Gut Health, IBS & Anxiety to Building Freedom | How healing her gut led her to building a thriving functional medicine practice

[MUSIC] Welcome back to the Health Detective podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Scarlett, and today we are joined by Raewen Guerrero, and she is the gutsy executive coach who transformed her own health struggles into a mission to help others. After battling traditional medicine to resolve her own anxiety, IBS, Insomnia, and unexplained infertility, Raewen experienced burnout while ironically leading corporate wellness for a global bank in London. This pivotal moment led her to study functional medicine, becoming a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. Raewen has since guided over 500 women around the world to health through the gut brain connection in her online practice. She expanded her impact by creating FDA and business school business in a box. Today, Raewen draws from her decades of experience as a practitioner of positive psychology and CBT to mentor FDA's on branding and technology so they can quickly build thriving practices. Raewen, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited to have you here. Can we start with your own health journey? Yeah, of course. We can jump right in. Thank you for having me. This is very exciting. I haven't been on this new version of the podcast. I love that you are hosting. Thank you. This all began. I guess I was always the kid who was sick. I was my mother's first child. I think she was such a perfectionist. She couldn't understand that people got sick. The second I got sick, she would take me to a doctor. Fortunately, we had a lot of those in the family. I had a lot of antibiotics. I think I started on antibiotics from the minute I was like, "Daydaw, if you had a cold or a flu, get some antibiotics." I just meant, as everybody knows now, that that just weakens your immune system. By the time I was in my 30s, one marriage, not working out and going through a divorce, and that year, remember being really sick a lot, because you become the sole breadwinner when you're suddenly single. You can't get sick because you've got to keep your job going. I remember going to the physician, doctors at work. We had on-site doctors at work. I lived in London back then, going to the doctors and they just kept giving me more antibiotics. I'm like, "Oh my God, what is going on?" I was only one of them who I ended up becoming friends with and ended up starting my first company with. It was only one. In the seven minutes that they get to see you, he said, "You're in here a lot. Every month I see you and I have to write you another script." He's like, "Maybe you need to start looking into your immune system and your gut." I said, "My immune system and my gut." That's all he said. Literally, I just planted the sea. I went down that rabbit hole. There's an immune system in my gut. What antibiotics? Wipe out your immune system. This is before Chatt G.P.T. This is 2010, you guys. You have to really research and search for things back then. I went down this entire rabbit hole of trying to figure out what was going on with me and why. I was sick all the time and why. Every time I had alcohol, it actually got worse. I'd be getting over something. I'd have bronchitis or sinusitis or tonsillitis or an ear infection. It's like, go back to the doctor and get out of it. The immune system in the gut is probiotics. I started down that route of taking probiotics and realizing my gut was not in a good place. By the end of 2010 and by 2011, I had this diagnosis of IBS. That was the start of understanding what was going on between the gut, the immune system, and then the gut and the brain because along with the IBS diagnosis came this diagnosis of anxiety and panic. I would get these terrible panic attacks. Usually on a Sunday night before I had to go into work on a Monday. This was after having five line managers in four years. I had a lot of stress at work, even though I was doing a job that I adored. I loved my corporate wellness job. I was the head of corporate wellness from 2011 until 2016 when I walked away from corporate. There are a lot of things that were great about it, but the lack of leadership and the uncertainty around who was actually running my looking after me as a who did I have in my corner at work. I didn't really have anyone. There was a lot of politics going on at the time and the line manager that I did end up with. We did not gel. Let's just put it that way. There was a tremendous amount of anxiety and stress around the work that I was doing. I had these Sunday, I call them the Sunday scaries. Sunday nights would be, I couldn't sleep. My stomach would be flipping. I'd sometimes throw up because I was just so stressed and anxious about getting into work the next day. Then self-fulfilling prophecy couldn't make it into work the next day. Sometimes not until like 12 in the afternoon. One time he pulled me aside. He said, is this IBS thing? Is this an ongoing thing? I'm kind of like, well, I can't predict it. I don't really know how it's going to show up from one day to the next. I don't know how many people here can relate when you have a stomach that does not behave itself. You can't really decide, am I going to get into work on time today? Back then, we didn't work from home. You had to show up. Even though we had the ability to work from home, but I wasn't allowed to do that. There was a tremendous amount of pressure. London's a huge city. There are 10 million people in it. And rush hour was like between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. So even if I left home early, sometimes I'd have to turn around and go back because my stomach was freaking out. So it was awful, but truly awful. So yeah, just all that to say, that was the start of me delving into functional medicine, seeking a better way because I had seen all of the gastroenterologist, the endocrinologist, the psychologist because gastroenterologist who was very expensive. She looked at me and she said, I don't really think there's anything wrong with you. After we did tests and scans and all that stuff, I think you have a little candida overgrowth. But yeah, just eat brown rice and have some fish. Literally have some fish, eat some brown rice and take some better call. And you should be fine because you thought my cholesterol was high. My family has a history of high cholesterol, right, even regardless of what we eat. So I was just sort of like, well, this is very underwhelming and I feel like completely at sea and you know, she said, I think you should probably see a psychiatrist. I'm like, lady, do you know that I have studied psychology and positive psychology and CBT and hypnotherapy and I practice meditation and I teach it at work? Like what is your deal? Like I do not need a psychiatrist. I'm like, I am not imagining that my stomach is flipping inside out and you know, I'm going between running to the bathroom and then not being able to go for three or four days. So that was very irritating. I found the entire medical mill extremely frustrating. And I had been exposed to them like I said, like my whole life since I was little, like my dad actually ran a health insurance company. So he used to set up health insurance facilities at people's offices. So he would set up doctors and opticians and dentists and all that kind of stuff and he did that all across the Caribbean. So I always had access to physicians. Unfortunately, right, like they were his friends, they were our family friends. They were having dinner with us anytime I had a snipply, it's like, oh, go talk to Dr. Tenney. He'll get you a script and they'll just write me a script and I'm back on antibiotics again. So that was my whole life being around medical professionals, right, who just all they knew to do was, oh, you're sick again. Okay, we'll just get you another prescription. Not like, well, why are you sick again? So Dr. Nathan, the doctor in London, he was the only physician that I think I had met at that time in 35 years of being alive and being around doctors who said, I think we need to look at your immune system. I think things going on there. Thank goodness for Dr. Nathan. Yeah, thank goodness for Dr. Nathan was amazing. He was a South African physician who was living in London and he was going down that functional medicine route at that time. He was doing a master's in clinical nutrition. And so he was saying, like, think you need to look at the immune system in your gut. So anytime I would go back to him, I'd tell him all the things that I was finding out. I'd be like, look at what I fear out here. And he's like, very good. You're on the right track. And anyway, fast forward to 2016 and I burnt out completely in the corporate job and walked away from it. And during that time, I took like a six months sabbatical. I know not everybody can do this, but I was able to do that at the time because my grandmother had passed and she and I were very close. So once she was gone, I was really like, what am I doing with my life? Like I am living sub optimally. I am not living the life I thought I was going to live. I'm living in a two by four in London, you know, like you're paying whatever it was, 750,000 pounds to live in this apartment in the center of everything. But you can't like everything is just so fast paced, polluted, dirty, completely ill-eating. Yeah, just overstimulating, so toxic. And I had done that for 20-something years at that point. And I'm like, I really don't want to be doing this. This is not what I thought my life was going to look like. You know, you just get kind of caught up in the rat race of like climbing some corporate ladder and trying to be the best around people. You don't even really care about something. Like I'm far away from my family and far away from everything that I really care about. There's no sun. Like what am I doing? So yeah, I had this Damascus moment at my grandmother's funeral where I'm like, what am I doing? Life is short. Like this is not good. So I didn't go back to work. I told them I needed some time out. And I started looking into what I was going to do next. I started training as a pilates instructor. I loved pilates. training as a Pilates instructor and my boyfriend at the time who was part of the problem, by the way, but he said, "What are the things you're learning Pilates for?" Like, you could just do that for fun. Like, he's like, "All you do is talk about food and the gut and you're always looking at toxins and what's in the labels and he's like, why don't you just go study nutrition?" I'm like, "My gosh, such a good idea. Why didn't I think of that?" Yes, I should just go study nutrition. And I'm like, "How do I study nutrition?" You know, like, "Do I have to go back to school? Do I need, you know, another degree? Like, what do I do with this?" Found out about IIN, started that, right in the middle of starting it and realizing, "I'm not really sure this is the right fit for me. Saw something on my LinkedIn. Somebody had become a functional medicine certified health coach. I'm like, "Oh, that sounds way more like my jam." So figured out that they were actually taking students within like two weeks and you had to write this admissions essay and you had to do a video and whatever. So I did that, pulled out of IIN, got accepted into their program, did that for a year, left the corporate thing officially March of 2017. I had to go back for a little bit and kind of negotiate my exit and tell them what I was doing next. I said, "Look, I'm actually just going to become a practitioner." Like, I don't think this whole making PowerPoints all days for me. In a dark room with no windows. Yeah, in a darker window. I don't think it's for me anymore. So yeah, because that's literally all they had me doing in the end. Like, before my job had been so dynamic, I got to speak, I got to present, I got to create and design programs and coming down to that last year, it was just like, just sit down and make his PowerPoints on how great we are. And like all the cool things that we're doing for employees. I'm like, but we're not actually doing anything. Yeah, but you need to tell people that we are. So there was a lot of propaganda involved in my job and I really hated it. I was just like, "But we're not being honest. We're not telling the truth that all we're doing is signposting people to the insurance company and the medical system." And I'm like, "That isn't well-being. How did this become the well-being job?" So I got sick of that, quite literally sick and walked away and started my own practice with Dr. Nathan. So I told them what I was doing. Yeah, I told I had everything. There's still a lining. There's a silver lining of growing up with all the medical professionals around you is that maybe you were intimidated to talk to doctors. You obviously got into a corporate job where you could talk to doctors and then along comes Dr. Nathan and changes your whole trajectory. Literally. Like, changed everything about my life. And I ended up breaking my ankle that year that I quit, right? That was the other thing. It was like, "Grandmother died, broke at an ankle." I'm like, I physically cannot move. So now I'm like forced to sit with my thoughts and figure out my life. So Dr. Nathan was the one who kind of helped me get back on track at that point too. He was giving me IVs and all that, you know, like vitamin infusions, not that wasn't hooked up to a drip. It was like vitamin infusions, mires, cocktails, all that kind of great stuff to kind of start building me back up. And yeah, we started a practice and also along with another friend of mine through my well-being job, like she was the head of well-being at Royal Bank of Scotland. So we had, you know, we'd connected over all the things that we'd wanted to do that, but we weren't being allowed to do at work. And then we ended up like, "Okay, you know what we're going to do? We're going to form this collaborative or collective of professionals who care genuinely about what's happening with people's health and we're going to actually make a difference." So we did that. We actually did that. We started doing that. I finished my FMCA training, broke up with the bad boyfriend because I realized he was part of the toxic drain after five years of whatever being with him. I was like, "Wait, you're part of the problem as well." I was really part of the problem because I kept picking people who were completely unsuitable that I had to take care of. And I suddenly realized, like, "I don't need to take care of men. I need to take care of my clients, you know, like I have to really have the energy to take care of other people, not these giant man children." So because yeah, I can also relate. I know everybody's been there, right? Where you end up being like, "Oh, I'll save you. I'll fix you. I can help the wounded bird." You know, and you end up with this collection of strays that are just like dragging you down and they don't know how to help themselves and you end up enabling them. So I was like, "You know what? I made a commitment to myself when he and I split up." I was like, "Never again taking care of a man. I'm going to take care of people who are going to pay me to take care of them. I'm not going to suck the life out of me." Yeah. You know, that was the, that was a big turning point 2016 was a big year for me, big, big year. You know, it's been 10 years actually. I think I officially started my company on April, if in 2016. I had met Mark Heimann on the fourth and to my grandmother passed on the fifth and that's when I started. I was just like, "I'm doing something different. I don't know what it is, but I'm starting a company. I'm not sure how it's going to pan out, but I'm starting it." And 10 years later, here you are. 10 years later, in a different country, not in England, got away from all of that. I have a totally different view of the world now because back then, I would think I was like super. I don't know what the word was, but very kind of Lucy Goosey, like anything goes, you know, just like, "Yeah, man, like, let's all get along." And now, I'm just like, "Yeah, we can all get along, but there are principles and there are, there are frameworks that we need to adhere to and you can't be all Lucy Goosey about your health, especially." And you can't believe that that unfortunately the medical system does not have your best interests at heart. And I think back then, I really thought like, "Oh, my doctors really care." And there are doctors who care. Trust me, they do. But trust me, there are. Like I said, I've been around enough of them. I know that there are many of them who do care, but the system itself is rigged for failure. Yes. For their failure and for yours. And that's a lot. Let's unpack something that I heard you say that I feel that I relate to and I see it in my practice a lot. And I, you know, tell me if this is how it resonates with you. And, you know, maybe the audience will also resonate. And I know that this is with other FDA and practitioners. When you heal the body, physically. So you physically seal the gut. You know, you've gotten rid of that dysbiosis or whatever's going on. You have created a really resilient immune system because, you know, that's what you kept saying. Your immune system, everything was just like piling up until you healed the gut. Once you get there and you are a more healed person, you have the ability and the capacity to draw boundaries in your life, your external life. So like getting rid of the boyfriend who was dragging you down, you know, instead of being sort of Lucy Goosey with anything goes and letting anybody in your world and not having framework and, you know, structure. And then all of a sudden going, hang on a second, I need those. I need that structure to thrive. I see that constantly. There is a correlation with having a, you know, sealed gut and having kind of sealing off people that don't serve you. You know, I never thought about it that way, but that makes a lot of sense because, you know, when you're leaky in all these different areas of your life, right? Where you're like, I don't have clear boundaries. I'm kind of like the people pleaser. I want everybody to like me. I want to make sure that no, and you put your own needs on the back burner because that's essentially what it is. It's like, I don't matter. Everything else matters, which is so terrifying to say out loud. But it's true. And I think it's very relatable for so many women. Totally. I think even men have issues with that too. Like that's why they succumb to peer pressure with drinking and, you know, like, oh, yeah, like I don't want to look like I'm the worst. Like I'm just going to slam down as many of those things as possible. And even when they're like, I'm going to feel like crap the next day. My wife's going to yell at me. Like, but they do it because they're not good at boundaries, right? Boundaries. There's a lot of freedom in boundaries. And we just, I know, even the people like, oh, structure, ooh, I don't need that. Don't need to go to bed at 10 o'clock. Like, what do I need to do that for? I'm like, because you're going to pay for it tomorrow and not just tomorrow in the future and not just you, but everybody else around you is going to pay for it. So having that leaky kind of existence just leads to a lot of leakyness in other places. Leaky hormones, leaky gut, leaky blood vessels, you know, so yeah, I never thought of it that way. Like when you seal off the gut and you repair, like you actually end up sealing off all this other stuff around you too. And you protect yourself, you know, you actually become a healthier human, not just biochemically, but how you function in the world and the people around you. Yes, I have, I have really experienced that. I see that in your story. I see that in a lot of my clients. And in all honesty, I know, you know, we're going to move kind of morph this into the business conversation. I see it in my business. You know, I mean, not being the practitioner who people pleases or bends over backwards or, you know, is like, like, people have to participate in their own healing. And I am there for accountability and guidance, not the one trying to do it for the client, which prior to my healing journey, I was that person. I was like, dragging them to the water to drink, like, let's go. You know, now it's more about support and guidance and not allowing it to pull me down. Because who, how can I serve people if I'm not well? Completely. You know, I love to teach practitioners that when they do come into, because I know business coach, FDNs, right? So I now coach them around like, you cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot work, you know, 70 hours a week and expect to give it all to your clients and actually be able to see all the things that were required to see as practitioners, you know, you're supposed to be able to pour from a place of fullness of feeling like, oh, wow, I've got more to give, not like I'm completely burnt out. So my own burnout, like you said, you can kind of see, I call, I see God's hand in everything. Like yeah, he took me through that to show me like, okay, you can't live like that anymore. Now you need to teach other people that they can't either. And that's not really part of his design. Like rest is such a huge part of the design for the body to recover and repair itself. And the way that the body's been created is that it can repair itself. Not enough people are aware of that. They think like, oh, I need a statin or I need an antidepressant or I needo or whatever it is. You know, I need an antibiotic in my case. No, you don't. And like you really actually don't like there are definitely probably times when those are called for, but the common cold or flu, not one of them. Like if you give your body the rest that it needs, usually you've gotten the colder flu because you haven't been resting enough. You probably have been, you know what I mean? Like you're, it's not because you're exposed to the virus. It's the fact that you don't have the inner innate resilience to resist it. And why are you not resilient? Why is the immune system trashed? So if you work on you, the person rather than focusing on the problem. And that's what I saw with cancer, by the way. So like my mom ended up being diagnosed with cancer. And all they did was treat the cancer, not the person. So they just wiped out her entire immune system even when chemo was not helping her. But they're like, oh, we got to get the cancer. We got to get the cancer. I'm like, why are we focusing on the cancer? Why are we not educating the patient on the fact that they might be part of the problem? And I know no one wants to hear that, right? Like if you had a five-year-old kid with leukemia, like they're not the problem. But in my mother's case, that was an endometrial cancer, which is an estrogenic cancer. I now know a lot about that because she and I have very similar genes. I ended up running genetics on her and myself and my sisters because I want to make sure like what are we dealing with here? Yeah. And you know, no one had cancer in the family before. But you know, my mother grew up in a time like in the eight, well, she was an adult in the 80s when eating fast food was like a sign of wealth. Like, oh, I can go out and get Chinese food. I can go and get this and that. And then she just kind of like laid it on with all of the convenience factors because she can afford it. So, you know, that was a status symbol at the time. Like, I can afford not to cook. I can buy whatever I want. I can go have nice dinners and restaurants. And even if the restaurants are loading you up with MSG and all sorts of terrible and Chinese food was her thing for whatever reason. She like freaking adored it. And everything was just go, let's go for Chinese. And I'm like, oh, not again. And I'm like, I'm then wondering like, oh, why is my nose streaming after I eat that or why do I have a headache? And I'm like, mother, it's the D, you know, like it's killing you. A bunch of other things that she loved that were not great. Like she loved all those food dye things. If you saw her with a bag of M&M's like, you know, that was like a normal thing for her or whatever. Sadly, you know, she didn't have great genetics for detoxing things. I don't either. So that was what I found out, like, I don't have certain certain genes for for glutathione, for metabolite, for methylation. Like I'm missing quite a few of them. And I'm like, okay, so I need that's why I probably am more susceptible to things than other people. Right. I have issues with vitamin D conversion, even if I sit in the sun for five hours a day, like it would not convert for me. So I have to take a supplement around it. So which is a real bummer because that is part of the immune system, too, right? Like if you don't get enough vitamin D, your immune system is going to tank and store your hormones. So all the things that I've been kind of struggling with my whole life hormones immune system and got like, I was like, okay, I don't have great genes, but the way that I'm living is not helping either. And that's the thing that I want people to understand. Like yes, you might not have crap. You might not have amazing genes, but you can actually do so much to support them by the way that you live. But if you're going to go down the route of like, let's say conventional standard American diet or standard Western diet, which is fast food, not sleeping, being on devices all the time, not breathing because when you're on a device, you actually don't breathe and you keep scrolling. So you're like, you're basically creating a physical anxiety, a physiological anxiety within your body. So the body is interpreting it as a stress, right? And you're creating all of this stress around you that you might not be perceiving a stress, but the body is taking it in a stress. So the go go go go go life. Yeah, the three meetings, the three back to back meetings that you've booked, like that's a stress on your body. You need to build in time for boundaries, for breaks and for breath. The three the three bees. They're my three bees. I like that so much. You know what I mean, ultimate. I don't know when I have one question before I move into this next piece. When did you become an FDN? Because through your journey. Yeah. Yeah. So let's see. Dr. Nathan and I we did that for maybe two years and then I met Reed. And it's a funny story because I had I didn't need to become an FDN, right? And I tell everybody this. I said when Reed told me I should take his course, I just said I don't need your course. I'm like I have a functional medicine doctor and I have a functional medicine nutritional therapist that I work with. So I kind of was very uppity about it because I was able to order labs without the medical director. I didn't need a medical director program because I had my own medical director. So I didn't need to do that. And it was funny though because once I'd started I started doing it in 2019 when I met him. I said let me look into it. I'll look into it, right? And I started doing and for full disclosure you guys like I can tell Reed things like he's my husband. Oh, I met him and I you know he's trying to like tell me you should take my course and I'm like I don't want to do your course. Like I don't need your course. And now we joke about it. It took me a while to get through it because it changed probably like three times in one year. Like in 2020 bio health went out of business and that was who they were running the labs with and it kind of happened overnight and Reed had to find new labs like in the space of like I don't know 24 hours. He started like ringing up all these lab companies that he knew. And so it was a really short 2020 was so 2016 was a big year. 2020 was another big year. I had started the course in 2019 and I think I officially graduated in 2023. I had kind of gone through all the modules by 2021 but I never scheduled the practicals. And then it had changed like two more times during that time. And I decided like oh my god if I'm going to do the practicals I'm going to have to start all over again. So I think I've been through the FDN program like three times before I actually ended up doing the practicals and graduating. Okay, I just have to share this. FDN Summer Open House is our biggest event of the year. It's coming up this June and it is completely free. If you want to know how practitioners are charging 4,500 to $8,000 a package and building wait lists, this is where you find out all of June 40 plus live sessions, advanced functional lab trainings, real client case breakdowns and business strategies straight from our six and seven figure FDN practitioners. This is all inside access that most people pay thousands for. You can grab your free spot at the link below. Well, I mean first of all persistence. Good for you. And good for him for being persistent on you finishing the course. So that's amazing. But what I was going to kind of come back around to your point of like, yeah, maybe you don't have the greatest genes. Like I don't know how anybody could say I've got the best genes well without actually testing it. But our epigenetics, our lifestyle, the pieces we have control over and to the FDN pillars, the dress pillars, the diet, the rest, the exercise, the stress reduction, the supplementation, implementing those pieces can I don't want to say override completely, but can change so much for somebody's health. Yeah. Living proof, your living proof, you know, we obviously have clients that are living proof of literally just those five pieces. You know, that we're not even talking about genetics at that point. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, for your mom, not only in the 80s, was it a status thing to eat out? There also wasn't the information to understand what was happening inside the body when we put those inflammatory ingredients inside of our bodies. Like there is today. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm grateful to be alive in 2026 because I mean, if someone had to go gluten free or dairy free now, trust me, it is so much better now than it was in 2011 when I had to do all of that one way. I had my IBS diagnosis because I basically was eating cardboard for a while. I was the same like art. The same and funny, you know, when clients are like, oh, I don't really want to go gluten free. It's hard. I'm like, no, I've got a doc here of every swap and every brand you can possibly find at any grocery store or any restaurant here you go. Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly what I do with people too. Like you give them the swaps and I make it like publicly available to I put it like on my Instagram. I'm like, if you want to start making some swaps, here's how you do it. So yeah, no, it's good to be alive in 2026. Let me tell you. I agree. I agree. Well, thank you so much for sharing your transformation, your health transformation journey. I want to dig into how you became a business mentor for FDN and what that looks like for current trainees and graduates today. That's a great question. So like everything by accident, and I get actually not by accident. There's no. Everything is by divine. Like, you know, it wasn't my plan, but clearly, somebody else had a bigger plan. So as I was finishing the FDN practicals, I remember I was in in Mexico and I was doing these practicals and I had taken a month out to finish them because I wanted to just schedule them, boom, boom, boom, boom. So every week I had an exam. And while I was there, someone reached out to me and she said, someone I knew from the conference circuit, like people you see and she said, "Hey, friend of mine's doing the summit." And she, someone just pulled out one of the speakers. Do you mind doing a thing, like a speaker in an interview? And I said, "Sure, I'll do an interview. No big deal. I didn't think anything of it." And I ended up getting a $7,500 client off of that and I didn't think she was going to become my client because I thought, I'm still finishing this. I still have to build out my platform, my program, whatever. Because I had other programs and stuff that I had done prior to that, but I had used another platform. And when I was doing the FDN thing, I had moved to the US. So I had to say goodbye to Dr. Nathan, which was very sad. And that's actually what prompted me. It's like, "Well, now I don't have a medical director. I need to be able to get my own labs." I have to do it. So I was like, crap, breathe. Now I got to do your course. I got to finish it. I got to finish. So I had to finish it. And like I said, I kind of scheduled the practicals, boom, boom, boom. And I told myself, "I'm not taking any new clients. I only want clients who are American. I don't want any people from the UK because I didn't want to have to wake up really early anymore." That was really horrible. Like four o'clock in the morning, having to see people. They want to do that. So yeah, because it's an eight-hour time difference between California and London. So anyway, I ended up taking on this client that I really actually could help. My heart was very moved by her story. She had MS and she had heard me talking about like the gut brain connection and she realized like she was constipated and a bunch of things. And I thought, crap, now I have to build out a program for her. So now for everybody who thinks before you start taking on clients, you need to have all this stuff built. Trust me, I was the person who had nothing built. Okay. So what I did was I was seeing her every once every two weeks. And just in terms of the timelines of like when you take on someone from the minute you have your initial consultation or your onboarding call with them, it takes about four weeks before all the labs are out and back. So I had about four weeks to kind of get module one prepared for her and record a video and make a workbook and all that great stuff. So I had module one ready for her for her R&R. So it was all about releasing toxins. And then I saw her another two weeks after that and then I had module two ready for her. And every two weeks, I would have another module ready for her. So I built out business in a box for my own clients and then people that I had studied finishing up the FDN practicals with, they were saying like, oh, I don't know what to do. Like I don't know what kind of handouts to make. So let me show you what I built and I showed them what I built and I showed them how I had an automated platform inside of Biocanic and they said, okay, we buy this for you because this is like this is going to save me so much time. And I asked Jeremy, who's the founder of Biocanic, and I wasn't working for him or anything, but I was paying them to be on their platform and I said, hey, Jeremy, is it possible to copy this over and to sell it to someone? And he's like, yeah, we could do that. No problem. And I'm like, awesome. So I did it. And then she told about 10 other people and then I sold it to them. And then at the same time, Reed said, oh, we need to build out a business in a box for graduates because they're all like complaining that they don't have anything, you know, when they graduate to be able to give people. I said, oh, don't worry. I already did it. And he's like, what? And I'm like, yeah, I sold like 10 of those. And he's like, how? And I told him this story because we don't actually really ever talk about work. I know people think like, oh, Reed and Ray would probably talk about work all the time. Very rarely. Because he just likes to keep a boundary like that, you know, we're not really going to talk about work. So I said, I already did it. And like, I sold it to these 10 people and I'm doing like a training with them and I'm teaching it live. And he's like, he's amazing. He's like, can I see it? Can I show it to my team? So I showed it to the team. And then Brown, he's like, yep, this is exactly what we're looking for. And that's how business in a box happened. Then I started working for Jeremy at Biocratic because he said, actually, it wasn't him. It was Jen. God bless her. Jen Malekah, who you guys have had on before. Jen, I think, called me up one Saturday morning. She said, I think Jeremy needs someone like you to help him with the stuff that you're doing. And how do you feel about working for him? I'm like, yeah, sure. I'll work for him. No problem. I said, but I still want to do my business. She said, yeah, I'll be part time. So she had a chat with him. He called me. He said, when can you start? Like in a couple of weeks, he said, what about tomorrow? And I'm like, well, okay. So it was like November 1st, 2023 started working for Jeremy. And then everything just kind of snowballed from it. And then we started learning about Go High level at that point as well. So I was recording a lot of videos for them learning about Go High level, which is a client relationship management system to help practitioners with their marketing, not just practitioners, but anybody with their marketing, like building up funnels and email nurture sequences and forms for collecting information about your clients and sending out lead magnets and all that kind of stuff. So he said, I want you to learn everything you can about this. And I'm a fast learner when it comes to tech. So I was able to spend maybe about a month to two months just like absorbing YouTube videos, learning all this stuff, building things out myself that broke initially. But you know, you have to perfect it and all that great stuff. So the business mentoring came off the back of that because I ended up having to show people how to do it. And then seeing how it worked for me. I was like, okay, well, this is what it's doing for me and my clients and how it's automating processes for them on top of the stuff with business in a box. And it just all became super gant and then he said, Oh, do you want to help me run a conference? And I'm like, I used to do events. I don't know. I mean, how much help do you need? So it was like in the middle. So the entire journey was just like an evolution. Like it was just like, Oh, as you get good at one thing, they're like, okay, well, let's give you some more to do and see how much you can handle with that. I got to tell you, like events was my whole life. I don't really ever want to run conferences so much again. Like we did it when we survived. Jen did an amazing job MCing. Jeremy did a phenomenal job too. The second Hicks conference was way better than the first one. The first one was the one that I did. The second one is the one that Jen handled with Laney. It was so much better. I think everybody had a great time, but the behind the scenes, it was just like so much like, he scrambling. And I'm like, okay, not good for my nervous system. I would think I'll be doing that one again. I was just going to say, be right back on the path to burnout again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, this is not for me. My thing is seeing people one on one, helping them meeting them in this space. I love this type of connection. I love being able to see a transformation. I do enjoy that giant. I like being part of the conference, but I don't want to be the person who is responsible for holding it all together because I feel like the Wizard of Oz just behind the curtain with like strings. So it's way too much pressure, right? I don't know if you're a professional. I'm a perfectist. And when you have that like weight on your shoulders, you're like, oh goodness, like I got to keep a thousand plates in the air. Yeah. And we did, we did end up bringing in people to help. And the entire Viacanic team was like phenomenal at like showing up on the day, but all the lead up to the stuff like, and thank God, I knew all the things about the email literature sequences and how to build a mountain, go high level because we were able to use the platform that I had just learned about earlier that year. And that helped run the entire conference like to be honest, to keep everybody honest and creating CSVs and import files and all that stuff of tracking attendees and who's a VIP and who wasn't and who's going to get a swag bag and who's not. So, you know, it was a great experience, but yeah, the business coaching came naturally as a result of all of that. Yeah. So it's kind of all evolution. And then I think Ev asked me to come on Monday, mastermind it a couple of times. And each time, you know, you end up sharing insights and then they're like, do you want a job doing this? And I'm like, yes, okay, I'll do it. I love that. I'm actually a guest person, but in a positive way, not in a way that's what totally burn you out. But like in a way that's like, hey, here's an opportunity. Let's go for it. Yeah, totally. Because I see that and I, you know, when I pray, I pray for Lord, like, you know, put me in the places in front of the people that need what I can help them with, you know, help me shine so that they can actually be helped at the end of the day. And it's been working out really well. Like, you know, I've had like 20 business coaching clients since then, probably a little bit more because I had obviously been trialing it out on other people before officially becoming an FDN business coach. I'd put people through my own version of a program before it became FDNified. And so that's separate to business in a box. That's actual like business one on one mentoring. And I put it through people through that before actually becoming an FDN mentor. So maybe a little about 25 people that I've helped one on one doing this sort of thing. And now we have like a little community going and online one. And they support each other. And it's it's so cool. So I still get to show up in the Monday masterminds. I still get to do business insider for the trainees. When you hit module 13 as a trainee, you're suddenly exposed to the world of business. They want to make sure that you know all the clinical stuff before they put you into the business stuff. So after module 13, then you're invited into things like business insider and the bridge calls with Jill, Philo and Jen. I think that that's a big pro for FDN in terms of the certification course that no other health coaching course has most health coaching courses. Like you said, you were initially in IIN. Now maybe it was just, you know, that that didn't drive for you, which is fine. But I think most are like, here's the modules and then go out into the world and do this thing. Whereas I really felt that when I became an FDN, I mean, I was an entrepreneur prior to becoming an FDN. But knowing you had the support of the community, knowing you had the ability to print out lectures and talks and now with you having the business mentors like literally in place, signing up for the program and your business mentors in place, plus the ability to work one on one or the business in a box. So you've white labeled like your printouts, your handouts, what else is inside business in a box? That's a great, great question. So a lot of people think it's literally just like Canva templates that they can personalize. the idea is that you are going to teach people about the class. customer journey. Like once they once they start to work with you. So there's an actual like I call it a blueprint a program blueprint where you map out what happens on every day within Inside your program when someone works with you. So I give them the one that I used for my own clients and then I encourage you like, okay, now it's your turn. Go on map out what's going to happen on each day with your client on day one. What do they get? Do they get a contract? Do they get a video? Do they get an intake form on day seven? What are they getting? Are they getting the workbook? So we map that then it becomes then then once you have that mapped out, then you put it into the automation on biocanic and it gets delivered seamlessly like there's just like you set it and forget it once you're done with that like you don't have to think about it ever again. So when you onboard a client for the very first time, instead of you like, okay, now I got to go through my checklist of like let me send them the MC scorecard, let me send them the lifestyle and medical history for them, let me send them the diet check record. It's all just built to drip out over time. Yes, that's so amazing for the practitioner easy no burnout. Right. I've seen in the AFDNP group, the Facebook group. That idea like I don't know where to start and I've seen you jump in like we need to automate some things things that you don't need to, you know, put your brains energy into. Put your energy into reading the labs, put your energy into making the protocols, don't do it on the admin stuff. Yeah, totally. And that's really the thing that I realized like everyone was like so overwhelmed by like I got to create a handout, I got to do this, I got it. I'm like, no, you don't. There's so much stuff for now like and the canva thing is so easy like one lady God bless her. She told me she ended up paying somebody $250 to like change all her counter templates for her. And then I had one coaching session with her and she said, you just showed me what I paid someone $250 to do. Like you did it in two minutes and now I know I could do it in two minutes and I'm like, yeah, it's like the way the world is set up right now. So there's so much stuff that just becomes so seamless and easy to do. So, you know, the automation, the I call it streamlining like you are streamlining your workflow, not just for you, but for the client where they don't have to think too much about like what am I supposed to do next. So they think that they're getting this really high touch program from you, even though it's super low touch for you as the practitioner right because all that you're doing as well is you're educating them on the things that you would end up repeating over and over for clients anyway. So you would probably say, you know, I'm probably needed to go gluten free, dairy free and pay attention to what your food sensitivities were drink purified water, you know, make sure you're going to bed at 10 p.m. So whatever the things are that you end up repeating over and over that are just sort of like standard, yes, that's a standard framework for like a healthy life without getting into the personalization, the personalization is for the coaching calls. That's what you have the coaching calls for helping them personalize the things that you the rules or the framework for health, the principles for health building. So the principles for health building become the thing that becomes automated because that's like what you learn, like how the body works, how it's going to function and do its best, you're going to be able to either record it in a five minute video or you're going to put it into a workbook that they, you know, like 10, 10 pages of a workbook with some nice graphics and visuals that makes it easy for people to digest as well. And the videos for me, people say, oh, why didn't you create scripts with the videos? I said, because I'm not going to script something that you're going to have to end up going and redoing yourself because you're going to personalize it to your audience and to your ideal client. So I'm not going to go and script it and besides if it's in the workbook, all I ended up doing was doing a screen record of me reading the workbook. So that's what the video is. The video is you talking through the workbook with the client. Yeah. So it's very simple. What I really love for the practitioner who has now just come through this course, you know, they come to module 13 and they feel overwhelmed because when they a lot of people when they come into health coaching, they come into health coaching because they're empaths, they want to help people. They're not like want to wear every hat of the business, you know, not everybody. I mean, you and I clearly want to wear every hat of the business. Jen Malacca on board, but that as well. But I love that you say you map out a framework, which to me is like, here's step one. Don't work it. Don't don't even focus on two, three, four, five, and six or big picture. Let's just get this one done. Like you said, even with you didn't have a program built out, but you did take on a client. I feel like even that like I love that you say that it doesn't need to be some 10 step, huge program that you're going to because you're never going to lay it out like that to a client because that's going to overwhelm them. So the way that you've laid out the business part of it, the business in a box, doesn't overwhelm the practitioner building their business, which I think is so key because a lot of fdns come to us and they have their own health journey, which is why we started the conversation with your health journey, right. Ultimately, they're looking for some healing, they're looking for some deeper investigation and they find it here. And now they don't want to, you know, regress in their own health by trying to put together a business where they can make money and they can ultimately help people. So I love that you've got it like, let's map out your framework and let's automate it. Those are great words. And I did say one, thank you for that. I just want to say one thing about this too because a lot of people think when they become an fdn that they're going to be working one on one the whole time. And that one piece of content that I used for that for and I've put other clients through that that program. I ended up turning it into a group program, right, because the videos stayed the same. Okay, videos all stayed the same. And I just like I duplicated it inside a biocanic and called it the gutsy group program. And then you invite people into the group program and then you meet with people 10 people once every two weeks, right for six for 12 weeks, and then that one piece of content became it became a one on one piece of content became a group program, it became business in a box. I actually turned the workbooks into a book that's available on Amazon. Not all of them because they're over 110 pages inside of the workbooks, but I condensed it down into about 45 pages to fit it onto Amazon. So that is actually a leader product for me when I go out to do talks or when I go to meet people about what I do so it's called the gutsy workbook. So I turn my one piece of content into five different pieces of content that generate revenue for me. So when you are an fdn, right, when you are an fdn, you think, oh, I'm going to have to work with people one on one. I'm going to have to have this concert revolving door and you're going to have to keep like trying to get people in and you have the thing about becoming an fdn is that the possibilities for freedom in your life become endless. And it's not because I want to burn myself out by putting myself in all these different directions, but as an entrepreneur, one of the first books I read was called the lean starter by Eric Reese if anybody is not read that book, please run don't walk. And I learned like if you're going to be successful as an as a business owner, you need multiple revenue streams, you cannot put all your eggs into one basket. And unfortunately society's kind of condition is like you got to go to college, get a job, stay on this one path. And you're like actually the people who are making lots of money in this world, they are diversified, they have portfolio careers, they are doing interesting things are doing things that light them up stuff that does not have them trapped. And I was such after what happened with me with the corporate thing of feeling trapped in that job for 10 years, I did not want to repeat that in my new life. And I wanted to make sure that this new life that I had was like just full of freedom that I was able to create as much as I wanted to I don't have children that was one of the things that you know being unwell really hit me I wasn't able to have children. So now I'm like all these little things are my babies, I'm like I get to create as many babies as I want right now I can birth books I can birth programs and courses and all of those things are helping more people that if I was trying to see them all one on one. And I'm like goodness I just love that and you know what what I really want to convey to anybody who's an aspiring health coach right now or maybe like struggling with the business side of an FDN after your graduate is that your business will forever evolve as an entrepreneur like you just said. And you know what I mean is that you're going to come up you're going to want to say yes you're going to want to expand and create and shift gears you know you might have an experience that goes oh my goodness this is where I want to be I'm going to start shifting things that way and you know what you even prove that earlier with your story talking about read and like when you entered the FDN program how much it changed. Yeah and it's clearly still changing and evolving based on what the clients need based on you know how he envisions this course changing and moving forward and I just think that it's very easy for new entrepreneurs to get stuck in this idea of perfection rather than persistence like just get in just get in what your feet in the water and like see what it feels like. And then it takes you see where it takes you see where the current takes you and you know hopefully don't swim and the thing about what's beautiful what's happening with FDN now is that the political landscape has changed to so all of these things have made like what we're doing now like it's going to consistently it's going to continually evolve right because the political landscapes different their conversations that are happening now in 2026 that weren't happening three years ago two years ago. Yeah right so there's a lot as practitioners that is it's going to be opened to us like there are lots of more doors that are going to be open to us and I feel like you know we're perfectly placed right now like if the. wave is cresting, we are with the wave or rising with the wave. I agree. You know what? I got a sing reads praises. I'm sure it wasn't an easy. I'm going to say 15 years. I don't actually know how long he's been doing this particular program, but persistence, like I just said, it's not about perfection, it's about persistence. And here we are, as the world shifts into this idea of more optimal health, he's just right there like already, already created the thing already has the proof of thousands of practitioners like just ready to get out there and do the work and make this world healthier. I'm excited to be a part of it. Likewise, I think he started in 2008 just for anybody who was curious. He said he taught his first weekend seminar, which is the basis of the FDN program. I can't remember how many slides. He made it, had 500 slides or something, but he had a lot of slides and he taught it in downtown San Diego, rented a hotel for a weekend, got, I don't know, 30 people in there and never looked back, never looked back. Almost 20 years ago, I mean, incredible, incredible. Nearly 20 years ago, and he'd been practicing in a clinic from 1998. So he had done 10 years in the clinic before starting to teach. Incredible. Raywin, I know we were going to talk about meashing down, but this is going to be a business series so we can talk about it on the next episode. I want to thank you so much for sharing your story, such an inspiration and anybody out there listening, know that Raywin is in your back pocket. She is an FDN business mentor. She does do some of the one-on-one coaching on the side. She is just like ready and willing to support you if you are ready and willing to dive in. So thank you so much, Raywin. Can you let everybody know where they can find you? Yeah, sure. I am gutsyexecutivecoach.com and I'm also on Instagram, raywin.gov/gotsynutrition. So please feel free to connect with me there. I used to have a big profile on LinkedIn, but I've moved away from that. I'm just sort of like hanging out now on Instagram a lot on the gram. Amazing, amazing. I'll make sure that all of that's in the show notes and again, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.