Game Changers
Ten years ago, Rhian Allen realised that mums were one of the most overlooked and forgotten people when it comes to health and wellbeing. So, The Healthy Mummy CEO and Founder started her own business to help mums find their healthy mojo and get back in shape.
Here, our Game Changers host Natarsha Belling talks to Rhian about her business which has a global following of 1.5 million members and has successfully helped countless women regain their body confidence.
Natarsha: From corporate media to a well-being and weight loss empire, it’s the largest mums only health and fitness program in the world. Rhian Allen’s brain child, The Healthy Mummy has motivated 1.5 million members to make positive life changes and get body confidence. Shedding a collective of 3 million kilos along the way. So is she a Game Changer? Let’s find out. I’m Natarsha Belling and welcome to Game Changers.
Rhian thank you so much for joining us, what an incredible Game Changer you are. Tell us about your business and what excites you about being part of this amazing organisation.
Rhian: I am so passionate about the business. I’ve been doing it for ten years now and my passion is as strong today as it was ten years ago but the thing I really love about it is, it’s not just about weight loss. It’s about empowering mums to live a healthier life. It’s about educating mums who in turn educate their families. I feel proud because we’re actually doing something good in the world and I feel humble everyday at the feedback we receive and that we’re actually making a difference to people’s health and their longevity.
Natarsha: What I love about your organisation is it’s not about weight loss its about education. Tell us about that?
Rhian: Diets and weight loss have very negative connotations to them because it’s about restrictions and not having things. So as humans as soon as we go on something like that we’re waiting for it to stop and it can be negative. So for me and our business it’s all about education it’s about actually showing mums and families how to live a healthy life in a sustainable way. So not, not having certain foods, not not eating after a certain time, not only having a very small amount of calories. It’s about changing your life and learning to cook healthy food, how to do exercise easily so it’s not a burden or a chore and how to make positive life choices for your mental health as well as your physical health.
Natarsha: And in regards to Covid, I don’t think any of us could predict what unfolded during 2020 from a business point of view. What are some of the skills you think you’ve added to the decision making table to help guide yourself through Covid?
Rhian: Yeah, I mean I think for us we were, although it’s been an enormously difficult challenging year for everyone in our community, our business was really set up for a Covid situation I guess because budget consciousness is probably the most relevant thing to everyone today and our business is an enormously budget conscious service and product. Just because there’s Covid, it doesn’t mean mums don’t want to be healthy. It just means they don’t have as much money as they did so we just adjusted those kind of rates across the board to help mums still be healthy but do it on a super budget.
Natarsha: Healthy mind as well as a healthy body is incredibly important and often mums, in particular, we are last on the list. How do you think your business has helped ensure that self importance of care is very important? If mum falls over, the whole family falls over.
Rhian: I think for us it’s always been a priority, because when you become a mum your whole life changes, not just your budget and your body but your priority list changes and we all put our kids first. What I do think is important though and what we do try to talk about is that the kids, they have a copycat kind of mentality, so they copy what mum and dad are doing. So if mum and dad are healthier and are being more positive around healthy living as well as a healthy mind, that really rubs off onto the kids because we’re their role models. And so I think that’s kind of a huge part of what we do as well and we have lots of different ambassadors in our community which are our mums. We call them motivating-mums and they’re mums who have been on their own journey and they’ve achieved incredible things and they are there to mentor and help other mums as well so that’s a really big part of what we do as well.
Natarsha: So what are some of the key business lessons you have learnt during 2020?
Rhian: I think it’s just consolidated that we always place the customers number 1 and we always listen to the customer. I think for us we’re enormously agile, we ask in our community “What is it that you want this week? What’s your issues? What help do you need?” and they’ll tell us. We respond very, very quickly to that and I think that having the ability to be agile is something we’ll never change.
Natarsha: A lot of leaders I speak with or CEO’s, often speak about the leadership qualities they bring to the decision making table. They talk about passion and purpose. How important are those qualities to you?
Rhian: Our community and customers know I’m enormously passionate, I am the founder and the CEO but I am very much there and involved in the day to day grassroots of the business. And that helps me stay completely in tune with the the community and what issues are reflecting mums because it is such a difficult time, such a difficult time on top of being a mum and having a whole different list of priorities in your life. So I think that passion for me has always been critical for the mums to know that I am involved and in, not just running a business, it’s a business with a heart and a conscience.
Natarsha: And a key part of your community, talking about community, is the use of technology, would’ve been wonderful during Covid, tell us about the app and how critical it is?
Rhian: We’ve had an app now for five years and we relaunch it every single year because technology changes so much. Our audience, like most audiences out there, demand easier, more convenient and faster technology that works and that is absolutely critical in their day to day life and we invest an enormous amount. Regularly we say “What do you want in the app? How can we do it better? We’ve got this new launch but how can we do better? How can we make more improvements?” So our community and customers give us feedback all the time, and I think it’s one of the things they love about us that they have a voice, they’re heard and what they ask for we go and build. And it costs a lot of money but I’ve always believed in investing in your business, in your community and customer and that’s why we always do it and we never have the same app for more than a year because we continuously rebuild.
Natarsha: You’re a great Game Ghanger, if you had one piece of advice for someone watching today that thinks I’ve got this great idea, I can see a gap in the market, I wanna start this, follow my dream and my passion, what would your key piece of business advice be for them?
Rhian: The most important business advice that I’ve learnt just from experience is never give up. Because there’s always so many obstacles in business whether you’re just starting or you’ve been going for a number of years, you just have to listen and figure it out. There’s always a different path and I think having that resilience and that never give up attitude is critical if you want to do something successful in business or in life.
Natarsha: Tomorrow is a new day, thank-you so much Rhian.
