How an Expert Nutritionist Coach Built a Thriving Business
After falling in love with functional fitness as an organic chemistry graduate student at Yale University in 2016, Justin Romaire noticed something that surprised him.
People at his gym were working out hard, doing four to five WODs a week, but they didn’t look that fit.
“I noticed that a lot of people weren’t reaching their goals,” said Romaire, CBG founder.
“We see it all the time. People that look the exact same [after years of working out] because their nutrition isn’t working with the WODs that they’re doing. That lack of cohesiveness keeps people stuck,” he explained.
That’s when he knew he wanted to get involved helping people with their nutrition. They wanted them to feel and look like they workout five days a week.
So in 2018, Romaire teamed up with Taylor Domengeaux, a four-time Regionals athlete, and launched Consistency Breeds Growth (CBG).
At the time, CBG was an unknown entity and Romaine had to find creative solutions for a sustainable business.
To get the ball rolling, Romaire began running nutrition challenges “basically for free,” he said, at a handful of gyms in his area.
It built some momentum, but it was just a start.
After that, Romaire decided to start messaging as many people as he could to introduce himself and hopefully nudge them to seek his help. And what better place to start than at the top of the Worldwide Open Leaderboard?
So Romaire started by messaging the five-time champion Mat Fraser, and then made his way down the leaderboard, sending “thousands of messages,” all the way to 75,000th in the world.
“I would message them on Instagram. ‘This is Justin from CBG. We’d love to teach you more about what we do and offer nutrition support. Let me know if you’re interested.’ Just like a cold message,” he said, laughing.
The result: The great majority of his messages he sent fell on deaf ears. But the other small percent did not. And so Romaire began to build his roster of nutrition clients (His first high-level athlete was Craig Kenney, a two-time individual Games athlete).
“You have to be told 1,000 times no, to get the one yes,” Romaire said of what stopped him from getting discouraged as rejection became the most common reply.
He added: “When you know you truly have something of value, you don’t care how many people tell you no. You just keep going.”
Romaire had another small problem, though. He was living in a world where everyone and their dog was turning to tracking macros as their nutrition method, a method Romaire had never embraced because he could see that tracking macros wasn’t a sustainable long-term solution.
“Tracking macros does get exhausting for everybody at some point. It’s not a matter of it, it’s a matter of when,” he said.
Still, “a lot of people laughed at me,” he admitted of how many reacted to his approach to nutrition.”
But he stuck to his guns and conned to build the CBG blueprint model, a model that focuses on building habits and educating about quality foods and portion sizes without inputting every gram of carbohydrate, protein and fat consumed into an app.
CBG Today
Years since launching CBG and sending thousands of unanswered messages to competitive and lifestyle athletes, it’s safe to say Romaire’s *dog and a bone *attitude has paid off.
Today, Romaire has 11 full-time coaches working with him and has worked with more than 10,000 clients internationally, both fitness enthusiasts and elite athletes.
Further, last year he launched a nutrition coach mentorship program. So far, close to 100 coaches or aspiring nutrition coaches have been through the CBG program.
Romaire credits his consistency to sticking to his guns and “believing in myself even though everyone was doubting me” for being able to build CBG to where it is today.
“It’s just consistency, you know… That consistency of daily interactions with people, messaging, conversations, social media, content. And just getting people deliverable results every time you’re able to work with them,” he said.
Two other keys to success: Hiring people who are smarter than him and continuing to believe in himself even when others doubted him.
Years after founding and running CBG, Romaire’s career is now mostly about managing his coaches and growing his business. He does find time and enjoys working with a handful of elite athletes, including James Sprague, Danielle Brandon, Haley Adams, Trista Smith, Chandler Smith and Jessi Smith.
Ultimately, more and more people have realized that tracking macros is a useful “starting point” but it’s not the path to long-term success. Nor is it the path to a healthy relationship with food, and so they have begun looking for an alternative option.
It’s safe to say, the CBG blueprint method is thriving today, and “not as many people are laughing [at me] now,” Romaire added with a smile.