#awinewith Kylie Pinwill
MEET Kylie, Founder of The Hormone Hub.
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Amazing. Kylie, welcome to Spark tv.
Kylie Pinwill (00:10):
Thank you so much, Danielle. It is great to be here.
Danielle Lewis (00:13):
I am so glad. We've just had a quick therapy session, quick business therapy session, so you never know how this one's going to turn out. I love it. Let's kick things off by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Kylie Pinwill (00:28):
Yeah, sure. So I am Kylie. My background is as clinical nutritionist. And yeah, I work with women who own their own businesses and professional women who are going through the rollercoaster of perimenopause and menopause. And that can hit us in so many ways. So energy levels and our ability to focus and concentrate and not to mention what's going on with our weight and all of sleep and all the other things. So I work with women in that space so they can just clear that brain fog, get their energy back so we can get back to doing what we are good at.
Danielle Lewis (01:06):
I love it. And I'm very triggered right now, so
Kylie Pinwill (01:11):
It's been a day I think. Oh
Danielle Lewis (01:13):
My god. I know. Tell me about it. I love it. So how did you get into this?
Kylie Pinwill (01:17):
Yeah, so I have always,
Danielle Lewis (01:19):
What's your background?
Kylie Pinwill (01:21):
Yeah. So I've always been in health and fitness in one form or another. So even when I was at uni back in the nineties showing my age here, I was teaching Les Mills aerobics. Oh
Danielle Lewis (01:32):
Cool.
Kylie Pinwill (01:33):
So I can do a grapevine.
Danielle Lewis (01:36):
Me too. That's taking me back to dancing days. I know.
Kylie Pinwill (01:41):
So, and then I went in corporate for a while after I finished uni, had kids and then I was sort of like, oh, I didn't really want to go back to corporate. What should I do? So always loved food, nutrition. So went back, studied, became a nutritionist, and then it was sort of working and then I noticed that a lot of my clients were reflecting back to me how I was feeling and they're like, oh, I don't know what's going on. I'm so tired. I am putting on weight, I'm not sleeping at night. And I'm just sitting there. And I remember one particular lady or client that was sitting there, I was just like, oh my God, that's how I feel too. And then I sort of realized, and along the way I'd had half my thyroid taken out, so I'd always kind of done that dance with my metabolism and I'm love food. So I think I was Labrador in a previous life.
Danielle Lewis (02:27):
Me too. I definitely blame that.
Kylie Pinwill (02:30):
So I was always trying to put a healthier twist on all the yummy things, so, so I was like, what's going on? So I'd always done that dance with my thyroid and my metabolism, but this was something else. And when I looked into it and the further I went down the rabbit hole, I was in my early forties at that point and I realized that it was perimenopause and I was just like, and that in itself was a shock to me. I was like, what? I'm not old enough for this. No way. And it turns out I was, but there was so much, even as a practicing health practitioner that I didn't know about perimenopause and how it impacted my family because I would go from zero to a hundred and bite everybody's head off and then turn around and go, well everything's,
Danielle Lewis (03:24):
Everything's fine. I dunno what you're talking about.
Kylie Pinwill (03:27):
And then it was with trying to work and trying to run a business and I just had this crippling brain fog and definitely elements of burnout. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that our hormones actually impact pretty much every part of our life. And stress is one of the biggest triggers for our hormones and that can exacerbate everything. So it was sort of, I guess my own as it is quite often the case when you work in health or beauty or fitness or anything like that, it's your own journey that sort of takes you down a particular path. Then. So I was in Sydney and I was working in a busy clinic, and then we moved to Queensland and it's beautiful Sunshine Coast, and I was in a clinic and I was waiting for my clients to arrive in my clinic and they didn't, because it's a big country town up here, it's a bit quieter. So I realized that I had to take my business online, so really did a total turnaround. So I went from being sort of a clinician to an online course creator I guess, and all the digital things that come with that.
Danielle Lewis (04:47):
I love that. And it's so cool as well. I mean, I think of myself, so I moved regionally a couple of years ago and I just am so grateful that things are online now that you can literally access anything as niche as it might be from anywhere. I think that that is so amazing for the consumer that we can do that now.
Kylie Pinwill (05:09):
Yeah, absolutely. That's the beauty of it. I get to work with beautiful women all around the world now, which is pretty cool.
Danielle Lewis (05:18):
Did you have any challenges moving from in real life to online?
Kylie Pinwill (05:23):
Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (05:25):
No, it was a breeze. It was fine.
Kylie Pinwill (05:28):
Six figure. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (05:29):
Oh my God, try it again.
Kylie Pinwill (05:33):
Yeah, there were quite significant challenges, but I think I was lucky that I did have, I was lucky enough at the time to find the right coaches at the right time. So I definitely invested in, I spent five minutes trying to figure it out on my own and then was like, so then yeah, was really lucky that I found just the right people and the right coaches at the right time to take my business, to get my platform set up, get my email marketing and automation set up, get my membership set up, and then I had another coach who was like, okay, well now we need to get you out there. You can't just have a beautiful course sitting on your website, no one's going to find it. So then it was the social media side and the marketing side. So yeah, I think what I do now is probably this much nutrition and this much online, but there've been great skills that I've really loved at times, hated at times. But overall I've kind of embraced it and gone, you know what, this is actually pretty cool.
Danielle Lewis (06:41):
Yeah, absolutely. So going back to perimenopause, menopause, how would one know if they might, because I was really just listening to you and I was thinking, you said the word burnout. You said the word nutrition, you said perimenopause. How would one know or one get a sense of knowing as to whether they were going through any of those things?
Kylie Pinwill (07:03):
So that's a really good question. So first up, perimenopause is sort of the two to 10 years before we actually go through menopause. So we sort of work backwards from there. So the average age in Australia of menopause is 51. And so menopause is when you haven't had a period for a year, that's where you're officially in menopause. And then I guess you have your one year anniversary of your last period. You go, Woohoo. And then you post menopause
Danielle Lewis (07:32):
Like, wow, I'm in menopause. Fantastic celebrate.
Kylie Pinwill (07:37):
But the process can be sort of really gradual over 10 years. So just like when we go through puberty, we don't just wake up one day and we've got boobs in our period. It happens over a few years. And if we think of perimenopause as reverse puberty, so things are winding down. So what tends to happen in the early days, so it can happen for some women in their mid thirties sort of in time, and it can be subtle or it can be full on. So what we tend to notice first is the fatigue is a big one. Mood swings not sleeping at night and putting on weight. So they're probably the common things that people, or the obvious things that women start to notice is they're like, hang on a second, where's this coming from? And the weight, I've
Danielle Lewis (08:29):
Been attributing this to the pizza and the wine and the stressful businesses, but you never know.
Kylie Pinwill (08:35):
That's it. And it can be that as well. So it also comes at a busy time of life. So for those of us who are running businesses or if you are in a professional career, you're at sort of the top of your game. So you've got work pressures or business pressures, you've got kids who are getting older, but turns out it doesn't matter how old your kids are, they still need you. So you've got kids that need you, your parents are getting older, so your relationship with your parents, that dynamic is changing. And then heaven forbid, we still want to exercise and have a social life as well. So we tend to, and I think as women, particularly as business owners, we are really capable women. We can do a lot. So we tend to just sort of step up and we push through and we keep going and we do a bit more and we take it all on. We say yes to all the things. We also happen to be people pleasers, so we want to make sure that everyone else is okay, is everyone looked after, but we don't pay much attention to us and what's going on with us. And often we hit that wall can be to the point of burnout. Some women are better and might tune in a bit quicker.
(09:54):
So it's the subtle little things other women might notice, changes to their cycle. So their cycle might get heavier and closer together or even lighter and further apart. So again, just like puberty, pregnancy, childbirth, it's going to be different for all of us.
Danielle Lewis (10:16):
Yeah. And do you suggest perhaps, I guess as I'm listening, I'm thinking about it personally and I think oh yeah, ticking all of those boxes, but also I know that I don't have healthy habits, so it could be attributed to that as well. Is there sort of a process that you ask people to go through in terms of I guess being a little self-reflective on the way you're living your life and what it could be and eliminating things to try and figure it out?
Kylie Pinwill (10:43):
Yeah, a hundred percent always. So the first point of call for a lot of women is if they're not attributing it to lifestyle, they'll go to their doctor and ask for a blood test. So this is where the blood tests come back, the results are normal and they're dismissed that you're too young for menopause because a lot of doctors aren't thinking about perimenopause because it's not actually a diagnosable condition. So we are not sick and there's nothing wrong with us, but these subtle changes are kind of going on in the background. So definitely it's time to pay attention, put our big girl pants on and go, you know what? I actually need to start looking after myself.
Danielle Lewis (11:31):
I think every woman in the world needs to be told that start looking after yourself, start prioritizing you.
Kylie Pinwill (11:40):
Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, we're good at doing it for everybody else. We are not so good at taking care of ourselves.
Danielle Lewis (11:47):
Yeah, I love that. How do you see this impacting women in business?
Kylie Pinwill (11:52):
Yeah, it's huge. And I have a lot of conversations with women and it shows up as brain fog and they know what they want to get done, or they're just so tired that they can't concentrate and then they go down the rabbit hole of just scrolling through Instagram or they're not focused on what should be, or I've also seen it show up in the way they treat or the way they interact with their team, the way they interact. When one woman said to me, she said, I'm going to lose it with some of my clients, and I think we all have challenging clients, but she was like, I really need to zip it because I'm really struggling with this. And I think at some point too, our BS monitor lowers a little bit and we become a little less tolerant and it's like, but definitely that's something I've noticed as well. So I really sometimes, but often with the women that I work with, we can laugh about that too because it's sort of like, yeah, just like we got onto this call today, I've vented, this is my morning this morning, and then we laughed. You
Danielle Lewis (13:08):
Need that though. I think especially as a woman in business, when you can't do that to your team or your clients, you need other people to go, oh my god, am I losing my mind? Or is this real life?
Kylie Pinwill (13:19):
Yeah, absolutely. And I often hear women sort of describe it as going from zero to a hundred over something trivial that would never have bothered them before, but all of a sudden flying off the handle. So it's I think, important to remember that hormonal shift and think we get big surges, big drops, so it's like a roller coaster, but that can impact us physically, mentally, and emotionally as well. So some women, it shows up as like they're crying at the drop of the hat. Other women are just angry and ragey, other women are just face first down in a packet of chips and a bottle of wine. So it does show up. You're
Danielle Lewis (14:04):
Really calling me out today.
Kylie Pinwill (14:07):
No judgment whatsoever.
Danielle Lewis (14:12):
No, it's just really interesting because I do, as a woman in business, I've been in business for 10 years and it's really interesting. I feel like now more and more people talk about what women go through physically. I've heard so much in the last couple of years even about tracking your cycle and where you're at as to where you should factor in different tasks. I know a friend of mine is a woman in business, she only schedules filming days where she's got to be high energy for a certain time in her cycle. And I think I logically know when I've got my period, I don't want to get out of bed in the morning, I know that, but I never factor my calendar around it. I just wake up and go, oh great, I've got a day of this crap that I've got to get through
Kylie Pinwill (14:59):
And that's it. And that's where we push through and your energy is lower. So it's really cycle tracking and things like that is really interesting because it does impact how we show up. But I think we're also very good and we're very clever at masking. We're very clever at, we just push through, we do what needs to get done, and I think that's all well and good, but there's a way we can do it that's easier. That's not so draining on our energy as well.
Danielle Lewis (15:34):
Totally. And I think literally as I listen to all of the information, consume the podcast, reflect on my own energy and how I'm showing up in business, I think to myself, yes, I really should do a few things to support myself and look after myself and be a better business owner. What are some of the things that you would suggest if someone has gone, okay, fairly certain that this is the time of life I'm in? Are there things that you would start telling them to factor into their life to help ease things?
Kylie Pinwill (16:11):
Definitely when it comes, even if we just sort of focus on energy, I think that's a big one. So if you've got energy, you've got everything, you're a bit, you're a clearer in the head.
Danielle Lewis (16:24):
That's so true. That's the truest statement I've ever heard. If you've got energy, you've got everything. Yeah, I love that. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah,
Kylie Pinwill (16:33):
No, that's okay. So if we're looking at how we can serve our energy, it's have we got good boundaries in place in terms of how we manage our calendar? We are feeling tired and we can't take six back-to-back clients or eight or 12 back-to-back clients in a day. Can we reduce it? Can we do it in blocks? So we give ourselves a break? Are we nourishing ourselves properly or are we going for foods that are going to spike our blood sugar up and keep us from crashing down? So we need to make sure that we are paying attention to what we eat. So we're lots of beautiful protein and healthy fats and good forms of fiber. So lots of plants, fruit, brown rice, quinoa, all of those whole foods. You know what healthy eating looks like, right?
Danielle Lewis (17:29):
Yeah, totally. It's one of the health eatings one of those things where it's like you don't need to research, you don't need to take a course, you don't need advice. You know what to do. Stop. So
Kylie Pinwill (17:41):
Nourish yourself properly. I love that. Make sure you're drinking enough water because it's, again, I sent mine before, so mine is now in a massive puddle all over the floor.
Danielle Lewis (17:53):
Oh no, that was another thing that's just pointing. Yeah, that's just toping off the morning. I love that
Kylie Pinwill (17:59):
The dog was happy. And I'm kind of thinking maybe that counts as the dog mopping the floor. Who knows? Perfect. But today that counts
(18:08):
That we're drinking enough water because often that brain fog, even if we're just a little bit dehydrated, that can affect impact brain fog. Are we moving our body in a way that feels good? And I'm very big on movement, not as opposed to exercise, because I guilty have always from the Les Mill days go hard or go home. That was sort of the way what was instilled in me for exercising. So loved F 45, loved those high intensity sort of workouts. But I would do that, get up at five in the morning, go off and do that, come home and by lunchtime I needed a nap. And then the second I gave that up and switched it out for Pilates, all of a sudden it wasn't putting my body under more stress.
(19:03):
So finding an exercise or a movement way of moving that feels good for you, if that sort of high intensity stuff works for you and you feel great all day afterwards, awesome. It's amazing. But if it knocks you around, choose something that's gentler and more restorative. So even if it's walking or swimming or Pilates or yoga, they're much more beneficial for our adrenals, our stress response then eat is another one because it, it's amazing. So we wouldn't jump in the car and go, you know what? I'm going to drive from Sydney to Perth, but I'm not putting any petrol in until we get to Alice Springs, we wouldn't expect our car to run on empty. And yet we are quite okay expecting ourselves to run on empty. So if you are low in energy, eat breakfast, please, please for the love of all things.
Danielle Lewis (20:07):
It always surprises me when people do that. My husband does this. He's like, oh, I didn't get to eat today. I am starving. I was like, what do you mean you didn't eat today? I work from home, so I've eaten 17 times today. I have a reverse problem.
Kylie Pinwill (20:22):
Exactly. I know. And I'm the same. I have clients who forget to eat and I'm like, I don't even understand what that means. It's the Labrador. Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (20:32):
Totally, totally.
Kylie Pinwill (20:34):
But if you're low in energy, you need to be fueling your body. So this is where again, having breakfast within 30 to 60 minutes of waking can make a huge difference in your energy levels. Later on in the day, I see women who will get up, they'll have a cup of coffee, and if we think our cortisol levels are already naturally higher in the morning and it's meant to be that way. So that's what gets us up and gets us going for the morning. Now in our cortisol levels are already high and we're just putting coffee on top of that. We're sort of adding fuel to the fire. So we're spiking our cortisol levels where we are not hungry anymore. We just had that coffee. So we are running on empty until 11, 12 in the morning and then we might eat, and then this is where things start to go south. And this is where women eat all afternoon or they haven't eaten much all day. They have dinner and then they're snacking all night. So they're going to bed with blood sugar through the roof because they've just knocked off a block of chocolate or a packet of biscuits. And this is where it becomes really tricky in that sort of weight gain cycle. And that's a really key habit to break is having breakfast, breakfast before coffee and then stopping eating after dinner.
Danielle Lewis (21:55):
I love it. I love it. And it's awesome because it's practical. Everything you just went through is not, I need to spend $10,000 on a guru to change my life. It's all things that we can all literally jump on and start making those small tweaks to feel better today.
Kylie Pinwill (22:11):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the thing, it's really not rocket science, but it's just paying attention to actually what's happening and where we can make some positive changes.
Danielle Lewis (22:22):
I love that so much. So let's switch gears to your business. How did you find going from I guess that employee mindset originally to then starting your own business? I mean, I know you've been in business for yourself for quite a while now, but what was that transition like for you in the early days?
Kylie Pinwill (22:46):
Probably I had a lot more enthusiasm for it in the early days than I maybe do now.
Danielle Lewis (22:50):
We all did. Yes,
Kylie Pinwill (22:53):
I was going to make a million dollars and work by the beach and totally
Danielle Lewis (22:58):
For two days a week
Kylie Pinwill (23:01):
When I felt like it basically my dream. And that was very exciting. That's still
Danielle Lewis (23:05):
My dream. Okay,
Kylie Pinwill (23:08):
I need to regain my dream. So anyway, so that dream got buried along the way. So it was a really big learning curve and I had no idea about cashflow. And I think one thing I would do differently is I would've kept my full-time job and started my business as a side hustle and actually got my business making money before I went in because when I think of the lost years of income of superannuation, of no holiday pay, of no sick pay, all of that, it adds up. And I did a financial seminar with another guy online a little while ago, and I actually felt sick afterwards when I realized the lost income that I'll never get back. Well, hopefully I will get back. I'll be a millionaire very soon, but I'm on board two days a week on the beach. But exactly,
Danielle Lewis (24:15):
Yes,
Kylie Pinwill (24:17):
It was just sort of like, okay, if I was to do it again, I would be a bit smarter about it.
Danielle Lewis (24:22):
Yeah. Look, I completely agree with you because I know that there are different schools of thought, especially when it comes to inspirational Instagram es of people going on about things. And I know some people burn the bridges go all in, blah, blah, but I'm like that extra. So the thing about money is that it just puts so much pressure on people. You can mindset yourself all you like, but bills need to be paid. So if you can start your business with less financial pressure by keeping your job that doesn't make you not a success or not completely all in on your business, that just maybe makes the bridge a little bit easier.
Kylie Pinwill (25:07):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, but I was completely naive and very optimistic at that point, so it was all going to be fine.
Danielle Lewis (25:16):
Totally. And it's one of those, it's funny looking in hindsight, all of the things that
Kylie Pinwill (25:21):
We would do differently. Absolutely. But that was sort of a big one for me. And like I said before, getting the right coaching. And I think I was lucky back then because there weren't as many online coaches who are with the pretty Instagram tiles who promised the world. And it's funny, I look now at some of the claims that they make and I'm like, that's a lot of shit, honestly. And you just sort of think, yeah,
Danielle Lewis (25:52):
I think the biggest thing for me lately is making sure that I take advice from people who've actually done what I want to do. So it's almost, for me, it's like, yes, you look at people in silos who they've got massive Instagram accounts or they've a TikTok superstar or whatever, or a business coach. So when I look at a business coach now, I'm like, okay, you need to have achieved the goals through another business, not through your coaching business. You need real well practical experience, but then also I niche as well, so I just want to solve this problem. I'll find an expert in that thing. So it's sort of, yeah, I guess I'm trying to have an objective view on things now and go, okay, who's actually solved the problem for themselves and done it and now is potentially teaching it.
Kylie Pinwill (26:40):
Yeah, absolutely. And then also look at the other clients that they have as well. It's what are their clients? Are their clients getting results or even not all of them would probably go along with this, but I think going into the coaching group and seeing are all the other people in the group, are they at your level or are they further ahead? Or where are they at?
Danielle Lewis (27:10):
Yeah, that's actually a really interesting one too, isn't it? Because I always have that mindset of I want to learn from people who are a little bit further ahead than me. Not that you can't learn something from everybody. I'm totally on board with that. But I kind of think in terms of growth, I always want to be stretching myself and thinking, well, if they're operating at that level, what are they doing differently to me, a hundred
Kylie Pinwill (27:36):
Percent. A hundred percent. And a big thing for me was getting out of my industry circle.
Danielle Lewis (27:42):
Yeah, I love that.
Kylie Pinwill (27:44):
Being a natural health practitioner, we are taught in college that there's only one way is that clinic model. So when I started going online, this was sort of early days of online, I was sort of starting online and then I had people say, oh, you can't do that. Oh, your insurance doesn't cover that. Oh, because we are sort of bound by in a clinic situation, we're bound by. So we can't guarantee that. I can't guarantee that we are going to work together and you're going to lose 10 kilos. I can't make that guarantee because if you're going to eat chips every night, then
Danielle Lewis (28:24):
Yeah, of course.
Kylie Pinwill (28:26):
So it's very, I guess regulated in a environment. But then it's a different story when you go online and you're sort of more in the health coaching reel. And again, for people looking out for wellness products online, actually do research to see is that person qualified. A lot of people with, I came across one the other day, she wanted to be on my podcast, and I looked at her qualification, I was like, that's not even a thing. Can I share what it was,
Danielle Lewis (28:59):
Please? Why not?
Kylie Pinwill (29:03):
What was it called? A gray area drinking coach,
Danielle Lewis (29:06):
Gray area drinking coach. What even is that?
Kylie Pinwill (29:11):
I took that to mean that she wasn't an alcoholic, but she wasn't always sober.
Danielle Lewis (29:18):
So I fall into the gray area. Excellent.
Kylie Pinwill (29:21):
And now we've got popcorn and
Danielle Lewis (29:23):
I love that. I dunno how that happened, but that was fun. How that,
Kylie Pinwill (29:26):
I've never had that before. I've had balloons and I've had thumbs up, but I've never had fireworks before.
Danielle Lewis (29:33):
That is so good. I love it. Bay
Kylie Pinwill (29:34):
Area drinking coach. And I was like, what
Danielle Lewis (29:37):
The hell? It's funny though. It's a good thing and a bad thing in the sense that right now you can be anything you want to be, right? You can design a life that you want, but unfortunately you can also be anything you want to be so you can tell anyone any story about yourself
Kylie Pinwill (29:55):
Of awards. And it looked like she had made the awards up because she'd won the silver, the bronze and the gold for this thing.
Danielle Lewis (30:02):
The same award.
Kylie Pinwill (30:04):
The same award all in one year. And I'm like, she the only one. It was just ridiculous. Whereas I've worked with some great sober coaches, for instance, have life lived experience of that journey back from a really, I guess not a great relationship with alcohol and how they've worked out of it. And now they're working with other people, but they're very clear on, they are a sober coach. They're helping people get sober, whereas this area drinking, I was just like, there's not even a thing seriously anyway. No.
Danielle Lewis (30:46):
Oh my god, I love it so much. Okay, so we could talk all day, but let's wrap this amazing conversation on one last piece of advice. So I'd love you to reflect on your time in business. Would there be a piece of advice you would give another woman in business who is on her journey right now that may help her get through her challenges?
Kylie Pinwill (31:09):
Absolutely. I think stay in your own lane. So know what your strengths are, know what your vision is, where you want to do, know who you want to help and just go for it. Don't worry about what the other girls are doing and that coach over there is doing because they will attract their people. And if you are true to I guess, your mission and what you want to do and keep doing your thing, you will attract your people. And a really big believer that there's enough clients for everyone as well. So we don't need to compete, we need to support each other. And it's like, Hey, I don't think you are the client for me, but I've got Danielle over here who can help you out. And that's okay because what you give, you get as well. So
Danielle Lewis (32:00):
That is so true. There is always enough to go around. I absolutely love that. That's gorgeous. Thank you so much, Kylie. You.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
