have. I'll give you an example I talked about on social media that time I got chlamydia a couple years ago. I talked about it because I know that there are people who carry guilt and shame around, perhaps their STD or some sort of like sexual encounter issue. I'll go first. I'll go first. And if that empowers you to use your voice or at least feel a little less guilt or shame or maybe reach out to someone to talk about it, that's magnetic. People, I think, are drawn to other people who empower them. Right. I'm not. I'm not sharing so people can know about my life. I'm sharing so that you can see that it's okay to use your voice like this. It's okay to feel like this. It's okay. If this happened to you, there's nothing shameful about it. You shouldn't feel guilty about it. I think that's really magnetic. I think that draws people to you and you don't have to talk about your std. You can absolutely start with something smaller. But you know, if there is something that, you know, addiction is a. A great one. People don't want to talk about their addiction. They don't want to talk about their recovery. There's still a stigma. I am 100% confident talking about those things. I have no issues whatsoever. So I talk about them all the time. And every time I do, one person sends me a DM that says, thank you, I'm going To seek help or thank you. I'm talking to my mom about it. That's that those are the kind of changes that add up to a really close, trusting community.

I agree completely. It's like somebody said this to me one time, which is like, what does it. What is like the definition of leadership or what does every leader have in common is somebody who's following them. Well, to have somebody who's following you, you have to go first. And it takes that courage of going first is like that servitude that like, hey, I'll go first. Hey, I'll speak up first. Hey, I'll try this first. That is what then allows the ability for somebody to follow and to create a group and a community. Like there has to be a leader for a community to form. And I think that's what's. What I am hopeful here is everybody in the chat hears that is like, where do you get to take the first step? Hey, I'll go first. And then you get to invite people. It's not about selling people into community. It's about an invitation to go where you have gone before and where you're going together. And I think that's the core of community.

So, yeah, I agree.

Okay. This one's a little less community focused, but I thought it'd be a fun one. Is do you have a morning routine and people are curious?

I do. Okay. I am very structured. I am a Gretchen Rubin upholder. I do incredibly well with structure and routine. So I have a morning routine and an evening routine and those are just sacrosanct. And that means if the rest of my day goes sideways, at least I have something to kind of start me off on the right foot. Also remember, I work for myself. I work from home. I only have my son every other week because every other week he's with his dad. So that gives me a lot more time to do some of these things that I do right. So just keep that in mind. I have a lot of privilege here, but I wake up sometimes I take a cold shower first thing in the morning. I'm obsessed with cold showers. They are killer for mood and energy. They're my favorite thing in the world. Take my cold shower. I'll take the dogs for about a 40 minute walk and then I head to the gym maybe four or five days a week. I have a movement practice that I do first thing every single morning. I don't look at email, I don't look at slack, I don't do. I'm not on social media before My morning routine is done. I will meditate at the end of my workout. I kind of just like build it in at the end and then I'll come home and I'll eat some breakfast and then I start work usually around maybe 9, 9:30. So that's my morning routine. And I do that on vacation. I do that when I travel as often as I can preserve that morning routine, even if it's just a 20 minute workout in my hotel gym, I do because it helps me start the day feeling proactive instead of reactive.

It's amazing. Thank you. I love the little detour there because I know a couple of people were curious about that. Somebody here says, hey, it's hard to have courage. What are your thoughts about that? Like, hey, if I'm going to go first, like it does take a little bit of courage. It takes a little bit of guts to maybe speak up first. Take the first step. What are your thoughts on having courage? When it's hard or scary.

You have to decide how you feel about something before you put that thing out to somebody else. I had to decide through therapy and my own self work how I felt about my addiction and recovery. So that when I put it out there, if someone said to me, I think less of you now, how are you qualified to talk to me about health and nutrition because you're just a druggie? None of that bothered me. None of that is about me. Doesn't say anything about me. Speaks to maybe how they're experiencing me because I know how I feel about it. If I put something out there before, I've decided that I am now buffeted by other people's praise and other people's criticism. And their praise might fill me up, but their criticism is going to tank me way harder and way faster. So before you put something out there, you have to decide how you feel about it. Such that if people praise you for it, you're like, oh, that's lovely. I'm so glad that's connecting with you. And if they criticize you for it, you can say, I'm sorry, that's how you're choosing to experience it. But I know how I feel about this. I think that's a really important step before you toss anything out to the general public or even your friends and family.

Yeah, I also think that's, that's so good. I've, I've often heard is like courage is just doing it scared anyways. And I think if you, if you're waiting for the fear to go away, I mean, I'm like 20 years into doing some of this stuff, like still get nervous, there's still fear, there's still trepidation around things that are hard. And so courage might just be pretending that you're not scared and doing it anyways and still being scared. So I think I want to demystify that a little bit for folks as well, because it's really key. So. Cool. Well, I want to start wrapping us up here a bit, but give me final thought here as we've kind of traverse this whole conversation. Like, what's one final thought that you want to leave. Leave with the group here to a bunch of folks who are maybe 2009 Melissa, who are wanting to start their groups and communities.

I'm going to say this because there's a comment in here from Matthew about for someone with an established social media community, how do you know how to transition them into sort of an engaged and thriving space? And this is the thing that I will say because it fits perfectly with your last question. You will build this community and you will be close and you will have trust and you will have given a lot of stuff away for free. And the first time you have something to sell them, there will be a big group of people who are like, how dare you? How dare you charge me for this? How dare you work and expect to get money from your work. Right. There will be people who are mad no matter what. They expect you to continue to labor for free. That's okay. Those are not your people. There will be a group of people who will say, yeah, I'll follow you there. Yeah, I see the value in that. Yes, I'll subscribe to this just to support you. Those are your people. So don't worry about the people who are giving you a hard time for making a living. If it doesn't feel gross, put it out there. And then the people who are attracted to that, those are your people.

Yeah. And guess what? When the people say no, it's just helping you have the contrast and the clarity of who your people are. Oh, that person's a no. And like Seth said, no is a valid answer. And I think that's really great. Is like, the more I've done this, the more I'm not afraid of the no, because it really just helps find the yeses. Right. Oh, great. That person is not right. Cool. I'm just gonna keep looking and focusing on the people that are right. So that's a great last thought, Melissa.

Yeah, thanks.

Hey, thanks so much. You've been so generous with your time I know that you have lots going on. You're super busy and I really appreciate you spending time with people today, specifically with me. It was good to see you again with a whole group of people who are, you know, maybe like a younger version of Melissa who are wanting to build their communities. So super inspiring, super practical. Thanks for being so generous with your time and your wisdom and your insight. Thank you very much. Where can people find you if they want to learn?

If you send me a direct message on Instagram, I'm at Melissa, you and you only talk to me. I don't have a team in my, in my Instagram. I don't have like anyone responding. If you get a response, it's from me. And that's another way that I stay really closely connected and I would love to hear from you. So, yeah.

Thank you, Melissa. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Darrell. Good to see you again.

Good to see you too. All right, well, we're going to take a little bit of a break here. We will be back at 1:30pm Eastern. So just in a little bit. So take a little break, get a drink, eat some lunch. And we'll be back here at 1:30 Eastern. If you have questions about the offer, this 199 offer that the mighty team has so generously put together, please email Chatightynetworks.com and we will be more than happy to help you out there. It might be an easier way to get your questions answered about that offer. We will be back at 1:30 with the influency story. So really excited about that session. See you at 1:30 Eastern.