Dana Lee Chapman: Conquering Diet Culture and Empowering a Shift to Holistic Health

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Well, you guys, this is one of the things that I love about having a podcast, is because I get to meet people that I never would have met unless I had a podcast. I was actually referred to our next guest by a mutual friend of ours who said that she would be good for the podcast. And we just started talking right before the interview, and I'm like, oh, my God, I cannot wait to dive into your story, but we have to record or we're going to lose this magical moment. And so, so much wisdom already, just in the brief time that we got to spend before talking. And she's currently helping people heal their relationship with food, which. I don't know, man, that is such an important thing to do because so many people have such.

Sometimes even.

Yeah, I was gonna say trauma. Yeah, trauma.

Dysfunction.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so many people have such trauma when it comes to food and just the yo yo dieting and all that stuff. And for her to be able to help impact people in that way is so beautiful. So I can't wait to dive into that. And she's also working on something brand new, completely unrelated to this, which I'm also excited to dive into, because when you guys get to see someone who's already done the thing and now they're doing a whole new thing, it's such a great way to memorialize this moment in time, but also for you to see that even when you reach success and you're at this moment in life when you could be like, okay, good, I'm. I'm done. And you could pack it in for you to start over with something brand new is really exciting to be at this moment and do this interview right now. And the funny thing, now that I'm thinking about it, is we actually have been kind of talking for a few months about doing this interview. So the timing of this is really cool because I think a lot of things have evolved since we first started Talking. So I am welcoming Dana to the show. Hey, Dana.

Hello. So excited to be here.

I know. I am just so excited. I feel like even the time that we just met, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so thrilled.

I know. That was so funny. It was like we start chatting. It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's hit record and start recording this so we can leave all the juice for our conversation. Yeah.

Well, I'd love to have you start off and just share your story.

Okay. My story. So I'm currently 47 years old. I'm married. I live an amazing life of my husband. We don't have any kids and no kids by choice. I always like to say that right out of the gate, we really love our lifestyle. So I have been in the fitness industry for about three decades. It actually started pretty fresh out of high school. And I was at the time in high school, very obsessed with staying thin. So when I found out I could go to college to study exercise physiology and, like, how in my mind how to stay skinny, I was like, sign me up. All my friends were talking about going away to school and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And then I stumbled upon this exercise physiology thing and I was like, wow, okay, I think this is something I could study. So that's kind of how it started for me. I do have my degree in exercise physiology. I have a minor in graphic design. Actually, I got my BFA in graphic design because that's another part of my upbringing. I'm artist, I come from artists. So I actually. It's beautiful how things have come together and I've been able to use both of those degrees, which I'm very blessed to say, but that's how it started was with my own issues with my body and the diet culture and just staying thin at all costs. And so I ended up developing in the fitness industry. I became a fitness professional and I started teaching classes and everything from kickboxing to spinning to all the things. So this is. I'm dating myself here. But going back to the 90s, that's where it was like step and Taebo. Do you remember?

Totally, totally, Billy.

So if your listeners are like, yeah, yeah, nodding their head like you remember, Come on. So good times, good times. But high impact, so hard on your body. I mean, it was just insane. Exercising was definitely eat less exercise, more mentality, the low fat eating and all of that. So it created a lot of food dysfunction. It just kind of perpetuated the cycle because I ended up becoming a fitness professional. So then I'm a leader and leading this and exercising for my job. I'm getting paid to do it and then therefore working out two to three hours a day. So what ended up happening is I developed exercise bulimia. So I would exercise two, three hours and then binge eat. And I'd feel guilty from binge eating and try to starve myself or exercise that off. So it was a perpetual cycle for probably about two decades. And it was very difficult to break because being in the fitness industry with my colleagues, it was very accepted. It was the cool thing to do. You wore the badge of honor that you were dieting harder and you were getting leaner. But my mental health was really suffering. And fast forward to years later, after college, I did decide to open my own gym. So in 2008, I opened Evolution Health and Fitness. It was an incredible boutique style gym. It was about 6,000 square feet. My baby. I was just going for it. I mean, doing the thing. Talk about doing the thing. I was a kid who came from a middle class, blue collar family. I had no idea how the heck I was going to make this happen. But I was determined, man. I had grit and I was like, I'm going to figure this the fuck out. So I did, I did. I figured it out.

Wow.

However it aligned with. Do you remember what happened in 2008?

Oh, yeah.

It was the recession. So it aligned with the recession and it was devastating. So here I built this incredible facility. All these gyms were closing around me. I just had more grit and tenacity. I had a landlord that really supported me. So basically my husband and I went through the wringer with that. Financially, we lost a lot. I lost that business. We lost our home. However, it pushed me to do something really uncomfortable and I started my YouTube channel and I started recording all of my workout videos. And this is somebody who. It took me two years from the idea of it to actually do it. Two years. It took me to get in front of a camera and start filming workout videos and posting them on YouTube. But I did it. And I'm telling you, looking back, that was the hybrid before it was Covid hit and there was a lot of hybrid going on. But this is going back to 2012. So I was determined to stay in the fitness game. So I did it and I figured it out and I moved my fitness business online before it was cool. Even my clients are like, people aren't going to look at their phones and do workouts from their phones and I was like, just you wait. Just you wait. My husband and I were keeping on pulse of the market and he's like, oh, no, no, this is going in this direction. So behind the scenes though, I had all this dysfunctional eating and I didn't know how to cope and I felt terrible about myself, especially being on camera. Then it was even magnified more. Who is this flat chested girl? Is she lean enough? I just was so afraid I was not filling the part yet. I have legitimate followers on my YouTube channel. I've been able to grow my YouTube channel in that period of time pretty rapidly and got legitimate followers and die hard followers. So I did start a membership site where I started a membership site in 2014.

So it was kind of 4 and.

5 of, you know, but meanwhile I had this deep dark secret of I don't have my shit together with food. And yet I'm kind of. I felt not right about promoting the exercise more because I knew inside it was the obsession that was not a healthy obsession, even though from the outside society standards. Oh, but it's exercise, so how can that be a bad thing? But I was addicted to exercise. It would get in the way of my life. I didn't want to go on vacation because what if I couldn't work out? I mean, it really affected a lot of my relationships and I built a career around it. So it gave me a great reason to stay in that game. Right. But what happened was after my business kind of was falling apart because of the recession, I had to move and kind of reinvent things and move into another studio just for filming. I did hit my moment in I'll Never Forget It. I was teaching kickboxing and I was fighting back tears the entire class. And I'm like, I don't know what's going on with me. After class and everybody left, took off my gloves and I just sat on the floor and I ripped off my heart rate monitor. I ripped off my watch and I said, fuck this dieting bullshit. I can't do this anymore. What if I set out on a path to actually love and accept myself? It was like a flash of brilliance in that moment in the tears. And I was like, that's it, that's it. And I never put my watch back on. And that set me on a path to figure out what the heck is going on here. Dieting is not the answer. It doesn't matter how lean I got. It didn't matter because I always wanted more. The goalpost had moved. Yeah, so, yeah, so that's kind of what got me into healing my relationship with food. And it took me about three years to do that, but then I was, because I had such a following and people followed me for fitness and they would listen to me. I reverse engineered how I healed my relationship with food, developed a 12 module course, and now I have a mentorship program. And that's what I do. That is my heart and my soul. And I help other women crack the code with their thinking and their belief system and rebuild and reconstruct their vision for their life and then therefore their healthy relationship with food and therefore their healthier relationship with their body. So that's my story in a nutshell.

It's so incredible from so many levels. One is because you could have given up at the gym. You could have been like, okay, we just lost our house, we're out of money, I'm gonna get a job. And the fact that you didn't do that and then you were able to keep pushing forward just even at that moment is so huge. What do you think got you to do that?

I think that is part of my character and how my parents raised us. I mean, we're of that generation that we were just kicked out of the house. Go play. Figure it out. So my parents raised us three kids to be pretty independent. And they're there for us. My parents are very much there for us. But it's figure it out. And I think it is a little bit of that blue collar where the tenacity is there, the grit is there, the independence is there. And as much as now, what's interesting is I am coming almost like the pendulum is swinging where I'm easing up on that grip so much because it works until it doesn't work. I say that to my clients all the time. So being on the pulse of it's okay to be super independent and leading your life, but at some point there has to be a surrender and a letting go and a letting in and asking for support and asking for help. And that has to come in. So I think to answer your question about I just didn't see it in my blood or in my path to give up. I was like, no, no, no, I gotta figure this out. What is the next thing that is pulling me forward? Not even pushing me. It was pulling me into the next phase. Even though it was scary, there were definitely times like I shared. It took me two years to even film that first fitness video on YouTube. And then they're still up there. By the way, Real Fit tv, if you wanna look it up my kickboxing, I hit workout spin. People have been following me from years, from all around the world. It's incredible. Incredible. I still get comments today about them. Yeah. So I'm just so grateful I cut through that. And you know what helped me is that I had something to show the world in Real Fit tv. I wanted to show the world that it's reality fitness. This is all shapes and sizes. I wanted to let you into the room of my gym to show you for real the shapes and the sizes and the ages of the women behind me and the men that group fitness. You may see, you may think that you don't belong. You do belong and you can do it. And there's different. You show up as you are. So my message with RealFit TV was the reality of fitness, that you don't have to put on makeup and you don't have to wear a cute outfit. And so my concept was, now it's very common, but back then, everything was polished and produced. I had a flip cam. Okay. So I had built my YouTube channel on a flip cam with one angle from start to finish with no editing. That was my commitment to my community. And that's something I do to this day.

I love how it just started with that one video and it was painful and you did it, and then now it's not even about you in the video. It's about the people that have watched it and are watching and are inspired by it. Even though you recorded them, it sounds like years ago and it's still this legacy that now you've left.

Yeah. I wanted to help give women the permission in their living rooms at home that you have a right to work out and you have a right to have access to really great workouts and you have a right to be properly coached. And that's something I do. So here's one of the best testimonials I've ever received. There was actually a blind man who was following my workouts. I got a message from his daughter in law and she reached out to me to say, my father in law follows a couple of your workouts. Workouts. So the only way, if you're blind, to follow my workout is the coaching cues have to be on. Yeah. So she asked if I could burn a few of my workouts on a DVD and mail them because they had a braille system set up. Because otherwise if she wasn't around, he have to be able to figure out how to pull up these workouts. So I'd burn them and it Turns out their family owned, they were jewelers. So they sent me this beautiful bracelet in the mail as a thank you. Oh, my God. So I was really committed to my craft and being the best instructor I could possibly be. Almost like a personal trainer, because that was the difference. I had a personal training background that I brought to group fitness. So I was able to teach all these modifications to like 30 people because I was able to really communicate that well. And I was committed to honing my craft. So that's where I wanted to get that. In the hands of more women in their living rooms, wherever they were. Because a lot of women are just too intimidated or scared to go join a gym. So then they wouldn't have access to the help and the support and the coaching that they deserve.

So I'd love to hear more about the words you used. I loved it is the cracking of the code of your body. Be able to really kind of love your body and kind of move through what is something. If the listener is listening and they are on that yo yo diet and they're just constantly shaming and going through that cycle of things, what's something that they could do to just get started?

I think the biggest decision to make is to let go of the dieting. I know it's scary, but that in itself is a turning point that can be a major turning point in your journey. If you're constantly believing that the answers are going to be found in the next diet, you'll be in a constant chase and a search. And it's gonna drive a bigger wedge between your true self and what you want in your life. Because it only reinforces a lack of trust that all women are looking for. Right. I hear time and time again they don't trust themselves with food. And that's why they need to find a diet. Because I need to be told what to do. But the answer then is if you let go of dieting, what if you can rebuild and understand how to trust yourself? And that's something that can never be taken away from you. That's something it will stay with you forever. 24, 7, 365. I just got back from a vacation. We went on a cruise to Alaska. And you know, of course, this buffets and tons of food and incredible food. I have such a healed relationship with food now. I operate the same way whether I'm in Alaska on a cruise or I'm here in New Jersey in my studio doing my365. 24 7, 365. I honor myself. I respect myself. And I love food. I've become such a foodie. But it began with me letting go of believing that a diet is the answer and that somebody else is wiser than me. So to anyone listening, the answer is within you. And when you can commit to the path of learning how to trust yourself, it's going to open up so many gifts in your life. Beyond food, it's relationships, it's trusting yourself with decision making, trusting yourself in boundary setting. I mean, it's incredible. It's like a domino effect.

Incredible. Okay, so now for the person listening and is. Does that mean I get to have the chocolate cake?

Yes, yes, you get to have the chocolate cake. But the thing is that sometimes you won't want the chocolate cake, but it's giving yourself permission. The permission piece is huge. When I work with my clients, the permission piece was huge for myself. I wasn't giving myself permission to have the cake. So therefore the rebel in me wanted the cake. Okay, so if you give yourself permission again, I'm not saying that this is easy, it can be very scary. But the secret is if you give yourself permission to eat all the cake and eat all the donuts and eat all the cookies, the interesting thing that happens is that you don't really want them. You'll realize, oh, but I really craving vegetables right now. Chocolate is not going to satisfy me the way an apple is right now. You really start to hone in on your. I do believe in intuitive eating, but I think that intuitive eating is a very advanced approach. I do not teach intuitive eating out of the gate because we're just as women learning unlearning a lot of what we've been dictated to about diets and how to eat and to trust ourselves. So the intuitive eating part comes farther into my course as I'm working with women. It's not right out of the gate. So I teach some other basics in the beginning. But yeah, the permission piece is huge. I can't even emphasize how important that part is.

Yeah, it almost takes away your inner three year old that comes out and you're like, no, I want it.

Yeah, because the, the rebel's gonna come out. The rebel's gonna be like, fuck you, I'm gonna eat the donut anyway. And yet that's like, wait a second. But I'm going against myself. What am I doing here? So it's a constant inner battle. So if you give yourself permission to eat all the things and do all the things, the interesting thing happens is that you don't really want it all the time, it's not good. It's just not gonna be what you want all the time.

What have you noticed about the people that have gone through your program? When they're done, what's kind of the common thing that you get to hear?

Oh, the freedom in their life. The freedom, the boundaries, the peace that they have, the control that they have. Which is interesting because you try to control your life with your body and I'm gonna lose weight in the food. And the control part is more like you are in the driver's seat of your life. And you understand, because I do weave some spirituality in my program that could be a little bit different too. Of like your co creator. I'm co creating with the universe I'm co creating. It's not all me, but it is about declaring what is it do I really want in my life. And we do that in the beginning of our work together. So by the time we're at the end of that six months or 12 month engagement mark, that there's already this realization of their dream day and their dream life because we're keeping our eye on what is it your soul and your heart really wants. So that ends up becoming your compass basically and how you're unfolding it. So at the end of our work together, you're really figuring out. I say this when I first talked to a woman about my program or doing something like this. This isn't just another diet to follow or a blueprint. This is you uncovering what you want for your life. This is, I just give a framework in how you can crack your own code to do that. And it's about you defining your ideal day and your ideal life and the vision for your life. And a lot of women have a hard time really seeing that like you and I are from the entrepreneurial world. So it's probably a little bit easier to dream. But I, I don't know, maybe you can relate or a lot of listeners who can relate with it's kind of scary to dream or who am I to dream or I don't know how that's going to happen. But then that is also gonna be part of your solution and healing your relationship with food.

Yeah, and I love even I wrote this down earlier. You said what if? And it's so much just imagining what could be what if.

Yeah, yeah. I always say so I run, I do run this live challenge once or twice a year. I just finished a couple weeks ago. It's called the Roadmap to Food Freedom. One of the lessons I Teach in that free training is has to do with living in a question rather than living in the answer. And it has to do with the what if. So what I mean by that is if you believe no matter what I do, it's not good enough, you're living in a statement. You're basically saying, you're stating, no matter what I do, it's not good enough. But if we can turn that around to say, what if what I'm doing is good enough? It opens up the possibility in our life in an incredible way. Because our brains do not like open ended questions. They will look for answers. But if you're living in the statement, then there's nothing for your brain to search for except evidence to back up that, oh right, you're not good enough. That's right, you stated that. That's right, you're not good enough. So we gotta turn that shit around.

I mean, that's getting clipped. I'm clipping that today and I'm sharing that in my singles community. I run a singles community too. And it's so hard to hear the constant like, oh, there's no good men out there. There's no this or there's no that. And to just now I'm gonna be like, okay, switch that statement around to a question and say the same thing, but just word it as a question.

I love so much. And what if he's looking for me? What if she's looking for me? And because, I mean, that's a whole nother topic. But I have an incredible marriage, by the way, and that is on purpose. And my husband is an incredible human and we've been together 19 years.

Oh, wow.

Until he married.

So, okay, I've got to hear about this new thing you're working on. So tell us what is new now with you?

Okay, okay. So, so exciting. This is a few years ago. So in 2019, a friend of mine, I call her my orchestrator of awesome because she's always coming to me with, hey, I was just invited on this Oprah trip for the weekend. Do you want to go with me? She ends up with these incredible opportunities all the time. So I'm kind of her yes friend, you know, she'll call me and be like, hey, Dina, I got this going on this concert in Philly. Do you want to drive down and go? I'm like, yeah. I like rearrange my schedule and figure it out. So she ends up inviting me to this weekend cruise with Oprah, this new ship that she was basically christening the ship or Whatever. And it was a weekend to the Bahamas and she asked me to go. I was like, yes, I'll go. Cause she ended up on a waiting list and then somehow got bumped off the waiting list. And it was like, yeah, so we're coming back from this girls weekend trip and I'm boarding the airplane with a full cup of coffee. Like this coffee junkie usually does. I love me a good cup of coffee. And we sit down and there is nowhere to put the coffee. Right. I got the coffee on the floor between my feet, or I have the coffee between my knees, or depending on the pocket or how much coffee you drank, maybe you can slide it into the pocket, but then the lid pops open, all that stuff. So the struggle is real, you guys. The struggle is real. So I say I turned to Colleen with a full cup of coffee in hand. I was like, you know what? Fuck this fitness bullshit. I am going to invent something that uses the pocket of the seat in front of us. And I either clips, I don't know what it is, but it's not made of plastic. And it'll sit and hold my coffee so I can enjoy my in flight experience that much more in economy, by the way, right? So we get off the plane and I googled that shit and I pulled out like, okay, who else is this even invented? Is anyone else doing this yet? So I did come up with a couple products on Amazon, but they were made of plastic and they were trying to do too many things. They would clip to the tray table, they're trying to clip. And the reviews are very mixed. And it was like a love hate kind of a thing. Like it broke all this stuff. And I was like, yeah, but I don't see this as being plastic. I don't, I don't want to add to that environment issue that we're having. So I tell my husband about it and he is very engineer minded and we actually pull out our recycling from our cart, our cardboard recycling, and we take scissors to it and we start cutting this up and then figuring out, okay, well, this kind of cardboard is not going to work. It collapses. And we're trying. So lo and behold, we end up coming up with this prototype we now call the Coffee Carry On. And it is now we're on zoom. I don't know if you do any video with this.

Yeah, it'll eventually go on video.

Yeah, okay. But even so, your listeners, if you go to CoffeeCarryon.com, you can see the product on my website. And I do ship anywhere in the United States for now.

But it's already out. It's already out?

Yeah. Oh, it's already out. Yeah. So we got patent approval for our design and utility patent, and it's basically, it's no assembly required. It is a one piece that folds into itself and hooks into the pocket of the seat in front of you. On an airplane, it uses an existing cup sleeve. So we're not reinventing the wheel there. There's no patent on the cup sleeve anymore. This is free market use. Can be customized, printed, branded, all of that good stuff. And holds a 10 ounce to 20 ounce hot or cold beverage securely in the pocket of the seat in front of you. You can use it in your car. I went on a road trip with my sister and her kids this summer, and I just put it in the little glove box and I locked the glove box and it just sat there, right out of the glove box. It also sits in any pocket. So even in the passengers in the backseat of your car. So I'm very excited about this product. And yeah, we got official patent approval and now I'm working on licensing the product. So, yeah, so. So at some point you're going to see this in airports across the United States where you buy a cup of coffee and you can just buy it right there over the counter. That's my goal.

Wow. I could imagine you had to have a bunch of iterations of this where things didn't go right and you're like trying to figure out, and then how did you just even keep pushing through that?

So we probably had about five iterations of it. And luckily it didn't take too many to figure out. At one point, there wasn't this little extra tab here. There was a sticker, and it was a sticker that attached, but then the sticker would come apart. We're like, okay, that's not gonna work. Then there was glue that we used from. I contacted a glue manufacturer and they sent me some samples and a glue gun. And then my husband drinks his coffee black. So we're sitting there on the airplane one trip, and it just starts peeling away from the back. And I was like, oh, God, that's not good. Oh God, that's not good. So whether you have tea or hot coffee, you need to make sure the adhesive is actually not just strong enough for the weight of a full cup of coffee, but also that it's gonna handle the temperature. So although the adhesive company I talked to, when they mailed me samples, they did say 210 degrees. I beg to differ because I guess with it sitting on it for a long period of time, it just peeled off the back. So that made me reach out to another company and to get an even higher temperature sensitive blue. So that was the next iteration of it. And that's how I came up with this final product. And this is what we have. Patent, the design, all of it, the glue, everything. So now this is really. I can't see it really improving much from here, at least stage of the game. Yeah.

So cool. And then who knows what that's gonna spur. Starbucks could be selling it.

Correct. Exactly, exactly. So the sky's the limit. I guess you could say the sky, yeah.

But also, how are you. Are you. Are you using your current audience to also market it to.

So I had to kind of, Yes, I did. I mean, my fitness audience that I have, yes, of course. I. Because I. Over the years, I've also shared so much more with my YouTubers and my community and my emails and I share more about my life. It's not just Dana the fitness professional, it's Dana the wife. It's Dana the traveler. It's Dana. I got a motorcycle. I got my motorcycle license like eight years ago. So I like to bring my community through my lifestyle and also showing that, oh, I'm living the lifestyle and also healed my relationship with food. So I have all these challenges and things that can come up, but I'm not using food to cope with life anymore. And I really love food and I really appreciate food, but I don't use it as a coping mechanism anymore. So I do share a lot with my community. So when I launched this product, yes, I sent it to my email list and I said, hey, I just invented this. And we're going through the patent process and all of that. And since COVID had happened, it actually gave us a little bit of time to get the patent underway because people weren't traveling for a couple of years there. But it didn't deter us. We kept moving forward and kept figuring it out anyway. And here we are after the pandemic and now we just got back from a trip and oh yeah, like, flights are full. It's ringing out there. So, yeah.

Okay, so I'm also working on something right now, which now I'm going to get your advice for. I'm working on an audience accelerator event I'm going to be doing. I'm calling it an action class because we're going to be doing audience strategies together. And so I'd love to get your advice on just how you did that with your YouTube channel and built your audience, your community. Because I feel like so many people get stopped. Kind of like you said, it took you two years to record your video. They get stopped before they start, and they have those feelings of unworthiness or imposter syndrome, whatever comes up. Right. What are your thoughts on just helping someone kind of just get started in terms of building an audience?

Well, first of all, you are the one. I really believe you're the one. So whoever's listening to this, you are the one. No one else is going to do it. What you are going to do, it's you. So knowing that, I had this belief from the beginning, there's tons of fitness instructors out there, but there's no Dana Lee. And so I know that. And I would always say to other instructors, you can even steal my choreography if you want. I don't mind. I'm going to teach it and deliver it in my way. So there's no stealing of that. So I was totally fine with that. Because I deliver in a way that the women out there, the clients out there, they're gonna vibe to me. So it's reciprocated. As much as I have this within me that I need to birth it, I think that's the thing I want to say. You've got something in you. If it's gnawing at you, it's not gonna go away. You must honor it. You must honor it, and you must keep doing the next thing, even if it's scary. You know how many days I would wake up and say, okay, but what can I do today? Okay, but what can I do today? What can I do today? So I'd have one little thing. Even if I felt overwhelmed, even if I felt scared, even if I felt, who am I to do this? It didn't matter if it was one phone call, it was one email that I sent. If it was one call that I got onto, it was one Facebook Live that was patting myself on the back. You did good today. So I think really, anything great is done one little thing at a time, and we cannot overestimate that.

And then I'd love to just ask you more about when you were growing your YouTube channel. How did you get it out there?

So this is going back to the great old days of 2012, because I just started my YouTube channel when they were allowing like 30 minute videos and 45 minute and an hour videos. It's going. I. You probably might not even remember that there was a limit to videos. I remember There was a limit to Instagram. Do you remember? Instagram had like 30 seconds. Yeah. So YouTube used to have a limit and now they don't. You, I mean, now we can watch three hour videos, six hour. So you hear like these, these music playlists and things like that on YouTube. So I think some of it was the timing of that that worked in my favor. With positioning with the titles and the SEO, there was less content. But I have to attribute my success to one of my favorite business coaches and mentors ever, James Wedmore. James Wedmore, back in the day had one of his first products, Video Traffic Academy. I don't think he even sells it anymore. I mean now he's like multimillionaire. He's still one of my mentors. Incredible human. But he helped me build my YouTube channel with the titles and what I was saying in the video and the call to action and how YouTube would pick up on the audio that would match the video title. So a lot of that has changed now. So I can't even really give the listeners here any good, juicy YouTube building content because the game has changed for the online space dramatically and continues to change. So I feel the pain of all the listeners who are just trying to be seen and heard and trying to build an audience and trying to get traction. I'm now actually about to shift gears for my mentorship program and finally do Facebook ads. I'm ready to do that because I have oodles and oodles of testimonials. I have proven results for my program. I've already kind of went through that part. So now positioning myself in a Facebook ad, I already have the proven method. It works. So I didn't have that a couple years ago. I was still kind of bringing clients on and I had a little. I was like, oh no, is this gonna work for everybody else? And I just have so many success stories, clients going through the program now. I didn't even get to record their testimonials yet, so. So I've got oodles of that. So I'm gonna shift gears. So I'm doing less organic marketing because I'm really burnt out from content. Really, really burnt out from content, if you can imagine. I started producing content in 2012 consistently through video publishing, content, writing emails, pouring my heart out. So this is 12 years, whatever, a little bit longer because before that I was doing all emails, I was sending out emails constantly. So I just don't have it in me anymore for the organic marketing. So I'm looking into paid ads and that funnel and that whole process. So. And as far as the coffee carry on is concerned, that's another reason why my decision is to go wholesale and licensing. I don't have to go through the organic marketing or positioning for you to be able to buy it on Amazon or do any of that, because that's not of interest to me. I have no interest in building an Instagram profile of no interest. I just, I'm a visionary if you haven't figured that out. So I'm just like, okay, been there, done that. And it's just. Doesn't jazz me. It's actually sucking my soul if I'm being honest. So part of this process is just getting them know myself and what I'm really good at and then outsourcing and accepting and receiving the help from others. They're really great at that. So why not team up so I can do what I do best and they do what they do best. And so I'm finally getting that in my entrepreneurial career path.

I'm so glad this came up because you're such a good example of following what makes you light up and not listening to all the noise from everyone else and what they say you should do. Because you're really tapping into who you are and what you want and how you want to grow the business. And you're not doing it because someone's saying, do this, do that. And I love that because that's the language that I speak to a lot. It's like, don't do it unless it's really going to be something that's exciting to you. And when you wake up, you're like, yes, I really wanna do the thing.

So what's so interesting about that is that is part of my key to success with healing my relationship with food. Because if you constantly have this part of you you're shutting off and denying and lying to yourself and you're gonna suck it up and do it anyway. Some of the side effects is I don't know how to cope with that. So I'm going to eat or I'm gonna keep extra weight on my body because it feels safer to do that than to really go after the thing that to do and be honest about it. It takes courage to do that. But I will say, since we brought it up and we've gone there in our conversation, that is part of my path to healing my relationship with food is saying more yes to myself when others. Because it just shifted. This is so interesting. It shifted from the, from diet culture and the diet Industry telling me what to eat and how to eat as if they're smarter than I am to then the entrepreneur field of business coaches telling me as if that's smarter than me. And I've had to break away from both of that to find what makes Dana happy, what lights Dana up. What is the path for me. And so it's taken a lot of practice, but I'm really happy to be here today.

So many people can learn from that, I think, too.

Yeah.

I'd love to hear what your number one piece of advice is for people on doing the thing.

Oh, gosh. My number one piece of advice to do the thing. Well, today's the youngest you're ever going to be, and it's the wisest you've ever been. So I. I just feel like, I guess going back to what I said before, you're the one. No one else is going to do it. You have something to birth. No one's going to do it for you. And for me, I live by. I'd rather live with regret of something I did than something I didn't do. I can't even stand the feeling of having something in me. When I came up with a coffee Carry on idea, there was no way in hell I was just gonna let that sit. But do you know, when I talked to my patent attorney, he showed my husband and I the whole shelf of patents that he said, do you know, like, 98% of those, no one does anything with them. Wow. He's like, no one. So you better believe I mailed him a couple ladies, like, watch me go. Because I get to experience this life, as far as I know, this one time, depending on your spiritual beliefs, but that I can remember this one time. So I cannot handle that level of regret. So I just believe that we all have something within us that has to. It's part of how we serve humanity. And it has to come out of you. Do the thing.

Yeah.

Just do it.

Please share with everyone how they can. Let's talk about the coffee. Carry on. And then also about the mentorship program, how they can kind of get into all your world.

Sure. Okay. So CoffeeCarryon.com is my website. I am also on Instagram, but I already kind of revealed that I've got a couple posts there. You can follow me there. But I'm probably not going to share anything new other than this is how the product works. But yeah, Copycarryon. Com. Also on Facebook, copycarryon. And my mentorship is actually RealFit TV. That's the URL because it was based off of my fitness platform and I just kept that URL. But that website now is entirely about my mentorship program and I do support women with fitness. If you choose to do the mentorship with me or that is a part of what you get. Cause I have like thousands of workout videos and I do live streams every week with my clients. But yeah, go to RealFit TV and if you would like to talk with me one to one RealFit TV talk and there's a questionnaire there and I'd love to have a conversation. If you've been struggling with food for decades and don't know what else to do and want to do something radically different as far as your thoughts and your belief system, then I'm your girl. I'm the one.

What a way to wrap it around. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been so much fun. I have to thank sue because this has been incredible.

Seriously, I love the spontaneity that you're like, hey, we're just having a conversation. That is how I roll. So I loved our conversation today. It was incredible to finally meet you and be a guest on this incredible podcast. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And for the listeners, do the Thing. Don't wait for opportunity. Create it.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoy enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at do the Thing callcast co or email us@helloothethingpodcast.com.