The Diet Industry is Lying to You: From Solo Nutritionist to Global Wellness Leader with Sofia Rozhko of The Body School

Season 1 Episode 8

The Diet Industry is Lying to You: From Solo Nutritionist to Global Wellness Leader with Sofia Rozhko of The Body School

Click to listen here on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5T6ej7kvehOxQC2fra7wvH?si=b23f715606e04bc5

And here on Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/founders-in-jeans/id1802430594?i=1000708319795

Summary

In this episode, Emily Jean interviews Sofia, the founder and CEO of a Ukrainian wellness program. Sofia shares her journey of building a successful business focused on helping individuals develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies. The conversation covers her experiences in scaling the business, the importance of personalized nutrition, and the challenges of launching an app. Sofia emphasizes the significance of community support, debunks common nutrition myths, and provides valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs.

You can follow Sofia on Instagram @sofi_rozhko and the Body School on Instagram @thebody.school & @thebodyschool.global. You can also visit their website here.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Sofia and Her Journey

07:13 Building a Team and Scaling the Business

10:23 Passion and Motivation Behind the Business

13:14 Differentiating from Competitors

16:07 Adapting to Current Trends and Research

19:13 The Five Elements Approach to Nutrition

22:14 Launching the App and Transitioning Online

34:18 Building a User-Centric App

36:23 Prioritizing Client Needs

38:44 Creating a Supportive Community

41:25 Key Nutritional Insights

45:47 Debunking Nutrition Myths

48:09 Future Vision for the Body School

51:08 Upcoming Initiatives and Programs

53:45 Rewarding Moments in Business

57:06 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

59:33 New Chapter

Takeaways

Sofia emphasizes the importance of building a healthy relationship with food.

The Body School focuses on personalized nutrition and fitness plans.

Sofia's journey includes hiring a team to scale her business effectively.

The program is based on a five-element approach to wellness.

Sofia's app was developed to provide continuous support to clients.

Building trust with clients is crucial for long-term success.

Nutrition timing is essential for maintaining energy and focus.

Excluding food groups without reason can lead to unhealthy habits.

Sleep deprivation negatively impacts nutrition and overall health.

Sofia believes one person's change can influence an entire family.

Sound Bites

"I always wanted to help people."

"Carbs are good for you!"

"Focus on your product first."

Keywords

wellness, nutrition, entrepreneurship, health, body transformation, personal branding, diet culture, scaling business, app development, community support

Emily Jean (00:00)

Hi you guys, welcome to or welcome back to Founders Club. I'm your host, Emily Jean,

And today's episode is with Sofia Roschko. She is a Ukrainian wellness program founder and CEO and incredible, amazing lady. I really enjoyed this conversation we had today. She is incredibly insightful, but also

such a hard worker, has so much passion for the brand, she's scaled up quite quickly in the time that she's been in business for the last 10 years. She went from a solo team of her own to 30 people in a very short period of time,

She has a background in health and wellness and nutrition, and her goal has really been to create a program and an app in a community for people who can not only lose weight and feel healthier in their bodies, but also feel healthier mentally and feel healthier about their bodies. So she's doing really amazing work and she's had an incredible impact.

The community now has over 5,000 members of people that they have helped and they are also launching a program in the UK. Anyways, we talk about a lot of stuff. She has some great insights, especially into carbs and complex carbs and if you should be eating them and why and why not, and I won't give away, but you're gonna like the answer. And I'm so excited for you guys to hear this conversation. As always, please.

Feel free if you enjoy this episode to give us a review or leave a comment below and let me know what you to see more about the podcast and what we do. You can follow me on Instagram at Emily.jeans.

And yeah, so I hope you guys enjoy this episode and let's get into it.

Emily Jean (01:59)

Okay, welcome to the podcast Sofia Thank you so much for being here today. I'm so excited to have you on. So obviously I've already told everyone a little bit about you, but why don't you tell people who you are in your own words.

Sofia (02:13)

Okay, thank you Emily for your invitation. I'm really also excited to be as a guest of your podcast today. So my name is Sofia. Originally I'm from Ukraine, now I live in Spain and I've been a nutritionist for the past 12 years already. Yes, it's been 12 years already. I started my career as a nutritionist. I was a self-employed specialist who helped people to...

balance their nutritional routine to achieve their health and weight loss goals. And two years after I started my practice, I started a business. I started a service, its name is the Body School. Now we are a big international service that help people to find the best way that serve their body and to build this healthy relationship with the body and food because

we know that that's a huge diet culture around. We see it everywhere online in Instagram and TikTok and people try to find some new diet to be in shape or to lose a few pounds. But you know this like this whole diet culture when you're just losing some weight and you'll gain even more weight back and you lose the self-confidence and you are just so dependent on your

body composition and on your body image. So we are trying to help people to build this really healthy relationship, how they see their body, how they treat their body and make the food, the nutritional routine and the workout routine more than just a routine to lose some extra kilos, more as a self care. And in my team working, a big team, we have a big team.

It's a team consisting of doctors, nutritionists and fitness trainers. We also have our own app where we support our clients. But yeah, the main reason I started this business because I always wanted to help people to build this right and healthy nutritional culture inside their families.

Emily Jean (04:06)

Okay got it. So let me just go back a little bit because I have a question about your team. So I know originally you started with a small team and I think I read that you have now over 30 experts. Is that right?

Sofia (04:13)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, we have sorry experts. have a big team. When I started this business, I was just by myself. I was the only one. So my team is joking that I just create a working place for myself. Just open the business to a place to work. And yes, then we started hiring people. Now we have a team of doctors. We have general practitioners, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists and gynecologists. Also we have

some therapists who help people with this mindset changes and the rest of the team are nutritionists and fitness trainers who create this personalized program for our clients that they follow on everyday basis. And also we have some marketing team, social media team, yes, it's also a big part of the team.

Emily Jean (05:05)

Right. I think what I hear from a lot of young entrepreneurs is that they are never exactly sure when to begin to scale up, specifically as it applies to a bigger team. Was there a moment for you, like a turning point where you were like, okay, I need somebody else, I need multiple people. What did that look like for you?

Sofia (05:16)

Yeah.

Yeah, that's honestly a difficult question because it's always about some extra expense for your business, especially when you're just starting your business, you just try to save every cent you are getting. Yeah, especially for three years of the business, always tough, always. It's like the challenge to go through this, through the beginning of your business.

So my first team was just I hired the first person in my team. It was the the manager I think in two months after I started my business because I just needed someone who would help me with all the documentation because I'm so bad with numbers and all of these tables and Excel So it's not my thing. So I just needed someone who would help me and to cover this part of expert expertise

And funny wise, this girl is still the part of our team. So she's working in my business for the last almost 10 years. And now she's the main person in my business after me. So she's creating everything from the technical perspective and from the team perspective. And secondly, we started hiring people who could bring some extra expertise in the business. For instance, doctor.

I remember that I just had an open lecture. We did this open lecture for clients where clients could come and just watch the presentation and just to ask some questions about our businesses was really popular back those days. And I remember that the doctor came in the end of this presentation to me and she said like, hi, I'm working in a hospital in Kiev, so I would love to join your team.

for the part-time, like not for the full-time, but for the part-time. And I said, I don't know if we have a place for you in my team because we don't have any health assessment part in our program yet, but okay, let's meet up and just see what will happen then. And yes, we just find the place for her because I just understood that I could improve my product by adding the health assessment part to this product.

And it's happening many times throughout my career when I would just met some really good specialist. I had no place for them at this point, but I just thought I could not lose this person because this person is extremely talented and I just want to have her or his on board. And then we just find some place for this person and this person just grow through the whole years working in the body school.

But most of the tasks I did by myself I think for for two or two and a half year I did all the social media all the presentations so I tried to do everything by myself because I had no money to invest honestly and We didn't have Such a big income back those days So just decided that I will invest my own time Because you could you could choose you invest your own time your own resources or you you hire someone

For me, it was easy not to have this money pressure in terms of salary and to do more things by myself and to invest my time in this business. And when I just understood, when I came to the point, then I understood that, okay, I could not do my social media or my business social media anymore because I'm just so into all of this product stuff, working with client and supporting clients. So I need someone.

who would do it on a completely different level. And that was a big decision to hire a first social media and marketing team because it was a big expense for business, but it changed completely how business started functioning because more people got to worry about my business. We started growing, but sometimes you just come to the point when you understand that you need someone who will help you with that. It's not about...

that you, I was afraid to delegate or something like that, never, but I just understood that I have no money for that. And I just, I was ready to invest my own resources. For instance, now we are scaling my business on UK market. And I'm doing the same I did 10 years ago. Most of the work I'm doing by myself, even social media for my business, because I have this expertise and I know what client need and I...

I have this my knowledge as a nutritionist and I could not find any social media manager who would cover the same amount of knowledge and social media experience as I have. So I just understood that I need to invest my own time. But I think with the time I will find someone who will cover this part of my business.

Emily Jean (09:50)

Well, okay, mean, it's no surprise, but you're definitely signing up for yourself. You're definitely setting yourself up for a lot of work when you are starting a business like this. And I love too what you said about doing so much of it on your own for the first three years. I think people don't really realize like first three to five years, I would say even it's a constant grind. I guess I'm curious then like how

Sofia (10:00)

Yes.

Emily Jean (10:14)

did you gain such a strong passion to want to launch this that kind of led to that? And how did that begin for you?

Sofia (10:24)

I think the part of that is how my parents...

educate me because I started working in a really early age. I was 14 when I started working because I just wanted to have some pocket money to buy a lipstick or something like that. And then my parents got divorced when I was 18 and I ⁓ had a sister. She's three years younger than I am. And I just remember that I wanted to help my mom to support.

myself somehow financially because for her that was a big financial change in our life. So I just started working and I was always a person who just I always have this consistency in whatever I am doing. I also have some background in professional sports so it helped me honestly a lot.

But what helped me when I started this business, I always had the thought that I have a really good product. I don't know why, actually maybe because of the client feedback, maybe because every client bringing on board the new client for us, we have...

The most effective marketing tool working at the body school is the world of mouse. So people recommend us to their friends and family because they are really happy about the product quality. And I always said that I have a really good product, but not so many people know about us yet. And I said that for the first, I think four or five years, I don't know where this confidence came from.

But I just knew that I need to focus on the quality of product and I need to focus on my consistent marketing and personal branding because you could not build your personal brand twice. You need to be really consistent in terms of your values, in terms of the message you're sending to your audience. And I just build this trust with people through the first three to five years.

And I just always said like, have a really good product, but maybe not so many people know about us yet. And I think the same now when we are launching the product on the new market, it's 10 years later. And I know that the market is extremely saturated, especially in terms of some nutrition and weight loss programs. So we have a lot of really, really good and professional competitors in this, in this area. But I still believe that we just need the time.

for more people to know about us. And I was extremely focused on the product quality. That was my always number one focus in my work. And the second one was the service. I tried to do the best service for my client to a bit overcome their expectation, to help them to receive a bit more than they paid for the service. And it always worked.

Emily Jean (13:00)

Would you say that that is kind of the biggest thing separating you from other wellness programs out there or?

Sofia (13:07)

In terms of marketing, yes, I think that's the biggest thing now because we need our clients to understand why we are different and not just to differentiate ourselves from other businesses, but most to show people that we have this kind of service and if they have a need for this kind of service, we're here for them.

because people have really different needs even when it's coming to building your nutritional routine or workout routine. And our service is providing this complex approach with a health assessment, personalized nutrition and workout plan, this everyday support. Some people need that, some people don't. And we're trying to reach the audience who really looking to have this all-in-one solution for them.

Emily Jean (13:54)

So I saw on the website that you guys are known for blending science and lifestyle and personalized care like you're speaking about, but how do you ensure that that program does evolve with current research and health trends and things like that?

Sofia (14:02)

Yeah.

You mean that, yeah, I think I need to re-ask the question. Do you mean how we ensure it from the product perspective or from the client perspective?

Emily Jean (14:18)

from the client perspective.

Sofia (14:20)

From the client perspective, yeah. So most of the things we're doing is through social media. And honestly, we're trying to work on our website because I think the website is extremely important for every business because it shows your knowledge and shows your team and shows your client feedback. And we have an educational blog.

on the website that help people to understand our approach. That we are science-based, that we based on the recent researches, that we are not using any controversial approaches in terms of health because health is the most important things you have. So you could not use something that is not tested or proved. And also we do a lot through our social media.

I love to do educational content, especially on TikTok because TikTok is an interesting place, let me say, because when I am opening my TikTok, this amount of video and information I'm getting, sometimes I'm really overwhelmed with this amount and I just feel that I'm lost in this amount of information and I do not understand anymore what is right and what is not. So we are trying to build this consistent...

marketing and social media message where we describe to our customers bit by bit what our approaches look like. So why we trust this evidence, why we think that it's going to work and then other approach not going to work. We talk a lot about some diet culture because through my career of nutritionist, I saw so many trends changes. We had

high protein diet, we had low carb diet, then we had fat diet like keto diet. And I saw so many of the stuff changes and people trying to try and implement new things in their nutritional routine, but nothing of that is working in the long term. And we educate our subscribers and our followers and our customers that to have a long term result, you need to build a consistent strategy.

that will work for you every day, no matter the holiday, no matter the celebration or the vacation or you're eating at home or you're eating outside because your life is not consistent. You're not just sitting at home and you're not just cooking at home. You need to enjoy the social life. So how you need to implement all of this evidence and researches just in your everyday life. So how to make this knowledge practical.

So we're trying to do it with the website and with the social, through the social media mostly.

Emily Jean (16:46)

love what you said about like speaking about that overwhelm when you get on TikTok and you've just kind of blown up with information. I think that you guys, have a fairly simplified approach to body transformation with the five elements approach, right? you kind of walk through those pillars and the thinking behind them?

Sofia (16:54)

Yeah.

Five elements, yeah.

Yeah, for sure. So we built our system based on five elements because we know that the approach to transform your relationship with the body and food is really complex. It's not just that you need to eat less and to move more because it's also working. So it's always better to move a little bit more every day. But for sure you need to have

more tools to have this long-term success. So yes, our program is based on the five elements. The first element is the health assessment done by a team of doctors. have when the people start our program, we have a big follow, like onboard form that all of our clients are following up that we can get a lot of information about their health conditions, family.

health history, about their lifestyle, about their previous diet history. So that's all of these points influence the strategy we will provide for our client. when people, like for instance, some of our clients would have the history of diabetes in their family or high cholesterol level, that's always influenced the nutrition strategy we will provide for this person on the body care program.

Also, if we have someone who tried every single diet on planet Earth, that also shows us that this person need to... that our program should be the last weight loss program for this person. Because we need to find this way to explain that this cutting of carbs or sugar or alcohol or eating, I don't know, 1200 calories per day is not gonna work in the long term and just to...

to help this person to understand that proper nutrition doesn't require any of this suffering. And it's a lot of also mental work, like a coaching work with this type of clients. So we start with health assessment. We also encourage our client to do the blood test because our team of doctors could review all the blood tests.

and could have a consultation with our client based on this blood test and this follow-up form. And after our doctors have a consultation with the client, our team of nutritionists and fitness trainer, because each of the client has its own nutritionist and fitness trainer throughout the program. So they create the personalized nutrition and workout plan for our client. And then we are coming to everyday support.

So we have an app, it's our own app, also called the Body School. You could download it for free, but the main feature you could see in the app only when you are the part of the program, because you see all of this personalized feature inside the app. So when our clients receive the personalized plan, they start uploading their meals on everyday base, and they also working out according to the plan, and they get an everyday feedback.

from the team who is supporting this client. Like I have, if I'm at the part of the program, I have my personal nutritionist and she's speaking to me every day and she's saying like, yeah, Sofia, that was a cool breakfast or we need to do some adjustments here. Or like, yeah, I see that you had some extra glass of wine last evening, maybe something happened and maybe you have like, maybe you're under stress. So it's not about like.

Punishing people that they're not eating right or not drinking Sufficient amount of water. I don't know. It's about like coaching and to help people to understand that something that they eat and drink it's not about just It's not about just the food. There are so many emotions and stress involved in this process So we are helping them to understand and to start understanding their body and their feeling to help them to manage better They also nutritional routine

So we have this everyday support. also have a tracking process, which is done also by team. So our doctors and nutritionists, the fitness trainer tracking the progress of each client every week and every month. We have some different tracking, tracking them, criteria. And we are giving a feedback to our clients saying like, yeah, this month was really great progress. We see how your body changed because we see all of the measurements.

And I see how you better perform in terms of your workout or in your nutritional changes. So you start eating more of this and less of that. you like we tracking all of that. And also we have an educational part also done by our team of experts, which is always based on the latest researchers. So we changing our program every year. We are rewriting every lectures, every approaches, because now

The big topic is also for sure diabetes, especially for people who are taking a Ozempic and they need to understand how to manage their nutrition and work out to have the sustainable results after get rid of medication. And also we work a lot of women and we help them to understand how their body functioned according to their cycle, menstrual cycle, like what amount of calories they need to eat.

every period of their cycle one they have this cravings sugar cravings in the end of the cycle because it's that's our physiology we're just not aware of how it's working and also we work a lot of with premenopause and menopause women also helping them to understand how their nutrition and supplements and workout should look like to to yeah to to to feel good to feel confident and to reduce this

symptoms they could experience in this period. So yes, every year we have new researchers and we're just trying to adapt them and to implement them in our program to have this educational part, to cover this educational part.

Emily Jean (22:43)

my god, it. Well, that all sounds great. I want to rewind a little bit. So I know you said you've recently launched an app. What was that process like? Because I've heard from some other people that launching an app is like one of the most difficult things. What was your experience like?

Sofia (22:46)

Thank you.

Yeah.

So yes about the app we started working on our app in 2017 or 2018

Yes, 2017 and 2018, because before that, our whole program just functioned offline. We have an offline meeting with the client in our office. We have these offline lectures. And then it was all honestly not the business solution to start an app. I just decided that I want to go to live for some time in Asia, in Singapore.

And I just thought, okay, maybe my business will not survive if I will just go to live in another country. So I need to find some way to transfer my business from offline to online. And it was honestly really scary because when you're working in offline market, you have one pool of competitors. But then when you're going to online market, you have...

so much more competitors and it's, you know, you just, I just remember when I checked the website of all of the competitors, I said like, wow, there's no way that my business will survive online.

Emily Jean (24:05)

Right.

Sofia (24:06)

And then I just thought, okay, so I am really scared how my business will perform, but I need to focus again on the product, how I can improve my product so it will function in the same way online as it's functioning offline. So how I could achieve the same statistic because we have really, really high statistic numbers in terms of client success, and I just wanted to achieve the same statistic working online.

And I said, okay, maybe we need to do some kind of app so people would receive a continuous feedback from us on everyday basis and be connected to the team. And we started working on this app. It was a really, really simple app and it was never an app to sell, to earn some money on this app. We just wanted to make this app as a part of the program.

So it was only available for our clients. And yeah, we launched the app. I lived in Asia for some time, then I get back. Yes, I think it was 2019. And then in one year COVID started. And for us, we were totally prepared for this moment. we didn't plan that, but we had everything just to switch our business completely online.

And I remember when the COVID started and our business started growing extremely fast, many people came to me and said like, yeah, let's discuss on the podcast or on the video, or let's write some article to our media just to share your experience, how you transferred your business so fast from offline to online. And I said like, yeah, guys, it was not so fast. It took me three years since I got this idea to launch an app because

Yeah, which it just happened. It was a coincidence, but we were prepared for that. And in the time we created the app, no one did that, especially on my market. We were the first one who decided to do that because I just had this intuition that it's the right thing to do. I think in terms of being an entrepreneur, sometimes it's so important to hear yourself because if you're an expert in your

Emily Jean (26:03)

Mm.

Sofia (26:06)

in your topic and you are reading a lot about that, you're talking to your clients, you always have seen something that market is not seeing yet. And if you invest your time in focusing on your clients, on your product and not analyzing all of your competitors, which is really, I think it's drain you so much when you analyze everyone because you think that I'm not

perfect and not so good, they're much better than I am. But if you're focused on your product, you could always see these trends ahead, especially for your business. And yeah, we just were lucky that we started doing this app early, even before COVID started, but it was honestly difficult. It was a great investment from our part because we never had any kind of...

investments, we we're just investing our own money in the business. And, and, and yes, the last year we changed our app because we had already enough data from the client feedback to, to improve the app and to work more on this user experience point, point perspective. Because when we first started our app, we had no, no group of people who test the app. just.

We just paint something and just release that in the most simple way. But that's also a good solution. know, when you're starting something, it should not be perfect. It should bring value to your client. If it brings value to your client, it's okay if it's some kind of simple design or some simple features. You just need to focus on the complicity of your product. If the app is just one part of your product,

Then you could cover the rest with your knowledge, expertise with your team, et cetera. Yeah, but if you're creating the app that you have some inbuilt purchases in the app, for sure it's more difficult and we are not going there yet. We sell nothing in the app yet. The app is open and completely free for all of the users from Google Play Market and App Store.

but if you are participating in the product, have some extra features in the app.

Emily Jean (28:08)

Right. So I know that the trust of your clients and I know that you've done a really good job of building trust with your clients. How have you kind of built a community around your brand in that way, especially now you have this app coming out and you just said like, it was really important to you that the user experience is good now that you have like the kind of rebrand of that coming out.

Sofia (28:22)

Mm-hmm

Emily Jean (28:32)

How has your approach been with that?

Sofia (28:34)

I think first of all, when you think about your client, you...

I think the key point is always to find the best solution for your client. Always put your client first when you're thinking about product. When you're about product, because yeah, sometimes when you have like a conflict between client and team, that's a point to discuss because sometimes you need to put your team first because...

Different situation happens when you have a business. Yeah, but when you're thinking about product, I always put my client first and I always thought like, okay, we're working with a lifestyle. We're working with a really, really difficult topic is the change of your nutritional habits. It's one of the most difficult part because you're eating every day, multiple times a day and you need to eat every day for the rest of your life. So it's like your everyday habit.

And sometimes it's difficult to work on something that is so deeply implemented in your everyday life. And I just understood that, okay, people are completing our three months program and what happened next? They're coming back to their family, to their environment, to their friends, and they're not in this supportive community anymore because they're just in the real world, you know?

And I just thought, okay, how we can improve that? And we just understood that we are going to have the permanent access to some features in the app just for our clients, even when they finish the program and they're not paying us anymore for any services. Because for me, it's the most important part for people to have long-term results. If they lost...

10, 20, 30 pounds, my main goal is for them to remain in the same body shape for as long as they can. For sure we have some stress factors, have, yeah, that's a lot of factors influence this process, but from my side, I need to do everything possible to help them to support this lifestyle and to be in this environment. Secondly, we created the community of people, it's like a chat, like a group chat.

with all of our customers who participate in the program. And every week we post something in this group, recording to some like simple advices, some recipes, some workout plans, some explanation of the latest researches, just for them to feel that they're still the part of the program and the business and community.

secondly, we create this group chat for our client who participated in the program. And every, every week we have a content plan for this, for this, for this chat. And every week we post something about like new recipes, some nutritional advice, some workouts plan, some...

explanation of latest research, just to help these people to have the feeling that one day they started our program, but this program has never the end line. Because this program is a part of your life, because your nutritional habit and workout habit is a part of your everyday life for you to feel good in your body and to feel healthy. So we try to create this feeling that

they are really important to us, even they are not our like paying clients anymore, because that is true, because our main mission is to help people to have this sustainable result. And a lot of things as a business, we invest a lot of money to do some things for our client for free, just to keep them going, just to keep them going. I know that it's really difficult, especially

for businesses that have a lot of expenses to invest in something like that, invest in the community. But this is one of the most important expense you could do because happy client will always bring you new client. And I think that's the most effective and important sales tool.

Emily Jean (32:22)

Right. What would you say, knowing that there is so much information out there about diet and wellness, what would you say are like the top three things people should focus on when they're trying to improve their own health?

Sofia (32:35)

think first is the food timing, like nutrition timing, to have some own rhythm to nourish your body and to feed yourself throughout the day. Because one of the biggest problems we see is when people start skipping their breakfast or have this like light breakfast or just the cup of coffee and some salad for lunch with some extra protein for sure.

but then evening is coming and your body just hungry and you're trying to eat everything that your body requires throughout the day. And also I think especially for people who are working many hours or who doing their own business they are so into the working task and the zoom calls throughout the day they just feel that they skipping their meals because they have this belief

that when they are hungry they are more productive because when they eat something they just become sleepy and they're not productive anymore. Yeah that's happening when you first

trying to build your nutritional risk, for some time it's happening, but in the end of the day, your focus, your performance really starts on your plate. Not in your to-do list, not in your inner or outer motivation, it starts on your plate. Because if you're not have this at least three main meals throughout the day, for men it could be two meals, for women we prefer to have three main meals because we need to have this portion of

proteins throughout the day and it's really difficult to cover it with just two meals and to have this nutritional risk, have this nutritional routine. It's really, really important. It helps you to stay focused, it helps you to balance your blood sugar level, it helps you to decrease your sugar cravings and these blood glucose crashes. So it's really, really helpful tool.

Second thing I think is not try to exclude some product from your diet with no reason because you could see so many information online that gluten is bad, lactose is bad, carbs are bad, fats are also bad, proteins are good, everyone is agree that proteins are good.

Emily Jean (34:29)

Mm.

Sofia (34:41)

And also we are so focused on the supplements and adding a lot of supplements to our diet that we forget that the main supplement should be the food we eating throughout the day. It's the supplement number one. Yeah, because it provides a lot of benefits for our health and for our gut health, for our microbiome. So we couldn't cover every deficiency we have just throughout the supplements. It's not possible. So if you have no medical reason, like...

a proven medical reason to exclude any food from your diet. Just don't do that because there is no reason to exclude anything. You just need to find the right portion and the right size and the right amount of every food in your diet. Even if it's sugar, coffee, I don't know, some chips, alcohol, whatever. But every food could be present in your everyday routine, just in the right amount. Because when we create in this taboo on some kind of food,

We start to crave this food and it's not working long term. You could not give up on sugar. You could limit your sugar consumption. That's good. But you could not give up on sugar because it's not possible. Sugar is everywhere. And some, some people stop eating desserts, but then they're drinking smoothie or some healthy juice, which contains way more sugar than every kind of chocolate bar or something like that.

Emily Jean (35:57)

Right.

Sofia (35:57)

Yes, and the third part, I think that's also important to work on, to have enough sleeping hours. That's not connecting to your nutrition, but if we have the sleep deprivation, if we're not sleeping enough, we could not manage our nutrition and our hunger level.

Emily Jean (36:04)

and

Right. Is there, I know that you just said some, but is there like a big misconception or myth that you hear people bring up a lot that you'd like to kind of say that's not true?

Sofia (36:24)

in terms of nutrition.

yeah, I think I always like to talk about carbs, you know, because I just want for people to start eating carbs. And I think it's everyone is speaking about that. Every, trusted expert I'm following, doctors, some masters in with a nutritional, some nutritionists and, and, dietitians, they all

saying that carbs are good and if we're eating complex carbs it helps us to perform in such a better on such a better level but i don't know why maybe we've been told for so many years that carbs are bad that we still are afraid to have pasta for our dinner which is not bad if you combine your pasta with a salad

with some kind of protein but not with the dessert and orange juice and cappuccino, which is sugar plus sugar plus sugar. That's really really good food and I think maybe because I'm so in love with Italian food maybe I'm so I'm the carbs advocate so but I really want for people to start eating carbs and to stop blaming carbs because even people who has diabetes type 2 even people who struggle with insulin resistance or some

and other kinds of insulin insensitivity problems, you still could eat carbs. You just need to manage those carbs in your nutrition more carefully to add some fiber, always to add some fiber, protein and fat to your meal. But no matter what health conditions you have, you could always find the right amount of carbs you could eat. And the carbs, they're simply so good. Bread, I love bread. Yeah.

Emily Jean (37:39)

Hmm.

Good, that's my new favorite tip I've learned today. Okay, got it. Well, I don't want to hold you up too long and I don't want to go over too long. So I'll do these last ones kind of rapid fire.

Sofia (38:02)

you

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Emily Jean (38:11)

Okay, first one, might be a big, I say rapid fire, then it's like a big question. Where do you see the body school in the next five years?

Sofia (38:18)

Wow, that's ⁓ yeah, that's I'm always stuck in this kind of question because I never had this long-term planning in my business because I think that everything is changing so fast that I have no idea where we would be in five years and what our program would look like and

Emily Jean (38:20)

Hahaha!

Sofia (38:37)

For me, this approach is really working because I'm more flexible in my changes, in my business, in my program. I'm really more flexible because when you're growing as a company, sometimes you're becoming not so flexible. And that's a bad thing because you have too many processes and you need to change all of these processes. I like to stay this middle size or small company to be more flexible.

of new trends and changes.

I would love to be a program and a service who create and who change this nutritional routine of the whole generations. Because I truly believe that one person who change his nutrition and his diet approach, not the diet approach, but the nutritional approach, it influence so much more than that itself. Because when I'm changing my nutrition, I'm also changing the nutrition of my daughter.

I'm also taking care of nutrition of my parents, my partner. I'm also saying something when we have dinner with friends in a really polite way when they're asking. But I think one person could change so much more and could bring such a big health change in the whole world. And this could start just from one person, just in one family. And this knowledge will spread throughout the family and it will spread throughout the generation because in my family we never

had this nutritional, good nutritional culture.

We ate just what we had and I never was educated on this topic because we didn't have this knowledge, honestly. But now, like my daughter, when she's eating, she could say like, yeah, this is carbs, this is protein, this is fat. mom, I need some extra salad because I need to feed my gut bacteria today because they need to grow. And it's fun for her. She could also eat ice cream or drink cola or

whatever, but for her that's a fun and I know that's something that I earned through my lifetime that I needed to educate myself and to push myself a little bit. For her that's some natural process and that's my own achievement and I think that's something that I love our service to do just to help people to change this dietary patterns of the whole generations.

Emily Jean (40:45)

Right. I love that. think that's a great answer. ⁓ Well, then maybe then on just a smaller scale of that, is there any upcoming initiatives or programs or research or anything that you're excited about in the next year or so?

Sofia (40:48)

Thank you.

Yeah, next year we will, we are going to implement, we have the main program called the body care and we are on the way to implement more updates about menopause and pre-menopause approaches for nutrition and for workout. And also we want to implement more features inside the app that will help women to try their cycle and to adjust their nutrition and their workout according to the cycle.

So now we are doing it manually with the help of the team who is supporting the client, but we also want to add some extra features to help people to see it in a more visual form. Yes, and I think we're just gonna do our regular day job just to help people to change the way they see food and their body.

Emily Jean (41:47)

Okay, great.

Okay, What is your favorite healthy meal or snack?

Sofia (41:51)

Okay, I really like some kind of different kind of toast because it's so easy to do some kind of toast. I'm usually having a sourdough bread with... yeah my recent healthy snack I'm just obsessed with that. I have a two boiled eggs, hard boiled eggs. I mix them with tuna and Greek yogurt or any kind of fish like maybe some sardines.

and then I have a bread I just put this mashed eggs with Greek yogurt and with some with some fish on top of this of this bread it's like the the carbs and protein and I have some green salad or some cucumbers just aside I loved it I think I could eat it the whole day honestly

Emily Jean (42:30)

It sounds really good. I'm going to have to try it. wasn't sure. Right after this. Okay. What has been the most rewarding? What has been the most rewarding moment so far in building the body school?

Sofia (42:32)

Yeah, now I have yes, I now I want to eat honestly Yeah

I think.

From the client perspective, it's just to receive this everyday feedback from our client, how the program changed their life.

And every time it's not because we are working with people for at least from three months plus. So we have a program for three months, six months, nine months and 12 months. And the longer your program is, the more difficult for you as a business to keep people focused on this, on this process, because when you have just one month program, that's easy. It's a challenge. Everyone could do one month, but three months, it's really difficult. And just yesterday.

I received a message from the client. She's been participating in the program for five months. She had a really difficult case because she tried every single diet on planet earth and on every diet she tried she lost a lot of muscle mass. And now she came to the point that we are calling metabolic adaptation when your body

lose so much muscle mass that your calorie expenditure throughout the day are extremely low. And that's really difficult for clients like this to lose weight and to see any results because it took months for us, first of all, to build some muscle mass and to start seeing some results. And it was extremely difficult to support her from the emotional perspective, but yesterday she just wrote that

I'm so grateful that I met you and your team, that I've never experienced something like that and that I did not believe that I'm going to do this hard way by my own in five months. And now I see this result. I was so angry and devastated and so anxious throughout the program that it's not going to help me, but you were always by my side and you always helped me. feedback like this, because I know that it was a lot of work.

From from team with this client, but in the end of the day we have such a great success story and also Everything that is happening inside my team that I'm really team oriented Entrepreneur for me the well-being of my team is extremely important When I see that they are traveling somewhere or they are experiencing new stuff or they're deciding to have kids. I'm always thinking

Emily Jean (44:50)

Mm-hmm.

Sofia (45:00)

wow, cool, that's meaning that my business is help these people to have this work space where they could earn money to build their life and to have time for the family. And I feel really, really grateful for that. And yeah, I'm just trying to improve the well-being in my team in the best possible way as I could do.

Emily Jean (45:20)

Yeah, I love what a good like that's such a good feeling. I'm sure to get those messages and to see things like that. It's kind of feel good. Um, OK, what is one piece? This is the last question. What is one piece of advice you would give to aspiring entrepreneurs who want to make a real impact?

Sofia (45:28)

Yeah.

Focus on your product first. Product is extremely important because you could have a good marketing strategy, could have investment, you could have an advertisement, but if your product is not good, that's the road to the end because you will not survive.

So first is product, then this service, create the possible service for your client because then client will start speaking about you.

marketing is coming just in the third place for me personally. And I would also say that I advise every entrepreneur to start building their own personal brand because I think that personal brand is really important because people always want to buy the product with a face. And with the social media nowadays you...

could easily build your social brand or personal brand. Sorry. Yeah. You could easily build your personal brand, but you need to have a core values and you need to stick to your values no matter what. Even if the trend changes, even if someone is trying to hype on some topic or whatever, you need to always stick to your values because that's what people love because people love consistent, consistent person.

Emily Jean (46:46)

Yeah, great. I love that. Well, okay, well, Sofia, where can people find you? Where can they find the body school?

Sofia (46:53)

they could find it in our Instagram account, the body, the body school global, and also in, Google and my social media, I think they could find it by name in a podcast and Tik Tok or also in Instagram. Yeah.

Emily Jean (47:08)

Okay, great. Well, thank you so much for coming on and joining me. I think this is a great conversation. I know people are going to love it. But yeah.

Sofia (47:18)

Thank you so much. you for invitation. And I was really happy to, if I would even inspire one person, one person through this conversation, I would be happy really.

Emily Jean (47:27)

I think you're going to inspire everyone. I'm inspired, so you're good.

Sofia (47:31)

⁓ yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you.