What if you could build a thriving business without compromising your values? In this episode, Margaret Floyd Barry shares her incredible journey from corporate consultant to heart-led entrepreneur in functional nutrition. Discover how aligning your business with your core values can lead to both personal fulfillment and financial success. Margaret’s insights will inspire you to grow a business that not only thrives but also makes a meaningful impact on your clients’ lives.
🎧 Tune in now for a dose of inspiration and practical advice on creating a heart-centered business!
Key Takeaways from this Episode
- The essence of a heart-led business
- Aligning values with business practices
- The power of integrity in business decisions
- Transforming lives through functional nutrition
- Financial health as part of self-care for entrepreneurs
- The importance of valuing your services appropriately
About the Guest
Margaret Floyd Barry is a functional nutritionist, author, and real food advocate dedicated to helping others achieve optimal health. After reversing her own autoimmune condition, she created Restorative Wellness Solutions, certifying over 1,200 practitioners globally. Margaret also runs Eat Naked Kitchen and authored Eat Naked and The Naked Foods Cookbook, empowering others to embrace healthier living.
Additional Resources
- Websites: www.margaretfloydbarry.com & www.eatnakedkitchen.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/margaretfloydbarry
- Podcast: www.margaretfloydbarry.com/#Podcasts
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Explore the Dialogue’s Treasures: Unearth the insights within! Delve into the profound wisdom woven throughout our conversation.
Speaker: Welcome to the Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
So buckle up and let’s go. Let your heart guide your business journey.
Tom Jackobs: Well, hello, huggable humans and good vibe givers. It’s time to kick up your heels and tilt your ears towards today’s nutrition nutcracker. Prepare to be tickled pink by our guest, the marvelous, magical Margaret Floyd Berry. This fine friend is a functional foodie, a word wizard with wellness wisdom, and holds the brass ring for restoring radiant health.
On today’s hoedown at the Heart-Led Business Show, we’re going to munch on Margaret’s mastery of owning a business that doesn’t just make moolah, but makes mountains of transformative transformations. So buckle up and bon appétit. This will be a non bore discourse. Margaret, welcome to the show.
Margaret Floyd Barry: Oh my goodness. That is the best introduction I have ever received. Thank you so much. It is a delight to be here.
Tom Jackobs: So glad to dive in to the show and in your backstory, having worked together for a couple of months. But first, the first question I always have out of the bag is what’s your definition of a heart-led business?
Margaret Floyd Barry: Well, I think it actually takes a step back to what my definition of the purpose of a business is, which is to me, it is one of the most powerful vehicles for self expression that we can have in this world. And so if we take that lens, it’s not just about a financial transaction. That’s part of it. Yes, but it really is this self expression then to me, a heart-led business is all about alignment. It’s about alignment with my values, with what I believe, with what I want to create in my life and in the world, in the lives of my clients and the lives of my students, and it’s all about really just this sort of core thread of integrity of just that alignment is the word that I keep coming back to because I know when all of these pieces are aligned, that how I’m relating to my staff, how I’m relating to clients, how we are engaging in the sales process, how we’re conducting those financial transactions, the actual content of what we do as a business. If all of that is really aligned, then I really believe that we’re unstoppable. And it just comes right back to that heart piece. It’s there’s nothing sort of, you know, the heart’s the center of the body, right? I just, it’s just everything just locks in into place in this really beautiful harmony.
Tom Jackobs: That’s what you said about business as a self expression. That is the first time that, that somebody’s said that in 50 some episodes now. I love that. And it’s so true that for most businesses, especially heart-led businesses, when, you put that business together because it’s out of a passion typically, and it is what you, it should be what you love to do because you’re going to be doing it for 15 hours a day at first things so cool. So tell us a little bit about your business and what inspired you to start a heart-led business.
Margaret Floyd Barry: Absolutely. So, well, my core business, I’m a functional nutritionist, as you said. And so, but my main business right now is training other health professionals and the really advanced tools of functional nutrition. So we’re working with nutrition professionals, chiropractors, acupuncturists, nurse practitioners, doctors who want to use lab testing. Not in the way that we conventionally think of it to sort of diagnose disease and treat and manage disease, but to identify deeper imbalances in the body that we can then correct through being very strategic with food choices and certain supplements and lifestyle interventions. So that’s my main business is supporting other health professionals to use a toolkit that I’ve seen in my practice, create absolutely transformational results.
Tom Jackobs: That’s awesome. And so you first started though, in practice nutrition practice and as a functional nutrition, and then gaining that knowledge. Now you’re training others to do the same as you’re doing. Is that right?
Margaret Floyd Barry: Exactly. So my first in this lifetime of business, I’ve had other lifetimes which is actually what led me to the really understanding the importance of heart-led business. Because I think I had some experiences that were exactly not that, which showed me what I didn’t want to do. And I can share about that but yes, I started off as a practitioner.
And I actually didn’t, the company restorative wellness solutions that I lead now, I wasn’t the founder of it. I was the very first student of it and it transformed my practice. It transformed my clients lives and so I quickly became involved as an instructor and then part owner and then a couple of years ago, ended up buying out the founder as she was going on to other things. You know, in terms of my commitment to this being heart-led, it just comes from many experiences of it not being heart-led and how absolutely horrible that feels. You know, way back in the day before I even considered nutrition as a career when I was first out of college, I worked as a change management consultant in one of the big five consulting companies working on SAP implementation.
So anyone who knows about all this stuff, I mean, In the belly of the corporate beast. And at the time I was living up in Vancouver, BC, Canadian originally. So I was living up in Canada and my boyfriend was, you know, working as, working for the Sierra club. So he, here he is doing this powerful environmental advocacy work, which I fiercely believed in and the client that I that I was put on their project was one of the biggest companies in the country and so it was this, I had this moment of disconnect where what I did Monday to Friday was help this company do what they do better, but what they did, I fundamentally, you know, it was all about the clear cuts that then.
My boyfriend was protesting, right? And that I would be literally protesting the actions of this company on the weekends and then Monday to Friday in the belly of the beast and it’s funny because it became a bit of a joke in this consulting firm. I’m not going to name any names here, but it became a bit of a joke because I actually got so hot and bothered about this.
I’m also, you know, early twenties, I’m just all idealistic and don’t have any responsibilities. So I can do things like quit and not really care about it. And I kept quitting, but then they would be like, well, here, we’re going to pay you this much. And I would, I mean, I’m also a starting student, know, I just graduated from college and so I’d see these things and they would say, I swear, we will never put you on another forestry company cause there was multiple. This is in British Columbia in Canada. That was like a big part of the industry and then they put me on some like government contract or something and then next thing you know, they’re like, well, this company, you’ve got such a specialty now. So I just had this experience of the disconnect of doing, it. That was the thing that was kind of crazy. I learned that I love the business side of it but I didn’t love the end result and I committed when I left that ultimately to never do that again, never put myself in a position where the bigger picture end. Of what we are creating in the world is not in alignment with who I am in my core. It took me a minute before I became, you know, an entrepreneur and actually started my own thing but that was the birthplace of really understanding how painful that disconnect is just with the, you know, and then this of course extends not just to the core line of the business, what the business produces, every interaction within that.
In fact, I ended up from there before going to to study nutrition and embarking on my health career. I actually became a business coach and consultant in the field of corporate social responsibility, working with companies, trying to help them actually have better relation with their staff, with the environment, with you know, in even their core business line and, you know it’s challenging work. It’s a lot of problems with it, but at least I was in alignment with what I was trying to do. So that I’ve never looked back from that. Every business decision I have made from that point has been to bring, come into alignment with what is, what I really believe to be important
Tom Jackobs: Yeah , that’s what a great story. And a lot of that resonates with me for sure. Like I was in big oil before starting my, my and on SAP implementation as well. So when you said that I was like, Oh, flashback oil and yeah, the days my Arthur Anderson friends and doing all that I was like, Oh my gosh, that was anyway. But the same thing, like the last job I had before I started my fitness business was, you know, managing a rail fleet for propane and propane accessories. I would say that it’s kind of funny and it made no, I was like, what am I doing? This is not, it’s not impacting me. Like, Is it impacting some people? Yeah, they get gas for the winter, but like at the end of the day, is it really helping people? Like you said, it’s all about the integrity and finding what that self expression is as well. Funny. So, As you’re making that transition from corporate to now having your nutrition practice and then now with RWS, what have been some of the challenges that have come up with being a heart-led business and still needing to make a profit?
Margaret Floyd Barry: It is. It is definitely there have definitely been challenges. I feel like, and maybe this is, I don’t know if this is an illusion that I live under, but I do firmly believe that when we’re operating in this place of true integrity, when I’m so committed to the value that we’re creating, the transformation that we’re creating.
So I think just thinking about RWS here, thinking about the transformation and the skills and the abilities of these practitioners and equipping them with the tools and methodology to get these incredible results in their clients lives. To me, If we’re doing a really good job of that, the financial piece comes together with it. I never the financial piece and I know that’s what business is for is the financial transaction. Anytime I have gotten into trouble is when I put. The interests of the money first. If I get into scarcity thinking, or if I start making buying decisions on behalf of my students or clients, right, I’ve decided in my mind, well, there’s no way you can afford this. If I start, you know, all of any financial challenges we have ultimately have come back to my limiting beliefs or. Me getting out of alignment with the priorities. And what I don’t mean by that is, you know, dramatically overspending or, you know, undervaluing what you’re doing. It’s really about. You know, what I have learned over and again, and I see this financially, I see this in sales, I see this in managing my team and in really watching them step up and thrive and behave almost like owners of the business. I feel like that’s one of the biggest pain points for a lot of entrepreneurs.
They kind of grumble about their team. And I hear some of my colleagues grumble about their teams and I’m like, that’s not good. I love my team so much. It is, it’s kind of an unusual sale or a team meeting that I don’t like cry at some point, but not because I’m upset because I’m just so moved by how hard everyone is working and how committed to this work they all are.
They’re just, I love them so much and I could never do what I do without them. And that’s entirely because we keep it all Aligned with, as I said, coming back to that those, that sort of that core belief, there have been times where we have fallen out of that, where we’ve gotten into scarcity mode, or we have put financial goals first, or we have not used. That vision of what we’re trying to create in the world as the inspiring force for the group and sort of equipped them with the go for it, you know, go, you know what the vision is, you share the vision, let’s create this together and with the permission to fail. I want to actually speak to that very specifically.
I think that when you are aligned, you give yourself a permission to take bigger risks because you know that mistakes are a part of the process. That they’re just part of your learning, but they don’t hook you, they don’t feel like when it feels like a dagger and it feels really personal, I’m going to bet there’s some piece of it out of alignment.
That is not integrity with who you are and what you’re doing. That’s when it really stings, because I know the more that I have been honest with who I am and how I want to lead this company, we’ve made some massive mistakes. And I’m so okay with that because I can stand in total integrity in front of my entire community and say, we screwed up. This was our intention. This is what we thought was going to happen. This is why we did it this way. And it didn’t work out. And they give so much more permission. and understanding for that because it’s aligned. Now, if there’s a piece of me, if I put it because of the financial goals first, or I was doing something that felt a little bit shady just to get the sale, or I was, you know, if there’s any of those pieces start to come in, then if I get that feedback, I’m, it’s gonna, it’s gonna really sting and I’m gonna get defensive because I know that I did something that I really any, and I’m trying to think of specific moments.
Honestly, the more aligned that I have become in every decision that I make in the business. It actually takes out a lot of the drama, and it doesn’t mean that there’s not stressful moments. There’s plenty of stressful moments, but it’s not these, like, it’s not like sort of white knuckling roller coaster kind of a situation. So I just I think that. It all comes back to me for this alignment of who you are and what you’re doing and that the financial piece just fits in this as this beautiful side benefit. It’s the outcome of doing all of those other pieces, as opposed to the first order of business.
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree with you more. And, you know, having worked with you for a couple months, I’ve seen your passion for helping the practitioners be okay with charging what they’re worth. And I wonder if you’d be okay with sharing a little bit about that and the first course or the first the first class that you went through that, that I observed, and I could see your passion about that. You need to make the money to be able to help these people. I don’t want to put words here. Can you talk a little bit passion?
Margaret Floyd Barry: No, a hundred percent. In the health space, in the functional health space in particular there are a couple of designations that typically, I’m going to over generalize and stereotype here, but where a lot of those practitioners have a very hard time valuing themselves and charging what they’re worth. And it can sometimes come because, oh, I don’t have MD next to my name, or I’m not a, you know, like they, there’s this sort of hierarchy. And yet, And I’m just going to speak very specifically to nutrition professionals, because even though we train lots of different types of practitioners, the majority are nutrition professionals, you know, in functional medicine, which is becoming increasingly popular because it is extremely effective at actually getting to the root of the problem so that we correct the issue rather than just sort of bandaid over it with a whole bunch of drugs and procedures and never actually heal. The core of functional medicine is functional nutrition. That is the core. That is the, you know, and in fact, sometimes what we see with functional MDs, if they don’t have that profound level of training in nutrition, which unless they have sought it out additionally, they don’t get in medical school at all. Then the tendency can be to just practice what I call green allopathy, meaning Oh, we see, here’s a disease state that we see on your labs. We’ll diagnose it, but instead of using the medical route, we’ll use herbs and nutrients instead. But it’s still, the approach is managing symptoms, but just now we’re using natural agents versus prescriptive agents. Nutritionists don’t have the ability to diagnose or prescribe and treat. And sometimes that can be the the basis of insecurities, but I think it’s our biggest power because we are required to look at what is causing. The imbalance in the body and how can we support the body through manipulating the diet, through bringing in nutrients really strategically to adopting new lifestyle habits?
How can we do that to create an environment in the body? That it can bring itself back into balance and heal. And we are the best equipped to do that. And I can tell you, I have seen time and again, what, you know, what I used to even think of, and it’s what I see a lot of my clients think of as almost miracles, right?
Because they’ve been through countless medical practitioners, they’re not getting results and now they get results. And I am using the tools of nutrition. So I feel like one of the things that happens is we, you know, practitioners come into this space. They come to it because of that desire, the Heart-Led piece. The Heart-Led piece can actually overshadow the financial piece, because that’s where they came. They came to change people’s lives. And who am I to
make money from doing that? And while I get that’s not sustainable. And you can’t drag that out. Unless you happen to come from, you know, extraordinary family wealth. Which I would still say that’s not a very responsible use of it. You want to be contributing to it, not just drawing from it. But it, you know, the vast majority of us need to sustain ourselves financially. And it’s funny because as practitioners, we think about, Oh, we’ve got to make sure that we’re prioritizing our own self care and eating right and sleeping well and getting the exercise and stuff.
And it’s like your financial health. is as much a part of your overall well being as anything to do with your diet and exercise. And so I’m really committed to helping them understand that, first of all, it’s not about the letters behind your name. It’s not about just, you know, the, to earn money from something that is because you got into it for a heart-led reason.
That doesn’t sour or taint the heart. The heart piece and the intention. It is a beautiful exchange of energy where you are helping somebody transform their health and get their life back. That is worth a lot. You know, the clients where I’ve had the biggest successes across the board have said, I would pay 10 times as much as I paid you to get this right.
Like they would pay anything. If somebody has their health, you know, all the goals and the projects in the world, if you don’t have your health, you have one goal. And it’s put that health back. Right. And so it’s become my mission to help these practitioners recognize that if they’re not taking care of themselves financially, it’s not sustainable to help these other, to help the clients. And it ultimately is not in the client’s best interest. They don’t actually end up getting better results. Any client. With maybe one exception, any client that I have recognized deep financial need and I’ll do things pro bono, it’s been a disaster. There’s something very powerful in that exchange of energy where you have something on the line. And especially in our work as nutrition professionals, The very nature of our work is that the client gets no results unless they change their behavior and behavior change is the hardest thing. And we’re asking them to do really hard things. Oh, like here’s your favorite food that you can’t eat anymore.
Right? Like, Oh, take a, here’s a bunch of supplements you don’t want to take, right? Like here’s, it’s not necessarily easy what we’re asking them to do. And we have to build the business model to account for that and to create enough. room to support the client through that journey. And when the client has money on the line, they have invested several thousand dollars to be working with you over the course of the next six months. First of all, that’s peanuts compared to what they would pay for a lifetime of illness. Secondly, what, you know, this is the most valuable gift you can be giving somebody is getting their health back. And thirdly, they have now skin in the game beyond just their health. And people do really take seriously, most people, what they pay for. So I just see no value in undervaluing yourself. It doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t help the client. It doesn’t help you. It doesn’t, it just It devalues and demeans the entire business. And it actually, I think it ends up reflecting poorly on other professionals. Like I think it’s almost like a responsibility to the field.
Like let’s all elevate, you know, and show. The professionalism, you know, you would never ask a lawyer to just, you know, give you all this stuff for free, right? There’s certain professions that doesn’t even dawn on us to be like, Hey, would you, Hey accountant, would you do my tax returns this year?
Just like, just cause. No, we expect that there’s a fine. Yes, we also know that there’s going to be some that charge less and some that charge more and we have certain expectations with that. But I think that the, yeah, that financial piece and the the self the valuing of. What somebody the creation that we’re, the transformation that we’re facilitating, it’s just, it’s so important.
And I think we’re talking about nutrition professionals here, but I see it play out in a lot of businesses, especially startups, you know, especially solopreneurs. Like there’s an insecurity and I get it. I’ve gone through it too. I’m not saying any of this without having deep firsthand experience of it. Trust me. It’s taken me years to get
Tom Jackobs: mean, that’s the whole reason I started the podcast because I’ve lived through so much of that and struggled you know, with all of that. And what you said is just absolutely on par as well. Now there, there’s probably going to be some practitioners are listening to this and say, yeah, but I have that one client that just really doesn’t make any money and they really need my help, but they can’t afford my services. What words of advice would you give to that practitioner? Absolutely.
Margaret Floyd Barry: Two things, number one. If it is truly one client and you are charging nice and robustly for the rest of your work, there’s nothing wrong with subsidizing, not completely not having them try to pay anything, but subsidizing that work and having some discounted rates in a select number of spots in your practice for people who are not able to charge premium or pay premium rates. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just make sure that’s not Everybody in your practice. Secondly, it’s really important that they pay something. And I would also say you will be surprised at what they come up with. I can remember, I remember I mentioned earlier on of not making financial decisions and buying decisions for my clients.
I can remember talking with a prospective client back when I was full time practicing and he was a, he worked at a grocery store stocking vegetables. Right. Like he was the dude who like, brings the apples out. He was not making a lot of money and he was really sick and he was really struggling.
And I remember I, I quoted him my price and I just, in my head, I was like, there’s no way he can do this. And I started to kind of write him off. And he was, and I, he started to, we were not talking on a screen. We were talking by phone, but I could hear some things. It’s like, almost like I could hear his brain thinking.
I don’t know if he’s writing or what, but it was like, you could hear it’s kind of like mulling things over. And he’s like, okay, yeah, if I can extend the payments. And he asked for me to extend the payments instead of it being you know, normally I have them pay every month for six months if they need to do a payment, then, you know, he asked if we could extend it, I think, to like eight or 10 months. He found a way to make it work. And let me tell you how compliant he was as a result. He was so invested in this. This was his work. This was what he was doing. Like these next six months of his life, his project was getting well. And so he got great results because of the that he paid for it.
And even in my mind, as I already had, I always have a couple of spots in my practice or when I was full time practicing, I always had a couple of spots for people who couldn’t afford it and they were already filled. And I was really. I knew I needed to keep that boundary. I just, then it doesn’t become, you know, I’m sustaining my whole family on this business.
I can’t do that if I’m giving too much away. So I wasn’t able to do that. And I, in my head thought, there’s just no way he’s going to be able to do this. And there he did. He stepped up and he impressed the absolute pants off me. I was so. Blown away by that. And he taught me a really invaluable lesson that we should never make those buying decisions for anybody, no matter the circumstance.
Tom Jackobs: That’s such great advice. And you know, when I had my fitness and nutrition business as well, like, you know, I’d see people roll up in their BMWs, Mercedes, and then they, you, oh, that’s too expensive. I can’t afford that. I’m like, and yet I had a school teacher roll up in an 89 Buick and she’s like, okay, yeah, 700 bucks a month.
Yeah, that’s fine. Like, I’m willing to commit and get better because, you know, it’s that important. And it’s really about, I think, and you illustrated this as well it’s what’s important and what’s the priority for that person as well. Because, you know, You know, if it’s a priority, they’re going to find a way some way or not, you know, they’re going to find a way to, to make it happen.
Great advice. Thank you so much for that, Margaret, and thank you for being on the show today as well, but how can people find out a little bit more about you, your work that you’re doing in RWS?
Margaret Floyd Barry: Absolutely. Well, kind of my main virtual home is margaretfloydberry. com. That’s just my main page. It will, if you are a practitioner, you want to learn about the practitioner program, it has links to that. It has practitioners, it has links to my former practice, my clinical practice site, which has loads of articles. And resources there for free for you. If you are looking for a practitioner, if you go to restorativewellnesssolutions. com, there’s a little find a practitioner tab. And that will list practitioners all the way through, you know, throughout the country, actually, and Canada, we have, we’ve bunch of people internationally in well, throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and some Asia Pacific region as well.
So, so really don’t limit yourself if wherever you are listening to this from also many of them work with people virtually. And then, I mean, I’m not super, super active on socials, but I, if I’m going to be anywhere, I’ll be on Instagram and it’s just my name at margaretfloydberry and berry is spelled with an A, not E like the berry, not what you eat, the name.
Tom Jackobs: That’s awesome. Oh, cool. Margaret, again, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your words of advice and your story as well.
Margaret Floyd Barry: Thank you so much for having me. It is absolutely an honor be here.
Tom Jackobs: And thank you listeners for listening and watching to the show, depending on what platform you’re on we really do appreciate it and make sure you’re checking out what Margaret’s doing. We’re going to link all of those up into the the show notes there. So just. Make sure you’re checking out the show notes and click away and see what Margaret’s up to and connect with her.
If you’re interested in becoming a practitioner at RWS certification is one of the premier ones to get. So I really highly recommend that as well. And also if you could do me a solid favor and give the show a rating and review that really helps spread the word about the show and help more people that could use the advice that we shared on today’s episode. And until next time, lead with your heart.
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Speaker 2: You’ve been listening to the Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.
