We were lucky to catch up with Victoria Faling recently and have shared our conversation below.
Victoria, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I’ve spent the last 20 years battling chronic illness. I’ve had to make a lot of lifestyle changes in order to support my health and healing journey. In college, I drastically changed my diet to support my healing and I had to start being more creative in the kitchen. I’ve always loved cooking and baking, but it became more challenging with a number of food allergies and restrictions. I started my website, Lemons ‘N Lyme, to post the recipes I came up with as I knew others were struggling to eat delicious food with food restrictions. I wanted somewhere to document my health journey and the creative recipes I was making.
Part of my health journey also included exercise. Movement has always been a huge piece of managing my condition and supporting my physical and mental health. I majored in Exercise Science in college in order to go on to become a Physical Therapist. But a relapse during PT school forced me to withdraw from the program. I had been a personal trainer for years and knew that I always wanted to help others battling complex chronic illness. So, I got certified as a Medical Exercise Specialist and began working with chronic illness clients.
I started my business The Influence Health in order to help people learn how to manage their symptoms and improve their health with movement. Movement saved my life and between the science and personal experience, I knew exercise was a vital part of the healing puzzle. Most trainers have no idea how to work with chronic illness clients and neither do many physical therapists, sadly. There is a huge missing piece in supportive therapies for patients and I knew I had to and wanted to help.
Between my two businesses, my focus has always been on teaching others how to support their healing journeys through natural and holistic methods that they can access from home. Doctors are an important piece of the puzzle, but so is nutrition and movement!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I feel like a shared a lot of this in the previous answer. Let me know if you need more details.
I think a big thing that sets me apart from others is my personal experience with chronic illness. it allows me to truly understand the struggle. My clients often tell me that they trust me because I’ve actually been through it. They know I get it and can talk to me about their experiences without judgement or fear.
I feel like a huge piece of my job is just listening and being there for my clients. I’m extremely empathetic, it’s my strong suit and something I love about myself, so I’m always able to put myself in my clients or followers shoes and understand what they’re dealing with and what they need.
Not only do I help people physically feel better with recipes and exercise, but I help people get back to listening to and trusting their bodies again. A lot of my work with my 1:1 clients is nervous system regulation and learning to listen to their bodies so they can take advice from me or any other medical professional and adapt it to their bodies and lives. There is no one size fits all treatment or program that works for everyone, but when you’ve dealt with health issues for a long time, it’s hard to even listen to your body and figure out what works for you anymore. I help my clients start to trust themselves again.
Have you ever had to pivot?
My dream all through college was to become a physical therapist and start a practice geared towards chronic illness patients. I worked extremely hard to get into graduate school and make my dreams come true. During my first year at PT school, I had to withdraw due to my health. It was crushing and I felt like my entire life got turned upside down. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life moving forward after that. Once I got through the initial grieving stage and got back on my feet, I realized I could still work within the industry, just in a different way. I had 10 years of personal training under my belt along with personal experience dealing with health issues and using exercise as medicine. That is when I decided to become a Medical Exercise Specialist and work with clients on managing their chronic conditions using exercise. It was different than the acute rehab route that I had envisioned for myself, but I’ve loved it even more and it’s more flexible for me!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
I think the biggest things that helped me build my reputation with my market are personal experience and sharing that personal experience. Yes, I have the education, I do the research, and all of that which is extremely important, but people have to know, like, and trust you in order to truly want to work with you, buy from you, or engage with you. My personal experience with chronic illness and using nutritional changes and exercise to help manage my condition and then sharing those details with my audience allowed them to see my journey and trust me. They saw my ups and downs, they watched as I learned, and they were there when I succeeded. Knowing I had gone through similar experiences to them, allowed them to trust me, to share my work, and to strengthen my reputation in my field.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lemonsnlyme.com AND www.theinfluencehealth.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lemonsnlyme/ AND https://www.instagram.com/theinfluencehealth/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LemonsNLyme AND https://www.facebook.com/theinfluencehealth
- Other: pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/lemonsnlyme/ tiktoks: https://www.tiktok.com/@lemonsnlyme AND https://www.tiktok.com/@theinfluencehealth
Image Credits
Victoria Faling