ENTREPRENEURS ' WATCH - FITTRIX EDITION

"Entrepreneurs' Watch " this year is starting with a bang 💯.
Our first feature is an entrepreneur to the core.
A lawyer by 'bookery '😀, a wife and a mother of three.
Meet Ebunoluwa Oludolapo Akinwale (via @ebunfittrix), a wellness coach and nutritionist. .
On this edition she shares with us how her personal weight loss journey grew into a passion and how she has been able to build and sustain businesses around that passion : Fittrix Consulting and @naturestreatscafe , Ibadan's first wellness cafe (100% organic), situated at Palms Mall, Ibadan.

SHARE WITH US HOW YOUR WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY STARTED?
    I've never really been a slim kind of person so I have always been self-conscious.
But when I started having kids, you know the way you eat for two, I just started piling on weight and I wasn't even working then.
My "ha-moment" was when I was going to start a job and I climbed on the scale and I saw 104.8kg, I was perplexed.  I knew I had added weight but never imagined it would be that bad.
That was the turning point for me. I had tried to lose weight a year or two before then but I was starving and created ulcer, so I went online to see how I could lose weight the healthy way. I started writing down the information I saw, comparing notes, so by the time same information is repeated from various sources,it means there is some sort of truth in it. So from the lists of meals that were acceptable, I created a meal plan/guide for myself and that's how I started.

HOW EASY WAS IT FOR YOU TO LOSE WEIGHT ?
  It wasn't a walk in the park neither was it terribly difficult. Probably because I gave myself realistic goals.  I didn't plan to lose all that weight in a month, I mean I didn't gain all that weight in a month.
I celebrated the milestones I achieved and enjoyed the kind of reactions I got from people, those kind of things spurred me on, I mean I lost weight right in front of my colleagues and naturally, they were by first set of "experiments". They started asking me how I was doing it. The first part of my weigh loss happened in four and half to five months. I lost weight from 104kg to 82kg and then I found out I was pregnant with my third baby. During the pregnancy, because I had learnt to eat properly, I didn't pile on much weight unlike the previous pregnancies where I was adding 28 to 35kg. I think I added just 12kg, I wasn't doing that "eating for two thing "and my gynecologist was always complaining.
I weaned my baby to 6 months then I started again.
I pushed it to 65kg in another five and half months.

HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO TURN YOUR PASSION FOR HELPING OTHER PEOPLE ACHIEVE WHAT YOU WERE ABLE TO ACHIEVE INTO A BUSINESS?
  My colleagues inspired my decision and the person that sowed the seed of making it a business was one of my managers although she said it on a really light note.
After a while, I left my job then and moved to another place and I was like the Head of HR/admin and I didn't have time again. I then decided that I wanted to have more time for my kids, my husband was always traveling and one of us needed to step down, so I did.
I'm not the kind of person who can just sit at home and watch telemundo, i had to be actively busy both physically and mentally.
So i listed the things i enjoyed doing. From event planning ,to fashion and then fitness which was a new terrain to me so i kept wondering how that would translate into business.This was towards the end of 2012.
I kept on pondering on how to package it.
Apart from the fact that i wanted to help people, I was looking for something I could do that would give me flexible time.
The irony of it was that I didn't have a prototype to copy in Nigeria.
Once I thought of it, I registered my business name. The name came up as "fitness tricks " which we modified to "fittrix consulting ".
As at that time i still had not figured out how to package it for people. One night ,i woke up and started writing in a book i call "book of life" which is always on my bed even though i was not sure of what i was writing.
When i woke up in the morning,i read what i had written down.
It's packaged like an online boot camp,set up a package for people with everything they would need to achieve the set goals and be with them every step.
That's when i opened a blog and shared my story with pictures.
The response since that moment has been wonderful ,people started asking me to help them.

ADVICE FOR PEOPLE WHO WOULD LOVE TO START HEALTHY EATING.
  Make it lifestyle, healthy eating should not be a project or a trend. I'm sure when we wake up every morning, we brush our teeth, that's a lifestyle, you can't say,I don't feel like brushing today,I would brush in two weeks. Discover what works for you and stick with it.
I believe as long as one can practice portion control, No food should be off limit.
E.g look at our forefathers, they ate all these things we are running from but what changed?  They were just more active. So whatever they eat is being burnt off. Unfortunately, civilization has made us less active. If we can do that,No food would be off limits as long as you are eating Good meal not junks.

YOU STARTED AS A CONSULTANT FOR PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO SHED WEIGHT, HOW WAS THE ORGANIC CAFE BIRTHED?
 Meal prep started when some of my clients starting asking me if I could not just be doing the meals in the meal plan for them. Also some of my clients started craving for cake,so I had to go back to the drawing board, what are the ingredients for baking cake, what are the healthier substitutes and that's how commercial baking started even though I had always known how to bake Which I learnt online.
For example, this Greek yoghurt everybody has been talking about,I  learnt it online, I was always  craving one I usually buy in Lagos.
So I read online, followed YouTube directions and cultured mine from the one I got from her.
After several trial and error, I mastered how to do it.
Then I needed to create a niche for myself and decided to go organic.  I decided to use fresh milk for mine because I had read that most people use processed milk.
The yoghurt is perfect for people who are lactose -intolerant or diabetic.
Of course there were times I got frustrated but the passion kept me going.

CAN YOU SHARE WITH US SOME OF YOUR SATISFYING MOMENTS IN BUSINESS?
  I feel fulfilled whenever any of my clients reach their targets.
For the cafe, I get satisfied whenever people tell me how amazing my yoghurt is.

HOW DO YOU SEE THE ISSUE OF GENDER INEQUALITY IN TODAY'S BUSINESS WORL
  I don't see it. For me, I don't do stereotypes.  I always believe there are different scenarios to things and same thing applies to gender inequality.
I believe you can decide to allow or not allow it. I am a feminist to the core but the trend of feminism I see on social media is different these days.I don't believe I am superior but expect my views to be heard.
These days, the so - called "feminists " are against marriage.
I don't believe marriage is an achievement but a ood marriage is an achievement.
I also believe in divorce, it should be used as a last resort rather than stay in an unhappy or abusive marriage.

HAVING BEEN AWAY FROM CONSULTING FOR ABOUT A YEAR,  HOW HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOU FULLY STARTED BACK THIS YEAR? ..
  Recently, I got a call from a client I had worked with and she was like, am I not consulting anymore and that's when I decided to start back my consulting fully this year.
The first client I had this year is the heaviest I have ever had.187kg.
I hadn't done this actively in about a year and coming back, God gave me this.
Today we did our progress check and she had lost almost 10kg in a week.
Currently I have five people I am working with.

ADVICE FOR UPCOMING ENTREPRENEURS.
First thing I like to tell entrepreneurs is "baby- steps" . The saying, Rome wasn't built in a day isn't  just a saying.
It takes planning and laying one brick after the other.
I mean anybody looking at me now would think I just jammed money but wouldn't know I started this journey way back in 2012. Most entrepreneurs now want to start big but it should not be . .
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We appreciate @ebunfittrix of @naturestreatscafe for gracing the first edition of "Entrepreneurs' Watch " for this year.
God bless Fittrix Consulting
God bless Nature's Treat Cafe
God bless Ibadan

Eat clean.....love life 👌

Visit @naturestreatscafe