Today we’d like to introduce you to Agatha Achindu.
Hi Agatha, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up on my mother’s farm in Cameroon, West Africa, eating the freshest organic food from our garden, or the local farmer’s market. My family used the refrigerator only for cold drinks and leftovers, and we never had convenience foods. As a kid, I enjoyed cooking with my Mami and aunties. By age 9, I was cooking and baking foods my family and friends just couldn’t get enough of.
Later, when I moved to the United States, I experienced a culture shock. I could not easily find the fresh foods I was accustomed to. Everything was packed in cans, designed to sit on shelves for two or more years. The bland color and texture, the offensive smell, and the fact sugar was in everything all shocked me. Packaged food didn’t compare to the fresh food from our backyard garden in Cameroon.
I started making my own food, and before you knew it, I was teaching others how to make simple changes to their favorite meals without compromising taste while improving upon the nutritional profile and thus their overall health. Bake the chicken instead of frying, don’t overcook your greens if you want them to taste good and pack more nutrients, cook your legumes at home to avoid unnecessary additives and preservatives, etc.
When I was 6 months pregnant with our youngest child, I remember realizing that the same over-cooked, processed foods were also made for babies. In my naivete, I thought that baby food would be different — and better — since everyone knows babies need the best nutrition. But no, peas were a dusty brown, not bright green like fresh peas. I picked up a jar of food and saw that it had an expiration date of 2005 — more than two years away.
The food my unborn baby was going to eat was already cooked and waiting on the shelf! This was unacceptable. I knew I was going to have to make food for my youngest child, but the bigger question was: what about all the other parents out there? I tell people that both my companies founded me.
I was so frustrated with commercial baby food, I started teaching parents how to make homemade baby food, that community grew to 45k mothers which eventually led to me leaving corporate America and my job as an IT Executive in 2006 and founded Yummy Spoonfuls® the first nationally distributed fresh frozen organic food for kids.
I realized parents needed the knowledge to be able to make better nutrition and lifestyle choices for their children and themselves, in 2016 I launched Life Unprocessed™, a boutique wellness and consultancy helping my clients uncover their unique optimal health and most importantly eventually getting off medication for chronic diseases.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oh no, not a smooth ride at all, while there were big and small challenges along the way on a personal level the many roles I juggle every day, and trying to keep everything in balance. I am a wife, mother, sister, and friend – AND a businesswoman. My family life means everything to me, but so does my work! In my mind, I am constantly prioritizing tasks –sometimes I feel my brain works overtime!
That’s something that’s not evident, but that is my reality. The biggest was losing everything, the hardest lesson I learned was to borrow when you have money, I know it sounds crazy but it is the truth. It is better to have it and not use it than to come up short when you need it. And as a business startup, you are going to need it.
When I left my job as an IT executive for Agilisys to start my first brand Yummy Spoonfuls® in 2006, I was creditworthy, so I funded my start-up using my own resources, and I believed that if I needed money down the road, I would simply go to the bank and borrow the funds. Access to credit had never been an issue, so it never crossed my mind that I would not be able to take out a loan.
But what a mistake that was; because a few years in, I had gone through all of our own money including our 401k, and family savings, and needed more to keep going. By that time, I was in a very different position. I had no steady income, no job, and my husband and I had spent all of our savings – everything – and our only asset was our home. Lenders turned me down for business loans because I was no longer credit-worthy, having bootstrapped the business for years. There was no way to collateralize a loan at that point.
I love sharing this part of my journey to help other startups not make the same. Looking back the best time to get a bank loan would have been in the beginning, when I was credit-worthy. Rather than using up all of our personal resources, I could have leveraged my healthy financial position to secure funding before I even left my corporate job. Only by God’s special grace were we able to come through victorious despite it all.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am the founder and lead coach for Life Unprocessed™ a boutique wellness coaching and consultancy for high-achieving women and their families. I help my clients find a clear, uncomplicated, and sustainable path to a healthy fulfilling life. I am well known for helping my clients heal their bodies from the cellular level on up, and eventually get medication for chronic preventable diseases including high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol they were told would have to take for the rest of their lives.
As a certified integrative nutrition health coach, certified life coach, and certified yoga teacher, what truly sets me apart is not only my cumulative knowledge but most importantly my compassionate guidance and decades of knowledge. While there are lots of clients’ successes I am proud of, one that touched my heart was helping a client who had been on high blood pressure medication for 20 years.
She was told she would have to take that medication for the rest of her life because there was no cure, she was happy until she started having kidney problems due to long-term use of medication. She had absolute disbelief and joy all at the same time as her body slowly started healing. For the first time in 20 years, she was able to go for 3 weeks without any meds eventually having to finally get off meds after 8 months.
The most important thing I want your readers to know is how magical the human body truly is. Your body, yes you, truly has the capacity to heal when provided the mind, body, and spirit nourishment it needs to thrive, please remember big Pharma and big food want you to be sick and addicted, they make HUGE profits off it.
At Life Unprocessed™ we help clients uncover, unlearn, and unleash their unique, optimal lifestyle design. Empower clients to think critically and independently to unprocess generational habits and wellness misconceptions to arrive at solutions that actually work, enabling them to thrive on their journey to longevity through coaching.
What makes you happy?
I am 56 years old, not on any medication (thank God), and not a single cavity in my mouth, I run the AJC 10k 4th of July race on the regular. What truly gives me joy outside of loving God and my family is showing my community there is a different and better path to aging, you, just like me don’t have to age in sickness, you, just like me can age in vibrant health, you can live a life free of chronic preventable diseases like I am. Spreading knowledge and inspiration to my community and beyond to live and be well gives me joy and hope.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://agathaachindu.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agathaachindu/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agathaachindu
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agathaachindu/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgathaAchindu
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXi4yW4TFjHMUgQcqBIT3Hw
Image Credits
Rinne Allen and Aim Crawford
