We were lucky to catch up with Cam Brown recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Cam, thanks for joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
I call this my “sweet potato moment” and I’ve told it to hundreds of women across the country at this point.
This goes back to a pretty dark part of my journey. I was probably about 6 or 7 months postpartum after my pregnancy with my daughter, Rowan. During my pregnancy I had gained about 70-80 pounds and then Rowan came out, all 8 pounds of her, and what had happened really sunk in. I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life and also the most unhappiest. It’s a really terrible thing, hating how you look and feel in your own body, and it effected every aspect of my life at that time. I was picking fights with my husband, cancelling plans with friends because I couldn’t find clothes that fit, and avoiding pictures with my newborn.
I knew I had to lose the weight and I was desperate to do so. I jumped into any and every fad diet out there. I remember being on this particular one that was just extremely bad. I was starving myself with very low calories and something ridiculous like 40g of carbs a day. Which is a super hard amount to eat and very unsustainable.
I was a group fitness instructor at the time at Orangetheory. That day I had opened the studio, which means I woke up at 3:45am. I coached the first 4 classes and then stayed to take the next one. Which means I was probably only fueled on coffee and water. Then I came home and my husband had to leave to go to work- this was back when we “baby swapped” just to make ends meet.
I was sitting at the table, Rowan was crying, and I was just looking at my plate of food that was maybe 10 grams of carbs. So it was basically all protein and like 3 strawberries. I was starving and I wanted a real meal.
I remember just feeling so horrible, telling myself in my head that I was a failure for wanting to not follow this diet plan, and then I looked up and into my kitchen. I saw a basket of sweet potatoes just sitting there. I love sweet potatoes- I always have. They’re a healthy and delicious whole food! And I looked down at my plate and I finally thought “Screw this! I’m eating a sweet potato! I can have carbs”
I began that day eating more food, especially sweet potatoes, and the weight started to come off. The scale kept dropping and I didn’t feel like I was starving and I wasn’t following some crazy restrictive diet that made me feel like a failure- when I wasn’t a failure at all. It’s just that the majority of diets marketed to women are impossible to follow and sustain.
And thats when my sweet potato moment inspired me to start Integrity Nutrition Coaching. So I could teach women that we are supposed to fuel our bodies and eat the damn food! And that when we do, we get actual results that we can maintain. I’m happy to say that we’ve helped hundreds of women across the country now with our Nourish to Flourish Method!
Cam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
First and foremost, I’m a proud mom and wife! I live in Charleston, South Carolina with my husband- Cory, our daughter- Rowan, and our two dogs Moose and Bear.
I’ve been in the health and fitness industry pretty much my whole life. I played sports all the way through college and graduated with a nutrition and exercise science degree. After college, I dabbled in personal training and working in the group fitness world. After my daughter was born, my husband and I opened a meal prep company. It was called Freshly Fueled and was voted the Best of Charleston for two years in a row.
Once we began to pair our nutrition services with our clients, the timeline at which they got results really began to skyrocket. As 2020 approached, we moved to just online nutrition coaching. This is when Integrity Nutrition Coaching truly began to take off. As we continued to grow, I came in contact with more and more women across the country.
This was when I realized that women had been chronically conditioned to under-eat and under-fuel, leading to an epidemic of eating disorders and hormone imbalances- contributing to the rise of thyroid disease. I furthered my education and became a Women’s Hormone and Thyroid Specialist. I fell in love with coaching women and explaining that they needed to fuel their bodies to balance their hormones. That they can THRIVE instead of just barely surviving and still get to their weight loss, performance, and wellness goals- while eating an appropriate amount of food. This is where my passion has continued to evolve. At Integrity, we rely on whole food nutrition and have a strong foundation in holistic techniques to create an accessible and sustainable routine to promote overall wellness and health.
What sets Integrity apart from other coaching is that we are our clients last fat loss coach and we finally end the feeling of dieting year after year.
Our 1:1 clients average a weight loss of 20-50 pounds depending on the coaching timeline they select. Despite weight loss goals, all of our clients end up having a much better relationship with food, finally feel comfortable in their own skin, and are educated on how to maintain their achieved fat loss for life. We teach them how to lose fat, we teach them how to keep it off forever, and they get to decide how far they want to take it.
We work together for 6, 9, or 12 months on the following things:
1. Prepping for fat loss. Most diets fail because they immediately put you into a fat loss phase without even knowing if your body will be receptive to fat loss. This is why it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels, working hard, and not seeing the results you desire.
In Prep, which is Phase One of our Nourish to Flourish Method, we start by evaluating hormones, gut health, and metabolism to begin the process of putting the body into a fat burning state.
It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. We can determine exactly what the body needs to begin losing fat and getting leaner with a simple intake process.
Many of our clients notice more energy, an improved relationship with food, and clothes fitting better within the first couple of weeks.
2. Pursuing your fat loss goals. Once we’ve laid the foundation for successful fat loss in our Prep Phase- and they’ve already started to notice some big changes in overall mood, energy levels, relationship with food, etc- we move onto Phase Two of our program: Pursue.
Appropriately named because this is where we pursue their fat loss goals. Except because they didn’t skip our Prep Phase, like most people have in every other diet, our clients notice a few amazing, and different, things on this fat loss journey. They aren’t restricting calories or certain food groups like they have in the past. Which makes it easy to enjoy your life.
Clients can have the occasional date nights or pizza nights with the fam and still see the scale trending down, which makes this the most sustainable fat loss diet that they have tried. We tell you precisely how much flexibility you can enjoy while still seeing the progress you desire.
The next thing clients notice is how easy it is to see progress and stick with the plan. We have had multiple clients tell us that this is the only plan that has ever worked and the only plan that they were ever able to follow for this length of time. It’s because we create a custom plan for you and your lifestyle and guide you with small, sustainable adjustments to make that deliver big results at low inconvenience.
3. Maintaining your results. Here at Integrity we know that any diet only works if you are able to keep your fat loss. That’s why after they’ve pursued and reached their goals, we move into Phase Three of our Nourish to Flourish Method, Persist.
In Persist, we focus on taking them out of your fat loss phase and putting them into their new lifestyle integration intake level. We guide clients through a calorie increase so they can be sure that they don’t gain any weight back.
Once we reach your new lifestyle level, we begin to do the one thing that every client gets the most excited about: teaching how to stop tracking. Nobody wants to weigh their food, type it into an app, and track macros for the rest of their lives. In Persist, we educate on how to move away from that so they can enjoy life more freely- but still maintain results. Making us the last fat loss diet that our clients ever need.
Most of our clients are busy professionals and working moms who are constantly trying to balance their families, social life, home responsibilities, and their own health and fitness journeys. That’s why our Nourish to Flourish Method has gotten hundreds of them success because it’s the most logical and sustainable approach on the market.
Our plan is made directly for our client and their lifestyle. We meet them where they are and take them to where they want to be using our education and application skills in hormones, metabolism, and gut health. Plus we have the added benefit of knowing what it’s like to be a busy professional balancing a family life, social life, and our own health and fitness journeys so we have realistic expectations and can understand our clients busy and overwhelmed schedule.
The coach sets up their entire plan with them. Making any changes or adjustments that they may need in order to be successful. They will be coached on mindset, creating habits that move them closer to your goals, and teaching them how to integrate all of these new habits into their life and schedule.
At Integrity we work very closely with our clients to build a plan that is truly customized to ensure that they succeed. We currently have a small coaching staff that is taking care of women in over 23 states and 2 different countries. We have helped hundreds of women finally achieve their lean, toned appearance and optimal hormone health without spending hours in the gym or continuing to eat less and less while feeling restricted in their daily lives. Our company goal is to help 1,000,000 people in the coaching industry over our lifetime. We might have a long way to go, but I’m excited about the path that we’re on.
Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.
My husband and I sold our former meal prep company, Freshly Fueled. It was a great experience, but we were cooking 700+ meals a week and trying to raise a 2 year old. It was no longer a business that we wanted to be a part of!
I think thats one of the most important things to realize- that you don’t need to be married to your first successful business! Most people will have a few different businesses before they find the one that sticks.
We were approached by a company who essentially bought everything except our name and recipes. So just our social media accounts, which they rebranded, and our customer lists.
This is why social media is important and you should be building a huge community. We leveraged that for a large down payment and profit sharing over the next two years. Big tip: build a contact list of raving fans that are interactive. And if you ever sell a business, negotiate profit sharing. That’s free money coming in for work that you previously did when the business was yours.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Most online coaches don’t understand that the most important thing to build your reputation is to get people results. A lot of coaches think it’s just something that they can jump into as a side hustle, but it’s so much more than that. Anybody can help someone lose weight- but very few coaches can help people learn how to lose weight and maintain it. The true reputation of an online nutrition coach isn’t the results that they were able to create for a client in 2 or 3 months. It’s how that same client looks 1 to 2 years later. If they have successfully maintained the weight loss- they had a great coach. If they didn’t, the coach didn’t teach them anything or solve the problem they originally had- wanting to lose weight.
Our reputation speaks for itself because we have helped so many clients see a change in their weight and then maintain it. The majority of our community and new 1:1 clients come from referrals- which is the best sign that our reputation is thriving as much as our clients are!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.integritynutritioncoaching.com
- Instagram: @coachcambrown
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coachcamb
- Other: Join our free facebook community! https://www.facebook.com/groups/335225074661233