Episode 387: Behind the Scenes of The Funk’tional Nutritionist with Erin Holt: Vision, Team Shifts & A New Membership in 2026
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Erin hit a breaking point last year. Her business was growing, but the behind-the-scenes reality was unsustainable. Instead of muscling through, she tore everything down, embodied the CEO / visionary role, and rebuilt the entire operation from the inside out. This episode is a raw, behind the scenes peek at the major shifts she’s made inside The Funk’tional Nutritionist since then, and how creating more clarity, spaciousness, and systems elevates the support clients receive.
You’ll also hear the hot-off-the-press details of her new brain–body membership, which is an evolution of Manifest Your Health, designed to help you move from chronic overwhelm into genuine physical and emotional safety. Erin explains why real transformation requires time, repetition, and nervous system stability, which is exactly why this ISN’T another rushed 6-week program. Join the waitlist here!
In this episode:
How Erin’s org chart turned into a “sunflower” and the surprising ripple effects this had on her creativity, mood, and revenue
The pivotal moment in San Diego that shifted EVERYTHING and clarified the company’s next chapter
Why Erin hired an integrator, how this role works alongside a visionary, and why it was the missing link in getting her out of the weeds
What Erin learned from running Manifest Your Health, and what you can expect from her new membership
How healing actually happens, including the role of repetition and titration, and why you can’t “manifest” or rewire anything when your body is in survival mode
Resources mentioned:
Join the waitlist for Erin’s new brain-body membership here.
Check out the book Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK and get a free sample pack with any purchase!)
OneSkin (Use code FUNK for 15% off your first purchase)
Qualia Senolytic (get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Bon Charge (Use code FUNK to save 15%)
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If people see me as a thought leader, then I need to lead. And the thing about being a leader, it requires that you go first. And when you go first, that usually looks a little weird. That usually looks a little different. It's like that quote. First they call you crazy, then they call you for advice.
Welcome to the Funk'tional Nutrition podcast, spelled with a K. Because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach, creating a new model that I call intuitive functional medicine, where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self trust. Your body already knows how to heal, and this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend, because you never know whose life you might change.
Hello, my friends. Today is Thanksgiving week, and I am not sure how many people are tuning into podcasts to learn about health on Thanksgiving week. So I figured we would do something a little different here. And I'm going to answer a question that's been coming in kind of a lot lately, which is, what's different? What are you guys doing differently? What are you getting up to over there? Because we've pulled back on some things and we've ramped up other things we've added, we're building something new.
And I just want to talk through all of the whys behind it, why we made these decisions, why, what decisions we've made, what it all looks like. And hopefully this is an exciting episode for some of you guys to listen to, especially those of you that have been following me, following my business, my work, my brand for a while now. I know that I personally learn so much through other people and listening to other people's experiences and how they navigate things, especially during seasons of change. So my hope is that there is some medicine in this episode for you. Even if you're not navigating the exact same stuff I am, you can still get some juicy gems out of this that you can apply to whatever it is that you've got going on. So there's been some huge changes with The Funk'tional Nutritionist as a company and a brand over the past year, maybe year and a half, you guys are noticing. But what I want to tell you is it's all really good stuff. I'm coming to you from such an excited but also grounded place.
Sometimes for me, curious if this is true for you, sometimes for me, those two things don't always coexist. They don't always align - excitement and feeling grounded. So sometimes the ideas kind of pour in and I get really excited and really jacked up. But I can feel a little untethered or chaotic, especially if I don't have the time or the bandwidth to execute on the ideas. And that was honestly really the place that I was occupying for a while. And it's why things needed to change. So let's go back to summer of 2024.
That's when things really started to shift things. Things started to feel a lot harder just within my company, the organization. I joke that the org chart was kind of like a sunflower where I was the middle. So it felt like everybody in the company reported into me. And so what that looked like day to day was like I was just in the weeds. I was in a lot of the day to day. I was in my inbox, I was in our support inbox. I was talking to everybody through Voxer. Like I was just really involved in the day to day operations of the company.
I was CEO by title, but that was pretty much it. I wasn't operating as a true and effective CEO. I wasn't really able to do the creative direction that I like to do for the company. I wasn't able to really sit and occupy the visionary seat because I was so involved in the day to day weeds. And it's like really, really, really challenging to do both to be the CEO and the visionary and also be in the day to day weeds. And this is gets more and more true as your company grows.
It's just really hard to do both of them and do both of them well. I did it for a lot of years because I was a solo-preneur and that worked. And a lot of you guys who are business owners and you're bootstrap and things like that's just what you do in the beginning. And that's kind of what I did. Not just in the beginning, but for like a. I just took a lot of the same strategies that worked for me as a solo-preneur and I tried to map them over into an expanding team. And that's when it kind of stopped working. And I knew it stopped working.
It was never like the quality of our work suffered. It was never like the customer experience or the client experience ever changed. It was more so like how I felt and like how the organization like the behind the scenes stuff operated. And so when I say it stopped working, two things happened. One is I stopped Working, enjoying my work. Like, I am somebody who loves my work. I love to work. My work gives me purpose, it lights me up, it gets me excited.
I believe as humans, we are creative beings by nature. And my work is the avenue through which my creativity can flow. So it like, keeps me feeling alive. And it stopped feeling that way, which was not only a weird feeling, cause I hadn't really experienced that before, but it was also just like I started feeling kind of depressed too. Like it just. Nothing felt good in my work. And then the second thing that happened is we hit a plateau with our revenue. We just couldn't get past a certain place, which wasn't necessarily a problem.
We've always run very healthy profit margin. So it wasn't like the company was in danger or anything like that. The problem was that I was working more, longer, harder in doing things that I really didn't enjoy doing. So I was more stressed, not really enjoying the experience. And at the same time, we weren't growing, we weren't expanding our impact. So it kind of begs the question, like, why am I doing this? Why am I working so hard? And that was the thing that made me realize, like, oh, I actually have to do things differently. But I just didn't know what that looked like or how to do it. So I had enough awareness to be like, yes, something has to change.
But I didn't know enough to really understand what exactly that thing was. But fortunately, fortunately, fortunately, I aligned with the exact person who did know. And that is the beauty of coaches and mentorship and guidance. I found the exact right person. Really up until this point, we were kind of building the plane as we flew it. So we were making decisions based on the needs of the moment versus, like, okay, like, how does the decision I'm making right now, how will that impact us in a year from now, in two years from now, in three years from now? Is this sustainable? If we scale, is this decision scalable? It was more so like reactionary. Rather than be proactive, we were more reactionary. What do we need right now? What do we need right now? And I'm not saying that with any, like, judgment toward myself.
Like, this is. I can be very, very, very, very, very hypercritical of myself. And I really, like need to say this out loud so the former versions of myself hear me and all the different parts and pieces of myself hear me. Like, it's okay. That is very normal. It's very common for a bootstrapped, homegrown, built from the ground up business. It's just that what had gotten me here wasn't going to get me where I wanted to go. You know, something had to change.
So I hired a business advisory firm, somebody who I had met at a mastermind a couple years prior. She really specializes in seven and eight figure companies and just, she really knows what she's doing. She has an incredible track record. She's somebody I really, really trusted to help get me out of the weeds. And that was the turning point for me and for the company. In fact, September of last year, 2024, I flew out to San Diego to meet with her and her team. And I literally was texting my friend as I stepped onto the plane. And like, you know, when you walk through that little, like, portal to get onto an airplane, I'm like, I am. This is like a threshold. This is a portal. Literally, but also figuratively. Like, when I come back, I'm going to come back a changed person. Like, I set that commitment, I made that decision. My internal belief system started to shift, my energy started to shift. I'm like, this gets to be true. I'm going to come back, change.
And I totally did. So what they were able to do was look at the company with full due diligence. We had to get really, really honest about where the company was, where I wanted the company to go, what the company needed in order to do that. And be honest, like, are we giving the company what it needs in order to thrive and grow? And the answer is, no, we weren't. I also had to get honest about my role in the company, how I wanted that to shift, what I needed to be successful in my role as the CEO, in the visionary. As I say these words out loud, I feel a level of discomfort. I feel it in my chest. I feel it in my throat.
So, like, this is hard for me to say and even harder for me to execute on positioning myself as, like, somebody who really matters within the company and prioritizing my needs. I know that's a really, really hard one for all of us, and I just want to, like, speak into that. I can say these words. It's a lot harder to execute on them. But I also understand from a logical perspective, it's mission critical for the health and the growth of the company, you know, but difficult for sure, emotionally. So what did this look like in practical terms? We restructured the team. One of the big things we did was hire an integrator to my visionary. So this is a concept outlined in the book Rocket Fuel.
Honestly, when I read that book, you guys, I cried I was like, this is available to me, this is allowed. I can do this. When they described the visionary, they were like describing me. And I felt so much less isolated, so much less shame. I'm like, oh my gosh, I just need to find somebody who like gets that, who like understands that. Anyway, so we hired an integrator role, basically my number two. We restructured the org chart so it wasn't a sunflower anymore. We altered our compensation plans, we altered and changed our offer suite.
So what we offer as a company, we changed a lot of our company systems and our infrastructure. And we did all of this with three primary goals. One is building something sustainable and scalable without the chaos. So like I was building and growing. We've always had, with the exception of 2024, we've always had growth year over year over year. But it was a little like hard charging, like kind of like running on adrenaline, like chaotic, responsive, like building the plane while we fly type of vibe. And I wanted to do that. I wanted the growth and the scalability without that, without the chaos.
I was just ready to be done with that. I was personally was outgrowing that season of my life too. The other goal is just creating less owner dependency. So I was in a position where I realized financially I could take a year off. Logistically I couldn't take three days out of office without like shit hitting the fan. That's how in the weeds of the day to day I was in the company. And growth really can't be dependent on one person or one position. So certainly not me, but like nobody else in the company as well.
So that was part of the reorg of the organization is just making sure that one person doesn't hold all of the power because it puts that person in the same position. Like they can't take time off because then we're like pinging them all the live long day to be like, come help us. And like that's shitty for everybody. So less owner dependency. But just creating an organization that doesn't depend on one person like constantly being there. And then finally simplification of our business model, particularly in terms of what we offer and what we do. So that does a number of different things.
One, it helps the team know where to focus.
Two, it allows space for innovation. So I'm going to get to that part in a minute.
But three, it also helps our audience understand who we are and what we do and how we can help them. You know, as I just said a couple minutes ago, I am the visionary of the company. And I am at my happiest and most fulfilled and honestly of most value to the company. When I can study, when I can read, when I can research, and when I can create, coming up with new ideas is like my whole thing. I love it so much. I have no shortage of ideas.
And since I'm also a manifesting generator, I want to do them all, all at once. Who can relate? So I think what happened is I had so many ideas and I was moving in so many directions all of the time that our audience got a little confused and it became a little unclear who we are as a company, what we, what we offer and how we can help. And I really saw this and understood this. When I started getting people on Instagram DMing me, asking for practitioner recommendations because they didn't even know that's what the company offers, I was like, oh, if people don't know this is literally what we offer in the company, then we might need to change some things. So what we've done over the past year is begin to streamline our offers. But before we could really do this, before we could decide what to pull, what to double down on in what our offer suite looked like, we had to get super crystal clear on who we are, what our differentiators are, what makes us uniquely us, what we do that nobody else can do. And by the way, if you happen to be a business owner listening to this, this is something that you should be doing and may even annually. This is not a set it and forget it, you guys.
We're constantly evolving and growing as people, as organizations, and so our differentiators might also be growing and evolving too. And for me personally, I bring such a unique background into the work that I do. We'll talk about what that specifically means later on, but I really needed to make sure that that was at the forefront of what we do. So once we uncovered this and it was a process, I won't lie, this was a lengthy. A lot of meetings, lot of market research, a lot of data analytics, a lot of, like, me going into the woods and writing in my journal and sitting in meditation. But once we got through the process, it allowed us clarity, and that allowed us to pull back on some of our offers that didn't necessarily match our differentiator anymore. And I'm kind of like, at the point in my career, but also in the company that if a million other people are doing it, I don't really feel the need or the desire to do it too. Like, let them do it and will really show up and shine in the areas and places and spaces that only we can.
And that's becoming truer and truer and truer for me. As long as I gave myself the permission to actually do that, it became very, very apparent that that's actually what I want to do. So we rebuilt our offer suite. We enhanced all of our offers, the ones that we decided to keep. We really made them the best that they could possibly be for the best possible outcome for our clientele. So rather than going wide, going deeper within less containers. So now we have three main offers. We have of course, our Functional C.A.R.E. method where we're working with clients one on one.
We just brought on a third practitioner. So we are expanding that and expanding the team in real time.
We have of course, FNA, the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy where we train and mentor other clinicians in our 14 month mentorship. And we're adding a lot of things to that. Like currently I'm teaching a new program within FNA called the Roadmap to 10K Months. So really kind of like juicing that up to be like the best it can possibly be. So I mean, can you hear the excitement in my voice? Like, this is the other thing that simplifying our offer suite has done is allowed me to get so much more excited about what we are offering. Not to say I wasn't excited before, but there's just like a new level of like vibes that I'm feeling.
And then the third thing, the third thing is our Brain/Body membership that I am currently building out. And I'm so excited to share more about that with you today because this idea has really grown and expanded and snowballed in the best way possible. I've been sitting on this one for over a year and I think I kind of intuitively knew that there were some things that needed to happen before I could really birth this into the world. Like order of operations, like, like pull back. It's kind of like when you're drawing a bow, an arrow. I don't know, I've never done it, but like when you pull back, you know, on the string so arrow can few launch forward. It kind of felt like that, like pause, land the plane, rebuild the plane and then take off. So I mentioned earlier that one of the goals for restructuring the company and what we do was to allow more space for innovation.
And I want to speak into that because this is something that I've logically understood for a few years now, but had a very hard time claiming for myself and like embodying. But Natalie Ellis says this and it's so good that I have to quote her directly: "The founder's capacity is part of the company's competitive edge." So the founder, the CEO, the visionary, whoever you know, have whatever title you use. But the founder's capacity is part of the company's competitive edge. And she says, protect your, your capacity like an asset. So that is an internal mental shift that I've had to make that my time, my capacity is an asset to the company and I have to start treating it accordingly. And if I treat it accordingly, then everyone else will see me modeling that and will sort of organize themselves around that truth.
But it really starts from within. It really starts from me. I cannot innovate if I'm constantly in the day to day reacting to the day to day business. I cannot lead or create new things without a ton, like a metric ton of mental and calendar white space. I really learned this when I, last week I took myself to Maine, to our lake house to just have three days of deep space, like creative work. Time, time, no email, no voxer, no asana. Like just me, just me and my journal and some markers and some sticky notes. And what I got done would typically take me three months if I was like involved in the day to day.
So it's just so important. And you, you guys, this stuff takes time. Like creating new stuff takes time and energy, but also just capacity, like capacity to do it. And we can't evolve the company if I'm not taking the time to step back and observe what needs to be evolved. So I had to learn how to be very discerning with where my time is allocated. And I do have to shout out my team because the reason, the only reason that that is available to me now that I can do that is because of the team. So it's such a testament to them. And it's still a work in progress.
This is still something that I just have to keep kind of like, like upholding my own commitments to myself and my own time boundaries. I didn't realize how challenging that would be. As somebody who's like so keen on boundaries, I'm like, oh, this one, this one's a growth edge for me. This one's actually really, really, really hard. So I don't mean to say all of this as though it was so easy. It was not. It has been an entire year in the making. Some of it is still ongoing.
A lot of it was really challenging. I had to have a lot of hard conversations, a lot of growth edges, a lot of confronting Old patterns, old wounds, a lot of triggers and activations. For myself, this is like deep work, you guys. I had to change a lot of things internally so that the external could catch up. And that includes certain beliefs about myself, that includes certain expectations that I have of myself and of others. That includes certain standards that I set. And all of that is really difficult work. You guys know this.
And part of the reason it's so difficult is that the amygdala, which is the fear center in our brain, often will misinterpret and mislabel growth as danger or as a threat. So when you're on a growth edge, when you're doing something new, when you're actively changing, when you're growing, when you're expanding, it can trigger anxiety. Like, hands up. Who has felt that before? Like, I thought I was doing this good thing, but all I feel is anxiety. That's what's up. That's what your brain does. So you have a choice here. You can interpret that anxiety or fear as a bad sign and then pump the brakes or whatever you're doing and like fall back to the old ways.
Or you can recognize it for what it is and carry yourself through the fear and through the resistance.
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I was recently listening to Sarah Jenks and she said all initiations have a fuck ton of resistance. She drops F bombs all the time, which is probably at least a small percentage of why I love her so much. All initiations have a fuckton of resistance. The bigger the initiation, the more of a shitshow it usually is. And I was like, preach. So in order to be the person to create the thing, to do the thing, we kind of have to like go through it. You know, it's almost like we're being trained to hold whatever it is we're about to create on the other side. Like we're creating ourselves in the process.
We're putting ourselves through that training so we can come out on the other side with more strength, with more, more capacity, with more resiliency, with more ability to hold that thing. This is like kind of like Manifestation 101, but like nobody talks about it. Like you're trying to call in and attract all of these things. Like, do you have the capacity to hold it when it lands? So many people manifest, like they're like really good at calling things in, calling things in, but they can't hold it. It like slips through their fingers as soon as it arrives. Like we have to build the capacity to like hold it once it arrives. So I like kind of was laughing thinking about this. But it's almost like my guides, the powers that be, whoever my helpers are out there on the different planes, they're like, okay, we've got to rebuild some things.
Like, we're gonna get you ready for your next phase. The next phase is going to be really great. But this phase probably isn't gonna be so great, right? This is gonna be really uncomfortable for a while. Like not just for a couple of weeks either. Like for a whole ass year. You're going to be really, really, really uncomfortable for a solid year. But trust us, because it's going to be great. So I wouldn't say now I'm 100% on the other side of it because I think we're still on some growth edges with the company and I think that will probably always be true.
I am somebody who's always looking for growth and evolution. So I think that that's just like, you know, I landed on the planet. This is my Earth school. This is the curriculum that I was handed. So I think there's probably going to be some degree of that, which is great, you know, but I'm on the other side of it enough to look back and say like, wow, that was kind of tough. But man, was it so worth it. And I totally, totally, totally get why I had to go through that initiation. So now, now that I'm here, I am spending because I have time, right? I have more time, I have more space, I have more breathing room.
So I'm using that. I'm redirecting that time to spend in, in meditation, in breathwork, in sacred space, in the woods. Like I said, I went up to my main house for solo work retreat last week so that I can allow for the new downloads to come in, the innovation, the new stuff to land, but also to grow my capacity to hold more, bigger, deeper space for the next thing that I'm calling in. Because that next thing is really big. Like I have a really big vision for this one. A really big vision for this one. These, what I'm creating are the tools, the resources, the education, the rituals that changed my life. And I don't say that lightly.
It's like, oh my God, it's like life changing. Like, no, these like changed my life. These are the practices that allowed me to get off anti anxiety meds for debilitating panic attacks, that healed decades long struggles with gut issues, that allowed me to reverse autoimmunity, to get my life back from fear of being sick or what I call healthxiety, to allow my body to maintain a healthy weight. For those of you guys who do not know, my relationship with my body has not always been a harmonious one. I struggled with eating disorders for a decade, decade or more. And it was really, really, really hard. That is a thing of the past. Because of these practices, I have a really, really happy and healthy partnership with my husband, with my daughter, like I can show up as the partner and the parent that I want to be.
I like to think that I show up as a really good friend too, to my friends. And it's also. I'm just going to put this out there because, like, fuck it, why not? These are also the things that allow me to become a self made millionaire by 40, which is okay, I'm feeling some things as I said that out loud. Are we gonna delete it? Are we gonna go back and edit this one out? I don't know. I don't think I've ever said that out loud. So if we do leave this in the podcast, thank you for witnessing me in that. I have a lump in my throat and like a little bit of tears in my eyes, but that's because I, of course, never thought that this kind of thing was possible for me. So it's a big one, you know, and you know, that's not how we're gonna market this new thing per se.
But I'm speaking to you plainly and honestly from my heart to your ears. This is what this work has done for me and allowed me to do in my life and with my life. This is the medicine that I want to share with the world. And I'm like really feeling the emotions right now as I say this. I just feel it so deeply. Like really deeply. And because of my background, I do feel as though I'm uniquely positioned to teach this, to lead this, to guide people through this. Many of you know me as a functional medicine practitioner, functional nutritionist, educator on functional medicine.
And that is, is very true. And so much of the work that we do and what we offer and how we help people through TFN and this podcast, and also my education and my experience extends pretty well beyond that. So when I was in dietetic school all those years ago, I was simultaneously studying meditation and energy medicine.
Over the past 18 years, I have studied and received training and even certifications in a lot of different, different modalities. Meditation, energy, anatomy, holistic health coaching. I taught yoga publicly for over six years. Like, I think new listeners probably don't know that about me, but I was a yoga teacher for a while. I've done a lot of mind-body trainings. I'm certified as a spiritual health coach, certified as a compassion teacher through Stanford eft, nlp, hypnosis, breathwork, facilitator. So a lot of different stuff.
And so that's why I label what I do, how I practice and what I teach as Intuitive Functional Medicine™ because I really am weaving together the physical body, the nervous system, the mental body, the emotional body, the energy body, and even spirituality for those that are looking for that into all things that I do.
I'm able to weave this through in what I like to think is a very grounded, scienced back way that people can actually understand, that meets people where they're at, that provides an on ramp for you kind of no matter what your starting point is. And I love to bridge the science with the sacred and in that way guide you back to self trust, like guide you back to a harmonious relationship with your body and with yourself. That's really like kind of the ultimate goal of the work that I do. And I do believe pretty strongly, pretty passionately that this is the type of healthcare that we all need.
Whether we're aware of that yet we really do. And I've been sitting on a resource that can really help, like I said, for over a year now. And now that I have more capacity, time and space on my schedule, but also like within my nervous system, I think it's time to let her restart. So here's a little sneaky peek behind the curtain of the project that I'm working on and explaining some of the whys too. Cause that's what this episode is all about. Not just what I'm doing, but why. Why I'm bringing it front and center. What the origin story is and the changes that I'm making and why I am making those.
And you know, sometimes I announce things before we have all the details totally fleshed out. But that is kind of part of my process. I have to speak it into existence before it's totally mapped out. So we're still working on the exact infrastructure, the exact layout, the exact schedule and all of that. But more details will for sure be dripped out soon. And if you're on the wait list, you'll get first dibs on all of that. We'll link up the wait list in the show notes. So, origin story.
A few years back I released a program called Manifest Your Health. Many of you might be familiar with it, but what maybe you don't know is that I was super nervous to birth that program out into the world. Or like any body of work that was akin to that. Even though, as I just explained, energy has been a huge part of what I do. Even though manifestation is truly how I healed so much, I was worried that I would somehow lose credibility. I at that point had established so much trust with my audience and I didn't want to lose that. I didn't want to forfeit that. It was really, really, really at the moment that my business was taking off in a huge way.
People were seeing me more and more as a thought leader in health and I just, I was afraid, I was afraid of losing that. If I'm being very honest with you, I was afraid to lose that, and even though this program was steeped in so much science and so much research, I still felt like people would think it would be like too weird. So what I did, what I did is I signed up for a year long program with Stanford and I actually created part of graduating that program. And it was a year long program, part of graduating. You had to create a project, and so I created Manifest Your Health at my time in Stanford's compassion training.
And I know I did that, looking back, I totally know I did that to lend myself a sense of safety, to lend a little bit of credibility to the program. Because I was like, if I'm able to say, I don't think this was a conscious choice at the time, I think looking back, I'm like, I know what I did there. That was smart. That was a savvy way to source safety in your nervous system, Erin. Good job. Like, I think the, the thought process is like, if I am able to say I develop during the year I was studying compassion science through Stanford, it lended some cachet. So I felt like it maybe gave me like a little bit of a ground to stand on. But when I really sat with myself, I'm kind of like, why do I care if people think it's weird at the end of the day? Why do I care if people think it's weird? This is the thing that has helped me more than anything else in my life.
I just told you all the things that has done for me, me. Why am I like acquiescing to writing this off as woo woo? Why am I making jokes about like this being woo when it's been the most real, the most stable, the most trustworthy, the most long lasting, impactful thing that I've had access to in my entire healing journey. Journey, internal healing, external healing, all of it. And you know what's interesting? I started working on this episode because I usually, you know, some of these, these episodes take a while to put together because if I just got on the mic and started talking at you like, it would be a magical mystery tour, like stream of consciousness style. So I had my notes ready, I had my little journal, my little dear diary notes ready for this episode. And I, I stumbled upon this video from therapist Dr. Chris Hoff. And the title of the video was Manifestation: A Confession.
And I was like, boy, oh, boy, am I intrigued. And he was actually talking about something really, really similar. He was talking about how back in the day, he was really into Manifestation teachings, and he was putting them into practice. And he started seeing really positive shifts in his life, in his work, in his career, feelings about himself, relationships, health, all of it. But he didn't want to talk about it publicly because of all of the critiques about Manifestation. And he went on to, like, list out the critiques and also list out, like, the benefits. And it was just a really great video. But he went on to say, like, yeah, I'm really aware of these critiques.
It's not that I'm oblivious of them. I'm aware of them. But at the same time, I also can't ignore my lived experience. And this is my truth. My truth is that Manifestation really, really helped me. And I thought he just summed it up so well. And that's kind of where I netted out. I knew that my program acknowledged and addressed those critiques head on.
Like, we didn't shy away from them. Like, we addressed them. But where I eventually settled was if people see me as a thought leader, then I need to lead. And the thing about being a leader, it requires that you go first. And when you go first, that usually looks a little weird. That usually looks a little different. It's like that quote, first they call you crazy, then they call you for advice. So I'm like, all right, we're just gonna go for it.
We're gonna lean in. And I launched the program, and I even called it Manifest Your Health. Like, I double down. I put manifestation right into the title. I'm like, you guys, we're doing it. If we're gonna do it, we're really gonna do it. And again, I built out little nervous system safety checkpoints for myself. So when I first launched it, I only opened up 30 spots.
We ended up having 33. Because, you know, that's just what happened. I had 30. And sometimes people sneak in and it was 33. And it was an angel number. And I'm like, I love it. So 33. I intentionally kept it small.
I did very little marketing. The marketing that I did do was like, I'm doing something weird. I'm doing something different. If you want in, here's the link. It was very just like, you gotta trust me on this. So I knew approaching it that way was only going to attract like my old season vets, my old faithfuls, the people that were already down with Aaron Holt. I felt like I was doing something kind of vulnerable. But to offer it to people who didn't already know, like, and trust me, that felt too vulnerable.
With this particular body of work that like, that started to feel like, oh boy, is this really safe. And so I created containment for myself. Containment is a nervous system term. I created that for myself, a way for me to feel safe as I did this new indifferent thing. And that first round was such a success. People who joined had a great experience, so I offered it again immediately after and I had had 75 more people join. So if you're into numbers, 33 +75 is 108. Pretty cool.
Now both of those times I ran it live and then I decided to run it one more time, but this time I ran it more as a self study. So pre-recorded modules and then there was some live components just because I wanted to test it that way too. I'm like, okay, I know it can be successful if we run it live. What if there are some self-study so people can kind of move at their own pace? Does this body of work hold up to that? So it sort of to me felt like three separate beta launches because I was iterating each time to get people the best experience and we were weaving in feedback and all of that. So all in 200 people went through the program so far. The last time I ran it was over a year ago. And that's kind of what I was saying earlier. I intuitively knew I had to stick a pin in this.
So I'm like, okay, we did that. I now like pause there, stick a pin in that so I can move over here so I can pivot and shift my focus and do everything that needs to be done company wide to get me to a point where I can completely direct my focus on the next phase of this. Like, I just knew that it was going to require more of me than I had to give at that time. And so I really wanted to this to become what it needed to become, but I knew it was going to require more of me. So here we are now. So why now?
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We ,over the past year, especially the back half, like the past six months, we've really focused on growing our 1:1. We just saw such a need for this kind of comprehensive functional medicine care in the market and we wanted to be able to offer more of that.
It hasn't always been, we've always offered it, you know, every single year. It hasn't always been at the forefront of our marketing. So we just pulled some other things back and really put that at the forefront because I just sensed into like this is what people need right now. They really need that individualized care, that undivided attention, like focus on them, Just like pure utter focus on them. And so we wanted to provide that for people because that is the support that they needed and still continue to need. And with that we're also able to see what kind of resources folks need outside of just functional medicine care. And I really, really, really desire to create a space where our one to one clients can go without having to purchase like 1200 different memberships or feel like they have to tackle all their deep emotional healing and do all this inner work in like a six week program. I want to give people not just random education or like workshops or random practices, but a cohesive system to follow and to be able to move through it at their own pace.
So not just nervous system regulation, not just brain retraining, not just limbic system retraining, not just meditations, not just self hypnosis, not just energy healing, not just subconscious reprogramming programming, not just somatic practices, not just emotional release, all of it. Over the past 18 years I have gone on a magical mystery tour of different modalities, different healing modalities. And what I can tell you, it was never just one thing. It was so many things. Different modalities work for me at different times in different phases. And that's true for you. Different things will work for different people at different times. And so we know this to be true and we're recommending resources to our clients all of the time.
But I want a place where you don't need 12 different memberships to pay for or 12 different apps to download, or 12 different logins to remember. And so I wanted to, or I want to. I am currently shaping what was formerly Manifest Your Health into that. So let's talk about how it's growing, changing, evolving, getting an up level and a glow up. I first started asking myself, if this is to have a bigger reach and a bigger impact, what do people need to experience in order to have the most success with this approach? So I really started with that question first. And so here are some of the the changes that I'm making to essentially answer that question to give people the most that they can possibly get out of this experience. And the first thing is that rather than a program, I'm turning it into a membership Manifest Your Health was first conceptualized as a five week program. That's why I did a beta group, because I'm like, I think it needs to be five weeks, but let's try it out and see what happens.
As we were underway, it stretched to six weeks. And then we built in a sacred pause. So the second round became seven weeks. And then the last round I taught it, I also added an additional module for eight weeks. And again, that was based on client feedback. Now, the interesting thing that I noted, the first round participants were all invited back to the second round to repeat the process. And that's when things really gelled. That's when things really clicked in, really solidified.
Going through the process again, how having more time, more space with the material. And so they would tell first timers, like, you just have to trust the process, trust the process, go through the process, repeat. So I thought that was really interesting. And we also did exit interviews after the last round. And the vast majority of feedback, like the number one thing we heard is that people wanted more time with, with the process. So that's why we're creating it as a membership and not another set program with a set start date and a set end date. It is really an intentional system to support your transformation. And it's going to be layered so that you can revisit it as your capacity grows.
Because you guys know this, I don't need to tell you this. It's not like you have one transformation and then you're done forever. You're like, never have to work on anything ever again. I'm fine now. Like, that's not how it works. As humans, we move in cycles. Especially women. Especially women.
But all of us, we move in cycles. And so this is going to be a place and a space that you can come to revisit. It's this work, this process, this system is literally designed to be revisited. The process is about returning to yourself again and again and again and again. That's the work, right? And I know this, I live this, I practice this. So I wanted to create a space, a community that really allowed for this. Because here's the deal, you guys, we're teaching ourselves how to not operate from adrenaline all the time, rushing through things, binging things like the dopamine hits that keep you locked in really unfulfilling cycles. We're not doing that anymore.
We gotta retrain our brains, our nervous systems, our bodies. But with nervous system work, it's important that you don't get overwhelmed. You really have to take your time with it, allow for integration. It's a titration process with nervous system work. And so I want to create the environment to allow for that in an ongoing monthly membership. Just feels what I feel into it, when I sense into it. It just feels like the pace that we need to really do this work. Manifestation is not like trying to stay positive when your body is in a state of sheer panic.
You can only call in, you can only attract, you can only hold what your body feels safe with. So we have to first and foremost learn how to source force safety within our bodies. Manifestation is not just about attracting something to us. It's about our capacity to receive and hold what we call in. So this process is about creating real strength, real stability, real resiliency, real capacity. And this takes time and this takes repetition and repetition and repetition and repetition. It's like a muscle that needs to be used. It's like going to the gym and picking up a hundred pound dumbbell and trying to do a bicep curl.
How well do you think that's going to go? Probably not that great. So you have to start small and work your way up. That's nervous system work, right? So this membership is going to be there for you, you over and over and over and over again. So you can return to the process. You're not frantically rushing through the process because if you take the approach that you've always taken, you're going to get the same results. That is not how we rewire.
So that's the big change. We're turning it into a membership.
The other big change, it's kind of what I'm speaking into already, but we're adding in some physical body support. So even though this is partly a brain rewiring system, it's also a body rewiring system. And you cannot rewire an inflamed or survival mode brain. And there are a lot of physical drivers that can lead to that state. So we have to tend to the physical vessel as well. And here's what I realized about the OG Manifest Your Health because I was keeping it contained. I built it with the assumption that participants had already been through my other work.
So they had been through Eat To Achieve. They had been through the Carb Compatibility Project or they had been through Your Hormone Revival. So there was this baked in assumption that they had a handle on how to caretake their bodies, how to set themselves up for physical success. And in fact, the very first lesson in Manifest Your Health is we do not bypass the physical body. So the program sort of presupposed there Was this baked in assumption that you know how to do this? And I assumed that they already had an understanding of and a handle on nervous system health because nervous system health has been the backbone, the plumb line of in my entire body of work. You know, with my three month hormone program. The entire first month was all nervous system. You know, it was woven throughout the program even like you come learn nutrition for me, I'm going to teach you how to meditate too. Like that was just since day one, that's always been a part of what I do.
But rather than assume you know this for the next iteration of this program, I want to teach you this and I want to show you how to do this, how to build capacity, how to move from a state of dysregulation into a state of safety. We want to set you up for success with not just neuroplasticity, but also bioplasticity. We're changing the brain and, and the body with this program. So I have often said this, this is a trademarked phrase of mine, but use your own biology to heal. That was like the tagline of Manifest Your Health. Use your own biology to heal. We know that your body has capacity to heal itself. We just have to put it into optimal healing mode before we can do that.
And we know what your body requires to access and enter that optimal healing mode. There are certain inputs that your biology is coded for. So we have to start there. That is like do not pass go, do not collect $200. So imperative. And so I've created this five phase formula for this membership.
Phase one and two are really the foundations. The, and I say foundations, which is like boring, but they're like the foundations that A, you might not be doing doing. And it's probably why you're not as successful as you'd like to be with your health goals. And B, maybe don't have a clear understanding of why they're so important and how they're impacting your ability to change. So we're going to bring a lot of brain science and neuroscience online so you really, really understand like how your brain creates your reality and how physical inputs can actually shape this. So phase one and two are the foundations because they're the keys to unlock optimal healing mode. They're the keys to unlock your full healing potential. So rather than assume you know what to do, we're just gonna bake that right in so you have access to those resources in that education and that deep, deep, deep understanding plus the integration, you know, like how to actually Put that into practice. Now, another thing that's getting a bit of a glow up with this is the price. One of the goals with doing this and revamping this is to make this as accessible as possible because this work is so necessary.
This is what I see to be the recurring missing link in healthcare. Whether we're on the conventional side of things, but even the alternative, functional, root cause, holistic side of things. This is really holistic care and it's constantly being missed. This is really looking at root causes, root causes on the physical body level, but even deeper than the physical body level. The emotional root causes, energetic root causes, mental root causes, beliefs, neural system patterns that show up in the physical body as real symptoms, as real stuff. This is like a BF day, a big fucking deal. So we want to make this work as accessible as possible. And so we're keeping the price point really low as a monthly subscription.
We're still working on the price, but we are gonna keep it below $3 a day. So really the goal here is I wanna teach you how to be your own healer for less than $3 a day. So still working out the kinks of that. I don't have the exact price. There might be a founder's rate where we, with a lot of different things, we have to figure out what our investment is going to be, how many people, like, how many live classes we're going to do, how many people we need to hire, are we going to build an app? These are all things that are really going to influence and impact the price. And so we're still in the planning phases of that. But I know that I want to keep it low and I'm going to do a little bit of a vulnerability share here. There is, is some significant fear associated with keeping the price low.
So I'm going to be a little meta and talk to you about how I feel the fear and do it anyway. I feel the fear and navigate myself through it using some of these tools. So I had an issue recently that required me to hire a legal team where we had a potential breach of contract and my intellectual property was potentially being made misused. And it was really messy and it was a really emotionally uncomfortable situation. And that's all I will say about that. But the reason that I bring this up is because I think that that is weighing really heavily on me, because I recognize that by keeping the price point really low and making this really accessible, making this work, my body of work, really accessible, this means that more people will access it, which is great. And it also means that people can access it and take it and reproduce it as their own. People are going to have big feelings about this, but I have big feelings.
I'm navigating big feelings right now and I'm going to share them and I'm going to be really honest about the shit that comes up that people don't want to talk about because it's awkward and it's weird and it's funky and it's clunky, but it's real. Like, this is what's real with me right now. I am afraid to, like, put my heart out into the world and have somebody take it and be like, nope, this is actually my heart because it's happened to me before and it's the worst fucking feeling in the world. Okay, so let me just share that with you and speak into my truth, which is like, that sucks. And I'm getting like hot, like sweaty. Saying it. Like, this is a legitimate fear that's popping up. I think the reason that it feels, feels so rotten is because some of the stuff that I'm teaching about, like for example, the HPA access, you know, other people can teach on that too.
You know, a lot of the stuff that I was teaching on in 2017, 2018, like, everybody's talking about it. So I can like let that go and let other people share all that stuff. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Right? But there's some of this work that just kind of downloaded into me, that channeled into me. Like, I didn't get this five phase framework from anywhere other than my life, my lived experience. And the truth is, I navigated some really big life challenges to receive this wisdom, to receive this medicine that I now get to share with other people. And there's this inner part of me that's really nervous about making it more accessible because it feels so personal and it feels so much a part of me that to have somebody take it and recreate it as their own, it's just, it's bringing up some stuff. And so I recognize that I don't want to make a decision out of a wounded place.
I want to make a decision out of a higher place. And I know and I trust that I do want to make this work as accessible. So what I'm doing to carry myself through the discomfort and the fear and, and the inner parts of me that are raging out right now is all of the inner practices that are outlined and that are going to be outlined in this membership. This is truly the work that I come back to every single day. This program is really marketing it for health, for chronic health challenges, for chronic symptoms, for anxiety, for health anxiety. But I want you to know that everything that I'm teaching in this program is literally how I manifested everything and how I work myself through everything, how I navigate myself through everything. I'm always using these skills, I'm always using these tools. I'm always doing some type of daily practice.
Does it change depending on what I'm navigating? Absolutely, and that's why you get access to all of it. But I'm using these practices to navigate this fear because again, I don't want to make decisions from a place of a wound. I want to make decisions from my higher self. And I know that on the other side of this fear is so much impact. And I know that this medicine needs to get out into the world. It is truly, truly, truly my goal to be able to do that. So that's what's up for me. That's what's present, that's what's real.
Those are my updates. If you're interested in this new membership, get on the wait list. Realistically, we'll be opening things up like end of January, beginning of February. It's going to require a lot of deep focus work. But, you know, I'll be doing that and it might, it might come with a name change. I am not entirely sure we're going to keep the name Manifest Your Health. It might be a name of one of the modules, but I really want to meet people where they're at and I recognize that there are some people that don't love that word.
And so I'm just really, we're doing some market research, we're talking to some people, we're thinking through some things. I'm sitting in meditation and I trust that the right name will reveal itself to me. And maybe we'll keep the name. Who's to say so? Stay tuned on that. Thanks for listening. Hopefully you got something out of this show. If not, I just appreciate you listening to My Dear Diary and I will check you next week.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep it mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.