Selling Something Nobody Wants to Buy: What Lucy Pérez Learned Founding Sintergia

Lucy is a nutritionist, the daughter of an agricultural engineer and a mother who loves to cook. After working at a weight-loss clinic in the Mexico City metropolitan area, she opened her own business in Toluca. The first one did not work. The second, born on May 9, 2011, is today Sintergia, a clinic that grew alongside a café and a dark kitchen.

In the episode she told us about the less pretty side of starting out: partners who do not work out, years without making money, family pressure to find a secure job and the question of how to sell something that, in her words, "nobody wants": a diet.

The problems she faced

1.Copying a model that does not fit your values

Lucy started by imitating the model of the clinic where she worked, where each nutritionist saw a large number of patients a day with appointments of a few minutes. It worked, but it was not what she wanted. She cared about how to truly help people, with nutrition education and a healthy relationship with food, which is how she grew up.

She admits that at the beginning she was afraid, because she thought people wanted the easy and the "magical".

2.A partnership that does not work and years without earning

Her first business in Toluca did not work: the partnership broke up and for three years she only covered fixed expenses, with no profit. Meanwhile she saw peers with cars and jobs in government or teaching. Her dad and people close to her told her to drop the business and look for a secure job.

3.Closing and starting over from zero

She closed, took a break and went to the beach for the first time. There, she says, she felt that everything was going to be okay and that she did not have to try so hard. She decided to start over from zero, now with her own vision. She took May 9, 2011 as Sintergia's birthday.

4.Selling something nobody wants

Lucy says she felt "alone against the world". She thought: "my business is selling diets and nobody wants a diet". Nobody walks in asking for a diet: they want to lose weight, feel good or improve their health. If she could sell diets, she decided, she could sell anything.

What she discovered is that what the customer is looking for is a result, and that a diet alone is not enough. You need trust and someone who shows them where to take the first step.

5.Perfectionism and frustration

She herself was very demanding and a perfectionist, and it took a toll. She started therapy and learned to be patient with herself. She says that is where she found the tools to help her patients better.

6.Neglecting yourself while taking care of the business

When she opened the café and the dark kitchen, she realized she was no longer eating well, exactly what she recommends to her patients. Many of the patients she sees run a business and live the same thing: they skip meals, lose energy and everything costs double.

That is how she came to build the dark kitchen: she calculated that cooking at home took about three hours a day between shopping, prep and cleanup, time that was worth more spent on her business, her family or resting.

7.Feeling that the business's failure is your failure

What stopped her most was the frustration when she could not see which way to go. Over the years she learned to separate herself from her business: "my business is a separate entity; if it fails, I am still alive and I can start others".

What she learned (and it can save you years)

1.Define your own success

When she got tired of seeing herself only for what she lacked, Lucy decided to define what success meant to her: feeling successful. By valuing what she had achieved, like the people who had changed their habits, she started achieving more. In one month she went from about 50 patients to 200, her first big milestone.

2.Your differentiator is in what you already are

She spent years looking for what she offered that was different and studying more and more. She understood that the differentiator is not in adding things, but in how you share what you already know, with your essence, which is unique.

3.Respect your customer's moment

In consultations she realized that not everyone is ready for a strict diet, so she starts with small recommendations and wins. Her business taught her something similar: it grows when it is ready, not when she decides.

4.Design services that solve the whole problem

Over the years she added services: aesthetic treatments that motivate patients, a weeks-long assessment to understand their daily life, a café so they can enjoy food without guilt and the dark kitchen for those who have no time to cook.

5.Set schedules and respect them

To balance everything, Lucy set clear hours: exercise in the morning, clinic in mid-morning, the afternoon for her daughter and the evening for the house. She says without limits she goes crazy, and that as the leader of the business she should lead by example.

6.Find mentors outside your family

Her family loved her, but suggested a secure job. She learned not to see her family as her business mentors and to look for mentors who have already walked the path she wants, without ceasing to love them or be grateful to them.

“If my business fails, I am still alive and I can start others.”

Is something like this happening to you?

If you feel stuck with your business, go through these questions:

Listen to the full episode

This is only a summary. The full conversation has many more details, stories and tips. Watch it in full on YouTube (it is recorded in Spanish; turn on the captions and choose Auto-translate to read it in English) or find every episode on the Pandas Creativos podcast page (in Spanish).