"Christie, you are not selling heroin"

Self-doubt

The biggest, crippling, full heart-stopping - small business crushing and paralyzing tiny loud voice ever.

Over the past week, I’ve had many calls from my friends in fitness, chatting about what the next steps look like for us.

For some the pull to cocoon is REAL but for the vast majority, there is this overwhelming sense of this: the. time. is. now.

Hibernation breeds innovation.

Society has arrived at the great equalizer. We have been waiting for a global eruption - but nobody, besides Bill Gates, ever saw this coming.

I started my business from my backyard in Toronto about 10 years ago. It went through a full swing of highs and a drastic swing of lows. In that early chapter, I received some of the all-time best advice - and some of the all-time, not best advice.

There is one best advice meeting that I will never forget. I had just opened my gym and it was frankly, financially speaking, doing terribly. I’d made more money renting from other facilities and I was struggling through a personal separation - which all left me with less than zero confidence in myself, in my choices, in my business, in my ability and in essentially everything that I was doing. I just wanted a shell to crawl into. I met with a business advisor, Mike, who is a longtime family friend - I babysat his kids when I was 13 - and we sat at his beautiful dining room table overlooking the Toronto ravine as I talked him through what was going on for me. I sheepishly went through all my facts, my business model, everything I had and everything I felt like I didn’t have. And when I was done, Mike looked at me and simply said - “Christie, you’re selling gym passes, not bumps of heroin. Why are you acting so ashamed of your offerings?”

And I was like … WOW. I am acting like I’m selling drugs to people! I am coming from a good place, I really only want what is best for people and their bums and yet I’ve got my tail between my legs half the time and I just can’t seem to pull myself out of this - FUNK.

Long story short. I moved out of that business, I even moved across the ocean. But I still took with me this sense of “selling heroin” with me. I was always trying to help people at my core but my sense of self-doubt left a hangover in its wake.

In this space of deep pause and reflection, so much has awakened from me in the past weeks. A remembering of what it felt like to start a business from the literal grassroots in my backyard park to every single step - the ups and downs and in-betweens. And like so many business owners will say - the early days are the GLORY days. Well, it looks like we are all about to be or are in the process of being born anew. And wow … what a privilege to step back in time and reset what feels right.

Your audience is waiting! What a wild west time to be alive. An entrepreneur’s nightmare but yet dream come true with the right agility and pivot-ably.

For me. That means movement. Remembering that I’m doing the Pilates drug. I’ll be on my mat LIVE to your living room every Wednesday and Friday at 9 am in Sydney, and I would love to see you join in. Here.

Remember: Hibernation breeds innovation. Take this time to reach inside and recall: you are probably not selling heroin.