Finding the root cause: Johnson tells of career as a dietician

“You are what you eat” is a well known nugget of wisdom, and one former Aurora High School graduate knows just how true that is.
Robyn Johnson has spent more than a decade learning as a dietician about how nutrition affects the body and the root causes of body problems.
“This is becoming the new normal in medicine,” said Johnson, a 2008 graduate. “I don’t think it’s quite what conventional medicine is, but more and more people are not getting answers with the conventional route. Most often, if they go to the provider with a symptom, they’re often offering just a medication to suppress the symptom, and that doesn’t typically work long term. So, more people are seeking out a deeper answer from their provider and that’s where functional medicine lies and that’s the point of this type of healthcare.”
Johnson grew up with a strong interest in business and health in high school, as well as playing on the golf team and participating in Future Business Leaders of America.
“I am super grateful that I grew up in a small town with a really strong community,” she said. “I feel like the school system was really strong in Aurora.”
Johnson shared that she wanted to pick a career focused on taking care of people. She started out in nursing, participating in a six-month volunteer program while attending college.
“So in the meantime, I was taking a nutrition class in college and really liked it,” she remembered. “So really, that’s kind of what sent me down the dietitian route. In fact, I remember one class where an entrepreneur in the dietician space spoke in our school and I thought, ‘Wow, that looks really cool.’ But I didn’t think I would do that for myself. And then, years later, I kind of stumbled into entrepreneurship and haven’t looked back.”
Another event that influenced her passion was a two-year bout at age 20 with a skin condition called psoriasis, which she helped treat by altering her diet.
“That created a passion for a functional medicine approach, or a root-cause approach,” she recalled.  “I went through all the traditional methods like prednisone and three dermatologists and lots of different medication trials, and none of it worked. And so ultimately, I looked into what’s causing my psoriasis and that’s where I found functional medicine, which is what we practice today. It’s utilizing food and lifestyle to calm down what’s triggering psoriasis inside.”
After graduating from UNL with a bachelor’s degree, Johnson went on to earn a master’s degree at the University of Kansas, completing her studies at the Kansas City campus.
“For dietetics you’re required to do a dietetic internship, which is usually a year-long program and then you take an exam. There are limited amounts of those internships in the country,” Johnson explained. “Actually only half of dietetic students get matched to a program and so I went to Kansas University Medical Center and did my graduate degree there along with my dietetic internship, so I spent two years there completing my program.”
Johnson proceeded to spend six years in Kansas City, which was essential to build her skills as a clinician and entrepreneur.
“I built the nutrition practice inside of a physical therapy practice and that was my first career, or first job,” she said. “So I wasn’t an entrepreneur, but I had the responsibility of getting my clients and doing my work, doing my own marketing while within another business. Elite Physical Therapy is where I worked for a few years and built my skills as a clinician.”
“They gave me a lot of autonomy there, so I was able to learn a lot during my first few years in clinical practice actually working with real humans, but they also gave me a lot of freedom and put the responsibility on me to help my clients,” she continued. “So I wasn’t at risk of not paying my bills, but I had a fire under me to not lose my job and learn how to market myself, which really taught me a lot and set me up for success when I did decide to go into entrepreneurship.”

California experience
Johnson was offered a full-time position in Orange County, Calif., to build an online nutrition program. She enjoyed taking in a bit of the West Coast health scene, though the position did not turn out right for her.
“The direction of the program just wasn’t aligned with what I wanted to do,” Johnson commented. “We ended up parting ways and we (her and fiancee, Steve Spangler) were in the center of Orange County, so very much not the Midwest, and it just really wasn’t aligned with where we wanted to live our life long-term.”
Johnson then launched her own business, Nutrition by Robyn, which she said gave her much more freedom and the ability to go with Spangler to his new position in Bend, Ore.
“Oregon is beautiful,” she said. “We moved there right before COVID hit, so it was a little bit of a chaotic scene, but I mean, the Pacific Northwest is gorgeous, that’s for sure.”
For the past nine months, Johnson has made her home in the Austin, Texas, area, establishing her business and family, which includes her fiancee and dog, Daxen, there in the Lone Star State.
“We’ve gotten used to the Texas summer, we’ve bought a house here and a lot of positive things have happened,” Johnson said. “We’re very excited to be here. My fiancee also works from home so we just have a really good set-up here and are loving things.”

Nutrition By Robyn
Johnson’s professional journey took flight in 2017, initially part-time in California before switching to a full-time endeavor by the next year.
“Once I parted ways with the company out of California, it’s been an upward success,” she said. “Honestly, since the beginning, we’ve had positive growth every year and the team has expanded.”
Her team now includes eight people, with 300 clients served a range of nutritional products to treat ailments like eczema, psoriasis, digestive problems, hormonal issues and acne.
“I also have an online program called the Clear Skin Lab, where we help women with acne,” Johnson said about her programs. “Again, we are all about a root-cause approach, so understanding and getting to why that’s happening in the first place. I also run a practitioner program where I teach other practitioners in private practice how to run their business with this approach. And in 2022, we launched a product (Rayvi, named after her grandfather, the late Ray Sukup) which is a hydration mineral powder mix.”
Johnson offered an example of how her products can work, noting how diet and nutrition can help “repair” a painful time during a women’s menstruation cycle.
“A lot of the messaging out there on PMS and periods struggles is that it’s normal, and that’s just what women experience,” she said. “I have a different professional opinion that those are indications that something’s off, internally. So our approach is to utilize nutrition and lifestyle strategies to optimize what’s going on internally. And therefore, I mean, ideally, women have fairly symptomless periods, which is normal and how our bodies should function. Yet, we emphasize the normalized pain, acne and kind of the struggles around periods which does not have to be the case.”
With a successful private business now well established, Johnson is looking forward to expanding the business and her marriage in July 2023 to Spangler, whom she said is behind her success.
“I would say resiliency and grit,” she said after a moment of silence. “I mean, it takes a lot to push through imposter syndrome and the challenges that come along with each stage of business, from just getting started in marketing to customer service challenges to growing a team. As exciting as each stage is it also brings up challenges and so I think my answer to why we’ve got to where we are is resiliency and pushing into those challenges and not letting it stop me.”
Johnson is the daughter of Kurt and Paula Johnson of Aurora.