With obesity and diabetes continuously on the rise, many Americans adopt various diets to stay healthy. But for Kelly Springer, people must not be satisfied with just that but also start consuming real food. Joining Elliot Begoun, she talks about empowering businesses to invest in higher levels of wellness and nutrition through her company, Kelly’s Choice. She explains why proper food education is needed now more than ever, particularly with the misinformation causing adverse health effects. Kelly emphasizes why everyone must be more vigilant in what they eat and avoid being easily swayed by the opinions of popular influencers. She also discusses why there is no single best diet out there, given that every individual body is unique in many ways than one.
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Getting Access To Proper Education On Real Food With Kelly Springer
Before I get started and turn things over to Kelly to introduce herself, I wanted to do a little bit of light housekeeping. First of all, this is the show that is shaped by the questions you ask. Go ahead and put those questions in our online portal in our TIG Tardigrade Online Community. I’ll be monitoring that. Also, an encouragement to share this show with your friends. Let them know that it’s here. We’re trying to produce things that help entrepreneurs in this space. It’s actionable, useful and you can help us help others by spreading the word and give us a review wherever you get your favorite show. I’m going to turn it over to Kelly to introduce herself and tell you all a little bit about her. This is going to be a great conversation. I’m excited about it. Kelly, thanks for joining and share with everybody a bit about you.
Thank you for having me on. I’m Kelly Springer. I’m a registered dietitian. I’m the owner of Kelly’s Choice. It is a conglomerate of dieticians that work on all aspects of nutrition from media. I’m working with brands to private practice and worksite wellness. Also, we do tons of little side things like review menus for present systems. We have our hand in a little bit of everything, and we’re nationwide.
First of all, why become a dietitian? Why do what you do? What’s the passion behind it?
I’m lucky. I’m from three generations of healthy eaters. Nutrition was always important in both my grandmother’s and my mother’s life. I was raised that way. I became interested in nutrition with my aunt Melissa Entenmann who was a dietitian. I was her nanny. I got to see how she could use her degree with her family as well as using it out in the community for diabetes education or teachings as professor. I love the fact that no matter what you choose to do, if you choose to be a stay-at-home mom or whatever it is, you can use your degree every single day of your life.
That’s pretty remarkable because I have a degree that I question if I’ve ever used, at least my undergraduate degree. First of all, one question I’ve never asked is where did the thought about the name Kelly’s Choice come into play?
I was working as the Wegmans’ dietitian. I was there for the employees. I also did some media and outreach. While I was there, I went through a divorce. I was left in poverty with two children. I worked my way out of that by working my butt off. I was coming up with an idea for a because I knew I had something. I knew I had this niche. There was no one working in the way of private practice or with these physician’s offices or with work sites. I was like, “This is my choice of what I want to do and how I want to present myself in the way of real food and real people.” Also, I love the name because it’s a dietician’s choice. If a company is going to hire me to represent their brand, you’re getting the dietitian’s choice of representation. The name was two-fold. Truly, it was the fact that I was going out on my own.
What’s cool about this conversation as well is that I have a feeling we’re going to examine some of these topics from two different places. One, as a dietitian and professional. The other is as a woman entrepreneur and founder which comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities. This is something that we’re seeing more as a reality for founders, and that is this tribalism around food. I look at it many times as there are all these different fingers pointing at the moon. Sometimes we confuse the finger with the moon. It’s keto, vegan, whole food plant-based and all these diet tribes. What’s your feeling about that tribe? Let’s first separate the nutritive benefits of each of the tribes. We’ll examine and talk about some of that. This tethering of self-identity to food and food choices, what’s your take on that from a dietician’s perspective?
It’s interesting because I’ve been asked and put in this position many times. It’s like, “What do you believe in? What is your structure?” This food movement has gone the way of religion. We’re saying that we all believe in a higher spirit, but we’re all going into our sides of Methodists, Catholicism or Judaism. Where are we in the way of food? We need to get back to that message. If we got people to eat more real food, we wouldn’t be having these issues. It’s a way to market and sell food. That’s what I try to explain to my clients, “Do not get sucked into the messaging. You’re getting sucked in.”
It’s great that we’re in the marketing business. We need foods to sell. We to get that market and niche. I was at a networking entrepreneur group in Atlanta and we’re talking about, “To be the most profitable, you have to have a tight niche.” That’s what’s happened in the food space. To move ahead and to be a new company, you have to have that community based around you. That’s sad because people are getting hurt in the way of health by cutting out certain food groups by doing things that are one way versus the other.
It’s causing some tension between people and within families. It is a good analogy to religion because it’s become such a big part of self-identity. I got to imagine it’s extraordinarily challenging for you. I studied nutrition and I’m fascinated by it. This is the industry that I’m in. I’ve had a lifelong struggle with my weight. It made me self-educate. The true cornerstones of healthy nutrition haven’t changed. What changed is public perception, trends, fads, the way it’s talked about, influence but at the end of the day, if you had a diet that was made up of 90% whole and real food, you’re probably going to be doing pretty well. How do you help both brands and individuals see the forest between the cacophony of noise around nutrition, especially America’s desire to find the easy button and the shortcuts or the hacks?
A lot of these new products are coming out. Some of them do have amazing health benefits. Let’s take Kefir for instance. Let’s take that product. I live in Central New York. I was at a presentation for Women and Criminal Justice. I asked them, “How many of you know what Kefir is?” Only 3 people out of 50 in that room, 2 sessions in a row, 2 groups of 50 knew what it was. This is an old product that’s coming into the market now. What is it? What are probiotics? What are twelve live and active cultures mean? How is that helping your health? That’s what brands need. If you’re going to have a product that’s going to increase your health, you need to have an expert being able to take that information and breaking it down in a way that is useful for that end consumer. In that room of 100 people that I saw on those two sessions, I probably got 90% of those people to start buying Kefir because I was able to take their information and break it down.
A lot of the brands that are reading are doing some amazing things. They’re bringing incredible nutritively beneficial products to the market and also providing access and pathways for consumers to find some of these things that maybe they wouldn’t do at home or wouldn’t know about. How do brands talk about this? How do they get heard? How do they help their consumers understand what they built and created? Especially these emerging brands, they don’t have the big dollars to spend. They’re the game-changers. These are the entrepreneurs in this space that are changing human health, but they struggle the most mightily in terms of getting a share of voice, let alone stomach.
It’s going to be where you spend your dollars and get that return on investment. It is hard. I’m an entrepreneur myself. I know how it works. I work extremely well with brands. I started with nothing. No one gave me anything to start this. I know what it takes to build. I also know that there’s been a lot of things that have diluted this space. The major influencers, people that are out taking a picture of a bottle and saying, “This is awesome. I love this.” You may get some likes, but it’s not long-lasting because the education isn’t there. I truly believe in everything that I do that if there’s education on why you should be doing something, how it’s going to help you, that’s going to make sustainable change and make the consumer purchase that ingredient or that thing.
I got this actual education when I worked at Wegmans. I worked with Cindy Debbold who, at the time, was working with all of their knowledge base selling. Instead of putting out random samples, different days, she took the entire East Coast and made it, so we had specific talking points around that product, “How we’re going to do the sample? How do you get the person in to do that education?” I learned so much about how you get a consumer to understand the product to purchase that product and to keep purchasing that product. It takes knowledge. It’s not saying, “I’m an influencer. Buy this product.”
People want to self-educate people. This is an opinion and not a fact. They don’t necessarily want the knowledge pushed at them. They want information and the ability to acquire that knowledge should there be an interest. How does a brand make the nutritive benefits or that education both appetizing and digestible to their consumer and make it interesting? What are those elements? You’ve been doing this long enough. I’m sure you’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.
You do have to recognize the pain point. What are you trying to affect? Are you trying to change over your gut biome? What does that do? If someone is having issues with sleeping or with energy, what are the pain points that you’re trying to cover with this product? Once you establish that and saying, “Are you having a hard time focusing at work? Is this something that you would want to increase your performance on the field?” First of all, what is the pain point? Second of all, why would this product help you? They’re going to have to do education where it’s not being forced because you’ve asked them, “Do you have this problem? You do?”
Now you’re continuing to want to invest. It’s more like gathering that audience and making sure you’re pulling them in then we’re slowly giving them the information then you have the close. It’s quick. I’ve been doing TV for many years. I have those two minutes to convey that type of education. Even in social media, it’s even faster. It’s strategic on how you put together those three elements to bring in, give the education and close. It’s a knack. I was with the host of CNN and she’s like, “I’m now teaching classes on how to do the pitches, the closing and put this all together.” I’ve learned from trial and error over these years what helps that product move forward.
Let’s visit some of this stuff. Being able to narrow it down to get it to those elements, to be able to tell the story quickly and succinctly with a good close, what are those elements? What are some of the things for those reading that they should be going and asking themselves, “Can I do this? Can I practice in front of a mirror and be able to tell somebody or educate in two minutes them as to why the product that I’m putting before them will benefit them?”
You can use experts like myself in our organization to help you with that and with the scripting. That’s going to be number one. There are dietitians like myself that do this but you are using someone who has expertise. I find that a lot of PR firms that we’re working with go to us for that. It’s interesting that you think that they would provide us with that but they’re looking for us for that expertise. That’s one way that you can do it. At that entrepreneur group, we are working with some people that had this amazing product but they weren’t telling the story. Like how I started Kelly’s Choice and what that name meant, if you’re able as an entrepreneur to share your story of why you started creating this product, how you got it out there and sharing some of that knowledge, it doesn’t have to be knowledgeable about the product, why are you doing this?
For example, the product that we were talking about is called eCoaches. He put it out there and he had this awesome reel but there was no story. Why did the guy start? He started it because he had children and he had to be that parent coach. What is your story? What gets told a lot to us as entrepreneurs is to tell your story. When I get on and I say I was a single mom working hard, that story resonates with a lot of people. It brings me down to a humble level. If people can relate to you and your brand, it’s truly going to help to sell it.
That brings me to the question of when do you decide to lean in and use an expert like yourself? What’s that threshold to, “This makes sense?” One of the challenges is that there’s a relative cynicism amongst consumers as to when brands tout their nutritive benefits and try to explain things from an impact on nutrition and not be able to do it well. It hurts the brand more than it helps the brand. If a founder is reading this, when do they know they’re ready to work with somebody like yourself?
Honestly, I’ve helped a lot of companies from day one with their packaging, nutrition or education. It depends on what you’re looking to do. If you truly have a product that is going to impact someone’s health positively, you should be working with someone in this field to help promote it. That’s truly straight out. It depends. You’re going to get different groups that do different things. We will start with a company from day one to say, “All you need is a blog post that’s going to go to Newsmax. You need one TV spot so that you can use that TV spot to go sell to Wegmans.” You don’t have to sign a huge contract with someone like myself, other dieticians or nutrition experts out there. Start small and see how you like working with that person because maybe that person is not giving out the image that you want them to portray. Start with a couple of different things. If the person is not willing to do that, that’s not your right person. You don’t have to go into this hugely. Start with a couple of different things and see how much return on investment you get from it.
Here comes some fun questions. This business is a business of trade-offs. Many of our founders find that hard. They come out with these dreams and want their product to do so much. They want it to be fantastic for human health, clean and all the right ingredients, everything organic, everything fair trade, compostable product and packaging. They put all of that shit together. They realize it’s going to be an $87 bar. It becomes inedible. It’s a business of trade-offs. Sometimes you have to make some trade-offs, things that are less than ideal. That also sometimes includes the inclusion or exclusion of certain ingredients or a change in the nutritive benefit. When you know that you’re less than perfect and you’ve made one of those trade-offs, the question is, how do you show up, own it and be transparent about it without hurting the brand and what the brand stands for?
I started from nothing and had to make some compromises in what I do as well. We have to make that first stamp. If you’re going to get into this industry and this is the only way you’re going to get in, maybe you have some plan in place where after this much growth happens, you’re able to change and go to that ingredient you wanted to. Do I say, “It’s not worth it, don’t do it at all?” No. You can get to a point where you can go down where you want to go. I’m finally at a point in my life where I have the ability to say no without saying yes to everything. I wasn’t always there. I had to say yes to a lot of things. I was going to events. I was doing whatever it took so I could grow my brand. Do I want you to compromise? No. As a dietitian, I would love for everything to be every buzzword under the sun. If you do need to make that cut to get to where you want to go, that’s what you need to do.
My take on that is you don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of the good. The other is to own it and is to say, “We’ll do everything we possibly can. We would love to include this and exclude that. To do that would make it inaccessible or unaffordable at this point in time. We are committed to continuing to work as those ingredients become more readily available and the costs go down to make those adjustments.” If you own it, it goes a long way within guardrails. What you don’t want to do is sacrifice everything you stand for. What are those guardrails that you’re willing to stay within? What are those things that are noes? There are certain ingredients that you won’t allow to be in your product or taken out of your product. Always be truthful. I love this question. It’s pretty funny. As somebody who is known on camera as a dietician, a healthy eater, do you ever get busted when you go out to eat and you’re snarfing down something you shouldn’t or are you always on camera-aware as you’re out and about?
I grew up with three older brothers. I have no food aversions. I eat everything which is funny to people. We were at a restaurant and I ordered French fries. Everyone looked at me. I had a salad and fish as my main thing. I’m like, “I eat French fries. I can have a few French fries.” It was funny. Everyone was like, “I’m shocked that you ordered French fries.” Ninety percent of the time, I’m eating healthy food. I do allow for other foods in my diet. I am not super restrictive.
Along the same vein is when you show up at parties or friends’ houses or family gatherings, does everybody try to up their game and show themselves eating healthier in front of you or tell you how healthy they’re eating?
It’s mostly in the grocery store where I see people avoiding me. I’ll see them turn. They don’t want me to see what’s in their cart. I grew up in an extremely healthy household where fruits were your snack and no soda. I grew up in a healthy environment. A lot of my friends are the same way. We’re all about give and take. It’s the grocery store where people are like, “I’m buying this because we’re having a party.” They are giving me an explanation in the grocery store. I’m like, “It’s okay. I’m not judging.”
Give the audience an understanding of what it’s like to engage with you and what some of those options are in terms of things that they could do with Kelly’s Choice.
You can start with simple things like writing a blog post or quotes for a magazine or doing TV spots. We also do a lot of content for your actual website. We do everything. I’m soup to nuts for New York State apples. I do everything from their RD toolkit, their blog posts, there are newsletters, talks to their board members. I do everything for them to an organization that says, “We want you to do a social media post holding our product.” It depends on the level that you want to engage. I’ve never said, “No. That’s too little. We’re not going to do that.” I’ve been lucky for this. Usually, what I find is if I do one thing, you’ll like working with me and the relationship always grows. I’ve had food companies with me for many years. It’s pretty nice. Now I have a whole plethora of dietitians that doesn’t have to be my face. I’m training a bunch of RDs under me. We can have all different types of different RDs faces as well, some that are younger, some that are older. Depending on your demographic of what you’re trying to achieve, we can also do that too.
If I’m an entrepreneur and I’m trying to allocate my limited resources between PR, influencer marketing, paid social and using somebody like you and Kelly’s Choice to help me grow brand awareness, education. How do I prioritize? What should I consider in terms of that prioritization?
We’re easy ones. With a PR, you have to pay pretty big monthly types of deals, which is fine. I do think that there’s a value in PR completely. You do need to have a schedule of what you want to achieve. Who are you trying to reach out to and trying to sell to? In what ways do you want to sell them? What is the education behind this product? It’s going to depend on what you’re trying to achieve with this product. Are you trying to get it into the hands of people? In the other part of my company, I work in worksite wellness. We’re in thousands of companies nationwide. We have the ability to get your product to the actual work site. Let’s say you have that bar. Can we get that bar out to all of these companies? There are lots of different ways that you can maneuver.
It’s going to go back to education. How are you supported in getting your message to the end consumer? In what way are you going to do that, through the retail dietitian? Which way are you going to try to go about this? It could be multiple angles at once. It depends. For instance, I’ll take KIND bars. The reason KIND bars became successful was because their main focus was having dieticians promote their products across the nation. Dietitians are promoting them in the way of their private practices. On TV they only use RDs, which is pretty cool. You all know the success of KIND bars. That’s a method that they went about and it was extremely successful.
I didn’t have to call this out loud but I’m going to anyway because I get it. Bernice says, “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t eat French fries.”
Thank you.
There’s a lot of celebrity RDs out there. In the opinion of some, they have bastardized the profession a little bit because they’ve been willing to tout things as nutritionally beneficial that aren’t. What do you see as an industry in terms of that as a profession? Is that a real challenge? Is that something that inner industry people are talking through about how to stay above that?
It’s important to constantly keep a private practice and also do presentations. By doing that, I am staying loyal to my field as well. I understand what the needs of the consumer are, what am I hearing in my actual office. A lot of the media dieticians don’t do that. They’re trying to be famous too fast. They don’t have any clinical background or that backing to be able to be credible. They’re touting information. You want to make sure that whoever you’re working with that they do have a clinical background. They’re not a TikTok superstar. They have nothing behind it. They’re not going to speak to your brand the way that they should.
Also, it is tough. I got called out by an organization that said, “If you’re not promoting us, if you’re going against it and going over to the other side, we’re going to drop you.” I said, “Drop me then.” I am about population health. I am not going to be in a bucket. I’m about getting people healthier. I don’t care if it’s carbohydrates, dairy proteins or whatever it is. I’m going to give the most solid information out there. Another part is that I’m probably different from a lot of people because they’ll probably go into one section or the other. I’m about population health.
Two follow-up questions. One is I see a lot of what we described in trade group-type of presentations. The dairy and meat industry, things along those lines, tend to sometimes have different and opposing dietary advice comparative to an RD who’s coming from a plant-based perspective. How does the consumer make heads or tails of that?
That’s the thing. In my practice and our worksites, we’re seeing everyone under the sun. We’re seeing everything from people that are eating full vegan and raw to a complete carnivore diet. I have the full gamut coming to me. My whole point is that, “I need to make this person here the healthiest they can be.” If I’m working with plant-based raw, I need to make sure they’re getting the iron, the B vitamins, what they need to get and what products are going to help bring this back to normal. Also, the carnivore person, what are the leaner type that they can have? What is some way they can get in fiber sources? I’m constantly battling these right to left because they all have nutrition deficiencies. We’re trying to bring them to the healthiest standpoint that they can be. It’s tough. People are trying to put me in a bucket. I can’t. I’m seeing everyone and everything. As long as I can give the education on how they truly can be their best selves, wherever they are on the spectrum, that’s what we’re trying to achieve.
That’s important. It is a continuum. It’s like fingers pointing at the moon. There’s a lot of paths and ways there. Even if 80% to 90% of it is the same for everybody, that 10% is a pretty big differentiation. When do you say no? What are your absolutes that you won’t do?
I will not do artificial sweeteners. Our tagline is, “Real people. Real food.” We have to stay with real food. We want to get away from chemicals. For anyone out there, if you’re trying to cut corners, do not go towards chemicals. I started in this field a while ago. We are moving away. We are truly now educating on that. If you are going down that road, it’s going to be short-lived. You want to make sure that you’re truly putting natural foods into your products.
We talk a lot about education from a nutrition standpoint. When you’re a brand that has multiple education points, you want to educate consumers about the nutritional benefits of your product. Also, you need to educate consumers about the sustainability aspects of your business or the social impact aspects of your business. How do you choose? To message all three is difficult and there’s a lot of information. Many times, the consumer’s eyes roll back in their heads if they feel total overload. How do you manage that? I’m sure sometimes that while you’re delivering some of the nutritional benefits, you’re also asked to speak to some of those other elements too.
You make it fun. For instance, I’m just going to call out a brand, Alter Ego. They have every buzzword under their name. When I was doing a TV spot for them, I’m like, “You can even use these truffle wrappers in your garden.” If you can call out something funny like that and say, “They have every buzzword you’d want to ever hear,” this is one example. Calling out and making something fun that way instead of saying, “They’re gluten-free. Fairtrade.” Saying they have all these amazing buzzwords, everything you’d want in a product but then call out something and make it either funny, relatable or something in that way.
That leads to this next question, the don’ts of talking about nutrition. This founder wants to, “What shouldn’t I do?”
Putting yourself in a tight arena is going to be tough. This is my background. I would truly try to go with the real food message instead of trying to be for one organization. I’m different from probably a lot of others thinking out there that if you had the 10%, you can make a huge business on the 10%. That’s my take on it. It’s completely up to you. Keep it positive. Not knocking other brands. Not saying something is bad. Not going into that realm. Staying positive in what your line is. What are you trying to achieve? Not going into the negative with everybody else. That’s where we’re falling down. That’s where the American public is confused. If I ever hear someone say again that fruit is bad for you, this is where we’re super confused. Let’s stay in where we are positively and how this product is helping the consumer and helping us versus saying that everything else is bad.
Forty-two percent of Americans, somewhere in that neighborhood, are clinically obese. Almost 2/3 of the population is considered overweight. We have a massive type 2 diabetes epidemic. A huge percentage of the population is either currently type 2 diabetic or pre-diabetic. Does it ever get daunting to know that we are out of where we should be from a societal perspective around nutrition? To that point, there’s so much confusion that people don’t know where to turn. Does that get disappointing, aggravating? How do you show up with a smile on your face every day when you know that you’re fighting a pretty uphill battle?
That’s why I love what I do, stay in private practice and doing presentations because I can’t tell you how many days I can see that light bulb turn on. I can see it. That’s what motivates me every day. When I was down in Atlanta, I presented to a whole group of 70 tech guys. The owner told me, “They’re not into health. They’re the unhealthiest people. You’ll probably not going to get any engagement.” By the end, everyone’s asking questions and they’re in because they got it. I could make it relatable in a way that they’re like, “This is fun.” That’s what motivates me, keeps me on my game and excited for it. I get to see the light bulb turned on. I’m not behind the camera. I’m in the trenches still doing it. Every day, when someone says to me, “That makes complete sense. No one ever explained it to me that way.”
Do you have a couple of examples of brands that are doing well with speaking about nutrition in an accessible manner?
Yes. I can speak to a couple of my brands. I brought up Kefir because it’s important to understand this gut biome and its relationship between nutrition, brain and psychiatry. I do think that Kefir is great at using us as dietitians to promote that brand. I was able to go as far as being on Good Morning America with Lifeway Kefir and be able to explain how this works in the body and what that product does and how it can benefit health. That’s one. I work with even smaller brands like Cabot Cheese that are local, sustainable, working in the way of 800 family farms in New York and Vermont. These types of companies put their product to the test and stand up to quality.
When we’re moving in this direction with America, we are looking for quality and for real. This is where the trend that has been happening for the last years is truly something that’s changing. I’m working with a Manuka honey product, Wedderspoon. We want to get the message that they are of the highest quality. Those are when they’re reaching out to the dieticians because they want quality education taught. What is Manuka honey? Where does it come from? Why is it different? Where can it be used? These types of products are truly using dieticians to call out those higher messages.
If someone wants to start working with you or engage in the process, how would they learn about what you offer? How does that look in terms of structure and starting point?
You can go to our website at KellysChoice.org. There are tons of videos of me doing TV and everything else. If you email me at [email protected], we’ll send you our whole media sales kit. You can see what it looks like and how we can put it together. There are so many different ways you can engage with us. It’s not a one fits all type of situation. It’s going to be different depending on your product, budget and what you’re trying to achieve. We can help you with all of that. Feel free to reach out to me. Write to my personal email. I’m happy to help and guide you in this whole realm. I know is overwhelming. That’s why I represent you versus do it. Make sure to follow us on Instagram. @KellySpringer_RD. We’re trying to grow our numbers. We’ve done it all organically.
Kelly, thanks so much for joining this episode. I appreciate it. Thank you everyone. We’ll see you next time.
Thank you.
Important links
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@KellySpringer_RD – Instagram
About Kelly Spring
Kelly is a graduate of West Virginia University with a BS degree in Nutrition and earned her Master’s degree in Health Education from SUNY Cortland.
Kelly formerly worked as the Division Dietitian at Wegmans Food Markets and as a clinical dietitian at Auburn Hospital working in bariatrics, critical care, and nutrition support. She began Kelly’s Choice in 2012 with a vision to empower people to invest in their own health and wellness in order to live their best lives.
Kelly’s Choice now functions as a comprehensive nutrition and health company that offers private nutrition counseling, workplace wellness, educational webinars, media appearances, and brand partnerships. The company has grown exponentially since its inception and is headed in an exciting direction to reach a wider audience and change the conversation surrounding what it truly means to be healthy.
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