Inspiring People With Diabetes

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in health and wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Tobias Oerum, founder of Diabetes Strong, Inc., located in Miami, FL, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Our business provides science-based, trustworthy, but easily digestible diabetes information on our website diabetesstrong.com. We don’t sell anything; we just provide information and monetize it with display advertising. Our “customers” are people living with any type of diabetes who need the information to manage their condition and live a healthy life.

Tell us about yourself

We are Christel and Tobias, a husband-and-wife team where the wife lives with type 1 diabetes. We founded Diabetes Strong in 2015 after Christel started competing in fitness competitions and struggled to find relevant information about how to manage diabetes when exercising at that level. It started as a passion project but quickly turned into a full-time business as it became clear that a lot of people were looking for the same information. Today, we reach almost 1 million people every month on the website and cover everything related to diabetes.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Being one of the largest diabetes websites in the world, the accomplishment we are the proudest of is impacting the lives of so many people living with diabetes. Christel gets regular “fan mail” from people whose lives she has helped improve through the information we provide.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

For us, it has been the volatility. Because most of our readers find us through Google searches, we experienced huge swings in readership (and, therefore, revenue) when Google updated its algorithms. This made it hard to plan ahead and invest in the business in the beginning because we never knew what our situation would be like in 3-6 months.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

EVERY start-up business is a networking business, so start building your network right away. Reach out to the other people in your industry and ask how you can collaborate. And remember to give back more than you receive; it will pay dividends in the end. Contrary to popular belief, nice people do finish first when it comes to entrepreneurship.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I am bad at this and always want to prove that I can do things myself, but spending weeks on something that an expert could have taught you in a few hours is not a good use of your time. You have more important things to do than proving stuff to yourself.
If you don’t know what to do, simply do SOMETHING! Don’t let your insecurities hold you back. The truth is that entrepreneurs have moments all the time when they don’t know what to do. The successful ones are the ones that act decisively anyway. Inaction is almost always worse than making mistakes. You will make A LOT of mistakes on the way to success.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://diabetesstrong.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DiabetesStrong/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diabetesstrong_ig/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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