Get to Know Tosca Reno, Founder of Transform with Tosca
VISIONARY SPOTLIGHT
Photo: Tosca Reno, LinkedIn
Some stories just have a way of reminding you what’s possible when you finally decide to bet on yourself. Tosca Reno’s is one of them.
I’ve had the privilege of working with Tosca for the past few months, and getting to know the real story behind the New York Times bestselling author, cover model, and founder of Transform with Tosca has been one of the highlights of my year. So for this Visionary Spotlight, I’m pulling from our conversation on the Rain or Shine podcast to bring you her journey, in her own words.
Tell us about your business and how it started.
“I never had the intention to be a big-time bodybuilding competitor or fitness competitor.” At 38, weighing 204 pounds and the mother of three, Tosca decided her current state wasn’t honest to who she really was. She transformed her body through clean eating and weight training, placed top five in her very first fitness competition, and was given a column in Oxygen Magazine called Raise the Bar.
That column became the most widely read in the magazine’s history. From there, she was challenged to write a book. Her first print run was 5,000 copies, and it sold out in under two weeks, making her a Canadian national bestseller. She went on to sell over 4 million books, become a New York Times bestselling author, and host her own TV show, traveling nearly two-thirds of the year at the height of it.
What’s the real story behind the growth?
It wasn’t just luck. “Success is when preparedness meets opportunity,” Tosca says. She tells the story of flying to Miami for a beach photo shoot as an extra, not the lead model, when the photographer realized the actual talent wasn’t shoot-ready. Tosca stepped in on the spot. “I showed up as if I were the key model for that shoot. I wasn’t, but in my head I wanted to be that.” That shift became the foundation of everything that followed.
“Success is when preparedness meets opportunity.”
-Tosca Reno
How did you navigate a major setback in your business or life?
In 2011, Tosca lost her stepson in a car accident. The following year, she lost her husband Robert to cancer, just months after his diagnosis, and was left to untangle financial secrets that forced her to sell several book titles and file for bankruptcy in his business’s name. “I was on my knees,” she says. “It’s like when you’re out there in a riptide and the wave just keeps slamming you down.”
What pulled her out wasn’t more discipline. It was learning the piece she’d never been taught: emotional self-care. That gap became the third pillar of Transform with Tosca, alongside nutrition and movement, because, as she puts it, “when women come to me and say ‘I want to lose weight,’ weight is a symptom. Typically it’s a symptom of a deeper unaddressed trauma.”
Photo: Tosca Reno, Facebook
What’s something you always do?
She prints out thank-you texts, cards, and client testimonials and keeps them in her fridge. “We are 75% water. Most of what we eat is water. So in the refrigerator, I feel like that energy is circulating in everything I eat.” When motivation is low, opening the fridge becomes the reminder she needs.
What’s something you never do?
Chase a shot at the risk of her safety for the sake of content. “I might be called an influencer, but I’m not an influencer in that ilk, where I need to get that picture and almost risk my life to get the shot. That was never me.”
What’s the best part of your work?
Hearing the ripple effect. Tosca tells the story of a young girl who was near death from anorexia and found the permission to eat again in the pages of one of her books. “No one ever told me it was okay to eat,” the girl told her. “That’s the kind of story that just, I can feel it in my body even today. That’s the highlight.”
Advice for other entrepreneurs having a rough day?
“Meet yourself in the space of grace.” Tosca is candid that after her losses, she isolated herself, and it made everything harder. Her advice: don’t do it alone, and ask yourself one filtering question in every decision, big or small: “Who am I being?” Is the way I’m showing up right now going to help me get where I want to be?
“Meet yourself in the space of grace.”
-Tosca Reno
A resource that’s added value to her journey?
A book she read over 15 years ago that reframed how she thinks about energy, intention, and what we project into the world. “I may not have understood the scientific side of the book, but I believe that we see how what we project into life actually manifests back to us.”
Tosca’s full story, including Transform with Tosca and her books, can be found on her website and Instagram.
Visionary Spotlight
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