Healer Q&A: Entrepreneurship as personal development with Alexandria DeVito

The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.

How do you transition from a high-powered corporate career to a pioneering role in holistic health? Alexandria DeVito, a former McKinsey consultant and Harvard MBA, shares her remarkable journey with us on the Healist Podcast. Alexandria's transformation into a functional nutritionist and founder of Poplin, the first pre-pregnancy wellness company, offers a deep dive into the world of proactive healthcare. Her awakening to the importance of preconception health through personal experience and rigorous research underscores the significant shifts needed in how we approach fertility and wellness.

We uncover the hidden struggles of leaving behind the prestige of corporate credentials to venture into the uncertain world of entrepreneurship. Alexandria takes us through her own identity crises and internal battles, providing real-life examples. This conversation emphasizes the importance of self-worth and credibility based on personal expertise rather than external validation, illustrating how solo practitioners are true entrepreneurs in their own right.

Lastly, we tackle the emotional and practical hurdles of starting a business in an emerging field. Alexandria shares actionable strategies for prioritizing impactful tasks over busy work, and an exercise to identify and overcome psychological barriers. We discuss the challenges of explaining innovative concepts like pre-pregnancy wellness and the persistence required to maintain visionary goals. This episode is not just about business success, but the invaluable personal growth and skills gained along the way, celebrating the entrepreneurial journey in all its complexity.

Check out Alexandria’s book 9 Months Is Not Enough where she shares a scientifically based roadmap for complete pre-pregnancy wellness and generational health.

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Rediscovering Identity in Holistic Entrepreneurship

Yuli Ziv: You started with what seemed like the ultimate dream at McKinsey & Company and Management Consulting. Then we jump to you as a functional nutritionist and practitioner. What was your point of awakening? How did that jump happen?

Alexandria DeVito: I lived a very linear and logical life, working as a banker and consultant in healthcare. I fell in love with healthcare while doing that work. At some point, I realized I wanted to transition from a reactive to a proactive model of healthcare, which was the impetus for me to go back to school.

I left the corporate world to work as a nutritionist. Everyone wondered what I was doing, as it's not traditional to get a Harvard MBA and then leave. But I knew there was something in it for me. I wanted to build something in health and wellness, and I felt that the clinician seat was one of the best to have.

I started working as a clinical nutritionist and training in functional medicine. I ended up having many clients struggling to conceive who came to me late in their journeys. This activated me to research this area further. I began running broad tests on clients and realized we were flagging things that their providers had never looked at. There was a completely different way to interface with our health and fertility than what we've been led to believe.

Initially, I thought someone else would figure this out. Eventually, I realized that I'm the one who gets to build this company and get the word out about preconception. That's where my entrepreneurial journey started. I went from having brand names behind me to being the name itself. There's an identity crisis that comes with that transition.

When I first left the corporate world, one of the biggest personal learnings was standing in my own identity. So much of my early career was about achievement—the degree, the thing external to me that I was attached to. At some point, I stepped off that train. I wasn't a McKinsey consultant anymore. I hung up my own shingle and said I am Alexandria DeVito, the person who is now going to come into this space and try to serve.

I tested myself. If I don't rely on my credentials anymore, if I just walk into a room and start speaking without telling people these credentials, can I establish myself as credible, trustworthy, reliable, and someone people want to do business with? Stripping all of that away brought up a lot to work through about what an identity is, what I value, and what people value about me.

Yuli Ziv: We met at a fabulous longevity dinner in NYC. As you go into a typical NYC networking event, the first thing people mention is who you work for or where you graduated from. By those couple labels, people build assumptions and create a perception of you. What happens when you don't do that?

We ended up sitting across from each other and I knew nothing about your incredible background. I started listening to you speak and was instantly impressed, without needing those labels. That's when I knew I had to have you on my podcast.

Alexandria DeVito: Labels can be a beautiful thing, but also a crutch. Now when I meet people, I ask, "What are you up to in the world?" instead of "What do you do?" It's a slight difference but allows for a more expansive response than just being defined by a career. Sometimes people are more passionate about things outside of work. That small shift allows people who have chosen an alternative path to what's expected to share more.

Yuli Ziv: I love that. I'm going to adopt it. My version would be, "What are you up to in the quantum?" It's a great filter. I might lose potential friends, but that's okay.

Shedding Layers: The Essence of Entrepreneurship

Alexandria DeVito: Another thing I would touch on in this journey is the concept of shedding layers. I've been reflecting on how much of life is about removing rather than adding. As someone interested in learning, growth, and evolving my understanding of myself and the world, there is beauty and simplicity in taking things away.

How do we remove layers of shame, judgment, and preconceived notions about how things should look or be? The journey of entrepreneurship is the same. What can we remove to get to the essence? There are activities we do that make us feel good but don't drive us toward our desired outcome.

It's busy work versus real work. I convinced myself I was doing tasks to move things forward, but they were just easier or more enjoyable. There are probably two or three essential things to do each day to move the business forward. If you're not doing those, you're spinning your wheels. Getting honest, removing excess, and focusing on the essence is a big part of life and entrepreneurship.

Yuli Ziv: We gravitate toward things that are fun and easy, putting off more difficult tasks with baggage and blocks attached. Those are probably the first things we should tackle. At the end of the day, we're building mission-based businesses with big visions, but we're also here to do our own work. We can't put off uncomfortable things for too long.

Alexandria DeVito: In an entrepreneurship mentorship, we listed 10 business tasks, the practical obstacles to doing them, and the psychological/emotional reasons we weren't doing them. Most of the time, it was fear of being seen, shamed, or failing.

We get caught up in not knowing how to do something, which can often be resolved through research or guidance. But to find motivation, we must address the underlying blocks. Once we do that, the "how" becomes much easier. If we stay in a loop of not addressing underlying concerns, it's a more inefficient path.

Yuli Ziv: I agree. I just did this exercise and noticed that once we remove emotion, the solution became clear. There were a few things to try. You focus on solving the problem instead of being stuck in an emotional loop. I recommend this to anyone procrastinating on their dreams.

Alexandria DeVito: Even when we know this, we still need reminders. I speak about what I need to learn. It's an evolving process. When I hit resistance, I examine the practical and underlying reasons. As we grow and expand, it's expected to face new challenges.

Yuli Ziv: As difficult as the process is, I love every part of it. I hope to reach a point where it becomes a fun game, approached with playfulness while celebrating small accomplishments.

Alexandria DeVito: Celebrating is important. Learning resilience and shortening the timeframe of getting caught up in drama is key. The goal isn't to eliminate drama completely, but to recover from it quickly, notice patterns, and have a broad set of tools to pull yourself back. It's about knowing which tool is relevant for the job in each case.

Building a Vision From Practitioner to Founder

Yuli Ziv: You've been a very successful practitioner, helping many people with fertility or other issues. How did you go from that to finding an even bigger mission and the motivation to pursue it and step into the unknown?

Alexandria DeVito: At its core, there is something slightly unexplainable about my obsession with preconception and generational health and the opportunity to completely change the way that we engage with it.

Fertility is at the extension of health, relationships, and different planes—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Building a new category is incredibly humbling. When I talked years ago about working in pre-pregnancy wellness or preconception, people had no idea what I was talking about.

It is deeply challenging to hold the vision for something that no one else can see besides you, particularly for such a long time. Seven years is a ridiculously long amount of time to hold a vision for something. A lot of times in that journey, you wonder if you're really seeing what you think you're seeing and if it makes sense.

The amount of faith that you have to have in yourself and your vision is immense. Sometimes the timing or collective consciousness is not there yet. There's a lot of sitting with the duality of deeply believing in it while questioning if the world is ready for it.

Yuli Ziv: You are very brave. I feel you so much. It's hard sometimes to live with the gap between our vision and reality. I think it's part of our work to really develop our trust, confidence, and acceptance. The fact that you've been living with it and continuing to develop and can now see the fruits of your labor with the business success, must be very fulfilling.

Alexandria DeVito: It is deeply fulfilling and validating to start seeing feedback that it's resonating with people and empowering them in the way that I hoped it would. Entrepreneurship is personal development. If you use that as the North Star, then even if the business side does not end up working out, you have evolved and have something to show for it.

It's about who you become in pursuit of the goal. It's important to me that I am showing up and learning day to day. When growth stops or I'm not showing up as the person I want to be, then the business isn't moving in the direction I want it to.

Cultivating Generational Health Through Conscious Conception

Alexandria DeVito: The book is called "Nine Months Is Not Enough: The Ultimate Pre-Pregnancy Checklist to Create a Baby-Ready Body and Build Generational Health." I wrote the book because I realized there was a huge educational gap around why preparing to get pregnant was important. Most people's sexual education happened at age 12 or 13 in school. Other sources for understanding this phase were TV, the internet, doctors, or parents. Resources for up-to-date, accessible information were few and far between.

I'm deeply passionate about sharing the concept of generational health, like how we think about generational wealth. The science is evolving, but we know much more today about how health is passed down epigenetically through egg and sperm health. We can cultivate and improve it in the months prior to conceiving.

This message is not being shared broadly enough. When we think about conscious conception, there's another level to it—how we cultivate the health, relationships, and physical space we want prior to conceiving, so we can bring children into the world we desire to see.

Transforming Fertility: Poplin's Holistic Approach

Alexandria DeVito: I run Poplin, a pre-pregnancy wellness company focused on testing for individuals planning to conceive. We screen for factors that could interfere with fertility, looking at 70 biomarkers to get a data-rich picture of health.

In fertility, age-based protocols often miss the difference between chronological and cellular age. Targeted interventions based on unique physiology are important, especially for those conceiving later in life. Fertility doesn't have to be a black box - you can get an early indicator of health issues and resolve them before trying.

The branding around fertility is off. "Infertility" is a misnomer, as only 1% of females are actually sterile. Infertility statistics are underreported at 15-20%. This industry needs a rebrand to align with society and data. Age is a factor, but we have more agency over our biological age.

Yuli Ziv: This is a goldmine. We need to spread the word about this process. Most women come across it too late. There's a message of hope here—the older you are, the more your health matters. I love the holistic approach. We need more educated, well-spoken people who understand the wholeness of body, mind, and spirit in this space.

A Message of Hope: Rewriting the Fertility Narrative

Yuli Ziv: You were talking about fertility, and I was getting emotional because it was such a hard journey for me. Thank God there are people like you who can speak this holistic language now and make the journey easier for this new generation of women. This is part of our generational trauma that hopefully the next generation won't have to go through.

Alexandria DeVito: I've sat across the table from many individuals struggling to conceive, and it was heartbreaking to watch the loss of agency. Females are used to getting things on a timeline and having things work the way they're used to. To be told there's nothing you can do is the most disempowering piece of information you could give someone.

Not only is it untrue, but it's not of service to that individual. I hope we're rewriting the script, and it gives me hope. As a collective, there is more consciousness and awakening to all these other modalities that can be of service to people.