If you're familiar with the health and wellness world, you've probably noticed a trend – most coaches are white women. But there's a gap, and it's not a small one. Who is focusing on the Latino community? Take a look, because that coach is here, and she's on a mission. Her name is Mayra Luz Colon, and you'll want to keep her on your radar.
What's she cooking up? Her own custom mix of health-conscious tips and advice. Plus, cookbook, Healthy Rican, is chock full of healthy Puerto Rican recipes you'll love… if you love flavor.
We've been following Mayra's story for a while now, telling it chapter by chapter as we check in with her periodically.
Chapter 1: Meet the Nutrition Dork
Mayra considers herself a holistic wellness coach, though there's more to it than the title implies. With components of nutrition, lifestyle, and self-care, the possibilities for helping people are endless. She provides guidance on essential oils, including how and when to use them for their most significant benefit. She steers them toward the right superfoods to optimize their health. And she shares easy tips for creating healthy family-friendly meals. Forget bland, restrictive meal plans and critical coaches. Mayra's got a tasty alternative people can't get enough of.
The Perfect Recipe for Coaching and Wellness
Mayra is a born entrepreneur with a natural drive for the hustle. The queen of the school fundraiser from the time she was young, she always raised her own funds for school trips. In middle school, Mayra would help her mother with her Avon sales and packaging. She also made rosaries with custom color schemes and sold them to classmates. She opted for the business track in high school, taking advantage of the opportunity to work a paid internship as a senior.
What led Mayra to a career in health and nutrition? Her own desire to lose weight was her driving force, but her path took some turns along the way. She struggled with her weight throughout her life, feeling self-conscious about her body and tired of always being on a diet. In her twenties, it got worse, especially after having her son when she was 21. After developing hormonal and digestive issues, Mayra's weight loss battle got harder. As a bonus, she felt pretty lousy most of the time.
The doctors she saw just pushed pills her way. But instead of using meds as the answer, she started doing her own research, trying to find a better, more natural way.
As her understanding of how the body works grew, she found ways to treat her body better and help it heal. She became a self-proclaimed nutrition dork, a moniker that became the name of her company.
Mayra enrolled in the Institute of Integrative Nutrition's health coach training program. There she learned holistic nutrition practices that agreed with her natural approach to wellness. Plus, she got business training she could apply in a practical setting with clients. While she started on her path to holistic health for herself, she longed to help others on the same journey.
Mayra's Mission
Don't call her a weight loss coach. Mayra is so much more than that. As a Latina who understands that not all women are built for rail-thin bodies, she knows that there is no one-size-fits-all formula for eating right and feeling good. Everything from genetics to hormones comes into play in health, nutrition, weight loss, and wellness. This foundation led her to start her own coaching business more than four years ago. She wanted not only to give a voice to the Latino community when it comes to boosting health and wellness but also to help create a new voice in the industry.
Some health "gurus" plug grilled chicken breasts, broccoli, and brown rice. Mayra's idea of eating healthy does not fit into this bland mold. Infusing her Latino culture with her cooking, recipes, and coaching, she caters to people who want a little spice in their healthy life.
First Steps On Her Road to $1 Million
With a 17-year old son and a day job that she calls her "investor," Mayra continues to hustle every day to make her dream come true. She first bristled at the thought of working for someone else. With the entrepreneurial spirit in her blood, she sees her job as a way to fund her passion project so it can grow. In the meantime, the wheels on her Nutrition Dork bus just keep on turning. Here's what she's working on right now.
Coaching
One-on-one coaching is Mayra's primary focus. It's more intimate than a group setting and gives her the chance to get to know and connect with her clients. The goal is to help them reduce and manage their symptoms. Some suffer from an autoimmune disease, gut issues, or other health concerns. Mayra teaches them how to use nutrition as a catalyst for healing.
During an initial free consultation, she gets to know each potential client, evaluating their needs, and assessing whether it's a good fit. The only condition to be her client? You have to be willing to put in the time. There are no hasty remedies on the road to wellness. You also have to be ready to make changes. They can be as simple as changing a few ingredients you cook with to more significant changes that include reinventing the food you grew up with. If potential clients want a quick fix, she's not the right coach for them. Her ideal time frame is to work with her clients is at least three months. Change doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and thoughtful incorporation of small lifestyle choices, one at a time, over time, so they stick.
Cookbook
Mayra understands that Latin cooking can be healthy, without being bland, boring, and blah. She and her mom often spend hours in the kitchen. They cook up recipes using healthy substitutions for common ingredients, making nutritious food that appeals to the Latino palate. Small tweaks can make a big difference when it comes to the nutritional value of food.
Mayra's friends all wanted to know her secret when she started recreating healthy versions of popular Puerto Rican recipes and meals and posting them on Facebook.
The food she posted looked as good, if not better, than the less healthy original version. They asked - what's the recipe? How did she make it? What substitutions did she or could she make?
With so much enthusiasm for her cooking, Mayra wanted to give the people what they want! She started by creating a Facebook group specifically for her recipes. There, she shares food ideas, tips, and tricks. From the first recipe she shared, it took off, so much so that even non-Puerto Ricans were reaching out, asking her how to make some of her delicious food.
With her typical savvy and eye for a business venture, instead of continuing to post her ideas and recipes for free, she put together what she describes as a "crappy PDF" packet. It featured low-res photos and "a total lack of pizazz" and sold for $19. Using her email list from her Facebook page, she sent out a quick promotional email letting people know it was available. Then she took payment by PayPal and watched it take off. Foodies flocked to her page, craving her cooking tips. Two years later, with a proper cover and some spit-and-polish, she had a bona fide cookbook on her website, HealthyRican.com.
Seasonings
One thing Mayra is not willing to sacrifice is the spice that makes Puerto Rican food and her recipes sing. Most commercial seasonings contain ingredients such as MSG, which can cause health issues, including headaches. So, Mayra makes her own organic seasonings.
After joining Million Dollar Brands in 2019, she had a lightbulb moment: Sell the seasonings!
What better way to complement the cookbook than with her own brand of spices? While the information is in the book, she understands that most people are not going to make their own batch of her special spice. Quantities, volumes, and hard to find ingredients make it too labor and time-intensive for practical purposes. She doesn't have the bandwidth to produce them herself, even without the red tape of food production regulations. So, Mayra is saving money to invest in manufacturing.
What was the clincher that got her to this point? Joining The One Percent and having a hot seat with Bram and Greg pushed her out of her comfort zone and closer to her goals. It was a scary and awesome way to bust her thinking straight out of the box. But they helped confirm her feeling that the cookbook was worth pursuing. Mayra also connected with another member who helped her edit the cookbook. Her grand plan is to market the cookbook first, build a list of customers, and then use it to market the seasonings.
What She's Learned
On her journey to success with her coaching and cookbook, Mayra has learned some critical lessons. First, she's learned that her most significant stumbling block is her own fear - fear that she would be seen as a failure, fear that she wouldn't find success as an entrepreneur, and fear that she wouldn't be able to pay the bills. When she was young and starting to show signs of the entrepreneurial spirit, she sometimes heard "that business won't work" and "go get a real job." These off-hand remarks haunted her, despite her obvious independence and entrepreneurial mindset.
It took work and time to find her people online and offline. In TOP, she found kindred spirits. Like her, they crave the freedom that comes with being a visionary and an adventurer, willing to risk it all to find success on their own terms. Mayra found people who don't tear each other down to compete. Instead, they support each other and talk openly to give honest feedback and constructive advice. These are the people you need to build your community of networking and support.
Tasty Advice
What would Mayra tell others following the path to owning their own business? That you can't do it alone. The "You Are Enough" podcasts and video hit home with Mayra.
If one person benefits from the information and coaching she provides, that's what matters. Mayra wants to share her message with as many people as possible and keep moving forward with her message. Look too far into the future, and goals feel impossible. Short-term goals are the best way to get from point a to point b. What are those goals? First, publish the book. From there, anything is possible.
Chapter 2: From $500 to $20K Months
Shortly after attending the Capitalism Conference in October, 2021, Mayra joined the Capitalism Incubator. This is where her story gets even better.
See, until then, she'd been making steady progress, but it was slow going. Month after month, she struggled to get past about $500 in sales.
She had a product she believed in, but nobody was listening.
For the first 6 months of her business, she was only getting 1-2 sales slowly trickling in each day.
She just needed a path forward to get to her first $10,000 month.
We worked with Mayra to help her go back to the basics and do a REAL launch for her business… which looks a lot like work.
We didn’t give her a new funnel.
And we didn’t completely change her business.
We gave her a very clear plan to get her to her first $10,000 month.
By the way, spices typically have very low prices. She needed to sell a LOT of spices… and she did.
By May of 2022, Mayra had had TWO $20,000 months after working together for just a few months.
Her sales were growing every day at Healthy Rican.
But Mayra would still be stuck at $500 a month if she hadn’t gone back through the process of launching the right way to have a profitable product launch. When she did, well, things got a little crazy.
Chapter 3: A Close Call and Some Speedy Action
What happens if someone in the largest Puerto Rican FB group (over 275K members) shares your products and everyone gets all exciterated and storms Amazon to buy it?
And you’re not on Amazon? Ooof.
And, looking through the 500+ comments, you notice a lot of people went looking, but found your competitors. Pow! Right in the kisser.
But you could get lucky and discover that many of the group members are your fans and that they shared your Shopify and raved about you. And you start replying to their comments and sharing your link.
Like Mayra, you could see a spike in sales, like 125+ in a day.
And, like Mayra, if you posted this exciting development in The One Percent, you’d also hear about FBM and how easy it is to set up, and even find another member offering to record a Loom for you, showing you how to do it.
That’s how we roll.
Chapter 4: Mayra Blinked and Her Audience Blew Past 20K
Most of us after posting on social: *refresh* *refresh* *refresh* Yay! Someone liked it!
Might be hard to believe, especially for anyone taking their first steps on the road to $1 million, but there will come a day when getting your content in front of tens of thousands of people isn’t even your most thrilling accomplishment. Like, you’ll have to go look at your stats rather than being able to rattle them off at the drop of a hat.
Of course, that assumes you’re doing the do.
Mayra Luz Colòn from Healthy Rican is doing said do. We were there when she launched her cookbook, there when she launched her line of healthy Puerto Rican spices, and there when she went from $500/month to her first $20K month. So, it was no surprise when we caught up with her again that big things are happening three years into her side hustle.
Mayra’s audience and product line continue to grow.
She’s really come into her own on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Her favorite content to make? Live shows where she cooks with guests.
Influencers love her, too.
Mayra partnered up with Whole 30 and several influencers in that world. Now one of the biggest Puerto Rican influencers out there (can’t tell ya more than that!) is collaborating with a YouTuber who’s got 10M followers (can’t tell ya who!). And guess whose seasonings she’ll be featuring? Yup!
Healthy Rican is now on Amazon, sporting some beautiful new packaging.
They say you should get your first version of your product out there so fast that you’re embarrassed when you look back at it. Mayra began by packing products herself with labels she’d designed. In 2022, she did a rebrand (gorgeous!), got a manufacturer, and finally put her product on Amazon instead of just Shopify. In true Owner’s Model style, Mayra outsourced that process.
She did 6 figures in 2022.
More specifically, she went from about $75K in 2021 to about $175K in 2022 and doubled her profits. Oh, and remember, this is still Mayra’s side hustle! She’s put her boss on notice… her days as a W-2 are numbered.
Investment funds are on the way!
Launch NY, an incubator supporting Buffalo-based startups has Mayra next in line to be funded. These funds will help smooth inventory issues. The org will also help her with distribution and getting Healthy Rican into retail stores.
Mayra’s an action-taker. She’s also been mentally agile enough to make some crucial shifts along the way as she began thinking like an owner. “I used to do everything. One of the first shifts I had as, ‘Alright, now I’m a leader. I can’t be doing it all. I have to learn to delegate.’ That was really hard for me,” she said. But she did it.
She’s gone from doing everything herself to building a team. No employees, but she’s outsourced her way to being more CEO than DIY. She’s had VAs to help with Amazon listings, VAs to help with newsletters and social media posting. Katerina from TOP helped with her site’s SEO. A couple of people come in regularly to help with order fulfillment.
That kind of progress, friends, is fuego.
But what else is on the horizon for Mayra in 2023?
When you meet Mayra at CapCon, buy her a drink (ok, yeah, we’ve got your bar tab covered, just play along here). There’s a 99% chance she will have made the leap to being full-time on her brand. With all that’s going on, why is she taking the time to get her butt to Austin for this event?
“I have to go to CapCon. I feel like my business wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for Capitalism.com, if it wasn’t for Ryan’s teachings, and me following the journey. I’ve done it all. I started with Million Dollar Brands. Went to The One Percent. Went to CapCon 5. Got into the Incubator. I feel like all those steps are just, like, piling up. CapCon? That’s where my people are at. So I definitely have to go.”
So...
We'll keep you updated on Mayra's progress on her road to $1 million. She's off to a great start, and we hope her story inspires you as much as it inspires us.
Coaching entrepreneurs to build million-dollar brands is our specialty. You can see more of our students' stories here.
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