If you want to be a successful entrepreneur and crush it in your business, you need to listen to this episode with Stefanie Ignoffo.
As she says, if you want to make things happen in your business, you've got to put the premium fuel in your tank. And for Stefanie, that premium fuel is a whole food plant-based diet.
In this episode, we talk about:
💻 How a plant-based diet can give you the energy, clarity and confidence to achieve your business goals
🌶 Her perspective on providing motivation/recipes, and keeping it real by focusing on simple, wholefood ingredients
🧠 How to overcome the mental hurdles around "diet" thinking and embrace an abundance mindset with food
💡 Her tips for transitioning to a plant-based business mindset without overwhelm
Plus we dive into the strategy behind her engaging social media presence and content:
🎥 Why she focuses on creating bite-sized, shareable content versus fancy "recipes"
📣 How showing up consistently allows you to beat the drum on your core messaging
💻 Using your platform to inspire and educate, not just entertain
And ultimately, why Stefanie's "premium fuel" of whole plant-based foods is the premium fuel for your business success too!
Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. If you have any questions about this episode, comment below or DM me on Instagram @jen_lehner
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The Power Foods Diet by Dr. Neal Barnard
[00:00:03.120] - Gary Vaynerchuk Hey, guys. It's Gary Vaynerchuk. You're listening to the Front Row, entrepreneur podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:00:10.530] - Jen Lehner Our guest today is a plant interventionist, lifestyle medicine coach, and food for Life instructor with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and founder of the nonprofit Plantspiration. She advocates and promotes lifestyle medicine by educating, motivating, and inspiring people to a plant-based lifestyle to prevent and reverse health issues, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and autoimmune disorders, obesity, and chronic illness. I could not be more excited to welcome you back to the show. Hello, Stefanie Ignoffo.
Read more...
[00:00:49.500] - Stefanie Ignoffo Hello, Jen. It's honestly an honor to be here. I'm so excited about this. So thank you for having me.
[00:00:57.140] - Jen Lehner Thank you for coming because I know you are the I know for reals. You were on the show before, and I was like, Well, I want to talk about all the things that you talk about that you're changing lives with that I also believe in so strongly, and all the health stuff and the wellness and the lifestyle and all of that. But I felt like because our podcast is for entrepreneurs, that I really needed to find a way to talk about your entrepreneurship. We are going to talk about that a little bit. But I wanted you back on the show because I was like, You know what? I didn't have to make that tie in. You know why? Because if we're going to be successful entrepreneurs, if we're going to have successful businesses, if we're going to be successful people, if we want to not just have good health, but really, really feel great and have energy and creativity and all of the stuff that is required to run a business, then we have to take care of ourselves. The best way to take care of ourselves as you teach is to look at food as medicine.
[00:02:14.110] - Jen Lehner I'm just going to stop yapping because I want us to have the freedom to talk all about that and dive deep into that. Then I do want to ask you about your content creation and what you're doing. You are such an inspiration with what do on social media, et cetera. We are going to talk about that. But right now, a lot of people will be listening, they're not watching. They're not going to see. They don't see how beautiful you are, but they will when they go and look at all of your social media posts and go to your website, and they're not going to see the before and after. Can you talk us through your journey, where it began?
[00:02:55.480] - Stefanie Ignoffo This is so exciting. How did it all begin? How did I get here? How did I get global? How did I do a CEO entrepreneur? What a great place to start. What you said was so important. When we take care of ourself, it's the best thing that we can do for everyone else. So 11 years ago, my daughter came home and she said, I want to go vegan. And I said, That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Where are you going to get your protein? Where are you going to get your calcium? And what they don't see is that I was 100 pounds heavier. I was riddled with chronic disease. I was facing double knee replacements. I could barely walk around. Heart disease, autoimmune, diverticulitis, IBS, migraines, arthritis. I mean, I just was hopeless, had zero confidence, and I had no purpose in life. So, lo and behold, six months fast forward. We're hoping that her little vegan food thing will end soon because this is getting expensive with her plant milk and that stuff. So we were really about to lose everything after my husband, John, came out of what would be our ninth surgery in 11 months.
[00:04:10.070] - Stefanie Ignoffo Financially, we were incredibly impacted by our health and the chronic diseases that John also had as well. We thought, Well, the older you get, the sicker you get, the bigger you get. With this mindset, there was no hope. So we're coming home from the surgery, and I'm realizing we're going to lose everything. I can't physically work. He's running his own business. He can't keep up with all these health conditions. So I went back and I thought, Oh, yeah. I saw that documentary about plants where they said you could lose weight and whatever else they said about reversing disease. If we could really reverse disease, my doctor would have told me, first of all. So we're coming home. I put in this documentary, Forbes Overnives, and it talked about losing weight, reversing disease, and I just thought if what I've been doing isn't working, Weight Watchers, Diet Center, NutriSystem, all these diets I've been on my whole life, I might as well give this a shot. So I went 100 %. And the next day, I stopped bringing animal home. I went brought all this fruits and vegetables home, and I hiked it up to the family who was just as unhealthy.
[00:05:22.770] - Stefanie Ignoffo If I have heart disease, they're going to get heart disease. What I didn't realize is it's not hereditary. It's hereditially what we learned to bring home. So here's where things start really snowballing. I'm talking day one or two. I'm just eating plants. I cannot get over. My hands aren't hurting. My body's less inflamed. I'm like, there must be some truth to this. I'm already down quite a few pounds. I keep going. I keep going at this. I end up losing 100 pounds reversing all my diseases. My family loses 250 pounds, and we accomplish this in 10 months with what felt like not much resources, support, other than what we were doing in our home. We had a society that wasn't built for it. We've got pediatricians giving me crap. We've got the Tool thinking that I am malnourishing my kids. Society was not set up to take this on. An evidence-based, by the way. Evidence-based information that we could live longer, impact the quality of our planet, and why not do it without harming anything? All right, let's give it a go. So once this took off and I lost the weight and I had the energy and I had the confidence, I didn't just build my arms.
[00:06:42.600] - Stefanie Ignoffo I built up my ability to build a business that was much needed. I thought, Well, let me just start this thing. I'll do a nonprofit. What's a nonprofit? They asked. I don't know, but it sounded good. I didn't have a laptop. I I started it on my cell phone. I had no history of business or any of this, what I created. But I truly believe with the right diet and the right tools, that lifestyle stuff, that meditation, that mindfulness, that manifesting, that when you're thinking this clear and you feel like a machine, you can do anything you want. So I'm just going to tell anybody out there who's running a business who wants to work in a If you want to make things happen, we got to put the premium fuel on our tank. It is a game changer. That's my job.
[00:07:37.390] - Jen Lehner What's the premium fuel, Stefanie ?
[00:07:42.020] - Stefanie Ignoffo Wow, my gosh. Wholefood plant-based. Greens, beans, fruits and vegetables as much as I want. Pasta every day, potatoes left and right. I can turn it into tacos, I could turn it into cakes, or I can just turn it into keeping it honestly super simple. So many people overthink it I become overwhelmed with it. So that's what I created. As a plant interventionist, I come in, I tell people, Hey, this is what you're doing, what you're eating, and how it's going to impact your future or what you do today, right now could really change your future. So there it is.
[00:08:18.950] - Jen Lehner But Stefanie , where do you get your protein?
[00:08:22.330] - Stefanie Ignoffo Same place that the cows do, from the plants. All plants contain protein, and all protein comes from plants. Don't just take my word for it. You could research it, but they're not teaching that in school. They're not teaching that in medical school. They're not teaching people this. So I am. And that's plant-spiration.
[00:08:41.870] - Jen Lehner Yeah. And a big thing, your tagline if you will, is eat your plants off.
[00:08:47.910] - Stefanie Ignoffo Literally.
[00:08:49.370] - Jen Lehner And you're all about that. And I love that you said you have as much as you want of these things, and you're not counting calories. And you go on your TikTok and your Instagram reels, and so often you take us with you to the grocery store. I think you take us every single time you go, and you're like, Okay, everybody, this is the vegan section. She shows the entire produce section, or she'll go down the grains and the legumes and the beans and the pasta. Here's the vegan section. But it really is so true that at the number one pushback, when you tell someone that you're whole food plant-based, it is, Where do you get your protein. I've heard you say so many times, Our nation is protein obsessed, and they should be fiber obsessed. We should be fiber obsessed. Why should we be fiber obsessed?
[00:09:41.050] - Stefanie Ignoffo Because that's everything. Fiber is a single thing that gets into your gut that heals your gut. It feeds your healthy gut bacteria, which truly is the catalyst for what goes on mentally, physically. Fiber is what cleans out the arteries. Fiber is what boosts our metabolism, gets our mitochondria going, gets the cholesterol out that we shouldn't even be eating. We make our own. Fiber doesn't come in animals. Eggs, cheese, meat, chicken, fish. There's zero fiber in these things. Those animals now are not only filled with problematic animal protein, they're loaded with cholesterol, they're loaded with saturated fat. All that's doing is slowing our blood. It's literally thickening our blood, slowing it down, clogging our arteries. People are over here trying to find a way so that we could eat meat and un clog our arteries and take these medications. Why not just take out the problem? When we put bad fuel into our car. We don't go back to that gas station. We don't go put that stuff back in us. But if we really took those same priorities and put it on ourselves, and of course, with the right tools and understanding, it It truly makes your engine run like a machine.
[00:11:03.560] - Stefanie Ignoffo I'm not walking around worrying all day about what I'm going to look like in six months or what's going on. I'm doing it. I'm doing it right now. This is the most important part. So the fiber is just important. It revs us up. It keeps us living longer, opens up those arteries, and we're lacking it. 97% of America is lacking fiber. People are only getting 10 grams of fiber a day. We should be getting 40 grams of fiber in a day, and that's only in plants. So we just need to eat more beans. People are living 100 years old who are eating more beans, and it doesn't need to be a recipe with 52 ingredients. We don't need to milk our own almond. We just need to open up a can of beans Like Popeye opening up the spinach, he was on to something.
[00:11:50.650] - Jen Lehner So one of the things that you do that really differentiates you from everybody else that's talking about this, a couple of things. One is people here vegan, and they're like, Oh, yeah, I bought some vegan chicken nuggets the other day. They were so good. Or I went to a vegan restaurant the other day and I had whatever, whatever. It was so delicious. I get the Impossible Burger at Burger King. On the one hand, I'm not going to put anybody down for that. Okay, that's still better than eating animals. But beyond that, being vegan doesn't mean being healthy and your whole food plant-based. It is about putting just the good stuff in your body because the process stuff has so many bad things in it. But the other thing that differentiates you beyond talking about the whole food plant-based is you make it so simple. I see the people in your Saturday classes, and We're going to talk about your organization, Plant Inspiration, but Stefanie has these. Never misses one. Saturdays, light clockwork, rain, shine, I don't know, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever. She's always there with her amazing partner and has been John. The people who come, a lot of them are very desperate.
[00:13:04.730] - Jen Lehner They're in very desperate situations. They've had health scares, and many of them have been living this way for decades. Suddenly, there's Stefanie saying, eat your plants off. People really are like, Yeah, but how? Stefanie , you simplify it. You simplify it, and you make it so approachable, and it's not scary. But, or and, I should say, you've I've had a number of people in there battling either... They're either pre type 2 diabetic or they're full on, they've been diagnosed as type 2 diabetic. What I want to ask you because, and this is a selfish question, Because I have a good friend who was recently diagnosed as the same. I don't want to overwhelm her, but I know what I know. I've learned so much from you, and I've been living this life for, I don't know, five years now. I want to just tell her all the things. But also, I don't want to overwhelm her or be overbearing. I've just gently been sending her recipes. But if I send her anything that has any starch in it or fruit in it, she's like, My doctor says I I can't have that, my blood sugar spike.
[00:14:18.000] - Jen Lehner Actually, the glucose monitor will spike when a diabetic eats natural sugars. I want to ask you, because I really don't know, how do you help type 2 diabetics when there's so much starch involved in the way we eat?
[00:14:37.290] - Stefanie Ignoffo This is a really great question. It goes again with, if a doctor came in and said, Hey, you need to get rid of the animal and you need to eat your vegetables and your vegetables, and your starches, we would get a better response to that, actually. But when we try to tell somebody, If you eat this way, you can reverse it, it gets overwhelming and it gets confusing. So first and foremost, what you're doing, you being the inspiration, is the greatest thing you could do for people, which is what you're doing. Second, people aren't going to like what I'm going to say. It is not about the recipes. I say it all the time. I'm not an influencer of recipes. I'm an influencer of keeping it real. And the number one thing people say to me when they come to me is, I have all the recipes, I have all the books. I have it all here. Not to say what you're doing isn't phenomenal and isn't awesome. We need that because it's It's really exciting to see that we can pretty much eat what we want, we can do what we want. But it's the taking action part that really does make the difference.
[00:15:39.070] - Stefanie Ignoffo What I would... I'm just going to say it to anybody that's out there struggling like this, it can be overwhelming, and I want to simplify this for you. It is not the sugars, the fruits, the starches that is causing the insulin resistance for the type 2 diabetes. It's simply the animal fat, the animal protein, processed foods beyond burger, stuff like that. Even processed vegan food is still high in fat. If I can have five minutes with this person and tell them, What do you eat? What do you like? If you like chocolate pudding, then we'll get you on chocolate pudding. If you like brown rice, we'll make it taste like this. What I do is I find the simplest ways with their taste buds of what they're willing to try, present them with the evidence, show up on the Wednesday night class or the Saturday support group, because hearing other people reverse their diabetes is the biggest impact of all their lives. Me telling them, me talking about it is one thing, but when you're hearing it over and over all week long is really what we're hearing people's A1c going from a 12 to an eight in two months.
[00:16:45.880] - Stefanie Ignoffo People saying every win-win, say they're getting off medications, they're losing weight. We need to have some education in here. We need to have some hope, and we need to have a little guidance, lifestyle, medicine, coaching, which is about behavior changes and and not about mistakes, about getting better. The first thing is to know it is something that can be reversed with the right things. It's not going to happen overnight, but be willing to accept that you want to try this, take on new things. Let's find what she likes, what they like, and explain if we take the animal out and make these transitions, this can be done. Of course, we need to let your doctor know because people overdose on medicines because this works so darn fast. Jen, we have to have that in place, too. But my best advice would be, I truly mean this, show up to a class just so that you can see the evidence. I'm working with a 20-year... Wednesday night is the nutrition part of this, where I do teach people. This is a 20-year evidence-based program. It's not just like Stefanie lost 100 pounds, eat, go on vegan.
[00:17:52.000] - Stefanie Ignoffo I'm using evidence-based information. I've been doing this for 11 years. I do teach people how to keep it simple, kick the recipes to the side, and give them a support system that keeps this going when society just isn't ready for this amazingness.
[00:18:08.390] - Jen Lehner Yeah. Let's talk about the evidence-based part of it. You work with doctors. I mean, these aren't gurus. These are board-certified doctors and surgeons and the people who you've learned from, Dr. Barnard, Dr. Mcgregor.
[00:18:24.560] - Stefanie Ignoffo Eselstin. Eselstin.
[00:18:25.130] - Jen Lehner Yeah, all of them. Right. What has blown me away I mean, obviously, I believe in this, this lifestyle, and I love it so much because it's not restrictive. It's the opposite of restrictive. If you can eat everything you want that is just to the right of the red line, It's a whole food. It's a whole food. Then you can have as much as you want whenever you want. That's so easy. But what I have seen is that these people come into your Saturday support group or in your Facebook community, or they'll say on the Wednesday night class that they've gotten off their medications. They've gotten off their statins, they've gotten off their insulin. It's unbelievable. It's not like a couple of people. It happens all the time. The thing, though, is the best doctors in the world still aren't on the same page. I went to the Mayo Clinic recently for an executive physical, which I was excited about in Arizona. They do the whole shebang. I had really a brilliant doctor. I loved her. I'll go back and see her again. But when it came to conversation about nutrition, she's like, Well, you really need to get your protein, and I guarantee you your B12 is going to come back low.
[00:19:50.180] - Jen Lehner We were waiting for the lab results. My B12 was 100% fine. I do take a supplement for B12. Of course it was. But all my numbers. She was like, Well, at 50, What am I now? 55. You just really need to make sure you're eating more fish. I was like, No, you don't. She said, Olive oil is good for you. I was like, But I've read olive oil It's not good for you. Oh, I'm having that debate with so many people right now. Can we talk about that for 2 seconds? We can. I want to talk about soy. I want to just dispel those two myths. Of course. Then I want to talk about your business. Okay, so let's talk about What was the first thing I said I wanted to talk about?
[00:20:31.980] - Stefanie Ignoffo Well, doctors are not taught about nutrition in medical school. They're not teaching nutrition or root cause of disease in medical school. You have these great doctors. They're doing heart surgeries. They're helping people with cancers. They're doing this amazing stuff with medicine, but they're really not getting down to the root cause. They're doing studies right now to see how we can get the pancreas to not be impacted by meat. In my mind, I'm like, why don't we just stop eating the meat and then we don't have a problem? It seems so simple, and it truly is. It really is that simple. But there is no... I'm going to just say it. This is what it's about. There is no money in getting people off medicine. There is no money in getting people off drugs. There is no money in getting money and healthy people. This is a sick care system. I'm going to say it like it is. And this is why I started Plant-Cerpration. And now I am teaching the medical students at Rutgers and at NYU because they realize we have got to pay attention attention to the evidence that's been around for a long time, and it works.
[00:21:34.200] - Stefanie Ignoffo I believe people have a right to know. Plants may not be for everyone, but they work for everyone, and everyone has a right to know. I just was, one, impacted by it, knowing that this was a dumb idea to why didn't my doctor tell me to? I need to tell everybody this because it doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem right. So the nonprofit part of it, of course, I'm making money. Of course, all that's going. But the point was, I wanted to keep this inexpensive. I wanted to keep this attainable. And what other people are charging $3,000, $6,000 for, I have fought really hard to keep it something that everybody could join and do. And at 50 bucks a month, that's how people are reversing disease. Now, I'm not a fan of a lot of their doctors, but there's doctors out there that are supporting this, and we need to look for them just like a good car dealer, just like a good insurance guy. We need to do the research on doctors that support the lifestyle. And there's two types of doctors. There's vegans, and there's ones who haven't done the research. It's as simple as that.
[00:22:39.880] - Jen Lehner Love that.
[00:22:41.310] - Stefanie Ignoffo So that's what I have to say about that. Doctors are amazing. They're great. But what I do, if you've got a leaky faucet, Jen, how many days are you going to keep wiping it up and wiping it up and wiping it up before you actually call the plumber in? I'm the plumber.
[00:22:57.380] - Jen Lehner Yes, I love that. I love that. I I just thought, you know how sometimes you could say a word over? Suddenly a word sounds so weird to you. You're just like, That's the weirdest word. I haven't had that experience in a while. I remember the last time that happened to me, the word was shampoo. So random. What a weird... Shampoo. Anyway. But I can't get that same... That moment is gone. I can't feel the weirdness the way that I did when I first thought about it. But I had this moment, which is similar. I thought about pouring Coca-Cola on one of your house plants. Would you ever think to do that?
[00:23:33.410] - Stefanie Ignoffo No, it would kill it.
[00:23:35.810] - Jen Lehner Right. But let's just guzel one. Would you put a donut or a slab of a pork chop on your herb garden No. Or a better example, would you pour olive oil on your garden? No, it's so wrong. It's so wrong, and yet we have no problem. Believe me, I spent most of my life eating all the bad things. Me. I am not coming from a place of judgment.
[00:24:02.030] - Stefanie Ignoffo Don't put the baking grease down the drain. We don't want to clog the drain. Yes. Oh, my God. You not put the baking grease down the drain. Everybody right now is thinking, Oh, my gosh, I grew up not putting baking grease down the drain. That's the same Everything is going on to our arteries.
[00:24:16.750] - Jen Lehner That's such a better analogy. That's so good. Okay, so on the business end of things, I don't know if I've covered everything that I want to with the food stuff, but we'll come back to it in a second if we need to. I want to talk about your nonprofit. We may have chatted about this the first time you were on the show, but I have to tell the story again because Stefanie comes across my feed. She's on TikTok and she's ridiculous. You are ridiculous. She's on roller skates. She roller skates in her living room to music, and she has this little microphone, teeny-weeny. It's about three inches big, the kind that a game show host would carry back in the day or share, but it's tiny. She wears it on her bike ride. She goes on these long bike rides with her husband. She's always talking into this microphone, and she's got a megaphone, and really and truly so entertaining, so engaging. The classes are phenomenal. But anyway, I see her on social media. I see you on social media, and I'm like, This girl is crazy, but I love her. I started following. Then you showed up on Chef AJ's show on on YouTube, and you were showing how to make these.
[00:25:32.610] - Jen Lehner I think they're the Black Bean burgers.
[00:25:34.960] - Stefanie Ignoffo Yeah, it was our burgers. Yeah, it was our burgers.
[00:25:37.170] - Jen Lehner You just crushed it. I think Chef AJ, and for those of you who don't know who Chef AJ is, she's like the Mick Jagger of the vegan world.
[00:25:45.690] - Stefanie Ignoffo She's the Johnny Curson. She was on Johnny Curson. She was on Johnny Curson. She's the Johnny Curson of the plant-based world. So if you get on Chef E. J, you've made it. You're in it.
[00:25:55.530] - Jen Lehner Yeah, that's so true because she has this huge audience. So I'm like, Oh, there's that crazy girl again. I start really following her. I make the recipe. It's delicious. I really start following her. And then I ended up joining. I came to one of your classes on Wednesday night, and then I just fell in love with you and everything that you're doing. But I noticed, because I'm a marketer and I have this online business, that I could tell that you just didn't have all your systems optimized. I could tell that you were doing what so many of us do in the early days. You're just doing it all yourself, right? Every single thing doing it yourself. I was like, Stefanie , I can help you with this. I was like, I have some really great ideas for you. I was like, You know, you could charge a lot more If you did one-on-one coaching, then you should adjust your prices for your membership site. Because PS, when I joined her membership, I could not believe the value that you were giving away. You get a one-on-one call, really and truly, if we're being honest, I think you just give them whenever people need it.
[00:27:05.070] - Jen Lehner But I think technically, you say once a month. But really, if you need Stefanie , she's there. You might not want me to promote that if you want me to.
[00:27:13.500] - Stefanie Ignoffo It's true. It's just gotten We've got a great system now. Keep going.
[00:27:17.060] - Jen Lehner I love this. Yeah, no, I can see. No, your systems are all on fire now, but this is back then. You need her, she's there. You get your weekly Saturday support group. They're so inspiring. People will share their struggles and their triumphs, but also a really great vegan bullion that has no oil in it that they just found or some cool thing. You're so excited to find this new product. Then the Wednesday night is pure education and recipes. But like Stefanie said, like you said, I keep talking about you in third person. It's okay. Anyway. Like you said, they're not fancy recipes, but that's what nobody wants a fancy recipe. It's like, the food you really eat, the food we all really eat, but delicious, delicious. It's easy to put together stuff. Then you get yoga on Sundays, which you're always there for. Then you do your motivational live streams on Mondays. Then there's the community that you have access to. I was like, Stefanie , you can charge way more for what you're charging. She was like, very politely, Jen, I'm not trying to... That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to make a fortune over here.
[00:28:25.780] - Jen Lehner I'm trying to help people. I'm trying to spread this, what What has changed my life so dramatically in my family and my happiness and my wellness and the way I view the world, I want to share that with people. Well, boy, I was like, damn, wow, this girl, really talk about walking the Talk. You were working so hard to start this nonprofit, which was such a huge undertaking. I mean, that's no easy feat. You got it. You got the nonprofit. Since a documentary has been made about you, you got a part in Neil Barnard's new book, The Power Foods Diet. I highly recommend this book to everybody. So, yeah, what am I leaving out?
[00:29:08.600] - Stefanie Ignoffo This is just awesome the way you summed it up. And I know that everybody is going to rewind and go, did she just say she wasn't here to make money, which is completely, again, going against the grain. And it's not that I'm not for it and all about it. And what I want is donations. What I want is sponsors so that I can keep helping these people. If you're going to donate money, I'll tell you a place where it's really going back into it, because on top of it, John and I volunteer our time to the Wednesday night classes, to the Saturday support. And then I do a lot. Here's what it's about, and it comes down to exactly being an entrepreneur. I'm not talking about it. I'm not just showing the studies and doing the research. I'm living it. I'm doing it. And I want to show people, if you really want to make this work, I don't want to hear like, well, I work all day and I can't do this. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody out I'm working my ass off, but I couldn't do it without the plans. And that doesn't mean I'm working 80 hours a week.
[00:30:07.180] - Stefanie Ignoffo This is where I've taken my... I practice what I teach. I do meditate. I do breathe. I'm out there riding my bike. I'm out there roller-skating. I'm out there having fun. And if I didn't have those parts of my life, there's no way I would be as successful as I am because this is hard. And that is what makes us happen. The good food, the good mood comes with it. Failing and knowing like, oh, look at all this positive stuff I've had going on has helped me get through all those things where I realized that really was the confidence building of all this stuff. Either I was too dumb to realize I was doing it wrong. It was is sometimes what I think. But all of the way that I... This was my second chance at life. So all the failures to me were like, Oh, that is nothing. I almost died. Or this was how horrible my life was before. All of these obstacles, becoming an entrepreneur, going global, actually building a business off my phone. This was all simple because of the way that I started perceiving my life, changing my life, living a more peaceful way.
[00:31:15.740] - Stefanie Ignoffo Whatever mistakes happen, whatever. We were here to learn from it. And I really believe that when you do manifest, and I don't mean just thinking about it, you have to actually do it. When you do envision where you're going, the way you plan for your vacation, the way that we schedule here appointments, eight weeks in advance. When we schedule what we want, we make it happen. And if everybody here is tuning in to be a better entrepreneur and a better business person, well, they're in the right place. You're giving us all the right tools, but we're never going to be able to grasp it if we're not taking care of our self first. It comes right down to, I had to put myself first. Some people might say, Well, it's selfish, or I won't be able to get this done. It's responsible because you guys are on a mission. You have a business to run. You want to be an entrepreneur. You want to be the best version of yourself. And if you're not aligned in practicing what you teach or preach, it's not going to feel the right way when you put it out there.
[00:32:12.970] - Stefanie Ignoffo When you start taking care of yourself and You know you're going to the top. You're at the top. It's not going to stop because there's nothing but good that you're putting in, and that just brings more... It's just coming out. It just does all the right things for you.
[00:32:26.520] - Jen Lehner Well, so well said. And I just know I know that the resistance that there will be from a lot of people who listen to this, at least maybe the first time they listen, maybe they listen a second time and they let their guard down a little bit. Because I think, first of all, I am the textbook example of a product of our diet culture in this country. You're raising your hand, too. I've done everything. Before I was vegan, I was paleo. I I never went keto, but it was probably on my list to try once paleo stopped working. It was something. Now I'm horrified to think that I would have even considered a keto diet.
[00:33:11.870] - Stefanie Ignoffo Keto increases risk of all-cause mortality. This isn't just because I've read books or done the research. I attend international conferences of nutrition and medicine. Doctors have about 6-8 hours of nutrition education. I have about 8,000. I've invested the last 10 years of gaining all that information. It's just another mission for me to get that information out there because really that's marketing keto and into the sick care system. And it's what everybody's doing because, well, keto works. Keto works. You can absolutely lose weight doing keto. If you guys want to lose weight doing keto, you could also lose weight doing cocaine. That doesn't make it healthy. It doesn't make it healthy. So you're right when you say we have I have to be open-minded. I hope people hear me when I say, I thought this was stupid. I thought this was a dumb idea. I had to really rethink who's telling me that and where am I getting that information? Because when you look at the studies and you see the people like myself doing it and the whole plant-inspiration nation, it's undeniable. If you're willing to say, You know what? I'm going to give this a try.
[00:34:26.100] - Stefanie Ignoffo You have nothing to lose but chronic disease and weight. We should all be eating more fruits and vegetables for goodness' sakes.
[00:34:34.420] - Jen Lehner It's true. But I know that the resistance is a big part of it is the carb. God forbid, I should eat a carb. You know what I mean? I cannot have a potato I cannot have pasta. No. That's how I was. I was even when I started my vegan journey before I met you and I was trying to figure it all out, and my God, it was such a journey. I thought, I just didn't know. I just didn't know, and I didn't have a guide like you. I was I was trying to figure it out myself. I was trying to replicate a paleo, but replacing it with tofu or satan or vegan chicken nuggets or something. I was just trying everything to not do carbs. I'm just so glad, thank you, plant-spiration, that I learned that I can have all of it. I can have all of it and keep the weight off.
[00:35:26.270] - Stefanie Ignoffo I love pasta. I just did a real yesterday where I'm holding my pasta bags up on my face, seeing how much I love it, and I eat it every day because it is the biggest misconception that we shouldn't be having pasta when it's what's helping people actually reverse heart disease and reverse type 2 diabetes. Pasta is actually low-calorie, low-glycemic. When we don't have egg, animal, cholesterol in it, it does exactly the opposite of what people think. It's not what's making us fat or gain weight. It's actually the oil, the butter, the cheese that we put on the pasta. That's where the fats are coming in. There's a really amazing tool that I work with. I wish I would have invented it. It's like a little Stefanie . It's called chronometer. Com. If you put in chronometer, the food that you're eating, and you see how much fat it comes to every day, it's insane on a standard American diet. No wonder people have to eat low-calorie, low... I mean, cut their calorie, cut their calorie, cut their calorie because the fats are so high. That's what that concept is, that they've created amazing marketing, whoever invented this whole sick system.
[00:36:30.900] - Stefanie Ignoffo When you get back to really real food, before wholefood plant-based was used, it was truly vegan. Grains, grains, fruits, vegetables. It was very simple. Now, vegan is very in marketing, and Burger King has vegan stuff. That doesn't mean healthy, of course. When we get down to the whole grains, I don't know how else to say this, you guys, but people are eating 2,000 calories a day, eating pasta every day, eating brown rice every day, eating potatoes every day, and they're dropping weight like mad. They're losing weight. They're reversing their diseases. Once you take that animal out and you replace it with all these wholefoods loaded with fiber, vitamins, nutrients, minerals, phytonutrients, cancer fighters. I mean, everybody's looking for a pill, but it's really in the plants.
[00:37:19.360] - Jen Lehner We're eating our plants off. Plantspiration. Org, you guys. Plantspiration. Org. Go and check Stefanie out and her amazing work and her amazing community that that she and her husband, John, have built. Wrapping up, I just want to summarize and say a couple of things. Number one, I really, really hope you guys will, if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, that you'll just give it a try. Even start with a start meatless Monday and eat just whole plants all Monday and Whole Foods on Monday and just see how you feel. But definitely Stefanie , please open your mind because I want you to feel so good that you show up to work every day, energized to work on your business and really be the best version of yourself. Secondly, I want you to follow Stefanie . I want you to go to plantinspiration. Org. If you want to take this journey with us, I hope you join her amazing membership and donate to the nonprofit. Then from a business standpoint, purely, I want you to follow her on social media to watch how she delivers every single day, multiple times a day across all channels. She just makes it look so easy.
[00:38:38.170] - Jen Lehner She's having so much fun. Her content, by the way, here's the other thing I want to say about your content, Stefanie , is that It's very much repetitive. But number one, I don't know if you had a plan, but it could be deliberate because she's beating a drum. She's beating a drum as we all need to be doing. You beat the drum of the thing that you want people to know. I think a lot of times when we're creating content, we're like, Oh, I talked about that yesterday. You talk about it every day. Then what happens is when you have a favorite song, and then you're waiting for that drum solo or you're waiting for that next line, I find myself doing that with your content because I know at some point I'm going to hear all the cheesy without the diseasey. That's just one of many little delicious, wonderful phrases that you're going to get. They're all woven into her social media. She didn't have to try because she's just being 100% herself. You are being 100% yourself. I'm not saying to go roller-skating you guys, in your living room, but I'm just saying if you want a bit of inspiration of someone who's really using social media really, really well, check out Stefanie 's social media.
[00:39:58.650] - Jen Lehner All right. Have we left anything out? Anything?
[00:40:02.090] - Stefanie Ignoffo I just want to say thank you. No, really. What you just said about my social media, that means so much because I'm being very vulnerable and honest when I say I've had no marketing training. I had to look up YouTube videos. I had to watch what was going on. It really is about a passion. It really is about being myself. And it is a marketing strategy that I stumbled upon an accident. I can't afford commercials yet, so I have to be the commercial. And what is McDonald's doing? They're creating these sayings. They're repeating an every day, Give yourself a break today. But I say, Give your arteries a break today. I can't say it enough because somebody's listening out there. They're going to hear this. It's going to go over their head. They're going to listen to the marketing side or the business side of the motivation. But I want you to know, even if you don't take on the plants, there is somebody out there that you could save their life just by saying, Hey, did you know you could go to plantspiration. Org? You could actually just sign up for a class. It's worth knowing that there's somewhere where we can go where I'm not just talking about it, I'm teaching it, I'm doing it with you because I know what it's like to be sitting there going, I could never give up my cheese, and I could never give up this.
[00:41:13.760] - Stefanie Ignoffo That was me, you guys. That was me. Listen to what Jen's saying. She's a genius. You know exactly what you're doing. To fuel yourself the way you are and to bring this to everybody else, that's being the biggest front row entrepreneur that we can possibly be. So thank you.
[00:41:33.020] - Jen Lehner Thanks, Stephie. Well, let's close on that note. That was pretty perfect. One last thing you could... She just dropped her mic. One last thing that I did mention was that they could sign up for a class for free that first class and check it out, right?
[00:41:47.590] - Stefanie Ignoffo I absolutely want everybody to email team@planspiration and put in the subject line, Jen, frontroentrepreneur. I'll send them a free class 100 %. That's how confident I am that you're going to come for the laughs, but you're going to stay for the plants.
[00:42:06.460] - Jen Lehner I love it. I love it. Well, let's go eat our plants off, Stefanie . Thank you so, so much.
[00:42:11.890] - Stefanie Ignoffo You're welcome. Thank you. That was great.
