Ep 290 | Mari Llewellyn

Written By Yasmin Nouri

How This Founder Hit Rock Bottom, Turned Her Life Around & Launched a Best-Selling Wellness Brand

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Mari Llewellyn is the founder of Bloom Nutrition, a health supplement company designed to help everyone bloom into their best selves. Although she is now a renowned expert, serial entrepreneur, and influencer in the health and fitness industry, her journey wasn’t always this way.

During her college years, Mari weighed 250 pounds and was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. This marked the lowest point in her life. Realizing that something had to change, she turned to fitness, which quickly became her passion. This journey ultimately planted the seed for what would eventually become her company, Bloom Nutrition. In her early days of getting healthy, she walked into a GNC and noticed that most products were geared toward men. In response, she and her husband launched Bloom in 2019 to fill that gap. Fast forward to today, Bloom ships over 100,000 orders a month and is the top-selling greens powder on Amazon, amassing more than 100 million views on TikTok each month.

In this episode, Mari is incredibly open and vulnerable. She shares her story from growing up and hitting rock bottom in college to dropping out and completely transforming her life. We dive into how she lost 90 pounds and the critical role nutrition played in improving her mental and physical well-being. Mari also discusses how a single Instagram post, when she had just 900 followers, sparked the growth of her brand and community. Although she didn’t originally plan on becoming an entrepreneur or influencer, her passion for sharing her story and helping others led her to start her first business selling PDF fitness guides, which later expanded to selling resistance bands out of her dad’s attic.

Mari also gives us a behind-the-scenes look at launching Bloom, including the challenges they faced with product pivots when they launched, rejections from retailers like Target and Walmart, and how they eventually broke through. We discuss the power of influencer marketing, building a community, managing multiple businesses, launching a podcast, and so much more.

Show Notes:

  • Early struggles with mental health. [03:03]

  • Mari opens up about her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. [06:33]

  • Mari’s turning point in prioritizing her health. [08:56]

  • Mari’s fitness journey: Starting with nutrition and losing 90 pounds. [12:31]

  • How Mari became interested in business. [16:18]

  • Posting her before-and-after photos on Instagram which changed her entire career. [20:07]

  • Navigating fitness and business as an introvert. [21:41]

  • The power of organic growth and community building in business. [22:47]

  • Lessons learned from working at her past jobs. [23:29]

  • Success of Bloom’s PDF guide and the launch of physical products. [24:59]

  • The process of perfecting product flavoring. [29:24]

  • Development of Bloom’s popular greens powder. [31:07]

  • How Mari secured product placements in Target and Walmart. [33:40]
    Mari’s focus on their influencer program & how it impacted their growth. [38:25]

  • The biggest challenges in scaling the business. [42:13]

  • Bringing in a business partner and future plans for Bloom. [49:07] 

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Ep 289 | Bethany McDaniel