We were lucky to catch up with Liz Wolfe recently and have shared our conversation below.
Liz, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?
When I talk about “previous jobs,” I’m really talking about previous projects and endeavors within my own “working for myself” journey. I have learned so, so much in 10+ years of scrapping together passion projects, building (and sometimes, letting go of) businesses, and earning an income serving people through my content.
The lesson that, at first glance, seemed insignificant – but that has followed me through years of new projects, showing its significance again and again – is one I resisted for most of my life! That lesson is: know your personality type.
Backing up: many people resist personality “typing,” and I was certainly one of them. It didn’t help that there are so many varying personality “frameworks,” and many of them aren’t actually helpful! I resisted personality typing because I always felt like it was nobody’s business but my own to decide or define who I am, or how I function in the world. More so, I didn’t want to “box myself in” and start assigning myself traits based on some arbitrary type!
That said, somewhat contradictorily, if you’d asked me whether self-awareness or self-reflection was important, I’d have said “unequivocally yes!”
During the course of one of my longest-running projects, a podcast called the Balanced Bites Podcast, my co-host introduced me to several personality typing frameworks that truly changed the course of my life. First, Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies, which is a simple, free framework that assesses how you, as an individual, respond to expectations. I took the quiz “just for fun,” but the information that I gleaned from it absolutely changed my personal and professional life! Discovering that I am an “obliger” explained SO much of my own personal and professional challenges, outcomes, and tendencies, and it paved the way for me to recognize barriers and set myself up for greater success!
From there, I also took the official RHETI Enneagram test, which offered me even greater insight and inspired an expanded sense of self-awareness – both about myself and my relationships with others, including those who work for me.
Ultimately, I have learned that the more tools I have to know myself – not just through my own self-assessments, but through established frameworks that offer new and thoughtful insights, the better I am able to circumvent limiting beliefs, conquer obstacles that are holding me back, and outline big, audacious goals that I never would have believed were possible in the past.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got into my field – which I would consider the “integrative wellness” field – quite by accident. I have always loved writing, and started a blog to keep in touch with friends and family when I moved across the country in 2009. This blog ended up centering around food and fitness, and began growing steadily over the course of a year. Consistency and a constant effort to connect with my new readers led to growth and opportunities I never could have imagined, and I set about becoming a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP) to better inform my writing in 2011. I also got my first fitness certification around that time (I am now an ACE-certified CPT).
Around 2012, I was asked to cohost a podcast (which is still active today, 10+ years later), write a book (Eat the Yolks, a Wall Street Journal Best Seller, published in 2014), give workshops, and partner with brands. I took most opportunities that came my way, as it’s really my personality to “oblige” (see previous question) and I get a lot of satisfaction from providing exactly what people want and need! (This is both a strength and a weakness, as sometimes “obliging” can lead to deep investment in projects that are not necessarily centered around my passions – and this eventually limits the projects’ longevity.)
During the last decade, I have developed programs and products in response to the requests of my audience; products centered around fertility and pregnancy, healing and improving the skin, natural skincare (including a natural skincare product), and athleticism for moms, but my longest-running project has been the Balanced Bites Podcast. With nearly 10 million downloads and 430+ episodes, the podcast medium has been a near-constant and so rewarding. It provides an opportunity for Q&A from listeners, for deep research dives on my part, and to build an enthusiastic community that has stuck with me for many years.
2023, the year I turned 40, has been a pivotal year for me (you’re never too old or established to have a “pivotal year!”) and I am setting about conquering my most audacious goal yet – creating an online “hub” for women entering midlife, who want to make this next chapter the best chapter yet. This hub includes food, fitness, and lifestyle content, signature nutrition and fitness programming, a new podcast, and a full team of creators making it happen. It’s the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In late 2019, I made what I have called, many times, “a very bad business decision.” I chose to completely exit social media and, in effect, simply stop all business activities for the foreseeable future. I was pregnant and felt very strongly that I needed to turn inward and take care of myself and my family in a way the pace of my business wouldn’t allow. Because my business is centered around people – serving their needs, listening to their questions, and communicating through social media and podcasts – I simply found myself lacking the energy to do all of it; to give my business and my family what they needed. So I put the podcast on indefinite hiatus and made my exit. Shortly after, a global pandemic took hold, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I was not “on the internet” at that time. The stress during my pregnancy would have been more than I could handle. When I was ready to re-activate the podcast and my business, the community that I had spent over 8 years building was still there and happy to see me return. The lesson: cultivate true, authentic connection with your community. They won’t forget you.
If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?
I would absolutely choose the same profession, but I would (I hope) treat it as a business from the beginning, rather than simply waiting for others to tell me what they wanted from me. I would believe in my abilities to build something great, and go about it strategically as a leader rather than responsively as an obliger. Of course, these kinds of lessons might only come through experience!
Contact Info:
- Website: realfoodliz.com
- Instagram: @realfoodliz
Image Credits
Claire Ryser