We recently were lucky enough to catch up with holistic health and wellness influencer, Amanda Carneiro, of the brand Raw Fitness and Nutrition (@rawfitnessandnutrition). She is incredibly smart and fun and she dropped some major branding and health knowledge on us during our interview for #sheraves. It’s a great episode jam packed with some incredible advice. I have a few highlights of our talk below and if you haven’t yet checked out the full interview, you can do so here.  

On how she started:

“I started it because people wanted to know what I was eating. People were like, ‘I want you to share your meals, I want to see what you’re doing,’ and they were asking so many questions about that. So I started just sharing photos of the food I was eating and since then it has developed into kind of a holistic approach to everything. I talk about not only just nutrition but relationships, spirituality, and career. All of those things play into our health.”

On why she started developing a brand:

“When I started posting people were really into it and they started asking so many questions. And there’s only so many people I can reach with my clients, in-person. So being able to share information and reach thousands of people is much more interesting for me. I really want to start a community around Raw Fitness and Nutrition. Not just people who follow me, but I want the people who follow me to be in their own community and get to know each other.”

On why your audience is the most important thing:

“It’s all about the people who follow me. It would be nothing without them. That’s why I respond to pretty much every single comment unless it’s inappropriate and every dm. And even if it’s inappropriate, I usually respond. ”

On haters:

“When you have haters, when you have people who are not liking what you’re doing, I feel like you’re doing something right.”

On how she learned what apps to use:

“Asking people what they were using was helpful and I’ve taken a few Instagram courses here and there which have been helpful. Just for little tips. I feel like everything I take, I take a little bit from each one and use it and make it my own.”

 On how she found her aesthetic:

“I’m still learning. I’m still trying to figure it out. I mean, consciously I do use a lot of white background. I like to keep things very clean and minimal because that is who I am. I am very direct. I love the people who have a lot of props in their photos and I wish I could do that, but that’s just not who I am.”

On scheduling her content:

“For the most part I’m writing the captions and editing the photo the same day. I feel like people want real time so I like to create captions that are related to that day. It’s important to be current.”

On the biggest lesson she’s learned in her journey so far:

“I think it’s to be authentic and genuine and share what you really feel and what you know. And to be real. It’s so funny because the things that I am resistant to or thinking ‘people might not want to see that’ or ‘that’s too personal,’ those are always the stories that do the best and that I get the most responses to.”

Watch the full interview here.