Heal and Connect - The Living Well

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in personal development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Alexa Schirm, Founder of The Living Well, located in Cedar Rapids, IA, USA.

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

The Living Well connects the whole of who you are - mind, body, and soul - to experience healing from the inside out. As a nutritionist, I quickly realized diet alone was not enough to create the healing my clients were looking for. More than what you eat, health is what you think, who you believe you are the way you interact with life. I knew I needed to bring this to light, helping my customers understand the intimate connection of their psychology with their biology and how their beliefs are shaping that. Plus, change the story of health. Making healthy which you are not another thing you have to achieve. To prove health is a verb, not a noun. My client base ranges anywhere from people who have tried everything, and nothing seems to work to the ones who want something different. To get healthy without losing their life and using health to live. They are men and women from all walks of life.

Tell us about yourself

For most of my life, health existed as something just out of reach. I spent my younger years witnessing women I admired follow diet fads, endured college nutrition lectures where calorie counting was expected to fix inner issues, and touted myself as a nutrition expert while suffering through my own personal health crisis and leading me to the realization that we're approaching health in the wrong way. Health is never about what you can do to your body but how you can work with your body to mobilize energy—a realization I had to fight for after losing my health. In an industry where health has been made unachievable and even unapproachable, I want to show you how to make health simple, proving all of us have the power to live well. Creating a new story in health and redefining it for what it was intended brings me purpose and motivates me to continue every day!

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I have several accomplishments I am very proud of; my podcast, Made For Living Well, has over one million downloads and has been featured as one of iTunes' top 100 podcasts. I have also printed and delivered a dated yearly wellness planner, The Nourished Planner, that has sold thousands of copies yearly since launching in 2018. But my biggest accomplishment is not following the standard protocol in the health space but creating a new path—one that focuses on the person personalizing health instead of making it a big boxed approach.

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

Organic growth in an oversaturated market is hard to come by. Maybe it's because I'd rather spend time producing content than marketing it. But that is a look at my personal strengths and weaknesses. Self-promotion, in my opinion, is one of the hardest things I do. But to overcome this, I've had to look at what I'm promoting, not myself but producing great content that matters.

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

1. Do what you're passionate about, not what others tell you. Follow your dreams, your gut, your passions, and your vision.
2. Focus on helping people more than you focus on the numbers. How you are helping people matters far more than how many people you focus on—quality over quantity.
3. Don't limit yourself to what you think you're good at. I failed high-school speech class and now run an award-winning podcast. I never thought I would be a public speaker, let alone enjoy it. But I overcame the fear because I believed in the message more than I feared failing myself.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://thelivingwell.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madeforlivingwell/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madeforlivingwell/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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