We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Liz Georges. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Liz below.

Liz, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

In 2019, I was making more money than I ever had before, at a job I truly enjoyed selling Mercedes-Benz, VW, and Audi vehicles, but I was stressed, depressed, and couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings. I’d stopped all prospecting at work but still had clients coming to me because of the relationships I’d built the prior four years.

My life at home was stressful, too, living with and providing care for my boyfriend, an Iraq War veteran with Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He had recently come home from a 7-week residential treatment and made dramatic improvements, but I recognized I needed to make some changes as well.

Since my boyfriend had worked so hard to get better, I didn’t want to give up on him, so I decided to think about changing careers. But what?

Because I’d been successful in sales and met so many self-made entrepreneurs while I was selling thee high-end vehicles, I had the idea that I could just go into business for myself, so for about a month, I prayed, meditated, thought, and wrote about what I could do instead. I realized the only thing that made sense was to return to healthcare – a field I was passionate about – but to find my own way in, because I could not tolerate the healthcare system.

The first 10 years of my career I’d been an executive assistant to CFO’s, CEO’s, CIO’s, Directors, and even supported an entire Sales & Marketing department. I learned a lot about many aspects of running a business, and I always thought I’d be great at it. But I had a love for health, so I became an x-ray tech while in the Army National Guard, where I, too, had deployed to Iraq. After that, I worked in Occupational Health, followed by a family practice for 4 years, where in addition to taking xrays, I was a medical assistant and the assistant office administrator as well.

The family practice had been eye-opening about the real workings of our medical system, and I found it to be an incredibly rewarding, but ultimately disappointing experience. In the Army and Occupational Health, the majority of patients were in pretty good health. At the family practice, however, we were in an underserved community, and the majority of our patients had multiple health conditions. Our patients had little hope of regaining health, and our doctors didn’t provide hope or any real guidance for the typical advice of “lose weight and exercise.”

Patients would ask me for advice, because I was an inspiring picture of health, more so than the physicians and other staff, but I was not allowed to advise in my role. I could tell them to do what I did – Google – but that was it. It was frustrating, because relatives on both sides of my family had been able to manage diabetes without medications, and I’d overcome my own high cholesterol and elevated fasting glucose by using the internet to research and make relatively minor changes to my diet. I found it unbelievable that not a single one of our patients was able to get off a maintenance medication the entire 4 years I worked there.

I left that practice after my son graduated HS in 2012 and returned to school, hoping to find a niche in healthcare that fit my holistic beliefs, Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the right programs, so I got my Bachelor of General Studies and looked for a job.

What I discovered that any local role in healthcare for which I was qualified, would pay far less than radiography, I would need a master’s degree to get into administrative positions, so I decided to find any well-paying job to earn the money to return to school. That’s how I ended up selling cars.

So as I was thinking about my history and passion for keeping myself as healthy as I could, I also realized what I loved about selling cars, taking xrays, and even being an executive assistant was the relationships I built with people. On Wednesday, it dawned on me I could become a health coach. On Thursday I researched coaching schools, and on Friday, instead of stopping at Panera for my morning breakfast, I stopped at Panera and bought pastries for the entire dealership. I walked into work, stopped at my boss’ desk, and told him I was there to say thank you and good-bye.

I really didn’t think even about it. Once I knew what I wanted to do, that was it; there was no turning back.

I hadn’t even discussed it with my boyfriend. I was home when he got home from work that day and said, “I have news.” He responded, “you quit your job, didn’t you?”

It’s been 4-1/2 years, and I’ve been learning my craft, digging deeper, learning more and more ways I can help my clients uncover and manage the HIDDEN stressors that are keeping them sick.

My quest to heal myself and help others learn to heal has led to multiple certifications – I’m a certified Health & Life Coach, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Level II Reiki Practitioner, Qigong for Healers(R) Practitioner, Positive Intelligence(R) Coach, Minister of Universal Life Church, and I’m currently completing a Dietary Supplement Specialist course. Some of these have been low-price, but the majority have not.

I’ve burned through over $35K in savings, and just this month got my house out of foreclosure.

If you’d asked me 4 years ago if I was taking a huge risk leaving my job for an uncertain career as a health coach, and I would have responded, “absolutely not!” I had no idea at all the amount of mental and emotional healing I would need to do to be able to fully love myself, work for myself, promote myself as an expert, feel confident in my pricing, and hear “no” over and over.

I was a rock star at every job I ever had. Working for myself has turned out to be the most humbling yet rewarding experience of my life, and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. When my mentor reached out last week and told me he realized I was an amazing coach when I helped him clarify his own purpose and passion, I realized I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Liz, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My life has been interesting, to say the least. We’ll start at age 12, when my siblings and I moved in with our paternal grandparents. Grandma was a “health food nut,” which I didn’t appreciate at the time, but she taught us to cook wholesome, nutritious meals from scratch. There were rarely boxed foods in the house, even though she worked for Kraft Foods. For a rare treat, she brought home Breyers all-natural ice cream from the company store.

Fast-forward a bit, and I’d worked as an Executive Assistant then became a Radiology Technologist through the Army while raising my son as a single mom. Throughout that time, I served in the Army Reserves then National Guard, deploying to Iraq when my son was 11. After returning home, I worked in occupational health and then for a primary care physicians office as a Rad Tech, Medical Assistant, and front office staff.

This was my first foray into a diseased population, and I quickly learned doctors have a very specific place in health, delaying the progression of disease and death, but they’re not educated or equipped to help patients heal naturally, the way my grandma taught me. At 36, I was healthier than nearly everyone I knew, including our doctors and other staff. I found our patients continually coming to me, asking for advice to get better without more meds, but I legally could not provide advice. I also recognized many medications interact poorly with whole foods, such as blood thinners and broccoli, or antidepressants with grapefruit. After my son graduated high school, I decided to go back to college to find a new place in the healthcare system.

College didn’t provide any answers to my healthcare questions, but I learned enough in psychology and sociology to understand a lot of poor health outcomes are both psychological and societal.

Not finding work in a healthcare role that satisfied me, I sold luxury vehicles while I continued searching for my next opportunities. After four years, I’d had enough. I loved my job, but it wasn’t my passion and I felt guilty leading my clients on, knowing I wouldn’t be around for the long term.

I thought long and hard about what to do next. On the one hand, I absolutely loved the relationships I was building with my clients. On the other, my passion was healthcare, but I couldn’t find any programs that weren’t tied into the AMA, which I’d lost confidence in. One day health coaching came up in my radar, and before I knew it, I quit my job and started a program.

From there, I discovered Functional Diagnostic Nutrition®, the Positive Intelligence®. I’ve also become a Level II Reiki practitioner, Qigong coach, and have been working on several other certifications.

Now, as a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® Practitioner and Health & Mental Mastery Coach, I I help my clients investigate the underlying metabolic dysfunction contributing to their symptoms. By mitigating these HIDDEN Stressors® and tapping into their bodies’ natural healing abilities, I empower entrepreneurs over 40 to overcome pain, stress, and self-judgement so they have the energy and focus to grow and scale their businesses while also enjoying the people and activities they love.

Using evidence-based, holistic healing protocols, I provide one-on-one, individualized personal service, ensuring my clients feel heard and respected, because they know themselves better than anyone.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I left the car dealership, I had all the confidence in the world that I would be immediately successful as a health coach. After all, I had been a rock star in every role I’d ever held in my life.

What I didn’t realize was that I was deeply depressed. I didn’t understand depression at that time, and I thought if I was still an optimist and loved people, I couldn’t be depressed. Then I started therapy – not because of the depression, but because I had a hard time communicating with my boyfriend, who is also an Iraq War vet, but with TBI/PTSD. In therapy, I learned I had nearly all the signs of depression, and my symptoms were more than stress related.

It took about 5 months for me to really get into my health coach training, and even longer to find the confidence to put myself out there to start looking for clients. Financially, I burned through all my savings within a couple years, just trying to make ends meet, and I kept signing up for all the free trainings I could attend. I learned a lot, but I still wasn’t finding the courage to make a run for it.

It been 4-1/2 years now since I quit my job, and I’m still working every day to build my business. It’s not thriving in the way I want it to, but *I* am thriving! I’m connecting with new people daily. I’m active in my community and volunteering with other entrepreneurs to build each other up. I’m helping to connect entrepreneurs with resources. I’m even volunteering with youth organizations to help promote mental and physical fitness.

The work I’m doing is way too important to stop doing it. I’m barely making ends meet, but I’m doing it.

If I could successfully raise my son as a single mom, buy a house and decent cars by myself, without government assistance or child support, I can and I will be successful in my business. I won’t give up on my dreams.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

There are so many things I had to unlearn – first is that there is no one perfect diet for everyone. I used to believe that if everyone ate like I do, nobody would have health issues! As I discussed earlier, my grandma laid a very strong nutritional foundation for me, that I believed would work for anyone, but I really wasn’t as healthy as I thought I was.

I believed the reason I carried extra weight was that I ate too many cookies and drank too much Coke. But when I stopped eating and drinking those, I didn’t lose the fat. I just lost weight.

Now I recognize that fat was protecting me – it was my stress response, and I’d been stressed my entire life. I also recently learned I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, which bloodwork indicates I’ve likely had at least 15 years. So I’m really not as healthy as I’ve thought I was.

I’ve learned food allergies aren’t the only issue we may have with food – sensitivities and intolerances create inflammation, that gut health greatly impacts food sensitivities and intolerances, that constipation is a signal the body isn’t detoxing properly.

I now recognize that everyone has their own genetics and weak links that impact how their bodies process stressors. That diabetes isn’t always a sugar problem, that obesity is rarely an overeating problem.

Every person has a perfect diet unique only to them, but unless that perfect diet is coupled with lifestyle changes that reduce stress and promote happiness, the solutions to their symptoms will only be temporary.

I also learned I was not as mentally fit as I once believed. I was judging myself and situations harshly, while being empathetic to others. I had to learn to have that empathy for myself as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lizgeorges.com
• Instagram: thelizgee
• Facebook: Liz Georges, FDN-P
• Linkedin: Liz Georges, FDN-P

Image Credits
One image has a watermark for The Prolific Zone so they have credit. The rest were taken by me (self-portraits), and the Qigong is a stock photo from Canva Pro.