We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Cornelius a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Emily thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I initially started my business as a macro coach for weight loss. Teaching macro counting felt like an unnatural fit for me. I personally hated counting and recording all the numbers and it wasn’t what I personally did to lose weight. I just felt like it was the main thing I was taught in school as a Dietitian for weight loss so I started with it. After about a year into coaching, I was feeling frustrated that there was about 45% of my clients who couldn’t lose weight. One of my clients who was struggling to lose weight got diagnosed with sleep apnea. We had been working together for 4 months and she didn’t lose a single pound! I did a lot of research on sleep apnea and weight loss using my Medical Nutrition Therapy books from school and the words that kept coming up were “insulin resistance.” I realized she might be struggling with weight loss because she’s insulin resistant. We ended up trying a more carb-controlled diet and leaned into healthy fats and protein for most of her calories. The diet style was Mediterranean based but the balance was designed for better blood sugar control. I’m excited to say she’s now lost 85 pounds and kept it off. After seeing so much success with her I tried this diet style of a few of my other clients who were struggling and asked them to get a fasting insulin test. Sure enough, all tests came back positive for insulin resistance. I was so excited that I wanted to share more about it on social media to see how many people were struggling with this. Within 1 year my social media following grew from 3,700 to 681,000. I felt like at that point social media had validated what a need there was for more education on insulin resistance and I decided to change my practice and solely focus on reversing insulin resistance. There were a lot of Dietitians talking about prediabetes and diabetes but there weren’t any just talking about insulin resistance. The condition of insulin resistance happens far before you are diagnosed with prediabetes so there are a lot of people out there suffering from symptoms of IR but can’t get any diagnosis because they don’t have prediabetes yet. I wanted to help people who were frustrated with not being able to lose weight but weren’t getting any answers. I also wanted to help people who were told the keto diet was the best option to reverse insulin resistance. There’s no need to completely cut carbohydrates to reverse insulin resistance and I wanted to share that.

Emily, 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?

My name is Emily Cornelius I’ve been a Registered Dietitian for 9 years! My mom was always interested in Nutrition and she told me I should go to school to be a Registered Dietitian. I thought Dietitians just sat around and wrote diets all day so I thought it was a boring career. I always loved business, so I decided to try Finance in school. After about a year of finance, I wanted to switch my career path because I was never great at numbers! I talked to a couple of Dietitians at Kent State and realized there were so many things I could do as a Dietitian (not just write diets). Fast forward to present day it’s been really awesome to see how I’ve been able to combine my love for nutrition and for business into one. The the main product I sell in my business is weight loss coaching. I help clients to crush cravings, feel full, and increase energy through blood sugar control. The after effect after working on these three things is weight loss! I offer 1:1 coaching and online self-paced courses. I also got the opportunity to work with some of my favorite brands over the past year for influencer marketing and really enjoyed it! I think what sets me apart from others is getting to the ultimate cause of lack of weight loss instead of focusing on the proximal cause. The ultimate cause for lack of weight loss in more than 1 in 3 people is hormone imbalance. I see so many people blaming themselves for lack of discipline surrounding weight loss instead of getting to the root cause issue of why they are so hungry in the first place! The thing that I am most proud is how many people tell me how their lives are forever changed after learning about eating for hormone balance and blood sugar control. It’s common that clients get emotional on calls after spending three months with me because of how excited they are about their progress with increased energy, weight loss, and feeling full after years of trying but seeing no changes in their health. The biggest thing I want people to know about me and my brand is that insulin resistance is extremely common (more than 1 in 3 people have it) and it’s 110% worth it to get tested! Once you know what the problem is, it’s easier to find solutions and answers on how to reach your goals.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The first thing I’ll start with is growing a massive audience on social media is HARD but not impossible. The two most important things in my opinion, are finding your audience and then getting to know them really well. Once I nitched into insulin resistance I studied my ideal clients to see what they were going through. I did this by doing polls on my stories, reading comments, following Facebook groups where people were chatting about their experiences etc. When I speak to my audience I try to talk to them as if they were my friends. I see a lot of experts in the field of weight loss talking down to their audience without realizing it. I don’t think people need to be told to stop doing fad diets. They know fad diets aren’t the answer they just don’t know what else to do for weight loss. In my opinion content like that just makes people feel worse about themselves. The other thing I studied was video content. We live in the age of video so if you aren’t doing them it will be hard to grow. I studied viral video formats, structures, flow, music, and trending topics. Consistency is also really important for growth. I post around the same time 3-5 days per week. This way people get excited to check on your post for the day and they know you will show up for them consistently. The last thing is branding is really important. I pretty much put the words “insulin resistance” in everything I post. For people just starting out and building a following, I would say post a variety of things to see what works for you! If people aren’t liking it, then it’s not speaking to them. Don’t spend time posting the same type of content that doesn’t get much traction.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Instagram and Tik Tok! The most exciting thing about having a big social media following is that you are able to reach people from all over the world! I’ve had the honor of working with people to reverse insulin resistance in Italy, Dubai, Ireland, Germany, England and more! My first viral video on Tik Tok reached 9 million views and booked out my 1:1 coaching inquiry calls for 3 months! At that point, I had to shut down my 1:1 coaching application and I haven’t reopened it and it’s been over a year now. I have enough people reaching out on a weekly basis for help that I’ve never had to put my 1:1 coaching service application back up. I feel really blessed about that, because when I first started my business it felt like I couldn’t even give my services away haha!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.emilycorneliusnutrition.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilycorneliusnutrition/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@emilycorneliusnutrition

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