Living The Red Life - How Two Scientists Turned a $100 Blog Into a Global Health Business

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Most entrepreneurs think passion is enough. Viktoriya and Oksana Gruzdyn learned the hard way that passion without systems leads nowhere.In this episode of Living The Red Life, the twin immunology scientists reveal how years of blogging generated almost no income, why investing $7,000 into coaching changed everything, and how they built a global health business helping clients transform their lives through cellular healing and autoimmune recovery. They discuss marketing breakthroughs, scaling with Facebook ads, building authority through client transformations, and creating a business that gives them freedom, impact, and purpose.From growing up in Ukraine and watching their father overcome extraordinary challenges to becoming internationally recognized health educators and entrepreneurs, their story demonstrates what happens when science, persistence, and business strategy come together.Key Takeaways • Why passion alone will not build a successful business • How coaching and mentorship accelerated their growth • The marketing strategy that generated massive client acquisition • How authority and testimonials became their competitive advantage • Why freedom and lifestyle design drove their entrepreneurial journeyNotable Quotes • "You can't just be passionate about something. You have to have the right system." • "They taught us how to have a real business, not just a hobby." • "If you invest into something, you have to make it work." • "We wanted more freedom and more experiences." • "Business is about creativity and innovation."Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

We didn't have the right system. Sure. So we were just writing like articles or sharing recipes and we thought people are going to find this because we're passionate about what we do. Oh, yeah. This made me realize that you can't just be passionate about something. You have to have the right system and the right coaching and support. So you just do random stuff.

Getting around the right people, they thought us like what is possible for you, but also how to have the real business, not just a hobby. And it all started with that, but it didn't happen overnight. Victoria and Oxana are functional health educators and immunology focused researchers, and founders of the rapid immunocelular repair healing program. They are best known for a cellular level healing system that helps address autoimmune disease. I think we were the first people in a market,

in our autoimmune market, to run ads where we shared our clients' testimonials. Our audience was seeing the transformation that clients experiencing their health. Within just six weeks, I was working together. That's what we've been known for, is helping people achieve rapid results. Right on.

So. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life Podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the Red Life, ditch the Blue Pill, take the Red Pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Welcome back to another amazing episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast, the Red Life Edition. You're welcome, Harry. Joining me today is Victoria and Oksana.

I'm going to give, I could have given them an amazing intro, but I'm going to just say I'm a huge fan of you both. And I've known you all for a very long time since I, One of Rudy's masterminds. We all became quickly friends, and it's been a long time to be sitting in front of you and ask you all these amazing questions. First of all, one of you is a dancer, and the other one is a scuba diver. A diver. Divers sharks. Ah, yes.

Where would you like to start? Dancing. Dancing. Okay. First, who are you? Okay. So I'm Axana. I'm one of the twins, and we have peer-reviewed published immunology societies who help people optimize their health.

But we also are passionate about our own separate things. I'm also a scuba diver, but I like salsa dancing, and my sister loves swimming with sharks. Awesome. End the podcast. That's all, folks. So let's start with optimizing health. How does one optimize health? Do you just click on a menu and go, all right, just breathe better?

Walk me through this. And how did you all discover this phenomenon? Yeah, so we studied the immune system, and we learned how food can affect inflammation levels, your cellular repair. And when we help our clients optimize their health, We focus on micronutrients and we also teach them what they need to eat in order to create healthy immune cells in the body as well as healthy cells in the body so the whole body can function optimally.

Wow. How did you discover this? Did you just look down a microscope? Did you find you? Were you always passionate about this? Talk about your journey finding this. So going back to Ukraine, we suffered from infections when we were little and our mom was a mid and somebody told her that she should take us to the Black Sea.

And we were able to recover just being next to the ocean. Wow. And we noticed that there's a power in natural healing. And then moving to the United States, we started struggling with the cystic acne hair loss. And instead of relying on ongoing treatments, medications, we wanted to see how we can heal a body from the inside out. So we had our own personal health issues.

And just growing up in Ukraine, we were always interested in health. a grandmother had a farm, we raised farm animals, so I think it's all going back to that. No, that's amazing. I can completely concur because my grandmother was like, oh, raised coffin, and she was old-fashioned Cuban, we'd go straight to the beach and sit in the water, breathe in that ocean air and it would just cleanse, and all that mucus would come out. It was very natural, per se. Yes.

Yeah, and how did you kind of turn this into a business now? Like, how does this work? Like, we're healthy, now let's make money. How did that work? Well, we had different jobs. I moved to California to work in the Sub-Motion Industry. Hell yeah. That's how I started.

And my sister was working in Detroit. So for me, because I moved to different state, it allowed me to think about what I wanted to do with my life because I didn't have any distractions. Yeah. Because my family or my friends would always tell me what I should do with my life, that I should just work 9 to 5. And but I'm working in the, I end up working in different, like, projects, different shows. So I worked on the kids' TV show called Tumblrief. Amazon Prime. Right on.

Amy Awards. I was in art department. It was making puppets. That's awesome. And I really loved working with creative people. So that's when I thought about how business

is about creativity, innovation. And I just wanted to start my own business because I just wanted more freedom in my life. Yeah. When you work 9 to 5, you just kind of live in one state and you hang out

with the same type of people. But if you have a business, you can live anywhere in the world and you get to meet amazing people who are creative and passionate. Yep. So that's what really inspired me.

Just kind of, I want to work for myself instead of work for somebody else. No, that's amazing. So what was it like? I got to ask your twin powers. You're literally in both opposite coasts. Were you communicating with each other telepathically? Or did you still, you have to use a phone like us normal people? How does the twin powers work when you're across states?

I think we always checked in with each other. And I was applying for medical school. And I called my sister one time. I said, I'm going to medical school. She said, why? Yeah. Why? I said, I don't know because that's what everybody's doing.

That's what I should be doing. And we had a lot of influence from my friends, our family members. And I think because my sister moved out, she had no influence. And she started listening to like reading books, Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Bob Proctor. Bob Proctor. Yeah, the good stuff. And in Paine, I don't think that maybe I could do more because we felt like we were

limited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But because she was away, she actually called me one time. And she said, we should start on business. And I said, what are we going to do? And we didn't know what we want to do. We just thought we're going to work well together because my sister is very logical and very creative. That's awesome.

We're very opposite. Yeah. So I thought we make a good team. And if we come up with something together, there was just the first idea. We didn't know what the business will be about. Wow. So you decided on optimizing health. How did you land on that because of your personal struggles?

But how did you go? That's the thing as opposed to being an artist or being something else. You said that. Why that? Because we were always passionate about health and just living the best healthy life. And we were always looking for like healthy foods to eat. There's a lot of things that were coming out that time. Like whole foods were more recently.

And then we thought like if we blog, people just kind of magically find us. But then after two years of blogging, we were making maybe like $100. Some things like in a whole year. Yeah, like Amazon links. We realized that this is not going to work. And we were actually praying to find a business coach who's going to help us, like, grow a business because we realized that it's just doing it. We didn't have the right system. Sure.

So we were just writing, like, articles or sharing recipes. And we thought people were going to find this because we're, like, passionate about what we do. Oh, yeah. But they won. So this made me realize that you can't just be passionate about something. You have to have the right system and the right coaching and support. So you just just do random stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It feels like you found a lot of that random energy. You phoned it in. Talk about that process and how you saw that change immediate, where you saw chaos, turned it into a system, and now you're seeing results. What are the results? Yeah, so the main thing is because we hired a coach, and I was making 30,000 as a research scientist at the time,

and that coach had paid him $7,000. And I remember just making the decision without my sister, and I didn't know much about the program. Sure. But getting around the right people, they thought us like what is possible for you, but also how to have the real business, not just a hobby.

And it all started with that, but it didn't happen overnight. There was two years where we didn't make any money, but we continue investing in ourselves and leaving below a means so that way we could actually grow something that's real, not just the hobby. Even at the time, you didn't have social media

because I didn't like Facebook or Instagram. And then when you had a business coach, he told us you have to have Facebook, you have to just do Facebook ads and learn marketing. And that's when we actually didn't have any like social media account. I didn't want to be on social media. Yeah, yeah.

Because my I'm more introvert, my sister more extrored. So that's why I didn't want to have like, I didn't want to be online, but then you realize we have to be online in order to grow up business. Did you always know that you were going to go in business together? Was this always inevitable? Or did you think that you were just going to be living in different coasts? Like, do you feel like this was always in the plan? No.

Ah. We kind of always had like a different habit. and friends. Yeah. So even when we went to college, we were like, we were not really good friends. Yeah, we didn't have different friends. Amazing. We didn't talk to each other. Yeah, like, I would have friends. A lot of my friends do you know I had a twin. They didn't believe me. Holy shit. They didn't believe me. They thought I was lying. Wow. That's got separate before. Amazing. Were you just mad at each other or is it like a Ukrainian thing? I want to have an identity. Oh, for sure.

I felt like, oh, I didn't want to be As much as she must have. Wow. She didn't want to feel like, oh, she's just, she's a tweet. I understand. I felt like I would be like, I'm my own person. Well, you're definitely not your old person. But I got to ask, you know, I speak to a lot of folks,

especially when they sit on the lips where I usually sit, power couples, brothers and sisters, siblings, but you guys are twins and you've essentially to literally have duplicated yourself, which is what all entrepreneurs want to do is compress time and duplicate themselves. But you're the yin to the yang. You're actually speaking to your mirror yourself.

What's that like having anti-support but also support system? I think I just know that if something goes wrong, she can figure out. That's fine. That sounds like something Rudy would do. Because I know it's good to have a clean because I just like, my sister not the opposite. I usually come up with ideas and she takes action really fast. I like to think about it.

And my sister does, she just like acts right away. So that's why I know if something goes wrong, I can just tell my sister and she can. Sometimes we argue about it because when I hired my coach, it took us two years to make money. And my sister kept saying like, it's your fault. Like you paid for it. So now we have to like,

no, you got to feel it. But we would argue about it. But I think because when you invest into something, you kind of have to make it work. Got it. And if we didn't do that, we probably wouldn't have been successful. We would just give us to do something else.

For sure. And also our personality, we constantly like to try new things. We like growth. Yeah. So I think this is one of the reason that led us to start a business because we want their freedom

and just live in different states because when you work 9 to 5, you're stuck in one state. You can't move and you stuck in the same environment. Same people, some energy. And for us, we like to explore, we like adventure and we like to experience life. So what motivated us to our business, we just want to have more experiences.

Yeah, for sure. Speaking of experiences, you and I, we've all been in the same rooms with the Karen Harrington's, the Les Browns, the Rudy Moore, the Jason Hamilton's. What's it like being in these room with these people and belonging there? Feeling like you belong there, especially as twins. Like, do you look kind of, because every time I see you both, you're all in your corner gossiping.

I'm like, what are they, what's happening over there? What's the hell is happening all there? Well, Les Brown's over here, Kevin. You guys are just like, what's happening? Most of we're talking about business. Oh, of course. I hate you. I hate you more.

Business. Pretty much. We just got like to argue with each other, but mostly just us talking about, like, our work. Yeah. Are you all still living together? Because this is some of my favorite stories. Besides scuba diving and dancing, you all are roommates. Yeah, you live together.

What's that like? Do you hate it? Do you love it? I think it's fine. It's fine. It's fine when I can move on. And personally, it's not working together. We used to fight a lot.

Sure. Because it's the opposite. And I felt we kind of learn how to work together and how to divide our roles. So the main thing that worked for us is when we divide what she does in her business, and I don't get involved. Great. Because before, I would get involved in the whole set of business, and we would just disagree all the time. So now we just divide our roles, and we agree.

Amazing. So how does the business work? I click on an ad, and I click go and I'm healthy? How does this work? Yeah, so virtual. and initially our clients found us organically through posts, videos, because we were sharing a lot of education, but also our client results.

I think we were the first people in a market, in an autoimmune market, to run ads where we shared our clients' testimonials. Right on. Yeah. A no-brainer. Actually, that video gave us 40, like around 40x ROI on ads. Wow. Because it took them directly to book a call.

Simple. And our audience was seeing the transformation that clients experiencing their health within just six weeks of us working together. That's what we've been known for is helping people achieve rapid results. Right on. So that's how our clients find us,

but also we do like connect you with other business owners because we're not just about health, but we have other interests that we like to share on social media. Right on, right on. How do you get introduced to the corporate world? Do they just invite?

you to take the stage and speak to corporate companies. How are you talking to B2B businesses? Yeah, so because my background is immunology, initially I did a lot of presentations at different surgical conferences. So in 20, like back to 2011,

2012, 2013, I probably presented over 10 national conferences. So I traveled all over the U.S. to present our research work. Wow. That I did, I even started it when I was still in school. So it's just all started from that.

What's this reach is showing that more dancing, more scuba diving equals to better health? What's the reach are showing? What's the number show? Yeah, so our research specifically focuses on immune system, but using immunotherapies to help immune system fight inflammation and cancer cells. That's what our research is focused on. But what we do with our business that's separate from our research, you focus more on holistic approach to help people minimize the need for medications or even the need of supplements. Wow. So that's what we do.

It's separate from our research. And out of curiosity, asking for a friend, what's your thesis on, you know, ketamine treatments, DMTX, like these psychedelics that are connecting the brain waves and making me healthy because they're reconnecting the highways? What's your philosophy there? Yeah. So I feel like if people are seeing results and they see positive results with that, then we're all about that. There's no long-term side effects. Sure, sure. In a program, we're trying to simplify everything and minimize the needs.

of, we need for clients to do anything extra. Because many of our clients come to us, they spend a dozen of dollars on supplements or different therapies, and they still have a lot of symptoms. But in a program, we help them identify what's missing in the diet or lifestyle. They slows down the recovery and how they can reduce the need for long-term treatments.

Got it, got it. So the reason why I keep joking about what you do as hobbies, these things are important because a lot of your health is being happy and doing things that make you happy is important. talk about your lifestyle, like emphasis on life. Like, why is it important to do these hobbies? Yes, because I think life can be really stressful. And if you don't do things that reduces stress,

then you're going to have inflammation just coming from just living, like, stressful life. Yeah, just, yep. So we always think like focusing on things that bring you a lot of joy, find what makes you happy, but also being around nature, make sure you get enough vitamin D, sunlight, physical activity. with things all plays a huge role in your well-being. Right on, right on. You just did your interview with Jason Hamilton for legacy makers.

What are folks going to learn about you both that no one's ever heard about before? That we also swim with sharks. I think that some of people, when they meet us, they don't think like that. It's cage-free. We swing with sharks with tiger sharks usually. So most of the dyes I did was 12-foot tiger sharks. Yeah. It's in Jupiter, Florida.

That's all the sharks are usually. at and that's what I personally like because it's exciting. It's less boring when you do just like reef dives because you don't get to see anything except fish. And I like to look at like massive big animals. Interact with them as well. They come close to you. Absolutely.

You learn how to interact, how to redirect them. So it's a very exciting experience. And also you learn about their behavior. Yes. And then when you're underwater, you breathe really slow. So it's like meditation. So it relaxes your body. You forget about all your problems.

You can hear your own breathing. and less your thoughts. Yeah, so that's why I like it because you just forget about everything. It's very therapeutic and healing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of tiger sharks, are they more afraid of you or you of them?

What's the energy like seeing eye-d-eye to this predatory beast? Well, I think all the sharks are very misunderstood. Yeah. Because people think they just attack people, but when you look at the research, most of the bites happen due to accidents,

either low visibility or just they buy you by accident because you don't know how to behave underwater. Correct. you like when you read all the articles they teach you if you see a shark you swim away but that's not what you want to do because they they're predators so they think you're praying so if you swim away from them they're gonna try to chase you and also sharks they like especially taggershs they're very curious and they're very confident so you have to establish dominance you have to look at them in the eye you have to feel confident you have to good you have to have good

buoyancy or dream and usually they just when they see you they just swim away they just want to to investigate to see what you are, but if you look them in the eye and you're confident, you know what you're doing, they don't like attack you or anything. I feel like what you just said is exciting. What's much scarier is making eye contact than leading when you're dancing. So talk about you as a dancer, what do you get from that? Being led or leading? I like to be led.

I like doing a lot of partner work. And I'm like doing like, because there's a lot of different classes you can take, like, lady styling, but I like doing partner work because I feel like it's just, you get to express yourself artistically. And also it's really good physical activity, physical exercise. So it's like sometimes people don't like going to the gym. Like I don't like going to the gym, but I like dancing. So I feel like it's important to find activity, physical activity that you enjoy doing, that can keep you healthy a long term rather than just forcing yourself going to the gym. So that's what I like about dancing because I enjoy it. But also it's like part of my.

my physical activity. Hell yeah. That's awesome. So for folks that are listening or watching, what's an easy, easy remedy or something that folks can do on this podcast that will lead to them calling you?

Like, what's something easy thing to do? As a breath and exercise, is it counting to 100? Something you can suggest to do on the podcast. Yeah, well, it's really going back to fundamental, like the basics. I think getting sufficient sleep, drinking more water,

and also eating a lot of nutrient-dense foods rather than focusing on protein powders, you want to get a lot of your nutrients from real fruits and vegetables. So I think that's a thing that can help people increase the energy levels and just feel a world better. And as well as simplify everything

because many people, the reason why they can't stick to something because they're over complicated, they focus on making fancy recipes or spending all day in the kitchen. But in a program, we try to actually eliminate all the complicated nonsense

and try to do something that's sustainable and easy to make. So you need to find a process that works for you and it's easy. Right on. Cool. Yes. How can folks continue their journey of discovery with you all? How can people find you?

So, I mean, social media is Victoria and Xana. We do have a YouTube channel. They can just go to Victoria and Xana or Autoimmune cellularhealing.com to learn more about what we do and connect with us online so we can build great relationships and help people. Right on. I'm glad you're all getting along, kind of. This concludes another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast, the Red Life edition. You guys have been great.

It's so much fun to finally get you on the podcast. And Talk Shop. Any closing comments? Anything you'd like to say before we wrap up? I think in life, if you want to have great things, you have to be willing to take risk, but also learn that failure is part of the process. Don't expect things to happen overnight. You know you're going to fail, but without the risks, nothing's going to change for you.

Awesome. Any closing comments from the introverted artist? I love it. From one introvert to the other, thank you so much for your time and energy. And yeah, I'm going to just wrap it up here. This is Victoria and Oksana, and I'm Regatierrez, and we are Inside Success.