Coaching for Type 1 Success

Speaker 1: hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in Lauren bouro is the founder and CEO of Risley Health she has navigated type 1 diabetes firsthand since she was 7 years old and believes that when Health transforms so does everything else our relationships our time our career our families and most importantly ourselves through empowerment and inclusivity Risley Health has been able to help people become connected to others who share sh the same life experience thank you so much for joining us today Lauren please tell us more about who you are hi thank you so much for having me on Melanie I'm so excited to be here so I am 28 years old I live in New York and I'm the founder of Risley Health where we help people and families impacted by type 1 diabetes take ownership of their health so that they can holistically transform their life with more freedom and confidence you mentioned a pivotal moment when you were a junior in college and celebrated by your doctor for achieving a 5.7 A1C even though you didn't feel healthy or happy in your own body tell us about that experience yeah so I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes which is an autoimmune disease when I was seven years old and type 1 diabetes is more rare than type two half of the population is type two diabetic or pre-diabetic and their bodies produce insulin but their bodies aren't able to utilize the insulin effectively because they have insulin resistance whereas type 1 diabetes which is what I have my body attacked itself and completely killed off the cells that produce insulin which is the hormone that helps balance out our blood sugar and there's no cure for it yet and so when you're seven years old and you get this diagnosis it you know like any diagnosis in a in a family it rocks everybody and from then on you have to figure out how to live your new normal if you will and a lot of my childhood growing up I was really active I ended up going to college to play division one soccer and I never wanted diabetes to slow me down and what I made the mistake of realizing was that putting diabetes in this box in the corner of my life and not really attending to it at the level that I do now that didn't help not slow me down all that did was kind of cause me to repress a lot of emotions around my diagnosis and not feel confident and feel broken and different and not lovable and all those you know emotional things that can can come up when we we don't truly accept who we are at our core and and things that happen to us in our life and so when I got to college I was playing this High Lev soccer and I was realizing wait a second like I'm competing at this level my blood sugar numbers are all over the place and when your blood sugar numbers are high you feel super lethargic when you go to run it's like you have like lead in your legs and you feel nauseous and you can't perform at your best at you know reading a book never mind going to run on up and down a soccer field and became super super obsessed with nutrition and with exercise and in hindsight it was not an classic eating disorder but what I learned to be orthorexia which is Obsession around control around your body and food and all that which a lot of women could resonate with in a way and that Perfection was what I thought was Health but turned out not to be well I imagine you had to start thinking about your diet so I see how that could naturally go in that direction for anybody yeah and that's the tricky part is you're constantly counting carbs and fat and meals in proportions and you're never truly 100% present because you're playing the role of your pancreas in trying to balance a seesaw of your blood sugar going up oh shoot I have to catch and get myself insulin oh wait it's going down I have to have this many carbs and what did I do WR do wrong there and now my blood sugar is high and that's a reflection of me as a person and there's all that 24/7 you never get a break it and it's not like we just wear an insulin pump and everything is fine it's very very manual still and when I went to the doctor junior year in college when I should have been partying and drinking in college and you know a lot of not everybody obviously does that but what the doctor would assume she was like scared to see my numbers and I remember my mom came to me with the endocrinologist she doesn't anymore but I still kind of wish he did I'm like mom like come come we did it for so long together but the doctor walked in and was like you oh my gosh like Lord how how do you have a 5.7 A1C which an A1C is essentially a report card it's an average on a scale of what your blood sugars have looked like for the past 90 days everybody when you go to get annual blood work your doctor should do this and there's a range of where it should be and a 5.7 is better than a type two diabetics numbers that are aren't that even still make insulin with their body right so for me it was this wakeup call that they're celebrating me and they don't know that I have had the most depressing three years of my life in college because I was so fearful of everything around food and going out to eat with friends and what if there's bread on the table and how am I going to like the Temptation with it a lot of those common diet issues but with the extra layer of diabetes on top of it it was masked as well this is how I'm going to control my diabetes that was a wakeup call for me that flipped me to the other side of okay I'm going to go on this journey of figuring out actually how to live with diabet IES in a more sustainable way because the doctor is not really there to hold my hand through the mindset and through the exercising and the nutrition and all these pieces I was struggling with and so I came into a place of how can I have good blood sugar numbers and feel energized and focused and have a positive mood from day to day but not get into the place where I'm restricting myself or my whole life is centered around diabetes because I know that I'm more than that when you tell yourself you can't have something that's really hard it's so restrictive so I see how mentally that would be challenging and how you could go down that road in that direction and I in my early 20s I had a doctor say to me I had to have cancer remove but she says there is no cure and walks out the door and the door shuts and you know you're sitting there by yourself and you're like okay well I have two choices do everything I can to learn and continue to live my life and good for you for going on to play soccer and go on to do those things in your life that you really want to do and just figuring out a way to make it work because it's so mental it really is yeah no absolutely and thanks for sharing that with me too whether it's diabetes or for anybody listening it's it's something else right hopefully relate to the struggle that added complexity adds to it but that moment isn't representative of a everybody's struggle with diabetes some people don't ever want to get to that place and so they say screw it I'm just going to eat this and eat that and it just is that way my blood sugars are never going to be good and I just have to accept that that I live with diabetes and I'm never going to feel good as somebody else right so I've experienced both sides because I think that's what my childhood and teenage years was a lot of so everybody's personal journey is so different but at the root of it the Health Care System just your two appointments a year does not allow you to feel fully in control of your diabetes and take ownership over your body's patterns which is a huge thing that we help people do in Risley it's an archaic system that needs to be revamped and that's essentially what we're at the Forefront of helping it do as a coach how do you assist your clients because you did mention it's all day every day it's not something where you can kind of think about it sometimes and work through that mentally it's a constant thought process and what are you doing a little bit differently and in addition to what doctors and the medical system can give you yeah absolutely so our coaching methodology is very much rooted in three things it's rooted in Behavior change published research and our own internal client data collection from when I started Risley and coaching in 2015 we focus really on putting them in the driver's seat and working alongside them to identify the gaps whether it's in their knowledge or giving them accountability and the relatability that you need myself and all the coaches on our team we have type 1 diabetes we understand what that's like and sometimes that's huge for people and we really help them with the implementation process and seeing their blocks helping them get unstuck so that they can create that sustainable change for themselves so yes it's about improving their blood sugars in the long run but it's really about helping them discover who they can be when diabetes isn't in the way so what differentiates the company from traditional endocrinologists or diets or Fitness coaching or even even therapy or nutrition right it's not a replacement for those things it's a addition and in many cases people have not had success in those areas of support and traditional health care and so coaching is something that they try and their whole entire life transforms we really are helping them hold space to prioritize themselves on that holistic level of understanding with the hormones and the exercise and the nutrition and their mindsets and the patterns and their blood sugar Trends all of those things we we're holding space for them helping guide them to where they want to be in that ultimate vision for themselves and how it all works together and I'm sure the mental piece is so big because it's the mental piece that's going to get everything working at the same time as long as someone's putting in the effort for all the various pieces yeah and there's this term that's used and I think it could be very aligned with business as well where doctors will say oh that that patient is non-compliant Right their A1C is hired it's noncompliant client right you can look at a business an entrepreneur and whatever their offer is if it's not working you can look like oh it's just not a valuable offer right that's not necessarily what's going on you have to look behind the scenes and understand like what's the root of it and address that piece and that's where doctors and Healthcare don't usually go to that level because they don't have the time or resources it's not the doctor's fault it's the way the systems especially in the US yes you have helped over 5,000 people and Families how have you managed the growth of your business in taking on more and more clients oh my gosh so much and even if you would have asked me this a year ago like the amount of growth that has happened year over year since I've started I sometimes I can't even believe it it's it's like I can't you don't see it in the day-to-day as much as much as you do in the yearly Reflections which I recently did one big piece for us last year was growing our team we went into 2021 with myself and other people on the team and now we have a team of 10 and it's a mix of employees and contractors and so I went from really a solopreneur to managing a whole entire team and that in itself is a huge growth for us because that's new new challenges that come I think everybody looks at at themselves and their companies and saying oh I just need if I only had this many people then I can fix this problem and if I only I you know had this much more audience then I could really give them more value or create new products or if only I had this this this but with this this this comes more more more problems and challenges and so you're you have to up your skill set and your leadership abilities to be able to match the growth of the company so true because it is a marathon and not a Sprint and good for you for the growth and being able to help that many more people yeah I mean yeah last year alone one of our big metrics was we had about 800 people apply and we have many offers but just for hours coaching programs and we served a great number of those whether it's coaching or or our courses that is only though a a small percentage of the 1.3 million people just in the US that have type 1 diabetes and that's a lot what 2022 is for us is how are we expanding and drawing in all of these people who need us but just don't know that we exist on your website you mentioned your favorite quote is life moves at the pace of your capacity to receive it I really like that and due to co I think we've all been thinking about the pace of Our Lives more than ever why is that quote so meaningful to you so I had this realization about a year and a half ago when I was really upleveling in how I was showing up and relating to the vision of where Risley was going which up until a couple months ago was actually boring bonjo coaching we we rebranded and we had this whole new um Rebrand which was a huge huge big leap in itself but I would say that your company can only grow to the level that you're willing to personally grow and work at the beliefs and the skills and the character traits of yourself and of your team and so I truly believe that you have to level up especially if you're the Visionary of the company and once you do you're you call in these new opportunities that you are then ready for there's these manifestation lists and these big goals and dreams that I've even had that I know I'm not ready for and so I have them on the back burner but it was like I am not ready for that until I learn X Y and Z so every year I pick a word for myself uh a theme if you will and 2020 was equinity which is the mental composure and calmness especially in difficult situations and I knew that the year before my emotions were like up and down all over the place it was like we had a goal for how many people we were getting in a coaching program and it fell short and I was like oh my God the world's ending and it was like it was like two people short than our goal right like it wasn't that big of a deal it was just an ego thing and so for me it was a lot about energy management inside my container because as the company grows there's more challenges more things that come up and I wanted to go into the next year and really practice how to stay pretty neutral and by doing so it then propelled me to have these new bigger opportunities to come in because I was signaling I guess you would consider me a spiritual person so like to Universe right that like I am ready to receive the next level of growth because I've worked on this area that I know that I'm going to need as a tool to uplevel in this next way that's so much self-awareness we go through these moments where we think I know I'm going to make this happen one day but I don't feel ready today is really important to admit that going through Co I have 8-year-old Twins and there are things I wanted to achieve last year but realistically when looking at my family and my life there's moments where you think I know I'm going to do this but this might not be the time so it's it's really great to have that Forward Thinking of I will achieve it someday yeah and I recently I heard I believe it was on Tik Tok and there was like a 67y old woman and she gives life advice to younger younger people and somebody had asked what advice would you give to somebody in their 20s and one of the videos that I landed on was her saying everybody shares that life is so short but I'm want to share with you actually how long life is if you look at it from that lens and that you don't have to do everything and have your life figured out by you know 25 or whatever it is because you're going to evolve so many more times in your life and have so many different chapters so look forward to that and I love the way that she explained that because it it really is true if you believe in the vision that you have for yourself and that it's going to happen let go of the timeline right trust in the process of it's going to flow to you when you're ready to receive it so true and it doesn't mean being passive either right you have to take those actions you can't just sit back and be like oh it's going to come to me but it's mostly the actions are doing the work every single day to work on yourself and become more self-aware and accept the season of life I think it makes you happier through the process too because you're not putting so much pressure on yourself all the time yeah I agree magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one tip that you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy ah I would say to figure out what your core values are mine are Integrity impact and Independence and I think when we start to feel unhappy or rigid or Snappy you're frustrated there's a good chance that one of your core values are being compromised someone in your life whether it's business relationship personal and you can look to find that hole and to see where you can recalibrate and I think that I do that a lot and that's how I find and and try to live in more of a space of Joy more times than not thank you so much for joining us today Lauren you are building an incredible business and helping so many families and people which is so wonderful please tell our listeners how and where they can find you absolutely my Instagram is Lauren l a u r ncore bonjourno b o n g i o r n o and if you listen to this podcast definitely send me a DM I would love to hear from you if there's anything I can help you with anybody who type one diabetes at listening you can go to risle health.com and check out all the support tools that we have for people and families living with type 1 diabetes if you are new to sheu it we'd love for you to join us we offer Community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our she built it shop curated products from women owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer Sheil it business Consulting and the Sheil it blog thank you to everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us us from experiencing the life that We crave