From Corporate Fitness to Business Owner
Welcome to Episode 2 of the Mind Muscle and Movement Podcast with Lindsey Heiserman! In this episode, I talk about going from corporate fitness to business owner, my personal journey to becoming an athlete, getting my degree in Exercise Physiology, figuring out my true passions in the health and fitness world, all while figuring out how to start my own business from the ground up!
We discuss:
– Corporate Gym Jobs Aren’t Everything
– My Personal Training Journey
– Money Blocks
– Building A Community
…and more!
Listen to the full episode here:
Here are some highlights:
Working For A Corporate Gym Wasn’t All That Great
“So when I moved to Minnesota and I started this job, I mean, I came out guns blazing. I was motivated. I was excited. I was gonna change everybody’s world and was gonna help all these people be healthy and fit. And I walked in, and it was probably the most anticlimactic disappointing day of my life.
They basically said, ‘Here’s your name tag, here’s where things are, here’s how you schedule them in the computer, and here’s how you account for them so you can get paid and have at it.’ And I was like, wait, what? You don’t have clients for me, or there’s no system for me to learn how?
It was shocking to say the least. I was so unprepared. And the thing was, my sort of self esteem was high. I was a marathon runner, and I had done all these things. I have a degree in exercise science and I’m ready to change people’s world. I walked in and I had no idea that personal training was a sales job.”
Group Personal Training
“I did end up getting clients. I ended up with probably a running average that was really sustainable. I started teaching group personal training, so not group fitness, like you’re used to with someone on the microphone. But group personal training; So anywhere from three people to 20, and that was really my jam.
I felt like myself, and I felt alive as a personal trainer. I love my one on one clients as well, ’cause I could dive deeper. But in this group, I really found my groove because I could connect to people and I could connect them to each other. That was so important to me, building this community.
Money Blocks Along The Way
“I remember we were selling 12 packs or 24, so you could get a discount the more you signed up for and I had such a hard time even saying how much training was. I had such money blocks. I didn’t feel worthy of that amount of money because in my mind, I was like, 69 dollars can pay my phone bill. 69 dollars could buy my groceries. 69 dollars could do all sorts of things in my world. I was selling with my wallet over and over and over,” said Heiserman.
“And I wish I could go back and I wish I could do it now with the confidence that I have, with the knowledge of my own money blocks, with an increase in my own self worth as a professional. It really didn’t matter what people told me about getting out of my own way, because in the corporate setting, they’re not there to change your mindset. They’re there for you to just make sales, and if you don’t fall into line with that, they really don’t know how to help you.
They don’t understand that that is a deep psychological issue for a lot of people, especially new trainers, and especially in health and wellness because, let me guess, you’ve said this line before, ‘I just wanna help people.’ I’ve said it, I just wanna help people. Yes, and you do that by selling your services, you do that by offering what you have, and that is the energy exchange with money.”
Building Community From Group Personal Training
“I’m rocking and rolling on these group programs. Truly, building community has been the most important to me. The people who joined my classes were friends. I’m pretty sure I invented email marketing. I was doing email marketing with them, keeping them in touch, giving them education, freebies, and all this stuff.” said Lindsey. “Building a community of people, we started to have parties, not ragers, but yes, potlucks. A good Midwestern potluck, but I wanted an opportunity for people to get to know each other from the other classes that I was teaching. So I take the same class, but at different times of the day, I was doing five per day, three times a week. And so every quarter or so we would have these parties and people would get to know each other, two of them are married now, which is such a fun story.
I remember one distinct moment. I was at one of our parties and I went to the bathroom. I shut the door and I could hear everybody laughing, having a great time, and I thought I did that. I brought these people together.”
Breaking Out Of Those Scarring Money Stories
“I think to some degree, everybody has some money stories. But if you’re feeling really blocked in making progress, whether you’re in a corporate setting, whether you’re on your own or anything in between. Start to dig into your money stories, so not to say I was never 100% happy,” said Heiserman.
“I reached some pretty good heights in my career there, as one of the top sales people, never the very top, but definitely one of the top five or six for a while. Based on all these people that were in my classes, but I never really pushed my limits. I didn’t, and I can definitely see that now, so there’s a plot twist. I was there for nine years. A lot happened in those nine years for me. Along the way, I got to a kind of cruising point. Again, I was never happy, but I was sort of cruising along.”
Perseverance And Hard Work Takes You Far
“I spend most of my time traveling the country, obstacle course racing, not in 2020, but in a usual year, so I started obstacle course racing and I fell in love with the challenge for myself,” said Lindsey. “I fell in love with the idea that I could get better at something, and it took 10 years almost, but I found that I was an athlete.”
“I found that I could dedicate myself to getting better at skills and not worrying about how my body looked and all of that. I’ll do a separate episode ’cause it’s really important to, in your journey as a health and wellness professional to understand your own story and how that plays in, because I have changed as a professional.”
“I no longer can sit here and listen to someone say, I have to lose 50 pounds for no valid reason. Without helping them to understand that getting better at squats is so much more critical to your life than focusing on the number on the scale today.”
TED Talk
“I started obstacle course racing, which if you haven’t watched my TED Talk yet, and you didn’t pause this episode to go watch it, what are you doing? I’ll give you the two sentence summary, the community that I built in obstacle course racing, and the confidence that I built in myself, conquering literal obstacles and failing so many of them,” said Heiserman.
“Failing, failing, failing over and over and over. And being able to just get back up and do it again and keep trying at it. I built my own personal confidence. I have this great community, and that enabled me to quit my job and start my own business.”
Reasoning For Building A Business
“[I built my business] out of necessity, I had no choice. I wasn’t interested in getting a job. I didn’t know what job I would get, therefore, I had a business. With no idea how to run a business other than I did know email marketing. Because I had been doing that for a long time. I knew how to build community, and I was really, really good at client focus and working with the clients,” said Lindsey.
Life Changing Moments And Advice
“We are changing people’s lives. The world at large needs us, needs our services, needs our wisdom, and needs our compassion. It is so exciting that I get to be on that journey with you. So that’s the short story,” said Lindsey Heiserman. “When I was doing a lot of in person networking, they would always say, ‘Okay, your turn, tell me about yourself,’ and I had it down to a short spiel, so this is a little bit longer.”
“But how do you cram your whole story into just a few sentences? My own life changing moment for health and fitness was when I was doing those step aerobics to Kathy Smith videos in my living room, it evolved to marathons, obsessive training and working out, shifting to performance goals and what my body can do and sustainable fitness for my lifetime as my goals now. I love helping other people do that in their own life, and now I can’t wait to help you build a business that works for you.”
I hope getting to know my story to becoming an athlete has given you a bit more of an idea about my WHY!
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