Strengths Coach Turns Her Weight Loss Journey Into Guidance for Others

 

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Shelli Varela: It’s a misnomer to think it’s too good to be true because sometimes the answer is right under your nose.

 

Stu McLaren: There is a big trend brewing that’s revolutionizing the way business is being done. Big companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple are jumping on this too but so are thousands of others in all kinds of markets like photography and calligraphy, fitness, finance, meal planning, lesson planning, dog training, and so many more, and they’re doing it by shifting to a recurring revenue model. Hi. My name is Stu McLaren and for more than a decade I’ve been helping tens of thousands of entrepreneurs generate recurring revenue through membership sites. Join our host, Shelli Varela, as she takes you behind-the-scenes to see how these companies are building a thriving tribe that spends with them every single month. Now, let’s get to today’s episode.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Shelli Varela: Lindell Pereira, welcome to the It’s a TRIBE Thing Podcast. How are you?

 

Lindell Pereira: Thanks, Shelli. I’m good. Thanks. How are you?

 

Shelli Varela: I’m fabulous as always. We’re going to talk about Fast Mama. I would love it if you could explain to people what is Fast Mama, who you serve, and what it is you do.

 

Lindell Pereira: Yeah. So, Fast Mama is a weight loss membership. I serve women and typically women between the ages of around 35 to 55 taking them on a long like helping them get to their goal weight and live their life there. And we do that through mindset rather than – we do have protocols we recommend but really looking at that mindset shift so that they can come off that weight loss yo-yo wheel and really make sure that we celebrate when they join that that’s their last start. They never have to look for another diet or weight loss program ever again. Their last start, we get them to goal weight and then we help them learn how to live there and make sure that they live the rest of their life there.

 

Shelli Varela: Brilliant. And in a market, as we were chatting earlier that has so many people teaching something similar, you have absolutely crushed your launch. But before we get there, can you take us back to the beginning of who you were before you had this membership, before you came to this realization that you wanted to do this? Where did your story start for you?

 

Lindell Pereira: Yeah. So, it started in the corporate world in HR and I went from recruitment into coaching, performance and development coaching, and strengths coaching. And then I did start my own strengths coaching business or consultancy. And I always knew I wanted to have my own business, and I thought that that was going to be it but really, I created myself like a job, right? I was working and earning money for my hour and I thought I want to create a membership to really scale what I’m doing and be able to have a business because I just knew I wanted to have a business.

 

Shelli Varela: Where was the first time you heard about a membership site and living in the corporate world but is this a viable option? And how does this work? What did that mindset look like for you?

 

Lindell Pereira: I was from a very young age interested in reading business books and just learning about business. And I’d fallen over like come across ClickFunnels, and then just got into the world of Russell Brunson and all of his books and reading and in the forums and spent a lot of time learning about things and looking at, okay, your business needs to be scalable. So, what can I do to be scalable for what I’m doing right now? And that’s how I didn’t know where I came across the idea. It must have been somewhere in that ClickFunnels world where I’d seen the idea of creating a membership for what I was doing.

 

Shelli Varela: And so, your original concept for the membership was performance and development, teaching the stuff that you were already doing in the corporate world.

 

Lindell Pereira: That’s right. Yeah. I thought that was it and then I started to lose weight. I decided at the beginning of 2019 that I was going to lose weight or try to lose weight again at like a hundredth time and I found this new protocol that I began. And at that time, I created an Instagram account because every time I’ve lost weight in the past or some weight in the past, I kind of would then put the weight back on and I thought I want to really capture what I’m doing, the meals, everything so that when I do start to put the weight back on, I can go back to the beginning and look at what I did and follow that again. I created a Facebook community as well to support myself and others doing this new protocol and it just grew. People started following me. I was so nervous to start with as well. Didn’t post any photos of my face or nobody knew who I was because I was a performance development coach in the corporate world so I didn’t want anyone to know I was like doing weight loss. And then it just kept growing though and people asked me for my coaching or asking for advice and I started coaching people just as a result. I just can’t help it.

 

Then I had decided that I was going to join TRIBE, Stu McLaren’s TRIBE, and really take this performance and development coaching membership seriously. And so, I joined TRIBE with that in mind. I was going to do a strengths group coaching membership and, in the background, I was still losing weight and people were still asking for my help and I was getting great feedback. The Facebook group was growing. And then it got to the point where I thought, “Ah, I really love this weight loss stuff,” but my background is performance and development coaching. That sounds better as well, right, compared to weight loss coach. And so, there was a pivotal moment where I thought, “Now, I’m going to flip this and go for weight loss coaching,” but like my insides turned inside out like it was a big decision for me because I feel like I had invested so many years in that performance and development coaching and I was like giving it up. But I made the decision to whilst I was doing the TRIBE course, that I was going to do a weight loss membership. And I’ve shared with you earlier that every time somebody asked me what I did, I would laugh like, “Oh, weight loss.” It wasn’t until like eight months, nine months after that my husband said, “You know, you’ve got to stop laughing after you said that you’re a weight loss coach because people won’t take you seriously,” because I wasn’t taking myself seriously as well.

 

But during TRIBE, I stumbled, tripped, but took action and I started my first membership. I launched it very – it was a very messy launching. It still can be but I launched it and I have 110 people sign up for it for my founding members’ launch which was just incredible. No advertising. Actually, Shelli, I didn’t share this with you earlier, I accidentally deleted my first 33 signups, like completely wiped them off my system. Messy, right? My husband’s in IT and like data analytics and he’s like, “How can you manage that? Like, isn’t there a system that prevents you from doing that?” But I did it. And I still have no idea if they managed to come back into my membership or not because I couldn’t even track them down.

 

Shelli Varela: I want to circle back on this for everybody who’s listening because I think it’s so valuable. So, you start this Facebook group and you’re documenting, basically, just reverse engineering what you’re doing so you can journal it and other people can follow along with you for yourself so that if you get off track, you can come back and go, “Oh, yeah, that’s where I need to get back to, eating this way or exercising this way.” And it’s so interesting to me, and I just wanted to shine a light on this for everybody listening. So often we negate the things that come easy to us or that we are interested in. So, oftentimes people will be efforting at the thing we “should do” and I just wanted to, first of all, acknowledge and honor you for listening to that and paying attention to the feedback that you were receiving. And also, it’s so helpful especially in this particular circumstance that the thing that you’re teaching and coaching on and the reason that people resonate with you and you’re being so successful is what you were doing before actually complements and ties into the thing that you love and comes easily to you.

 

Lindell Pereira: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s interesting that when like my body was still tense when you were saying that, like, “Oh.” It’s still an uncomfortable thing for me to think, “Oh, I didn’t do performance and development membership.” It still feels. And my weight loss membership, Fast Mama, is thriving. It’s growing so well. But like it was interesting to see my body’s reaction when you were saying that as well because like there’s still part of me that thinks that like because I spent so many years focused on it, but you’re right. What I was great at and that has transferred to Fast Mama and there was some resistance in me in that area that just didn’t flow naturally and that’s no longer there as well. So, I have married up interest, passion, and strengths to really create the business and the membership that really suits me and like I work ridiculous times because I just love it so much. And the people in my membership, geez, I love them so much as well. It’s just every day I pinch myself with like it’s all aligned and it’s just wonderful. Yeah.

 

[ANNOUNCEMENT]

 

Stu McLaren: So many people in all kinds of niche markets are leveraging their existing knowledge and influence and they’re transforming it into passive monthly income. This isn’t luck. This is a repeatable formula for producing a growing subscription income and if thousands of others can do it, you can too. To find out what type of membership site would be right for your business, visit GetTRIBEGuide.com. Go to GetTRIBEGuide.com and download it today. You’re awesome!

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Shelli Varela: Well, in our pre-conversation, I thought it was cool because we were discussing when you were telling me what performance and development coaches do and you talked about goals and you talked about the things that actually hold people back and getting them unstuck and getting people to work together and then accountability and stuff like that. And it’s so interesting, and again, for those that are listening, the thing that the world has given you as your label, underneath the label has certain qualities and some of them more intangible just like this where it’s like you’re teaching people about goals. And the title of that is performance and development but when we nuance and when we look at what is actually under the hood of that, oftentimes it’s a transferable skill set. So, when we start to pay attention to the thing that we love, it really can be the rocket fuel in your business when you marry up a couple of unlike or seemingly unlike things.

 

Lindell Pereira: Yeah, absolutely. Just a side note, it’s interesting because that’s what like the young generation now coming through are going to be needing to do that like they’re choosing not careers but they’re choosing what skills they can build and develop in each role and take from one role to another. So, it’s really exactly what I did as well. When I did start my weight loss membership, I still wasn’t clear of what I was bringing from my background into that membership. Like it wasn’t like I made the decision and it was all laid out in a gold path like it was still, let’s walk through this with my founding members. Like I said, I deleted the first 33 members, that was just the beginning of the mess concerning this launch was, but like I attracted the right people that understood and wanted to be in it and is still in it today in the membership, and we created it together. It wasn’t like here’s the polished membership. They came in and they knew from the get-go that we were going to be creating these together. And it was more around, “Okay, what do you need?” And that’s my question every day, what do my members need? What else do they need to get further along their pathway to get to goal weight or to really give them more confidence that they can maintain and live up the weight as well?

 

And so, that’s how the membership and the content and what I provide to my members really came about. I’m biased, but it’s absolutely an amazing experience for my members and I wish it was there for me when I was on my weight loss journey. This is like, I’ve created them with my family members. We’ve created an amazing experience. Because we created it with ourselves in mind and what we wanted, the accountability, the coaching, the mindset work, all the tools and techniques, it’s just like if I had thought it would look like this when I started last year, and I just have my first year, my one-year anniversary of my membership and my family members launch. So, if I had thought this far ahead, you can’t predict this stuff. You can’t predict, well, I thought. Because my friend says my brain’s like fireworks and so I’m not a detail planning person but I think there’s art in that. There’s creativity and I’ve created an experience that really works for women.

 

Shelli Varela: I love that you busted two major myths and the first one is you have to have it all figured out before you get there.

 

Lindell Pereira: Yeah, you don’t.

 

Shelli Varela: You clearly don’t because your members will tell you what they need and the other one that is equally as important is we often hear people say, “Well, you know, I would like to start a membership in the area I have interest in which is XYZ, but so many other people are doing that.” And you are in the weight loss industry and there is a plethora of different websites, courses, membership, books that deal with that very subject. And I’m reminded of Sara Blakely. She’s the founder of Spanx.

 

Lindell Pereira: I love her. I’m in Jesse Itzler’s Big Ass Calendar Club founding members that we’ve kicked off this month.

 

Shelli Varela: Oh, yeah. The cool thing about Sara though is she was a dropout in law school. She said she wanted to be a lawyer just like her dad. She went to law school. She was terrible at it. She failed and she was selling I believe it was Xerox machines in Florida and she would wear pantyhose and her feet would get chafed and whatever so she ended cutting out the bottom half of her pantyhose, and all of the things all the benefits of the tuck-in, the hold, and all of the stuff. And she said to herself, “Well, maybe this could be a thing,” and everybody is, “Well, that’s crazy. Pantyhose already exists.” And she went with what she knew to be true and she’s a billionaire now. So, we don’t always have to recreate the wheel. We just have to put our own personal spin on it.

 

Lindell Pereira: 100%. But on that, Shelli, I knew that when I was like, yep, I’m doing strengths coaching. I knew Sara’s story. I knew that you needed to follow what people wanted and were asking for but I kept trying to mold what I knew and was doing and my expertise into that. And it was like you hear all this information and like all these like success stories and you think, “Well, that’s what like got to happen.” And I think it all marries up because you think, “Well, I can’t do that because someone else is doing it but I need to follow…” It’s such a conflict. Well, it was within me. I need to follow my interests and it’s going to be this magical experience for me but it just wasn’t happening. And the more it didn’t happen, the longer it didn’t happen, the more I tried to make it happen more within my focus and my expertise. So, it was kind of like a cycle of something’s going to happen because it’s a magical experience once it happens but sometimes, you’re so focused in your area of expertise, you might be missing other opportunities.

 

So, I think the lesson there is there can be other opportunities. You may miss them, though, if you’re so focused within your own area of expertise. And especially if you’re a planner, you’ve got everything planned out and you’ve put all the work into it and you think, “I’ve just got to execute this plan and they’ll all be fine,” keep your eye out for other opportunities.

 

Shelli Varela: Absolutely. One last question. What’s the best piece of feedback that you’ve received from one of your members?

 

Lindell Pereira: I tell my members I love them. They give me amazing feedback. And like especially my family members, they have the confidence to give me feedback because I’m so open to hearing it as well. The best feedback, oh, it would be the length of my coaching call and the content that I provide within my membership, one of my founding members had said. I just don’t have time to listen to it all because they go on. Because I loved my members so much and there were some that really valued the calls but there was a whole heap that stopped showing up because they went for so long. So, I think keeping the content in bite-sized chunks and length of time was a really valuable feedback. And I think it’s really important to be open to receiving feedback from your members too. But in terms of positive feedback, like I get so much of it. It’s like a real love fest with my members because I give so much of it to them as well.

 

Shelli Varela: Well, that’s awesome. It’s true what Stu says, you come for the content but you stay for the community.

 

Lindell Pereira: 100%. Yeah. My community is the best thing about my membership. Yeah.

 

Shelli Varela: Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your story. If people are looking for you online, where’s the best place they can find you?

 

Lindell Pereira: Yes. They can find me at FastMamaTribe.com.

 

Shelli Varela: Amazing.

 

Lindell Pereira: Thanks, Shelli.

 

Shelli Varela: Have a great day. Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your story.

 

Lindell Pereira: You’re welcome. Thank you so much too.

 

[CLOSING]

 

Stu McLaren: I hope you love that story. It’s amazing, right? That’s what It’s a TRIBE Thing is all about. So, many people in all kinds of niche markets are leveraging their existing knowledge and influence and they’re transforming it into passive monthly income. Listen, this isn’t luck. There’s a repeatable formula for producing a growing subscription income and each week we’re going behind the scenes to show you exactly how they did it. Get the latest stories and actionable ideas from each episode at www.ItsaTRIBEThing.com and if you know one other person who could benefit from this, tell them to subscribe. Tell them to go to ItsaTRIBEThing.com.

[END]