Episode 239: Ruth Soukup: From Humble Blogger to Digital Mogul and Wellness Advocate

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Well, you guys, this is one of those moments that's really exciting for me because I've been a fan girl of our next guest for a while now. We sort of follow in the same groups, and just being able to see what she's done with all the businesses and everything that she's accomplished in the course of her lifetime is probably what most people do in the course of 500 lifetimes. I'm so excited to get a chance to talk to her, hear her story, hear how she does the thing in the way that she does it, where it's helping impact change people's lives, both personally, professionally, and now even for their health as well. And so I can't wait to talk to her. So I'm welcoming Ruth to the show. Hi, Ruth. Hi.

Thanks so much for having me. It's fun to be here.

Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. I know it's hard. You get so many people asking you to come on their podcast and do the thing, and you have an extremely strong wait to get into with you. So I'm so excited to have this opportunity.

I know I have a lot of gatekeepers that protect my time, which is definitely necessary. So.

Yeah, I'm glad you said that.

Yeah. Because I'm here, it's on my schedule, and then I show up.

I love it. Well, and it's probably how you do the thing, right. It's literally, you know, what you're able to do, and then you're able to leverage and manage that as well.

Yeah. Honestly, there's no other way to do it. You have to be so protective of your time and what your priorities are, and then guard that so closely. And that's what I try to teach my students, too, is, I'm sorry, I can't respond to everything. I have an amazing team. They're great. They're going to help you and respond to certain things. I'm here for this part. You get me here. But you can't have me all the time because that's just not feasible.

Yeah. I love that we started here because I think it's so easy when you're doing something and you're in this space where you're helping so many people, and it's so easy to come up with that, people pleasing or wanting to do things because you want to help everyone. But it sounds like one of the ways that you've been able to do so much is you've acknowledged how much you can do when you protect your time and you're supported. And that's where a lot of your decisions are able to come from.

Somewhat. I feel like sometimes I'm really great at that and sometimes I'm not at all. If you would ask my husband, he says I'm not good enough at it yet. But I think one thing that I am really good at is knowing what my priorities are at any given time. And my team will joke about this too, because I am the queen of I can leave things hanging. I am not a box checker. I'm a priority follower. So if there's things that are undone that are not a priority to me, either somebody else is going to have to do them or you're going to have to wait on them. And it's just a known thing within our team. And luckily I have an awesome support team. So I have an integrator on my team who she is a box checker. Right. She gets all the things done and she handles anything that has a deadline or that needs to be done in a timely fashion. And they just know to work around that for me because I will go into my hole and I'll be working on a project and they won't even be able to slack me. The only way sometimes that they can even reach me is by calling my husband and having him walk into the room and say, okay, they need something that's an emergency. But I think that's the only way that I've been able to actually produce the amount of output and content and things that I do do. Because I'm running three companies and creating a lot of the materials for all these different things. There's only one way to do that, and that's to be able to be extremely focused with my time and extremely guarded with my time.

Yeah, I think that's so important for people to know and to understand. I'd love to. Let's bring them in. So tell us who you are and more about you and how you even got into this space and all the things.

Hope this is a long podcast to know. So my name is Ruth and I started my online business about 14 years ago now. I started just writing a blog. Wasn't really expecting to create a online empire or anything like that, really. I just needed something to do that wasn't going to target, honestly was why I started my blog. I had two little girls at the time. They were 1 and 3. And now they're teenagers and my husband and I were fighting a lot about money. So I was trying to figure out a new hobby. We had just moved to Florida. We didn't have any support system or any family or friends around or anything. And so I started writing this blog. And about a week into it, I was like, honey, there's like, people who are making money online. This is a thing. People can make money on the Internet. My husband was like, no, that's dumb. You can't make money on the Internet. I mean, 2010, that wasn't really a thing. And like, I think I could do that. I think I'm. I think I'm gonna try it. And like, he's like, okay, go for it. And so that's what I started to do. It just started at the time, there were no courses, there was no nothing to teach you how to do it. So it was just googling, how do you make money on the Internet? And so I started trying different things and I started growing my blog. And from there ended up, it took me about three years to make enough money with my original blog that my husband was able to quit his job and retire and become the stay at home parent. And that's when I then really went into it full force. But at the same time, that's when people started asking me, what are you doing? How are you doing this? What did you. Nobody else is making enough money that they could retire their husbands. So I started having people ask. And I first wrote a book called how to blog for profit without selling your soul, which I thought would answer all these questions that I was getting from readers and from friends. And that only brought up more questions. And people were like, I just want to know, step by step by step, what do I have to do? And I'm like, I guess I could create a course. I don't know how to do that. I've never done that before, but why not? So I created this program called Elite Blog Academy. And then that ended up being my second company. And I did that for a while and really had my hands full between those two companies. Because then we with living, living while spending less, we launched a planner company under that umbrella and did all these things. And then in 20, let's see, what was it? 2021, 2022. I went through sort of my own health journey and health transformation. I lost 40 pounds. And living kind of publicly and having this public presence, a lot of people started to notice, oh my gosh, you've lost all this weight. What are you doing? Can you tell us? Can you share? And I really, truly, honestly needed to start another company. Like, I needed a hole in my head, but I did it anyways. So in 2022, we launched Thinlicious. And now that is my third company that I help women get healthy and lose weight. So I have these three different brands under one umbrella. Really our overarching mission, I guess you could say, is that we provide practical resources to help women transform their lives. But that has been. It's just been a lot of fun. And so I've had to split things up into three separate teams so that everything is independent. And learning how to manage all of that and still be kind of the face of all three companies and all three brands has been interesting as well. But it's always a learning experience. So that's who I am and what I do. In a nutshell.

Yeah, it's so incredible because it started with a blog. You literally started just by being able to blog about. Was it your life? Is that where it started from?

It started with that, actually. Most interestingly, the original blog was called Living While Spending Less. And so I was trying to figure out how to live well and spend Less. And it was 2010, if you remember that time. It was right after the big housing crash. The economy was crappy, feels a little bit like right now. And people were really interested in budgeting and saving money and couponing. So I was doing couponing. And I think the thing about me and that I've realized over the years is sort of my superpower is I'm really good at doing a lot of research and understanding things and then breaking it down into a simple system or step by step process that other people can follow. Because extreme couponing is very complicated and there's all these different components of it and stuff. And so I figured out how to do it and I got really good at it. And then I would start going to the grocery store, get 300 worth of groceries for 25 cents, and basically became good at explaining it. But at the same time, behind the scenes, I was learning everything that I needed to learn about online business. And at the time, everybody said, well, you gotta be good at SEO. You gotta put all these keywords in the content that you're creating. And then you got to put up ads on your site, right? That's how you made money with ad network revenue. And so I'm like, okay, I can do that. So I was writing, I wrote this whole guide. It was called the Beginner's Guide to Coupons, how to do Couponing, and had all of these things that were very keyword rich because I Had I read. I remember one weekend, I read like 12 SEO books in one weekend, right? Just one after the. Okay, I'm going to master SEO. And if that's called search engine optimization, if you're not familiar with that term. So it's basically how to get Google to find your content. So I did that, and then a few months later, and this is where sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. So I'd been kind of doing all the work behind the scenes, and then this show, you might remember it, in 2011, came out that was called Extreme Couponing on TLC. And it was a big deal, right? Everybody was watching it, everybody was talking about it, and everybody started searching for how to use coupons. And that search kind of blew up. And here I had done all the stuff to be right at the top. And so I came up actually before the show. I remember that page one of Google, you want to know how to do coupons. And so everybody started coming to my site, and that was kind of when it started to take off. And then, of course, that craze died down, and I had to figure out the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. But that was sort of the first moment where I realized, if you do this work and you create the content that will draw people in and then you can monetize it. I mean, that's basically what online business is. You create content, you content market, you then attract people to your orbit, and then you have some way of monetizing it, and there's all sorts of different ways. So that's how it all began.

What do you think was the hardest part for you through that? As your husband's still working, you're going through the money stuff, you're figuring it out. How did you actually break that wall through and be able to do it?

I think I'm very tenacious, I think, when it comes to wanting to figure things out. So that was the first thing. I was determined to figure this out. And I had a very strong motivation, right? I believed it was possible to make enough money that my husband could quit his job. And he hated what he was doing. He's an aerospace engineer, so he didn't have this terrible job, but it was terrible for him, and he was very miserable at it. And I wanted something better for our family. And so that was kind of my driver and my motivator all the time. But it was hard to explain that to other people, right? Everybody thought I was crazy. And I remember the lady at the bank right I opened up a bank account for my business, and every time I would go to the bank, she was real snotty. She'd be like, how's the coupon business? Kind of almost making fun of me, right? It was almost a joke. And I remember we had some friends and they kind of looked down on it that I was doing all these coupons and thought that it was beneath them. I remember the husband told the wife he didn't want her to hang out with me anymore because I was that weird coupon lady and just kind of weird stuff. I had to be so sure for myself. And it didn't make any sense because I wasn't making money at that time. And when you look back in hindsight, and especially now, I've been doing this for 14 years. I've made millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars in my online business. And so it's very easy now to go, wow, that happened so fast. And wow, of course you had all this drive, but you don't know that when you're in it, right? Three years to be working early in the morning and during nap time because I had two little kids at home and doing just at it, continuing to do it even though it didn't make any sense, even though people thought I was crazy, even though it seemed like this goofy, goofy thing that nobody understood to keep going. Now I don't even know if I would have that level of tenacity now. I look back and I'm grateful for it. I don't know why I kept going, but I think it was this inner fire inside of me that would not let me quit. I know I can make this work. I know I can do this. I know I can make this work. And so I just kept at it and kept at it and kept at it for three years. It took three years of basically very little to show for it. You know, I had those blips when the coupon thing took off, but then it went right back down, right? That wasn't a sustainable revenue. And so I had to figure out the next thing and figure out the next thing. And when I finally did figure it out, then you can look back and go, well, of course that was an amazing choice, right? But. And that's what I think. Anybody who's doing that right now, who's in that, whatever it's called the mess. When you're in the grind, when you're in that beginning stages where it. It doesn't make any sense and nobody gets it, keep going. It's like that story, I think it's from. Is it from think and grow rich? I don't remember now where. The guy's almost right there, right? He buys this land and he's tapping for gold. And he's tapping and he's tapping for years and years and he's digging and he finally gives up. And the next guy comes and buys the land and first hit, all the gold is right there. You're right there. You're so close. And if you just keep going, like it's going to happen for you. And that's what I always tell people now, because I know that for myself, in the minute, in the moment, it doesn't feel that way. You feel like, what the heck am I doing? But just keep going.

Yeah. It's so powerful when I hear your story because you had this really strong why of why you wanted this to succeed, right? With the stuff with your husband, your family. And then you saw the light when that coupon thing hit. You're like, oh, wow, this actually could work. So then you got that belief right? And that's how you were able to almost keep that Howard going. Because you saw that it's like the skills to pay the bills. You saw that it could work. You just weren't sure how to get it consistent yet. And then you were able to keep it going. And then it blew up in a way that you probably never even imagined.

Definitely never even imagined. I've been in my wildest dreams, your goals get bigger. And as you start with one thing and you start to prove yourself and you prove, oh, I did this and now I guess I can do this next thing and now I can do this next thing. And I think every step of my journey has sort of been the same, right? Like the goals I set now for myself that 14 year ago Ruth would have looked at that and been like, are you crazy? That's insane. Who are you? But I also have the experience and the knowledge and the know how of having run a million dollar business for however many years and having run a whole team. And I have the confidence that I've built up over all these years from that experience. From one step and then the next step, and then the next step and then the next step. And a lot of times people will think, oh, if I could just be having a seven figure business right now, right Then it would all be, well, be careful what you wish for because more money, more problems. You deal with problems at that level that you would have never even dreamed of. So learn how to deal with the $50,000 problems first, and then the $100,000 problems, right? And then the $500,000 problems, because I promise you, they get bigger and they get more stressful and they get harder and they get more complicated. And you're going to want to have that experience to draw back from.

I'd love to talk about. Because then, as you mentioned, you had the naysayers in the beginning, and you were able to somehow not hear it or at least not let it affect you or let it power you, whichever way probably happened. And then once you hit the other side, everyone's probably like, oh, you're so lucky, or whatever. And you're like, you didn't see all that hard work that I just went through to do this. But then all of a sudden, people started seeing your success. So then, like you said, you wrote the book, you were able to start to teach people. You created the Elite Academy.

And.

And so I'd love to go there next. So how do you get people now to do what you did and help them eliminate or at least work through those things that can get in our way when we're doing something new like that?

Well, I think. I mean, the benefit of Elite Blog Academy is that I've been teaching all the way through. I've been teaching now online business owners since 2014. So that's 10 years now. And we've evolved and evolved and evolved because as I've grown and learned and my business has grown and evolved, it's almost always been like this place where I don't tell about it. Ten years later, it's like, hey, this is what I'm trying right now, and this is what's working. And now I'm doing this thing and now. But I can also look back. I think I'm very good at connecting the dots from different things. And the benefit of teaching it, I think, is that, first of all, you learn way better when you teach it, right? Like, I don't fully understand a concept or an idea until I actually start teaching it and explaining it and realizing what's the process here, what's the system? But I think also that we have the benefit of having now had over 15,000 students go through Elite Blog Academy. And so just the sheer volume of seeing what works for a wide variety of people where I can say, I've taught this and it's worked for all these people, but it works for this person in this way and this person in this way. Because not every business is the same, not every niche is the same, not everything is the same. And so I think that's one of the things that I'm proudest about with Elite Blog Academy is that sometimes it almost feels like in the online business or marketing world, you're learning from online marketers who are teaching online marketers how to market to online marketers. And it's like this huge circular, backstroking thing. Whereas I can genuinely say, actually, this is what's working in a business that's totally unrelated to online marketing and online business, and this is how we're making it work for this. So if your audience doesn't happen to be online business owners who are trying to market to online business owners, this is what's going to work, and it's not always the same.

Yeah, that makes sense. So how do you help someone through this program? Right? How do you help them overcome that fear of starting something new and saying, okay, this is going to work for me, and be able to get them to actually take action?

Well, with our new program that we just launched, in fact, we're still in beta. We just launched it at the beginning of this year. We're actually doing a very cool format where it's building it from the ground up. And even though we do have a lot of experienced business owners, a lot of our people that we've had from other programs were like, oh, this looks amazing. I'm going to go through it, right? And it's great, even if you have an existing business, because the stuff that we're teaching is just. It's so good. It's literally what's everything that's working in the online world right now. Because a lot of stuff has changed over just the last couple of years with the advance of AI, with the changes in social media platforms and the changes in privacy law, all of that stuff has really impacted people, not to mention the economy. So we're literally going, let's start here, let's go back to basics, let's start here, let's look at this thing. But what we're doing in this program is that it's very much step by step by step by step. You actually don't get access. A lot of people are like horse junkies where they will go through all this stuff and then not do a single thing, right? Not actually implement any of the stuff. And you can't do that in our program. You have to do this. Then you have to show us your work, you have to show us that you've completed it, and then we will give you access to the next module. You don't get to move on until you've done this thing. And the level of accountability that that creates and that provides and the level of motivation, we're going to have a hundred percent completion rate for that. So it's pretty cool to see it happening in real time and to see the aha. Moments that are happening already. I mean, like I said, we just launched at the beginning of this year, so we're still in the beginning modules, but it's gold. It's literally probably the best thing that I've ever created. It really, truly gets me so fired up when I see and when I see how it's already impacting people and impacting their business, man, I'm like, this is fire. So, yeah, I'm excited about that.

Yeah. It's almost like you took everything that you've learned from all of these different programs that you've done, good, bad, and learning lessons, and now you've been able to create this, which is now this whole nother evolution and what you're doing.

Yeah, it very much is. And that's how I describe it. It's literally the things I'm seeing and discovering right now that are working and yet it's not taught of just, here's the tactic, here's the tactic, here's the tactic. My brain is very much strategy and big picture. And so if you don't have an overarching strategy to your business and to what you're doing and how you're building it, and if there's not a purpose, you can be waylaid by all the tactics, right? You're going to be distracted. You're going to be like, oh, I got to do this. No, I got to do this. No, I got to do this thing. No, I got to do this thing. And it's not that those tactics can't be useful. They can be if you know how to apply them to your overarching business strategy. And so that's kind of from the frame of reference that I'm teaching, right? I've helped people create this strategy. And the path that we're teaching now is called the Powerhouse Freedom Path. It's really cool the way that's set up. And it's helping people establish their online business. It's specifically for online business. But I think also having done this for so long and having taught courses, right? And I have programs under all of my different brand umbrellas. My biggest problem, I think, as an online marketer is that I actually care so much that people get the results. Right. And it probably doesn't sound like a problem, but it is, right? Because I'm good at selling. I love to sell. I love selling.

Right.

It's so fun to me. And marketing is so fun. And writing sales pages and writing copy and all that. I love it. I love it. But if you're not also actually creating a quality product that creates true transformation for people, then what's the point? I don't want to be a used car salesman. That's not what I do. And so that's always my frustration with programs. I always feel like I'm giving you gold and giving you the opportunity to change everything about your life, to create this business or to in the course of our health program, right. To transform your health to literally something that we have a 92% success rate for the women that are completing this program. And if you're not going to use it, then I don't even want to talk to you. Just go away. Don't be in my orbit because you're bringing me bad energy. I only want to help the people that are ready to help themselves, Right? I'm not going to convince you that I need to help you. I'm going to say, this is gold. It's worth every penny that I'm going to charge you for it. And it will actually change your life if you implement what you're doing. And so now with this powerhouse program, we've literally set it up so that you have to. You have to implement it if you want to keep going and if you want to get the next piece and people are like, give me the next piece. Right? So that part is really fun.

So give us an idea. So for anyone listening and they want to check it out, what would be the transformation or what would be the result that they would get after having done the program?

Well, for our powerhouse program, it's specifically for online business, right? And for mostly content creators, you could use it and implement it for any form of online business. So if you have coaching, right, and you're promoting primarily selling that online, it would work for that, but it's really intended for anybody with an online presence. Online products, products that you want to sell online. I mean, the whole program is designed to help you set up your entire system, your entire funnel, your entire powerhouse path, as we call it, step by step by step. We start with literally thinking through your mission and your messaging and how you're presenting that to the world, the markets that you're going to try to tap into, and looking at it from more of a blue ocean perspective. And then we go into attraction and how you're going to find people, right. Then your people, your dream customers and how they can find you and the different things that you want to do. And then we go through actually creating your products and what those products look like and how they need to be set up, how you're going to create transformation for your people all the way into the upsells and the high level programs that you'll create once you've created those lower level programs. So it's very comprehensive, it's not like a big deal. And if you are interested in it, we are still accepting people into the beta. The only way you can get accepted into the beta is to attend a training that we have set up where you can go to eliteblogacademy.com fire is the URL for that. And actually just watch the training and then you understand it and you can decide whether or not that's something you want to do. I'm not going to tell you to do it unless you're actually going to be interested in doing it. So I love that. That's all I can say.

Yeah.

And it's work, It's a lot of work. So you got to be prepared for the work. What it takes away is that uncertainty of not knowing that you're doing the right thing. Because we also have amazing coaches in there who are helping to answer all the questions. Right. Like it's so guided that it makes you go, okay, I can do this. Because it's step by step by step by step by step. If you're willing to do the work, then it's pretty amazing.

Yeah, it's just like another layer of college. Right. Except with this you're actually getting a business on the other side of it or a successful business.

Yeah, it's a way better deal than college, let me tell you.

Exactly. Yeah. You're actually getting the result. So what do you notice about people? What do they have in common with the people that are successful with the stuff that you're doing? Because I think there's so many people that want to have the change like you said. Right. And they just can't get out of their way. So what do you notice with the people that are able to actually do it?

Well, I've talked a lot about fear. I wrote a whole book on fear called Do It Scared and did a TED talk on the fear archetypes. That was a whole two year project. I did this two year research study and honestly what I found about that. Right. Is that fear shows up for Us in different ways. Everybody's fear is a little bit unique. But there's seven fear archetypes, as I call them. There's the procrastinator, which is the most common fear archetype, which is also known as the perfectionist. But we don't use perfectionist because some people actually claim that title with pride. Like, oh, yeah, I'm a perfectionist. But it's actually your fear holding you back when you have those perfectionist tendencies. So the procrastinator, slash perfectionist, your biggest fear is the fear of making a mistake or getting it wrong and don't want to screw up. And so how that tends to manifest itself if you have that archetype is that you will do all the research, right? You're constantly researching, constantly planning, constantly. But you don't take the leap and take the step and actually take the risk because you're like, but it might be wrong. What if I make a mistake? And so that's a really big thing. I see that for a lot of people. And it's definitely the most common fear archetype. Then there's the people pleaser. People pleaser is the one who. The biggest underlying fear for the people pleaser is the fear of what other people will think or the fear of being judged. Clearly, I don't have that fear archetype. It's does that one does not rank high for me, which is probably why I was able to keep moving forward on my business. But if you do have that fear, right, that can be a big thing. You have to really learn how to work with that fear. And the thing about the fear archetypes is that they all have positives and minuses, right? They all have things that serve you, and they all have things that don't. And so on the plus side, a people pleaser tends to be really well liked, really personable, usually has a lot of friends. And so if you can learn how to lean into the strengths of that fear archetype while mitigating the weaknesses or the pieces that might be holding you back. But a lot of times, the awareness that this is my people pleaser coming out, okay, I'm not gonna let this be the thing that holds me back. There's the rule follower, there's the outcast. I could go through all of them. I don't know how much time you have, but truly understanding where you are within those archetypes, I think is really, really helpful. And also, I think one of the benefits of having done so much of this work on fear and Understanding that I tend to spot it in my students. Right. And we do a lot. There's so much mindset work that's built in to everything that I do because I literally can't help myself because it all comes down everything that we do. I mean, that's same thing with my health program. So much mindset. We talk about the fear archetypes in there as well. Because it comes into play anytime you're trying to make a change, anytime you're trying to achieve a goal in your life. Those archetypes are the things that will kind of stand in your way. And so recognizing them and seeing them and identifying them so that you can continue to move forward despite those fears is a really big deal.

Yeah. It's almost like all of that work and I love that that was two years. I actually didn't realize there was a timestamp on it. Now that work has just translated into everything that you're doing because now you're able to help people in such a huge way. But all of that research now is what probably powers it because you're able to get people to move past their own stuff.

It's huge. It's huge. And honestly having so many businesses is. Is not a great thing sometimes. Cuz there's just too much to do all the time. But Do It Scared, it was such a passion project for me writing that book and doing that huge research study that we did. And I had a podcast called Do It Scared for a long time. I'm not currently recording. Hoping that I can go back to it at some point because I loved, loved doing that. But yeah, it is great that I can pull it into all the other different things that we do. So even though I'm not actively promoting anything related to Do It Scared, it doesn't, it doesn't go away. Right. It's such an intricate piece of everything else that we do and everything that I teach. And in fact I just did a event, kind of like a one off event at the end of December. It was called Ignite your best year yet. And it was sort of the first cross brand event that we've ever hosted where it was basically like a five day virtual event where we focused on creating vision and setting yourself up for success for the year. But not just for one year, really creating kind of a life vision for your life and mapping that out, a bigger vision of what you want. Because it's really hard to set goals unless you've gotten really clear about what are the things that I want. So I walked through different frameworks every day. But the fear archetypes were a really big part of that as well. And it was so fun to be able to pull that back in and be like, oh, let's talk about pure archetypes, because this is really important stuff.

Okay, I have to go here. I wasn't going to, but we have a little bit extra. So let me ask you this question. So, yeah, you also, after building all of this successful stuff, going through everything that you've gone through, then you started an E commerce part of your thing where you did, like, a protein bar. And I feel like that's truly a whole nother layer of grind. And I'm just curious what happened? How did you.

I know, and I'm not doing very good at it, honestly. It's part of Thinlicious, and our bar is delicious. It's called the magic protein bar. And we have some snack bites as well that are. We have white chocolate macadamia ones. And what's the other one? Oh, peanut butter chocolate. And they're all absolutely delicious. But I would say that that's probably one of the biggest business lessons that I'm learning is maybe don't try to totally go into a whole thing that you're not familiar with, and maybe at some point we'll really start to focus on that piece of the business. But it's definitely not a huge focus. It's a little bit on the back burner right now.

Yeah, I actually like that because you're able to identify, again, it's all going back to what you want, and it's not holding yourself back now. You don't have regret over it. You're able to just see, okay, I have so many other things going. It goes back to our beginning conversation with the priorities, too.

Yes, very much so. And let's just. We have a huge vision for that whole brand and for what we want to do and how we want to basically transform the world by helping women transform their health. Because I'm so, so, so passionate about the work that we're doing there. I just. It's crazy to me, having struggled for so long with my own weight and having tried every diet under the sun and every. Everything, one after another after another after another for years and years and years. You know, all these years. But I was so successful building my business. I felt like I was such a failure on a personal level. Right. With my health, and I just kept getting heavier. And I. I remember going to conferences and I always felt like the big girl. And it was. It Just really started to shake my confidence and my self esteem to the point where I even started really hiding in my business. I stopped speaking and I stopped wanting to be on media and, and wanting to do any of that and really retreated sort of into the background. And then when I started, I don't know why, it never occurred to me to take this superpower that I have of do all the research, learn all the things, figure it out, and then create a system that never occurred to me to do that with my health, right? I always was like, oh no, I gotta go get the next book or the next fad diet or the next meal service delivery service or whatever. I always thought it was somebody else that had that answer. And so I finally, finally, finally started doing that for myself and was like, I can't do another diet, right? I've done them all, they don't work, I gotta do something else. And as I started really digging into the research, I think that was when it just shocked me that so much of what we have been told our whole lives about how you lose weight, right? What does everybody say? You gotta cut calories, you gotta eat less, you gotta exercise more. It's just this nonsense, right? Eat less fat, go vegan, all these things that literally don't work. And so all these women are making ourselves crazy trying to do something that if you actually read the research and the studies of which there are thousands of them, it never works. It never works for anybody. Because weight loss isn't really actually related to calories. It's hormones. It's how our hormones are processing. And it's mostly because of insulin resistance. So, which I don't mean to go all deep into the science of weight loss with you. Clearly it's a hot point, hot button for me. So I started learning all this stuff and I was like, why are people not telling us, right? Why is this not readily available information? What the heck? And so, not to be a conspiracy theorist, but if you start to look into who's actually funding a lot of the medical studies, who's funding the doctors, who's funding all this stuff, it goes back to big food and Big Pharma wanting to keep us sick and fat. And so it was almost like this outrage for me that prompted me to go, I got to share this. I got to share this. I have a platform, I have a way of sharing this. I'm going to share this information. And so I have a huge vision for thinlicious and what it can be. But my ultimate goal is truly to help women Create freedom in their lives. Because I've experienced the kind of freedom that comes from having that right to have struggled for so long and for so many years in this shame spiral of trying to diet and then falling off the wagon and then watching my weight go up. It consumes so much energy and so much of your life that could be spent doing other things, Building your business, taking care of your kids, going out and having fun with your friends. Whatever it is that you want to do in your life. Think of how much energy is spent thinking about what to eat or what not to eat. And as soon as you fix this piece of your life and you feel great and you have so much energy, it's like the world is my oyster, man. And so I love helping people transform their businesses and do that. And I honestly, truly feel like that helps change the world as well. But, man, there's nothing like watching people transform their health. And we've had thousands of people go through a program now, and they've lost eighty pounds, a hundred pounds, one hundred twenty pounds. Right. And watching them get off of all medications to have the confidence that they've never had before to now become coaches in our program, that is a life changing experience. And it's amazing. And I just want to get that out to as many people as possible. So that's where we're at with thinlicious, is I need to focus on the program and getting this out to more people before I just focus on giving them one piece and one tool, which is the protein bar. Right. Here's a snack for you. Or here's how you can change your life. So that's kind of where my focus is. But that was a very long answer.

Yeah, it was so good. And I think what I'm noticing is I love how you just. And for anyone watching, you'll see it, but I'm sure you can hear it too. It's just how you light up when you're able to talk about these things that mean so much to me and you have so much conviction. I'm just kind of wondering, how did you really tap into that? That finding your voice, kind of getting that conviction that you have over the things you're doing.

I don't know. I don't think anybody's ever asked me that before. It's almost like asking, how did you get your arm right? It's there. It's so ingrained in me. And I think if you struggle with something and maybe that's. I have this innate need to teach and share what I Learn with other people. And I don't know if that's a normal thing. Maybe, maybe not. But like, if I'm like, this is working for me, I have to tell other people about it, right? I can't not. And I think my husband thinks I'm crazy sometimes too, because he's like, you don't actually have to share everything with everybody all the time. I'm like, but yes, I do. I mean, I like that with products too, right? Even products that are other people's products. If there's something I love, I'm like, oh my gosh, have you seen this thing? Look at the squeezy sour cream. It squeezes. Have you seen that? I'm everybody's hype woman. But I think that if you struggle and you understand that struggle, then you of course want to help other people not have that struggle. And that was, I mean, for me, my weight struggle was at least 10 or 15 years of really, really struggling with it. And I just to now have the freedom that I have. I can't not tell people about it.

Okay, so what is your biggest piece of advice for people? On doing the thing?

On doing the thing. Well, do it scared, I guess is my tagline. But yeah, I would say, number one, don't let anybody tell you you can't. Right? Let their skepticism, let their comments, let all of that just be the fuel to your fire. If somebody tells you you can't do that, watch me, right? Watch me. Let that be the thing that drives you. And number two, just keep trying things because you have to make mistakes. Because mistakes are what actually teach you all the things, right? Don't ever be worried that you're going to make a mistake because then you'll never do anything. You will make mistakes. You're going to make tons of mistakes. I hope you make tons of mistakes. I tell that to my team. You should be making mistakes because if you're not making any mistakes, then it means you're not trying and I'm having to make all the decisions and that's not good for either of us. So just to keep learning, just keep learning and growing and trying and eventually you'll get there.

Well, please share with everyone. I know we mentioned it earlier, but let's say it again where they can find out about you. Also check out your program and all the good stuff.

Yeah. So for Elite blog Academy, that URL is eliteblogacademy.com fire to go to that training and if you wanna find out more about thinlic, you can just go to thinlicious.com or you can watch. We have a training there too. It's thinlicious.com happy is the URL for that one.

And do you have a Facebook community that's outside of the program or is everything inside your program?

We do have a free Facebook community, yes. It's called Our Health Rebel community. You can find that on Facebook. Just search for Thinlicious. And you can also follow me on Instagram. I made a goal this year to post one thing every day on Instagram, so I've been busy working on that. So far, so good. And. And yeah, so I'm actually very active over there right now, which is not always the case, but currently it's a good place to find me.

Thank you so much for coming on. This was so good. I can't wait to listen back to everything that you shared and really dive deep in it.

Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

And for you guys, do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity. Create it. And hey, have you guys checked out my Facebook group yet? It's Doth.