Who's that Gal: Kristin Thomas, CEO Health and Wellness Business School

Name: Kristin Thomas
Age: 32
Occupation: CEO, Health and Wellness Business School
Currently living in: St. Petersburg, FL
Hometown: Ellington, CT
Currently reading: Your Brand is Your Stand
Favorite workout: Biking Outdoors
I never leave home without: Chapstick

YOU’VE STARTED MORE THAN ONE COMPANY TO DATE. WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BECOME AN ENTREPrENEUR?

I’ve actually always considered myself an entrepreneur. Growing up I’d help organize my family’s tag sales and I loved creating short stories and designing bookmarks to sell to my family. Right out of college I started my first consulting company as a social media strategist and manager and absolutely loved it. After a few years working inside early-stage startup companies helping to build and scale their marketing departments, I decided to go back out on my own and create an agency that specialized in exactly that, in the Boston area. Several years later, inspired by a health challenge, I became certified and started a functional health coaching business, and several years after that, my entrepreneurial journey came full circle and I’m now a marketing and business coach for health coaches and functional health practitioners.

Your education IS in the Marketing sector with multiple roles to follow in Strategy and Analytics. What made you want to embark in significant career change to Functional Nutrition and Wellness?

It was sparked by an autoimmune diagnosis of ulcerative colitis that I brought to complete remission through holistic and functional health modalities. Within just a few weeks of working with my own health coach and a few other alternative wellness professionals, I felt a passion come alive in me that I had never felt before. I didn’t want anyone to have to go through the pains and lows and hopelessness of such an invisible disease, and for as long as I did, without knowing they have options.

So I enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) and then Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN) to become a certified functional health coach. I did this while I was still running my marketing agency full-time and upon graduation I slowly wound down my agency work and built up my health coaching business utilizing all of the marketing and business skills I had acquired and practiced for the 6 years prior.

It was so incredibly rewarding to walk people through the same or similar health conditions I once had, and help them know they have support and another choice of treatment much earlier on than I did in my own journey and to see how rapidly they felt better by making simple but targeted changes to their diet and life.

Can you tell our audience more about your work with Health Coaches through your Health and Wellness Business School?

Yes! Our mission at Health and Wellness Business School is to help thousands of passionate and talented alternative health practitioners who own their own business to learn the business and marketing skills they need to build and scale a successful practice and, together, make a measurable impact on today’s rampant disease epidemic.

My big why for starting this company, which is essentially a beautiful fusion of my past two companies, is that I saw so many incredibly talented and passionate alternative practitioners struggling, burning out, or going out of business altogether because they didn’t know how to build an audience of potential clients, charge their worth so they could be profitable, or enroll the right clients, and enough of them. This broke my heart because I knew they could help people in such big ways and that people desperately need their help.

These were skills I knew well myself and used to take for granted but I realized that I could give them to this industry in the way I used them in my own functional health practice and for the over 50 companies I worked with in my agency so they could be successful and their clients could get the help they need.

If I can help many thousands of practitioners to reach hundreds of thousands of clients through our work at Health and Wellness Business School, that is a success to me, and to the world. That’s what drives me and lights me up every day.

For our audience, can you describe what is Functional medicine and how does it differ from Western medicine?

Functional medicine takes a whole-body approach to an individual’s health. We don’t look at any system, organ, or symptom in isolation, but as a part of a bigger system. In that way, we can better understand how dysfunction is occurring and where it stems from. Functional medicine also takes a customized approach to health, whereas Western medicine is much more one-size-fits-all and this-for-that where everyone is given the same treatment, even if someone’s constitution is wildly different. We take the individual into account, as well as their lifestyle and diet. It’s a truly end-to-end, inside and out approach that gets to the root of dis-ease in the body.

This approach literally saved me from a life of chronic symptoms and destructive surgery, and I’ve witnessed firsthand the massive impact and changes it’s made on the hundreds of clients I worked with and the thousands of people my health coach clients have already served.

Any insights or words of encouragement for someone thinking about a substantial career change and/or starting their own business?

If you have a drive to share your gifts in a bigger way by starting your own business, now is literally the best time in history to do that. Let your light shine! Your future clients are waiting for you to offer what they need, you just need to step out, commit, and connect with them. It’s never been easier to start a business, and especially with the online world, it’s easy to reach people globally so you’re not restricted to where you live.

What are the biggest challenges and biggest rewards of what you do?

Our biggest challenge is keeping up with the demand for what we do because what we offer is so unique and health and wellness practitioners are needing it more than ever now that COVID has brought all businesses online and has amplified demand for wellness professionals in the market. We are fast building a global platform which is no small feat, but it’s beyond exciting all the same.

The biggest reward is hearing my clients signing on new clients and hearing about the wins those clients are having inside their program. Clients that they would have never found or enrolled if it weren’t for our guidance in getting clear on their niche, their messaging, their marketing and sales strategy, and their own self-worth and confidence. I love hearing my fertility coaches announce their clients getting pregnant after years of infertility, my gut health coaches celebrating their clients no longer feeling bloated and fearful of food, and hundreds of other humbling and inspiring stories.

How do you balance your career and your personal life?

I’ve spent the last few years very intentionally building in these boundaries. I’m so grateful to be in a place where I can have a peaceful morning routine, a long lunch break, and a clear end to my workday so I can transition into the evening. What helped me the most was getting clear on what that looked like. What time did I want to be wrapping up work and sticking to that. What did I want to do in the morning to fill my cup up first? How I could add little reset moments throughout the day like stepping outside or stretching. And I have a very strict no-work-on-the-weekends policy so I can be present and relaxed with family and friends.

As a self-confessed Type A person, this was not easy and took many years, and it’s still a work in progress, but I put in the work and am able to disconnect from work when I intend and live a truly balanced and full life.

What’s next for Health and Wellness Business School? What’s next for you personally?

We have major plans for 2021, from multiple program launches, several of which will be new programs, to team expansion to support our growth, and partnerships with organizations and schools we support to further both of our missions. 2020 has been a big year, and 2021 is going to be even bigger!

If you could give our audience one ‘pro’ tip about maintaining or advocating for their own health and wellness, what would it be?

Never stop searching until you find the answer. If something inside you tells you something is wrong in your body or the guidance you have on your health isn’t good enough, find someone who can hear you and guide you. You deserve to feel healthy, strong, and in control of your body and there are so many talented practitioners who can help you find what’s really wrong and guide you personally to feel better, just like I was guided, and like I guided my own clients.

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Julia Blanchard is a content contributor for JUGs by night, by day she works at Amazon on some of Alexa’s feature expansion programs. You can follow her @jcblanchard6 on Instagram.