Women In Wellness: Edyta Satchell on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

Surround yourself with champions — Champions are the people who understand you, believe in your mission and know other people. It may be your mother, your grandmother, your work colleague, your neighbor or even your daughter. They know people. They may have many followers. They may play key roles in heir communities. They can connect you to other people who will become your champions or future clients.

As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Edyta Satchell.

Edyta Satchell, America’s Travel Wellness and Beauty Expert. She is a corporate travel executive and wellness practitioner with more than 20 years of global leadership experience at some of the world’s most powerful B2B travel brands. As an accomplished woman in travel, she’s now shifted her focus to helping women prioritize their health, beauty, energy, and confidence by developing Finelle.com; providing modern, comprehensive health and wellness programs to women executives and entrepreneurs who are strengthening their focus on wellness and want to look and feel their very best in the new travel normal.

She is a Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and certified in Oncology Esthetics, which means she can support cancer survivors.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

I’ve been working in the travel industry for more than 20 years. I was a senior executive who traveled the world. Often. I thought I knew everything about traveling well, but I was coming home bloated, dehydrated, overweight and worse. I developed skin allergies, and food allergies too. I had stomach problems resulting in frequent diarrhea. I was simply exhausted, and I had no help. I was coming home unhappy, tired, irritated, and drained. I had no time for my family at all.

Throughout my travels, my hotel room was never ready at 7am (somehow I always seemed to arrive at that time), and what’s worse is at 8 am I was presenting, entertaining, meeting clients, suppliers, my managers, employees and more. As you can imagine, the entertaining continued until late night hours.

I remember during one such event, I developed a stomach bug. I was sweating, my face was red, and I was in tears. BUT, I had to present the very same day to 100 people and I ended up doing so without wearing any make-up. I was humiliated. It felt like the Q and A session would never end. I wanted to go home or at least to my hotel room, but I couldn’t, because it was not ready.

The worst part? My managers didn’t care. The meeting was too important to them. I had to pretend that I was feeling great and that I was ok, but I was not. AND NOBODY CARED! Nobody cared about how I felt and how I looked as long as I could present, entertain, and spend long hours with clients and prospects.

Unfortunately, I continued to travel the “unhealthy” way and do what I was doing i.e. continue to make the same mistakes during my business travel. I had no health or wellness routine neither at home nor on the go. I was simply exhausted and sad.

Things got much worse when I came home from yet another trip totally tired to the point that I didn’t even know what day of the week it was. When my daughter came to me and said: Mom: you are the only mom who didn’t show up at my school’s Mother’s Day performance, she was in tears and so was I. I still get goosebumps when I think about it. I was devastated and I don’t know what was worse, the fact that she told me about it or that I still continued to work crazy hours and travel all the time. And it wasn’t until she broke her elbow ON MY WATCH on Thanksgiving Day when she was playing on the playground and I was busy catching up with my work.

We spent the holidays in the emergency room, and I knew that there must be an easier and better way to have it all: beauty, confidence, productivity, and success in all areas of our lives. I wanted to enjoy traveling again! I wanted to feel confident and energized again! I want to have time for myself and my family again! I wanted to feel and look beautiful again! Therefore, I created Finelle for all these women who want to look and feel their best before, during and after travel so that they can have it all: beauty, confidence and success in all aspects of their life.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

Great question. I create beauty and wellness itineraries that complement the travel itineraries that every traveler follows. The itineraries are highly customized and are created based on travel destinations, time of the year, seasonality, skin type, skin allergies, food allergies, and more. I’ve been doing it for “healthy” women. However, last year I was contacted by a female executive who was referred to me by one of my clients. She traveled intensively pre-Covid and continued to travel during Covid. She shared her story with me. During our conversation, I’ve found that she was a cancer survivor and she was frequently turned down just because she was a cancer survivor. She was looking for a health and life coach and I knew then and there that I will not disappoint her by turning her down. I took an Oncology Esthetics certification course to be able to support her and any woman who needs my help and is a cancer survivor. She recommended me to her friends and ever since I’ve been working with cancer survivors and I never turn them down.

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

The biggest mistake I made in early days was that I thought that we are all the same. What works for me must work for other people as well. It wasn’t until I heard the term “bio-individuality” that I began to understand that no 2 human bodies are the same. It’s a term used by Joshua Rosenthal, Founder of Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN). What works for us may never work for our family members, friends, or clients. As Joshua says: one person’s food is another person’s poison. Ever since I heard Joshua say it, I said to myself, the advice we give and receive must be based on bio-individuality and nothing else. One person will enjoy a 30 min walk every day and lose 15 pounds, but someone else will need to work out intensively 5 days a week to lose 5 pounds. Therefore, we must not forget that that we are all different and never base recommendations on the assumptions that what worked for me will work for other people as well.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

From the get-go, I knew that my offering and services were unique and required marketing and positioning in both travel and wellness. It was very hard for me to find a marketer who understands both. I spent hours interviewing candidates for marketing positions. After yet another one where I had to explain the difference between business and leisure traveler, I was in tears. I made a phone call to my friend, Maggie Fischer, who took this difficult task upon. Maggie is an amazing entrepreneur, marketing guru and a friend. She helped me with marketing, positioning, branding and so much more.

Ok perfect. Now let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

My mission is to support busy high-powered women to look and feel their very best. Why? Because, I’m one of them and I know how it feels to be exhausted and have no time for myself and my family We are mothers, sisters, wives, partners, aunts, grandmothers, and more and we need to be able to look and feel our very best and have time and energy for our families, job that we love, and most importantly for ourselves! There is nothing else more powerful that I can offer to women than beauty, confidence, and success in all aspects of their life.

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

1. EXCERCISE GRATITUDE. Gratitude is the ability to see “beauty” in the “darkest” things. It is the ability to be grateful for things that initially may seem as a curse and not as a blessing. I would encourage everyone to set up a journal and write down everyday things that didn’t seem to be blessings at first and be grateful for them
2. BALANCE YOUR NUTRITION. I totally understand that we may not always crave salad and kale, let’s but try to balance our diet. Every time you go to a grocery store buy one new produce and cook it at home. Try to experiment with super foods. They are very nutritious and bring color to your plate.
3. HAVE A BEAUTY ROUTINE AT HOME. Working from home for the last 20 months makes us lazy, we gain weight, and we stop caring about the way we look on Zoom. Well, people form an opinion about us in the first 10 seconds, which impacts their decision-making process. So, why not create a daily 10–15 min morning routine that will give us beauty, confidence, productivity and success? It is worth it!
4. GET READY TO TRAVEL IN THE NEW NORMAL. We know that 2021 will be the year of travel. People are tired of staying at home and they want to go somewhere, and it doesn’t matter where. So, my advice to all busy frequent traveler is to be travel ready and pack your luggage smart. It is said that the most important items to take on a trip are the face covering masks and hand sanitizers. I argue that the most important item is a body thermometer, which will save you a lot of embarrassment and alleviate the stress of travel. Hand sanitizers and face masks are widely available when you travel However, body thermometers are not! I spent 2 months traveling during Covid and I didn’t have the thermometer with me. At one of the airports my body temperature was taken, and it turned out that my body temperature was elevated. The moment people overheard the conversation about my body temperature, there was no one standing next to me. It was a very embarrassing moment, which I really wanted to avoid.
5. HAVE YOUR WELLNESS ROUTINE. I recommend that every traveler has his/her beauty / youthfulness and wellness routine that is different than the one at home. The routine should consist of the before, the during and the after nutrition and beauty tactics. Because when we are on the go, we eat different food, we exercise in a different way, we care for ourselves in a different way. Travel requires a different routine than the one we have at home.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Since I specialize in supporting frequent travelers, I would create a “Frequent Travelers Unite in Health and Wellness” movement. For that very purpose I created Finelle.com and a “Finelle” persona. Finelle is a woman who is frequently on the go. She needs to juggle between the roles of being a mother, wife, business woman, and more. Finelle cares about her mental health, beauty, vitality, energy, productivity, and success in all aspects of her life. She understands beauty tricks, balanced nutrition, and how to work and be productive on the go. She has it all: beauty, vitality, confidence, and success!

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

I wish someone told me these 5 things before I started my own company

1. The Universe is my business partner — it is all about “Timing” and being patient — we often get frustrated if we don’t achieve a goal in that very moment, but we forget about the concept of Timing. It means that the Universe aligns with us at the right moment, which is right for us.
2. Be grateful — always be grateful for everything that happens in your life and especially for the small things. We should learn to noticed these small things as all these small things contribute to the overall success.
3. Fail often — there is nothing better than failing. Failure is not an outcome of something that didn’t come out the way we wanted it. It is a result of recalibration and re-alignment of our path to success.
4. Have fun and laugh often– how many times we are working hard and forget to have fun? Many, many times! It is a mistake we make. Did you know that you can lose calories when you lough? Yes, you can! Research conducted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center revealed that laughing for 10 to 15 minutes burns between 10 and 40 calories. Laughing causes your heart rate to raise by 10 to 20%. As your heart rate raises, your metabolism increases as well, which means you will continue to burn calories once you stop laughing as well.
5. Surround yourself with champions — Champions are the people who understand you, believe in your mission and know other people. It may be your mother, your grandmother, your work colleague, your neighbor or even your daughter. They know people. They may have many followers. They may play key roles in heir communities. They can connect you to other people who will become your champions or future clients.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

Mental health is something that I didn’t think about until I created my coaching business. Having spent 20 years in the corporate world, not a single time I was trained, educated, or reminded about the importance of focus on mental health. It seems that Covid reminded people about the need for a mental health check, which is a critical part of self-care. Covid not only created many new stress factors in our lives and many unknowns but also helped us realize that we need to take good care of our mental health to be able to overcome the stress of the unknown much easier.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

I always love comments and feedback from readers. You can find me on:

Facebook/ Instagram / Twitter: @edytasatchell

My websites: edytasatchell.com, finelle.com or satchelleglobal.com

Thank you for these fantastic insights!