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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Rob, for agreeing to be part of the Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Rob Britt: Sure.  My name is Rob Britt, and I primarily consider myself a writer, although I wear a lot of hats.  I work with my wife in a company called Britt Marketing, which is a sort of an internet marketing, social management stuff, and I also blog at The All Health Network about health and fitness pretty much daily, and I do community theater, and I also do improv comedy, plus I am the inspiration scout for the Get Inspired! Project, at least for a couple more months.

Toni: Absolutely, and if you wouldn’t have added that to your introduction, I was definitely going there.  So everybody who has enjoyed the interviews, Rob has just been one of, as he calls himself, the inspirational scout, and has found you and your referrals, so thank you so much for that as well.  It’s important for you to be part of the Project in the last 100 days, so this is awesome.  Rob, when you think about inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does it happen?

Rob: Well, I inspire people I think … and I think this a question a lot of people struggle with because you like to think you put things out to the Universe and that, you know, people are responding, but you know, are you “inspiring people?” That’s in quotes “inspiring people.”

I think that because I put myself out there and I try to provide information to people, and people find me through different websites that I have or through maybe YouTube or different video hosting areas, and I put out videos and blog posts on sort of how to do things — let’s say instructional sort of videos, things on software, some WordPress stuff, Moviemaker, all kinds of things like that — and I think people find those and realize that, you know, even if you don’t know about something, you can find the answer somewhere.

I try to help people by providing answers to questions, so if somebody wants to make a video or wants to learn how to be more fit maybe they might find what I provide, and maybe it helps them to lead a better life or, you know, at least some aspect of their life gets better.  So hopefully people are inspired by that sort of thing.

Toni: So really the inspiration occurs … as you said, sometimes you don’t know, but what you’d like to think is that it occurs in all the work that you do trying to find resources, and then putting it out there for people.  So it’s not only finding the answers for others to learn from, but it’s also the process you go through.

Rob: Right, exactly.

Toni: How do you think that by doing that and living the life that you’re leading and the work that you do, Rob, how do you think that it helps people to explore their potential?

Rob: Well, I have sort of a couple of examples.  I was poring over this question trying to figure out how people explore their potential through things, and some of the videos I have, like I said, help people to do things that they might not know that they can do.

I think the thing that really kind of sends shivers up and down my spine sometimes is when somebody writes me and says “Thank you for doing this, because I realize that I can accomplish this goal.”  One in particular I had, a young kid who I was think 18-19 years old and found a video that I have that’s like an instruction on how to run a 5K – which 5K is just a little over 3 miles – and the video was about if you don’t even walk much, you can follow this program, and within eight weeks or something, you could run a 5K.  And I’m not talking running some sort of world-record time or anything, but just completing the task.

This kid found the video and followed it, and then he wrote me and said “You know, I followed your video and through the instruction, I completed a 5K and I’ve lost 50 pounds, and it has totally changed my life.”  It totally changed his perspective from being just, you know, like … I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but from being like a couch potato and being overweight and not being able to do things, and knowing now he can do things, and I helped with that.

And you know, I think either in fitness or in work or your life or whatever, you’re either making an effort to make things happen, or you’re making excuses why they’re not happening.  I’m trying to help people know that their efforts can bear fruit, I guess.

Toni: Well that’s a great way to put that as far as people exploring their potential.  If they don’t put the effort forth, then they won’t be able to do that, so you’re not only trying to educate them on what the end result can be, but what that effort would look like, and that’s a really cool way to handle that.  So Rob, what inspires you?

Rob: Lots of things.  I like … it sounds … I mean, because we’re so close to this Project and obviously listening to the interviews on a regular basis, and you know, sometimes I won’t listen to an interview or any interviews for a couple days in a row and then I have like this marathon session of listening to four or five interviews within an hour or two, and it kinds of gives a window into what’s possible.  I think that listening to them lets people know that you aren’t really limited in what you can do, and I think a lot of people don’t realize what is possible and what they can do, and what’s inside them.

I mean, I listen to interviews.  I’m huge into reading books.  I think like it’s like visiting an old friend, because I re-read books a lot of times, or like finding a new friend.  I read mostly fiction and biographies because I’m looking for information.  I mean, I read some light … scratch that … I read mostly nonfiction and biographies.  Sometimes I’ll read some light fiction just to give my mind a break, but I like reading things on thinking, the process of thinking, and psychology and fitness and stuff.  I really like authors like, I’ll say, Malcolm Gladwell where he looks at one little thing and kind of opens up your eyes about it.

I hope that I’m passing all my love of reading … at least one of my kids, my youngest daughter, gave me a book for my birthday this year that was called The Yes Man and it was by a guy named Danny Wallace.  They made a movie about it; Jim Carrey starred in it.  The movie was pretty good, but the book was … I mean, it was a true story where this guy just decided that he had too much negativity in his life, and he was going to start saying “yes.”  Whenever anybody made an offer to him, he was going to say “yes” and just see where that led him, and he made a kind of pact with himself that he was going to do this for a year.

My daughter read this book, and she immediately, which I’m blown away, that she immediately thought of me and she was like “Wow, that’s like my dad” and she bought it for me and gave it to me for my birthday.  That’s like, you know … it’s just the possibilities of what’s out there if you say yes, and I think that goes along with the rest of what I said with this answer, that you don’t know what’s possible until you try it, until you really make an effort and say yes to things.

Toni: Absolutely.  What a great inspiration you must have been for your daughter to think of you for that book as well.

Rob: I have hopes.

Toni: So how do you explore your own potential?  You’ve spoken about how you love to read and learn and you do this research – what else happens with you?  What else do you do to explore your own potential?  How about in the … you mentioned in your introduction that you do theater and stand-up?  What happens?  How do you explore your potential in those areas?

Rob: Well, I think that a lot of life – and you mentioned the word education – that it’s like challenging yourself and not getting into a rut, because, you know, there’s an old saying, and I’ll probably get this wrong because I’m kind of doing all this off the top of my head, but there’s an old saying that, you know, the difference between a rut and a grave is like the depth, and if you stay in a rut long enough, you’re going to walk yourself right into your grave.

I think that everybody needs to challenge themselves to kind of try to, you know, look at themselves, because I think that people start out their life and make huge decisions about their life when they’re young.  You know, are you going to college?  Are you not going to college?  Are you going to work?  And then you end up working at something that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with your passion and you’re stuck in this rut.

So I think, to answer your question, at certain points in my life … like I was 36 years old and said to my wife … and I’m so lucky to have a wife who is so supportive of things, because at 36 I just said to her “You know, I think I’m going to audition for this musical.”  I saw an ad in the paper for auditions, and I think most people would think you were insane, because I never did any theater whatsoever.  I didn’t do anything in high school, I didn’t do anything in college.  I didn’t do anything in this nature at all, and I auditioned for a musical and got cast in the lead in the musical singing a five-part harmony, and it just like blew me away that, you know, I’m doing something that I really hadn’t ever thought of much in my life.

I had a conversation last night about this where you don’t have to think “Oh, I’m 30, I can’t try something new,” or “I’m 40, I can’t try something new.”  I graduated from college when I was 41 because I had … my first marriage broke up and I had a lot of troubles, I’d say, early in my life.  My first marriage broke up because my first wife didn’t support me in things that I wanted to do, and she thought going to school was a waste of time.  I had gone to college when I had first gotten out of high school and dropped out of college because I just got involved in things that weren’t conducive to thinking so much, I’ll just put it that way, and she wasn’t supportive of me getting an education, so you know … that was one factor, and we ended up not together.

That’s another thing where you can say, you need to know that you’re not stuck, no matter where you are.  I got divorced, and I got custody of my two kids who were one and three at the time, and I was a single dad for four years with those two until I met my new, wonderful wife, my forever wife, and you know, you don’t have to be stuck in a rut.

Theater, doing that and going out for that show … I auditioned for a few more shows and then somebody told me about an audition for an improv troupe, and I thought “Wow, that’s kind of cool,” because you know, I think of people like John Belushi or Dan Aykroyd or original Saturday Night Live people and thought “That’s really cool stuff.”

So I auditioned for this troupe and made it and ended up going out to Second City in Chicago, which is a training center that all these people went to — Joan Rivers, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Mike Myers.  And I went out there for a week’s worth of training just on improv and writing, and just thought “I’m going to try to do everything I can and challenge myself to new things,” which is kind of what I said a few times in this interview; you know, challenging yourself and not getting stuck in a rut.

You mentioned stand-up, and we talked a little bit about that offline.  I’m 47, and tonight I’m going to go to an open mic and I’m going to do stand-up.  It’s going to be the first time ever that I’ve done it, and I’m scared and excited, but you know, I think you have to keep challenging yourself in life to grow, and that’s how I try to … that’s where I get inspired.

Toni: Well, you can hear a lot of … I think the word education is really the takeaway for me here, because with your interview – and people will have their own perspective as well – but the way that you’ve shared information, even during this interview about who you hope to inspire and help people explore their own potential by the education that you go through for yourself so that you can provide that education for others and encouragement, and then it’s also what you’ve been through.  You know, the road that you’ve traveled, the courage it takes to do your stand-up tonight, to say I’m just going to do it – and raising two children on your own because that was important, and learning along the way, so that’s what I’m hearing.

It’s not just, you know, staying at it and being tenacious, but it’s learning and then sharing, and that’s awesome.  So for sharing your time today on the Get Inspired! Project, we can’t thank you enough, Rob.  And also thank you for all of the work that you’ve done to help bring this Project to life.

Rob: Well thank you.  It’s been an amazing journey for me; I think for all of us who are directly involved in this Project, and such a learning and growing experience and tenacity – you just used that word.  I mean, you’ve been doing these interviews for nine months, and doing anything every day, getting up every day is tough.  Interviewing somebody every day … it blows the mind, you know, the journey we’ve taken, and I’m very happy to be a part of it, and I’m very happy to be a friend of yours.

Toni: Oh, thanks, Rob.  Take care and knock ‘em dead tonight!

Rob: Okay, thank you!

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For more information about Rob Britt:  www.britt-marketing.com, www.theallhealthnetwork.com, www.selfesteembuilder.net

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Kymberly and Alexandra, for joining us today on the Project.  Our listeners and readers are in for a treat today.  But before we begin, can you guys please introduce yourselves?

Kymberly Williams Evans: Yes, hi.  My name is Kymberly; my full name is Kymberly Williams Evans.

Alexandra Williams: I’m Alexandra Williams.

Kymberly: We are twin sisters.  We’re identical twins who teach fitness and write about fitness and we are also moms, and many other things.

Toni: Well thank you both for being here today.  Now, before we begin, can you guys … we’re going to, for those that are listening and reading, we’re going to be trying … Kymberly will say that she’s speaking, and then Alexandra will say that she’s speaking, so hang on, guys, here we go.  So when you think about that word inspiration, who do you believe you inspire and how does that happen?

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  Well, I would like to think that I inspire people who might have a bit of intimidation or concern about exercise and fitness and general well being and good health, and I would like to say that I try to inspire them to find it to be accessible and enjoyable and approachable, and also something that’s achievable for everybody, not somebody who’s already fit.

I once knew somebody who used to carry a card in his pocket to a club, but he didn’t go because he said he was waiting until he got fit.  So we want to be the people that help … I like inspiring people, so that it doesn’t matter if you’re doing a little bit or a lot, as long as you’re doing something more.

Toni: Okay.  Kymberly, who do you think you inspire and how?

Kymberly: Well concerning fitness and the world at large, I’d like to think … it’s very similar to what Alexandra said.  In our classes, we inspire those who are already active because they’re in the club already, they’re taking classes.  I also think that I inspire people to be active or to move or to engage in a healthy lifestyle, just because I am a regular person.  Not extremely fit, not teeny-tiny.  A regular person doing regular activity, but with lots of energy and lots of love for movement.

I’d like to think that I also inspired my daughter to be active throughout her life, so that’s been important is to live in a way that’s a role model so that she is someone who enjoys movement, enjoys being active, enjoys her body for what it does, not just for how it looks.

Toni: Okay.  When you guys think about how you work, and you set this example for others and you try to make it approachable for others that need and want to be fit, how do you think that helps people to explore their potential then?

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  What I do to help people explore their potential is, on a serious note, I tell them they can wear whatever they want, as long as it’s comfortable, they won’t be embarrassed, and they can move effectively in it.  So I don’t care if they come in the right shoes or the right outfits or full of makeup or that kind of thing.  I just tell them “What did you do yesterday?”  Like a lot of times people will come to me and they’ll say “Oh, I’m not going to be very good at this because I’m new” and I’ll say “Well, 80% of the population doesn’t even work out and you’re already here, so you’re already in the top 20%.”

I would say that I use … that particular comment would probably come from my counseling experience where you reframe it in looking at the positive instead of the negative.  Because over the past 27 years, I’ve had people come to me all the time and tell me what they cannot do, and I like to reframe it for what they can do.  And I also like to think that to help them explore their potential besides just fitness is it helps them to maybe reframe things in other areas.

Another thing that I do is like if I make a mistake, I just say “Okay, I made a mistake” and move on.  Like if I cue them orally or something like that, or I run out of steam and I can’t do one more pushup or whatever.  I’ll say “Well, I did more than I thought I could” or “I did more than if I didn’t do any” so I try to be an example by that and let people know that it doesn’t matter so much what they can’t do as what they can do.

I’ll give an example and then I’ll let Kymberly.  This is on the humorous side.  For example, people say “I can’t do a pushup.”  I’ll say, “Well, just do a pushdown.  Just lower yourself to the ground, claw yourself back up, and do another pushdown.”  The secret is what I know; they’re training the same muscles.  But they get a laugh out of it because I called it a pushdown and I make a humorous comment about it, but it also makes it okay to not do 100%.  It makes it okay to work toward it.  So I’ll let Kymberly answer now.

Kymberly: Holy smokes, that was long!  I’m going to be shorter.  Okay, what do I do to help explore potential in others?  A couple quick quotes.  Number one, I like to remind people that perfection is highly overrated.  Forget perfection.  It’s overrated.  Just go for better than last time, or more than I did before.

Number two is, as Alexandra said, we try to use humor a lot because I think that’s a real bond between people, and it does break down barriers.  And so really our teaching style, our writing style, just our own regular personalities is pretty in your face, and usually we will use humor in our teaching style to try to connect people and ourselves to the people that we’re working with.

And then thirdly is when I’m teaching, I make mistakes and I’ll tell them.  “Hey, here’s the deal, it’s a coupon special, double offer, two for one – it’s actually ten for one.”  If I make one mistake when I’m cuing and I cue them the wrong way when I’m teaching, I say “Okay, you get 10 freebies.  No expiration date.  You can head over to the right when everybody else is going left.  You can trip up over your feet.  I don’t care; I just made one, you get 10 freebies.”  So I guess that helps them explore their potential.

Alexandra: Also, I’m interjecting … this is Alexandra.  First of all, perfection is overrated, but my parents did a really good job with me, especially.  The other thing is, what Kymberly didn’t tell you is that she also tells people that if she makes a mistake, again picking on pushups, she tells the people they can  have 10 free pushups for themselves, because there’s a money back guarantee.  If you don’t like my style, you don’t like my jokes,  you can  have all your pushups back, so she gives a refund.  Kymberly, sorry.  You can finish now.

Kymberly: I think I’m done with that question. Unless Toni, you want to ask more on that.

Toni: Well no.  What I’m hearing – this is Toni – and what I’m hearing from you guys and I wrote down certain words, which is what I do.  When I’m doing these interviews, there’s words that come to my mind, and I’m listening to you both, and I wrote the words “humanized fitness.”

Kymberly: Yes!

Toni: That’s what I’m hearing from both of you …

Alexandra: Well I have to … sorry, go ahead.

Toni: That is an oxymoron though, isn’t it, because you are dealing with humans, but you really are humanizing the experience for someone.

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  You’re right, but it isn’t an oxymoron because I would say, really it’s as high as 80% of the population thinks that fitness is for somebody else, and punishing, tortuous exercise is what they should have to do in order to achieve this fitness thing.  I don’t think it’s an oxymoron.

Kymberly: That’s a great way to put it.  I hadn’t thought of it with one word except that two other words we might use are “just fun” – we hope people see movement or activity as fun, even if it’s not formal fitness – and the other is accessible, as Alexandra said earlier.  Just accessible.  Just walk out your front door and walk a little bit.

Toni: Right.

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  I tell people that we’re going to bring out their inner hotness.

Toni: Fantastic!  So guys, what inspires you?

Kymberly: This is Kymberly, I’ll answer first.  What inspires me and what I need to be inspired?

Toni: You bet.

Kymberly: People, number one.  Number two, my sister, because for writing, without her I wouldn’t get inspired because she’s so off the wall that that’s what kind of gets me going, and a microphone usually inspires me, and a stage usually inspires me.  So those are good elements to get me rolling.  Also, on the benefits of fitness side, so that’s what’s inspired me, I should say, to teach fitness and to write about fitness.

As far as what I need to be inspired overall, I love moving, and I think in terms of the concept of keeping your world large, versus the world shrinking.  Normally with age and inactivity or a sedentary lifestyle, the world starts shrinking.  Things that you could at 40 you can’t do at 50.  By the time you’re 60, 70, well, “I can’t do this activity I once loved, and I can’t go to this place that I once was able to get to.  I can’t travel there because of these barriers.”  That is a world that is shrinking, and what inspires me to keep fit and to keep moving, in addition to being able to be with people with that activity, is trying to keep my world large.

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  You lost me at hello.

Kymberly: I tried, but you’re still here following me!

Alexandra: This is Alexandra again.  I guess what I need to be inspired is a good night’s sleep, a good breakfast, and my preferred makeup regimen – sunglasses and lipstick.

Toni: And are they very large sunglasses?

Alexandra: Yes; they cover my entire body.

Kymberly: This is Kymberly.  I suggested to Alexandra that she include a low-brimmed wide hat with that fitness, excuse me, with that makeup regimen.  I don’t think she was going for that.

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  In addition to that, what I need to be inspired, in all truth, people.  Social interaction.  If I were alone for a long time, I would start to talk to myself, beep, beep, beep, more than I do …

Kymberly: Quit calling me then!

Alexandra: I might start answering myself.  It’s other people.  When I see … like I have a lot of Twitter friends, and I see how hard people are working.  In a sense I think, well, I have it easy, although I don’t.  I worked hard to get where I am.  But I’m the same size, clothing wise, that I was in high school, and it inspires me to think you know what, I work hard.  And the people that I see around me who are trying to achieve whatever is the right size or weight for them, are working 10 times harder, which gives me a lot of respect for them, because I feel like I work pretty hard, and so to imagine the multiplication – I’m missing the word I mean – but the amount that they must be putting into it always gives me a lot of respect for the people with whom I deal.

I never … I probably prefer the unfit in my class to the super fit.  Not that I don’t like the super fit, but I always volunteer to teach the new classes because I like working with newer exercisers, because I feel that they’re going to be more successful and happier, and also they need me more, and I like to be needed.  My teenagers don’t need me anymore unless I have a wallet and car keys.

Toni: So to both of you ladies, how are you continuing to explore your own potential so that you can keep this attitude towards fitness and life and helping other people alive?  What are you doing to keep stoking that potential in yourselves?

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  I need one of those AAA Triptic maps.  Other than that …

Kymberly: Okay, you’re lost with her on the explore site?

Alexandra: My map.  My road map to exploring my own potential.  I couldn’t find my own potential without a road map.  Can you translate my joke for me?

Toni: So when you find your potential, what happens with it?  What do you do with it?

Kymberly: We’ll be rich!  Wait, this is Kymberly.  No, Alexandra, back to you.

Alexandra: Okay.  I need … well now, besides the fact that I have hundreds and hundreds of students every quarter at the University who are forced into the position of having to listen to me, and I inform them on the very first day that they’re going to enjoy that experience, so they don’t have to decide later whether that’s true or not; they just know in advance.

The other thing I need to explore my own potential is a forum for expression.  So Kymberly came home with this idea to write our fitness blog together.  I realized you know what, just that little spark or that little kick in the keister – I’d like to speak metaphorically, but you should see her aim – I need to feed off other people’s good ideas, but also what I need to explore my own potential is to try new things and like I said, to find a way to express myself, particularly like in writing and in humor, because I’ve done a lot of standup type of stuff, but now to be able to write it, and then I see it.  I see it written, and it kind of spurs me on even more, and then I’m thinking about the reader, from the reader’s perspective to make sure that they’re not just laughing, but they’re also getting some knowledge.

So that’s what I need is kind of like that interaction.  I say this so that people will be encouraged to put lots of comments on our comments page, because we always write back.  Kymberly?

Kymberly: Toni, would you mind asking me that question again, but in different words?

Toni: When you are doing what you do, are there ways that you explore other ways  of doing it, other ways to learn from things yourself, development for yourself so that you can continue to explore your own potential so that you can keep getting stronger and stronger in what you’re doing?

Kymberly: Okay, okay.  Thank you, Toni.  This is Kymberly.  Then that’s two answers – there’s an internal answer and an external answer.  How are we doing on time?

Toni: We’re okay.

Kymberly: Okay.  For the external answer, I’m an education junkie, so I just would, in the sense of how you’re asking exploring potential or developing or constantly pushing boundaries, I would say always looking for a high learning curve and just somebody who always looks for something new with a learning curve.  So if there’s … once I get something to status quo or once I get bored with it but then I’m ready to either move to something else or to work on that original thing in a different way.

For example, when I was at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as a faculty and fitness advisor in the Department of Exercise and Sports Studies, when I took the program over, it was time to add a new track to the program.  We were training fitness instructors, but we weren’t yet training personal trainers.  And so the couple years that we put into place to create curriculum and train personal  trainers, that was a very exciting time for me because I had to learn a whole new area so that I could turn around and then teach it.

Once that program was up and running comfortably and we had reached all our goals, then it was something that was better done by somebody else.  That wasn’t as interesting for me because okay, I’ve done what I need to do, and now it’s just managing it.  So when there’s a new learning curve, for example, this fitness blog, Fun and Fit, that Alexandra and I now do, that is kind of pushing a little bit too, saying “All right, well we’ve never written together.  We’ve written separately.  We’ve never written humorously together.  So let’s be ourselves a little bit more in this rather than answering straight.  Let’s answer straight plus twisted and quirky.”

Alexandra: This is Alexandra.  I wonder by implication if she’s saying she’s going to get bored with this pretty soon.

Kymberly: Well, the questions are new each week.  This is Kymberly.

Alexandra: Maybe you’ll have to get a new twin when you get bored.

Kymberly: I already tried cashing you in.  This is Kymberly again.  On the internal side of that, I guess this comes more with age, because Alexandra and I are now 51.

Alexandra: No – this is Alexandra – Kymberly is 51.  When we hit 50, I gave her the rest of my birthdays.

Toni: Okay, okay.

Alexandra: I’m 50 with experience.  You check with us in a year, I’ll be 50 with more experience.  She’ll unfortunately be a lot older.

Kymberly: Yes, that is true.  I’ll just divert for a second – this is Kymberly – because I did come up with the twin birthday plan, and I want to share it with any of your listeners who are twins and want to get in on this plan because it’s really helpful.  It’s kind of redundant each year for the twins to both have a birthday and both turn a year older, so we thought we could just alternate.  So really, we’re both 25.

Toni: Fantastic idea!

Kymberly: So on her year, she gets to pick the cake and the dinner type, and get the present, and then next year when I turn 26, I’ll be up, and then she’ll turn 26.  It’s just a little redundant otherwise.

Alexandra: This is Alexandra, and I forgot to inform Kymberly, but on my year, I stopped picking the cake and now I just pick the age.

Toni: There you go.  Well, ladies, unfortunately we are running out of time, but I want to make sure that I capture and put back out there what you guys are doing and how you’ve come at not only who you inspire, but also what you need to be inspired.  And who you inspire are the people that you are with every day, and you are in their presence every day with humor and grace and comfort, and that is so important, and that will help a lot of people with their potential if they feel comfortable.  And then, what you guys both need to be inspired as far as the strength and to be able to have that learning curve as you spoke of, but also keep finding new things to poke at, you know, for yourselves, but for others.  I think that’s what I’ve heard.  Am I pretty close?

Alexandra: Yes.

Kymberly: Yes, and people.

Alexandra: And also further education, like workshops.

Toni: Absolutely.

Kymberly: But we need people.

Toni: Absolutely.  At the core of all of this are the people that you’re working for.

Alexandra: Yes.  We eat them for snacks.

Toni: Absolutely … well, ladies, it has been a pleasure and thank you so very much  for being part of the Get Inspired! Project, and we will post a link to your blog so that people can comment or ask your questions.

Alexandra: Thank you.

Toni: So for your time today and for being part of this, we cannot thank you enough.

Kymberly: Thank you, Toni.

Toni: Take care.

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For more information about Kymberly and Alexandra:  www.funandfit.org

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Toni, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Toni Marano: Hi.  My name is Toni Marano.

Toni R: Fantastic, Toni Marano!  What do you do?

Toni M: I own a Pilates fitness and wellness center that specializes in injury prevention and the promotion of health and fitness.

Toni R: Okay, okay.  Toni, when you think of the word inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does that happen?

Toni M: Well, I certainly hope that I offer some source of inspiration to my clients or students.  Our health deserves thought, and if you talk to anyone who’s experienced some type of injury or health issue, they’ll tell you that prevention is really the best method possible.  Health is really the principle instrument to enjoying your life, so I think that by living an active, healthy, and productive life, we inspire people.

Toni R: How does that happen, Toni?  By living that life and demonstrating that, how does it inspire people?  How would you describe that?

Toni M: Well, I think that people who are active and fit are just generally more happy, and I think that’s really contagious.  All of us really want to spend more time around positive, outgoing,  people who are excited about their day.

Toni R: I have to agree with you on that one.  What do you think happens when people are inspired in this way to explore their own potential?  Is there a way that that happens?  Do you think that you do help people to explore their potential?

Toni M: Well, I certainly hope so.  I think the most effective way to explore potential, I think, is really to ask questions and really listen to the answers.  I think listening is really key.  I think that gives any program direction.  I find that if I really want to ensure a positive outcome, after I know what my client’s needs are, I need to be certain that my clients understand my instructions.  Prescribing exercise for home programs is challenging, and educating my students is critical for their success.

Also, we can never underestimate that motivation is a key factor in exercise adherence, and what motivates one person is unlikely to motivate another, so my job really is to determine which factors motivate my students to adhere to the exercise or fitness program, and as the program progresses, it should maximize an individual’s potential.

Toni R: And that potential would be to succeed, to go further, to be healthier?  What does that look like?

Toni M: Well, it really depends on what my client’s needs are when they come in.  I have some clients who come in with weight loss needs.  They’re concerned about gaining weight.  I have some clients who come in with back issues, lower back issues.  They have some kind of a wrist injury.  Each program is specialized to get them back out on the road.  When someone wakes up and they have chronic back pain, it’s impossible for them to enjoy their life.  It’s really … it never leaves their mind.  They’re always focused on how uncomfortable they are.

No one can live a productive life when they’re constantly in pain, and so it’s really very important to make sure that these needs are addressed.  It really affects people’s lives in very dramatic ways.

Toni R: So it’s really by allowing someone to get healthy, whether it’s through exercise for weight loss like you said, or there’s some sort of other systemic problem going on that’s blocking them from living to the best of their ability, that’s really where that potential comes in.  It’s the potential to be able to live the best that they can live.

Toni M: Yeah.  I mean, the word potential, you know, it doesn’t even … when someone’s not happy with themselves, I mean, thinking about their potential is the last thing on their mind.  They’re just, you know, getting by day to day.  I don’t know, maybe it’s the area that I live in, but for women weight is really a big issue, and I don’t think people realize it.

Taking 10 pounds off is really not that difficult.  It is probably just small little bad habits that can be eliminated really easy.  There’s all this information in the news, and some of it is accurate and some of it is not, so really finding out what works for my clients is really the way that we move to discover, so they can go out and discover what they’re good at.  It really opens up all these doors for them.

Toni R: What inspires you?

Toni M: What inspires me is challenge.  I get really excited about a challenge.  I understand that most people don’t get excited from the challenges of exercise, but I do.  I’m an information junkie when it comes to food and fitness.  I don’t think most people know that it’s been estimated that 50% of premature deaths in the United States are related to modifiable lifestyle factors.  There’s clearly a need for effective prevention programs and efforts aimed at reducing risk factors and improving health and wellness.  Wellness involves choice – choice and behaviors that empathize optimal health and well being.  Being a part of this process is really inspiring to me, this exchange of energy that I have with my students.  My students inspire me.

Toni R: When you find yourself – and maybe you don’t – but if you ever do find yourself with a day where you’re going, “You know, I could use a little inspiration here,” where do you tend to find it?  Are there tools or resources that you reach for on a consistent basis that kind of fill you up when you might need to be inspired in different ways?

Toni M: You know, Toni, really for me I get that from other people.  You know, reading a book is really a great way to find inspiration when I’m feeling like I need something.  Really, all a book is, is somebody talking.   So you know, I can sit down with that material and let that person talk to me, and there’s so many creative people who have come up with these ways and methods of doing the same thing, but a little bit different, and I think it’s really, really amazing.  People amaze me.

It’s really … in my industry, most of the time I’m asking people to do something that they really don’t want to do.  For one, if they have an injury, it’s uncomfortable.  It’s a little painful at first, and asking someone to do these exercises is not really fun for them.  To watch them work in ways and struggle and do these things that eventually is really in their best interest is … it’s really powerful to watch that happen.

You know, I think my clients really give just as much back to me as I do to them.  It’s just that communication with other people I think is really … I think that’s inspirational to everybody, not just myself.

Toni R: It’s interesting – there’s words that come to me when I’m listening to people in these interviews, and the word I just wrote down for you is engagement, and it really … that’s just what I’m hearing that you thrive on that engagement; engaging with your clients, engaging with information, engaging in the science and fitness.  I don’t know, that’s the word that’s just coming to me listening to you.

Toni M: That’s so funny.  I think that’s completely true.  That’s key; engagement.  When people are engaged in life, they’re happy, they’re curious, they’re trying to learn something.  I think that sometimes when we finish school we think that we’re done, you know?  It’s like we’ve learned everything we need to know, and now we just need to get on with our life and we’re in this routine, and I think that that routine really needs mixing up.

One of the things that I hear over and over again from my clients is that they’re bored.  They think this is boring, and when someone gets into a routine that feels boring to them, that’s not good.   And that’s so easy to fix with all the information that’s out there, with the internet and books.  You can do the same thing with a different person and have a different result, because people are so different.

Toni R: Absolutely.  And that’s why that engagement has to be customized, doesn’t it?

Toni M: Absolutely, yeah.  Absolutely.  People are so unique.

Toni R: So how do you explore your own potential?

Toni M: How do I explore my own potential?  I think that to explore my own potential, I think it’s really important to be where you’re needed, which is really engaged in what you’re doing right now as to being present.  I’m sure all of us are familiar with that term, being present, but it’s really important to be present.

I remember this quote that said what you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals, and I know that might sound kind of corny, but I really think there’s a lot of wisdom in a simple sentence like that.  So I have these goals, but instead of being goal-oriented, I’m more process-oriented, and really more curious of what it’s going to take for me to produce the desired outcome.

There’s these different dimensions that add to the content and quality of our lives, one of them being physical.  But you know, others would include things, you know, social, emotional, intellectual, and by exploring my own potential that really requires, you know, attention from me in these areas.  And I also think it’s really important to surround yourself with other curious people who ask a lot of good questions.  This keeps life interesting and challenging.

Toni R: Toni, you’ve been fantastic with the information that you’ve given and how you really describe not only how you inspire others with the work that you do, but it really does translate into your everyday life.  And one of the most important takeaways for me is that you have to achieve these goals, but it is a process for you, but you have to be present for that process and learn and engage others along the way, and what a gift you’re giving by being that way, the gift you’re giving to others.  And for showing up on the Get Inspired! Project, we can’t thank you enough.

Toni M: Well thank you.  Thank you for having me.

Toni R: You are quite welcome.  Thank you, and take care of yourself, Toni.

Toni M: You too.

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For more information about Toni Marano:  www.tonimarano.com

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Michael, for agreeing to part of the Project and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Michael Carson: Yes, hi.  I am Michael Carson, and I’m very lucky to be here.  Thanks for having me.

Toni: Well, you’re quite welcome.  Michael, what do you do?

Michael: Well, I do a number of things.  Mostly I work in the fitness industry.  I create, develop, and implement fitness workout programs and products that are brought to me that I improve upon.  So sometimes I’ve given a product and they say “What can you do with this product?”  And other times they say “How can you make improvements to make this product better?”  And that’s what I do.

And very luckily I’ve had a training business with personal clients for a couple decades – some of them I’ve actually had for nearly 15 years – and I keep them in shape, I motivate them, and I inspire them to stay young and continue on their pursuit for continued health.

Toni: Well that’s a beautiful lead in to the first question, which is who do you inspire and how, which it sounds as though you have clients that you inspire.  Are there other people that you inspire, and how does that happen?

Michael: You know, it’s very interesting.  I’m a lucky person, because I live in Southern California, I’m around children, seniors … people of all ages — in the middle age group where I am in my 40s — and I’ve been very lucky that I inspire people by teaching classes that I have in certain locations.  I also work out a lot outside, and I’ve found that kids and families that are on spring break – just in the last couple weeks – come up to me and give me compliments and accolades, asking me “How do you do what you do?  Where do you go to school?  I laugh at them because I’m 43 years old, and I’m well beyond being in school.  Most of them are usually younger than I am, and they’re asking “How do I get to look and feel and be as youthful as you are?”  So what I do a lot with my inspiration is to show by performance what you can do, what you’re capable of.

Toni: So really it’s leading by example as well.

Michael: Yes, exactly, that’s a great way to say it.

Toni: So how do you think then that that helps people to explore their potential?

Michael: Well, it’s funny, because the conversations I have with people, they always tell me what they’re doing, what they haven’t done, and I have an immediate sense of figuring out where someone is with regards to their fitness whether it’s mentally, physically, nutritionally.  You can really gauge in a 30-second conversation with someone where they’re at, what they’ve been avoiding.

And what I try to do – and this is real important with just about everybody – is that I try to give them what would be considered an evolutionary bit of information to change their lifestyle.   I don’t try and make a revolutionary change in someone’s life where I ask them to change every single thing at one time, because it’s impossible to ask someone to do that.  It doesn’t work that way; it’s proven.

So I give them small incremental ideas that might be directly towards their question of fitness or directly towards nutrition, and I try and … when I’m speaking with them, and usually it’s the family, it’s not just one person.  I make sure that I’m looking in the eyes of each one of these people so they’re hearing what I’m saying, that I know that it’s not going in their ear and out the other ear.  So I let them ask me the questions, but I give them specific answers.

And I’m always making sure that I’m smiling when I’m talking to them.  It’s not as if I’m giving them serious information that they have to feel like it’s a doctor that’s prescribing something, that if they don’t accept it they’re going to have a terrible, terrible effect.  I try to show them the positive side and what can be felt, what can be achieved, and how you’re going to be motivated in other areas of your life if you make these small changes that you can make in all of your life.

Toni: Can you give an example of how that integration occurs?

Michael: Sure.  I have several clients … I actually won’t say clients, though people have come up to me, that are on vacation, and they tell me that they don’t have time to exercise, they just don’t have time to get to and from the gym, and I’ve made very simple suggestions to them, and I’ve shown them as I’m speaking to them a 90-second three-exercise routine that allows for 90 seconds that I want them to do after they’ve been sitting for a long time, driving for a long time, prior to any meal that they have, and shortly after any meal that they have.

And what this does is give their entire body a boost of metabolism, a boost of circulation, sort of a wake up, if you will, without giving them caffeine, without giving them something that would be an artificial physical jolt.  And I find that that physical jolt allows them to be more open to other things like a nutritional change, like a change in, let’s say, intake of alcoholic beverages or something like a caffeinated drink to search for energy when they could be doing it from their own natural source, which is a simple amount of exercise.  So I think that I try to inspire people quickly through movement, and that’s what gives them inspiration through other parts of their life.

Toni: So it really is giving … what I’m hearing from you is that the inspiration occurs in almost bite-sized nuggets.  No pun intended on the nutrition side of things.

Michael: Little baby stepping, you know … if you take small steps, you can monitor the steps you’ve been taking.  If you try and rifle through things, forget everything that you’ve done to get you to the point that you’re at … because most people, let’s say they’re in their 30s or 40s or even 50s and 60s, they have been told by their physicians, told by their bodies, “I need to make a change, I don’t have the energy, I keep getting injured, I have this comfort.”  People are constantly in agony from typing, driving, commuting, and these aren’t things that have to be if you just add some simplistic exercises that will make you feel better and allow your productivity for the rest of your life to be better.  So it gives you more life in your life and less exercise than you think you need in order to become healthier.  People think you need to do 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or an hour at the gym.  It’s just not the case.

Toni: That’s interesting.  And we will have a way for people to check out what it is that you do and the techniques that you use at the bottom of this interview.

Michael: Great.

Toni: So Michael, what inspires you?  What do you need to be inspired?

Michael: You know it’s funny – for me it’s many things.  I’m inspired … I have to say every single day music inspires me.  If I am in a down mood, if I’m in a stressful mood, if I’m in a … in a lack of energy, if I put on music that I know I like and enjoy, that immediately gives me a boost.  And it gives me an energy that my toes are tapping, my heart rate increases — you just feel more of a euphoria.  And for myself, that has really been a real important aspect, because I do teach classes.  I choreograph, I create things in the music.

The beat, the baseline is something that is a pulse for life.  There’s certain beats per minute … 120 beats per minute that they call is the beat of life, which would be an average of like a heart rate of 60.  And when you’re at that 120 beats per minute, your body just moves better.  You just have a better feeling, and the individuals that listen to music on a daily basis, you’ll find, are more easily inspired and more easily brought out of, let’s say, a down mood or a lack of motivation.  Music really helps me as well as exercise.  I mean, I am an exercise enthusiast of course, but when you say I need an instant inspiration, it would be music that I would turn to probably more than anything else.

Toni: Is there a certain type of music you’re drawn to?

Michael: You know, it depends on the mood.  I am … I’m a huge jazz fan.  I’m a huge R&B fan.  I have hip-hop records that are unbelievably ….  I love rock & roll.  It all depends on the music itself.  It’s not something that there’s one genre that can give me a straight across the board “that’s what inspires me.”  I think that it’s … jazz and blues sometimes can give you more inspiration than rock & roll, it just depends on the mood that you’re seeking to get into, and the mood that you may be in.  I do love rhythm, so anything that has a syncopated beat and has more movement to it, that’s what I’m going to sort of go towards.

Toni: Have you always know that you would be in the fitness arena, that you would be teaching and training and motivating?  Was that something that you just knew intrinsically or was it an evolution for you?

Michael: You know, it was intrinsic as soon as I was in my early 20s.  I think that I found an outlet for my athleticism when I became a California resident, first of all, from upstate New York.  And when I moved out here, I ended up working for a gentleman that wasn’t in the best of shape, and I would work out before work, and he asked me what I did and he said “Would you mind showing me some of those things?”  I must have been 20, 21 at the time, and I realized that I was changing his life and that he was getting more out of what I was doing with him exercise-wise than I was in my job performing for him at what I was hired.  So I went to UCLA and decided to get certified for private training in group exercise instruction, and I haven’t looked back, because I’ve just been … I’m very gifted physically.

I’m very lucky.  I’m not a large person, I’m only 5′ 7″, but I can do so many Cirque du Soleil gymnastic style movements that genetically I’m just very lucky, and that is giving me sort of a platform where people will look to me for my information, because I can break it down for them as to what I’m doing and how to do it so they can try to do it.  A lot of people can do things, but they can’t tell you how to do it.  I’m really good at the breakdown and making it so you understand completely how to do something so when you’re doing it it’s not just “I hope I can, maybe somehow, sometime I will be able to.”

So yes, I think I’ve always been a natural teacher.  I’m the oldest of two kids, and I always used to teach my sister everything growing up, and it’s just … yeah, I think intrinsically teaching was my thing, but fitness became an eye opener when I was in my early 20s.

Toni: And so what do you do to continuously explore your own potential so you can continue to do the work that you do?

Michael: Well, it’s funny, because I’m always looking for new ways of stimulating my physicality, as it were.  I was an ultra-endurance athlete, so I did 300-mile Team Endurance races for a short period of time – short period of time – long period of time, actually, I feel like now looking back, and triathlons and outdoor activities.

Now that I’m in my 40s, I’m realizing beating myself up to that extent isn’t needed to get what I want, so I will literally pick a place and explore it physically.  I will park the car and go for a walk through an area, take a 30, 45, 50-minute walk, and learn new areas and see things and look around, not just put my iPod and ignore everything and listen to the music.  I look around, and I see what is there.

And when you do that, when you see what you’re surrounded by, you actually get much more out of the exercise than if you stay in your tunnel, as I would say, and stay into the maybe the stress that’s caused you to need the exercise.  If you forget those things for a few moments, you actually will process your problems, let’s call them, and issues in life better by getting out and doing things.

And that’s what I’ve been doing for myself is making sure that I continually move my body in ways that aren’t necessarily testing it to see if I can do things, but putting myself out in nature, getting outside.  Being outdoors is what motivates me a lot.

Toni: And so you’re exploring your own potential and fitness by putting yourself in other surroundings in order to, again … I like the words that you said you didn’t test yourself but to maybe stretch yourself.

Michael: Expand, exactly.  And one of the things I’ve added to that is museums.  I’ve been going to lots of museums.  LACMA and MOCA out in Los Angeles are two large museums, and I will park far away from the museum and walk to them, explore the museum, and walk back, and you learn so much.  And art is a passion of mine.  I wish that I could afford more art.  There’s so many wonderful things, so many artistic things that you can purchase out there, that I find that if you’re able to go look at beauty and not test yourself in a way like I said before to physically to … can I even accomplish this?

You get more out of your physical being by feeling, by getting the emotion that you get from looking at a piece of art, going to some terrain that you may have never explored before.  It’s just a better way of expanding, like we said before, your horizons.  Mentally and physically you’re still moving, so my momentum is never lost physically, but I’m adding to it emotionally and mentally.

Toni: How does that correlate then to what you do for others?

Michael: Well it’s funny, because a lot of people, they stop short of seeing what’s outside of their small periphery.  And my goal, and what’s had to be my job in many cases, is to come in and open that up, take the blinders off.  If you’re familiar with horseracing, they put those little blinders on so they can’t see the other horses.  I want my clients to see the other horses.  I want them to see the beauty.  I want them to understand that their child that’s growing up around them isn’t going to be there in 5 years in the same age and the same situation, so embrace it.  Don’t try to … don’t look negative at situations all the time.

There are difficult situations that often it’s hard to avoid looking at it, but I see that people will look more to the negative than the positive, which draws you more into the negative.  So with my clients, I try to give them what their attributes are that are good and show them where they’re at as opposed to telling someone “You can’t … you’re not doing this, you need to do more of that.”

I like to focus on the positive, especially with clientele that are young or elderly.  The middle group, they’ve got some passion still, but when it comes to young kids they don’t know that they’re going to get older.  When it comes to older people, they’re not so sure it’s worth the time because they’ve gotten old at this point.  So breaking through those two groups, that’s the most important for me.

Toni: Fantastic, Michael.  Your passion and enthusiasm for what you do is coming across loud and clear, and this interview will drip of it, and that’s really encouraging to hear.  And for being part of the Get Inspired! Project to talk about not only who you inspire, but what inspires you and really have that connection between the two, it’s really been amazing, and for that we thank you for being here today.

Michael: It is my pleasure, thank you so much.

Toni: Okay, take care Michael.

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For more information about Michael Carson:  www.mindbodyseries.com/fitness, mymobileminute.com

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Kimberly and Katherine, for joining the call today.  And for those of you that follow the Get Inspired! Project, this is our very first duo interview, so we’re looking forward to this.  Thank you very much for being here.  Can you please introduce yourselves?

Kimberly Corp: Well, my name is Kimberly Corp, and my sister …

Katherine Corp: I’m Katherine Corp and we own a small business here in Manhattan, and we’ve owned it for almost ten years.

T: Well thank you for being here, and when you think of the word inspiration, who do you inspire and how does that happen?

K: Well we own a Pilates studio, so we’re all about helping people discover their movement potential, whatever that may be.  So we hope that we inspire people to embrace the body that they have and not try to be something that they’re not.  For example, some people are born with longer legs than others, and no matter how you will your legs to be longer, they will only be the length at which genetics has decided that they will be.  So we help people embrace the beautiful body they have and discover its potential.  So we hope we succeed in inspiring people in that way.

T: Can you give an example of how that might happen?

K: Well, actually it’s very funny that you asked that.  We also have a video website, and we get so many testimonials.  You know, a lot of times when you’re in the service business, you only get people writing you or something, or calling and complaining, but we get a number of testimonials.  One woman who has fibromyalgia wrote to us and said that she can actually do the videos and that she’s been inspired because it’s movement that doesn’t give her pain.

And that’s something that a lot of us don’t think about because we’re aiming for the next goal, and we have these lofty goals.  And here’s just a person who just wants to move through life without pain, and that’s a huge thing, so we know we succeeded in inspiring her.  We also received another email recently from a woman who is blind who has been able to do our videos, and she said that she can do them because the cueing is clear enough that she doesn’t need to see the screen, and so we were very happy about that as well.

T: Well, fantastic.  So how do you think your business, or just the two of you in your everyday relationships, how do you think you help others to explore their own potential?

K: I think that, you know, we are very honest in the sense that we admit when things are hard or we admit the struggles that we have, and that kind of makes people sit back and say “Oh, it’s okay not to be perfect.”  There’s a whole image out there that you need to be perfect at this or do this perfectly, and this whole “perfect” word.

And so we try to say, and even with our videos, when we make a mistake, we don’t edit them out.  We’re like “Okay, that wasn’t such a good day today.”  It’s that human element.  And then it inspires people to realize that they have flaws .. we all have flaws, we’re all flawed, and we just work through them instead of try to hide them.

And we also help people in a business level.  We get a lot of people calling and writing in for business advice.  And one thing we often say is you do learn from your mistakes, and owning a small business does not mean you’re going to do everything right by any far stretch of the imagination.

So we wish we didn’t make a lot of mistakes, but we now try to help people not make the same mistakes we have already made.  And they’ll make their own new mistakes, but to the extent that we can help people avoid certain ones that we know, like if P then Q – we’re like “Don’t do that,” and then they can go off and explore other avenues for making mistakes, and of course making successes.

T: So really, it’s double the value here, because it’s not only the physical element that you’re inspiring people to work on, but it’s also that human element of either running a business or feeling better about themselves.  It sounds like there is a lot more going on here than the Pilates, which in itself would be, I would think, enormous.

K: Yeah, thank you for saying that.  I think that’s true.  What we’ve learned in our lives is that all of the nos in your life lead to yeses.  It’s sort of like a torpedo.  That’s how a torpedo hits its target.  It gets signals like no, no, no, no, and it hones in on its target that way.   And so if you try something, let’s say movement-oriented, that you’re not good at, then you’re like “Okay, I’m not good at that” and then you try something else.

And all of the little nos lead to yeses, and that’s the way that people can discover, for instance, an exercise system that is right for their body.  We find that some people just don’t like Pilates, but they’ve been told they should do it.  And Katherine and I are all about saying “If you don’t like it, you need to find something that you like, because if you’ll like it, you’ll actually do it.”

T: Absolutely.  You’re talking … the word that I just wrote down was resilience, that there has to be a lot of resilience even in growing a business the way that you have, but also working with your clients.

K: Absolutely.  Resilience is absolutely key because you get so many setbacks, and some things you know are going to be difficult.  But some days are just harder than others, and you can’t really prepare for some of the things that fall into your lap, and you do need that ability to bounce back.

And sometimes, you know, we’re very fortunate; we own a business together, we can inspire each other.  But when we’re both down in the dumps, then where do we turn?  And so that’s where it gets a little bit tricky.  But you also have to allow yourself to move through that process, and that’s what we tell people who call us … other business owners, other Pilates studio owners who ask us “How do you do it?”  We’re like “You don’t have to be happy all the time.”  I mean, obviously, you don’t want to carry bad energy to your clients, but it’s okay to be not at 100% all the time, because you can oftentimes learn something during that process as well.

T: That’s great advice.  Absolutely great advice.  So, what inspires the two of you?

K: Well, it’s an interesting question now, and as we were answering these when we got the speaking points ahead of time, we were laughing because we’ve had such a delay with this iPhone app that we just launched that we’ve both been pretty despondent.  I mean, when I think about my professional career, it’s probably one of the deepest troughs I’ve been in since opening a business.  And because we were both experiencing the same dip in biorhythms, it was very hard to find inspiration.

So visiting our clients in the studio more – like we don’t teach as much as we used to – but going out and talking to clients and hearing them say things, you know, positive feedback, “Oh, I love it here.”  We were like “Good, someone’s happy.”  And getting the emails from people who use our website, like that’s always good.  And then we also find that just increasing knowledge base — whether it’s about the body or about a completely different topic — just helps me get my mind off of the reality of today and into “Wow, there’s so much out there in the world to be happy about.”

K: Yeah, and I’ll add one more thing – I think a sense of humor is absolutely vital, because if you don’t have a sense of humor, then you just … everything weighs so heavily.  So we got to the stage with this launch of the iPhone app that we would just make jokes about it, and then some people would be like “Aren’t you upset?”  And it’s like “Oh yes, we’re so very upset that we can only laugh about it now.  We’re like two steps away from the funny farm, so now we’re just keeping … ”  But it did help us a lot to keep the humor and the levity about the whole thing, or else it would have really gotten to us.

T: Oh my gosh.  And is there anything else, you know, that you can think of that when you have been in that, as you called it, the “deep trough” and you’re going “Oh, I could use a little inspiration here” – what do you guys tend to reach for on a consistent basis?

K: Well, you know, I think the most important thing that we’ve learned is what not to reach for, and you can’t … if you know there’s a source in your life that never provides inspiration, make sure you do not go to that source when you need inspiration.

For example, you wouldn’t go to the hardware store for milk, so don’t go to those people who consistently let you down.  I know that that sounds very trite, but it’s a hard thing to learn, especially if you’re in a relationship with friends or spouses or family or whatever.  If there’s someone close to you that doesn’t inspire you, you need to be very vigilant to stay away and go only to those friends and family and whatever who do inspire you.

So to answer the question directly, we do have friends and family out there who are the source of inspiration, but we also have people who we know “Oh, better not talk about this because they’ll just send me further down that slope.”

K: Right, and I’ll just add to that, the flip side of that is just, you know, anything that brings you joy, no matter how small it is.  Like we both love talking walks, and what’s simpler than, you know, taking a walk?  We like taking walks.  We like watching movies.  Just something that gives you just a little bit of joy, just to lift your spirits a little bit.  It doesn’t have to be grandiose.  But those little things, even if it takes 10 minutes out of your day, if it serves to just flip your mood around, it’s a good thing.

T: You know, it’s interesting.  I’m listening to both of you, and even when I first asked the question of what inspires you, you went back to the basics of why you actually started the business.  You went back to visiting your customers, and you went back into the studio and you revisited that, and that’s the simplest thing to do, isn’t it?  We get so caught up in the aspects of business that sometimes we forget the heartbeat of the business, and it sounds as though when you needed to be reinspired you went back to the heartbeat of your business.

K: Absolutely.  You said that so well, and I don’t think I’d even realized it myself.  But exactly, we created a business to help others, and so I guess when the trough gets deep, we run back out and see what people are saying.  But yes, I think that’s very true.

T: Yeah, and anything that brings you joy.  What’s coming through on the Get Inspired! Project and many of these interviews is that a lot of people truly believe that if you’re not working your purpose and it isn’t bringing you joy, you have to go find what that is.  And so when you reach these low points waiting for an iPhone app to be developed or another stumbling block in your business that might have happened with the economy, who knows – do you question that purpose and passion?

K: You know what?  There have been times we have questioned it, and usually the doubt sort of lives in our brains for a day, and we just let it run its course.  And usually by the next day or so, we’re back to just saying “No, this is what I want to be doing.”

We actually have been looking at statistics of small businesses and their “rate of failure” or the amount of closings, and Katherine and I have this theory that many did not go bankrupt; many just closed their doors.  And I think what a lot of small business owners … sometimes the passion … they just run out of passion, like gasoline.  They just run right out of passion, and they cannot do it anymore because it’s very difficult, especially in an economic downturn.  However, we will still have … we might be running on fumes someday, but we still have passion left, so we’re able to dig deep, dig our heels in, and do what’s necessary to keep it going.

T: So again, the resilience.

K: Yes. We’re like little rubber bands over here.

T: That’s fantastic.  So what do you guys do to explore your own potential so that you can stay resilient, so you can stay passionate about what you’re doing?

K: Well, we both make jokes that we’re nerds at heart.  We’re like nerds in disguise is what we usually say, so we do a lot of research, whether it be online and just go to the bookstore and buy books.  And a lot of times it’s about movement or anatomy.

We both are fluent in Japanese, so that’s always a very abundant source of inspiration because we can just pick up a book that we haven’t, you know, read and start reading in Japanese or learn more Kanji.  So we both get very inspired on a creative level by just learning more.  And you know, our graduate degree is in international economic policy, so that’s another source.  So we usually turn to that just to stimulate the little gray cells as Hercule Poirot would say.

T: Okay, now, I’m going to have to ask, because I know there’s going to be people who are going to listen to this interview or read the transcript and will go “Okay, wait a minute, there’s a disconnect here” – how did you go from international economic policy to opening up a Pilates studio?

K: You know, that’s a very logical question, and it would be raised, definitely.  We attended graduate school at Columbia, and while in graduate school … we had always danced all our lives since we were kids, but recreationally, and suddenly being in New York we were taking dance classes.  We sort of looked around the room and we were like “You know, we’re not so bad.  Why don’t we start auditioning for things?”  And so we did.

Long story short, we did a world tour, so we got two years of touring the world, and then we danced with the Radio City Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, and we did that for two years.  And then we weren’t ready to go plop ourselves down at a desk, because we’re like “moving feels really nice,” so there has to be a way to integrate the business side of our lives with the movement side of our lives, and that’s how Pilates came into play.

T: Well thank you very much for the clarification, because we know that there would be some questions to that.  What?  And the Japanese?

K: Right.  We both … we went to Duke undergrad and we graduated a year early — again because we’re nerds in disguise — so we did not have a fourth year plan.  So we had this crazy idea – it turned out to be a brilliant idea – we just moved to Japan to find jobs, because we had studied Japanese at Duke.  We knew we wanted to be fluent.  We didn’t want to continue with school at that time, so we actually moved to Japan and lived there for almost four years working in Japanese companies.

T: Wow.  And how do you think, for those people that are listening all over the world here — and you’ve really followed your passion, you’ve been resilient, you’ve stayed with it, you’ve had a very diverse background — how do you think all of that has come into play to be able to do what you do, to keep this moving, to keep the potential alive?

K: Well … and I think that’s an excellent question, because you never know when a tidbit of knowledge will serve you later.  For instance, when we joined the Rockettes, we had so many people, our colleagues at Columbia saying “This is a waste of your education.”  I always replied at that time, even though I had no plans for opening a small business at that moment, I said “You can never take education out of someone’s head.”  Like, it’s not something that leaves you, so you never know when some knowledge will come back to serve you.

So Katherine and I like to say, like the circle is always completed somehow.  You might know how it will be completed, but it usually is completed in the scheme of things.  So for instance, our focus at graduate school was international relations, and that’s basically people skills on a really grand level.  So our clients service business … we’re all about people skills.  And of course, it’s not as grandiose as the President of the US, you know, meeting with the President of Russia, but we still have people that have to get along with one another.

T: And it’s interesting, because you go back to those people skills when you needed the inspiration.

K: Absolutely, absolutely indeed.  If we weren’t trying to make clients happy, why would we even be here?  Our goal is like if someone walks out of our studio and says “Wow, I feel so much better than when I walked in,” that’s a good day for us.

T: Absolutely, but don’t you find sometimes when you are mired down in all the business stuff, sometimes – and I call it the heartbeat – sometimes that heartbeat just gets lost, and so I really think it’s very cool that the connection for you of your background to what you do in your business is the people, and the people that you serve, and you went back to that, and that’s where it comes full circle.

K: Exactly, yeah.  Absolutely.

T: That’s fantastic.  Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet both of you, and we will put your website at the bottom of the transcript of the interview.  And we cannot thank you enough for telling your story today on the Get Inspired! Project.

K: Well thank you.

T: You’re quite welcome.  Take care, ladies.

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For more information about Kimberly and Katherine Clark:  www.pilatesonfifth.com

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Louise, for agreeing to be part of a project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Louise Steinbach: Well, my name is Louise Steinbach, and I live in Crystal Lake, Illinois, and I’m a fitness instructor along with many other kind of hobbies, jobs that I do.

Toni: Well thank you.  I want to ask you about that great word about inspiration.  When you think about inspiration, who do you think you inspire and how do you do that?

Louise: Well, the people that I really think that I have an effect on would be the people that I have in my fitness classes and, obviously, that is the closest touch that I have with people that need inspiration.  I mean, I have several people, whether they be male or female that are looking to change their lives in a more positive, as far as health aspect, a more positive direction.

I have the direct ability to do that for them, to help them do that, to at least give them the inspiration to do it for themselves.  Sometimes they think that I’m doing it for them, and they come to realize that there is nothing that I can do for them that they cannot do for themselves.  That comes through, I think, inspiration.

Toni: Can you give an example, Louise, of how you do that in this fitness classes?  Is it leading the class?  It is leading by example?  Just a brief example of how that happens between you and the people that are taking a class from you.

Louise: Well, I think it’s leading by example, and it’s also a little bit more of a one-on-one, like “You can do this.”  There are some people that get stuck, or they get frustrated and they confide in me that they feel very inadequate.  My information or my story that I tell them is that, you know, I was over 300 pounds when I started, and I felt very inadequate.  I felt very stuck.

Being that weight going into a health club was very intimidating for me, and I soon realized that that was why that health club was there.  It was there for people like me, not for the little girl in the spandex.  It was there for people like me who needed to lose major amounts of weight, or somebody that needs to lose 20 pounds.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s all about the health and wellness and not about what you look like in your workout outfit.

When people know that that’s what I’m there for and I’m not judging them, they become a lot more inspired to do what they need to do.

Toni: Well, that leads us beautifully into the second question which is, what do you do in order to help explore the potential in others, and what I’m hearing that you do is provide that gentle nudge or that kick in the butt with whoever’s in front of you with those personal consultations.  Is that right?

Louise: Right, right.   You know, sometimes it is a kick in a butt, sometimes it’s a wakeup, and sometimes it is kind of a little … you kind of have to take them by the hand and really lead them gently down the path.  You kind of have to know who you’re dealing with in order to do that, you know?

Some people don’t respond to that kick in the butt.  They get … you kick them way out of the gym and they never want to come back.  There’s other people that that’s what really inspires them.  That’s what turns them into a machine.  When you say “Listen, when you are 45, you are going to drop dead of a heart attack unless you lose this weight.”  Sometimes that is the wakeup call that some people need.  Other people can’t handle that.  They kind of retreat.

You have to be able to read your clients and know what it is that will turn them on.  Sometimes you don’t know until it happens, until all of a sudden it happens and you can see it.  You can see it in their eyes.  You can see it in the way that they practice.   You can see it in the way that they … their commitment level.  All of that comes together really beautifully and doesn’t happen in everybody.  You have to know that as a trainer and as a teacher.

You have to know that you cannot save everybody.  That’s kind of a hard lesson to learn, that everybody … right on this day, not everybody that walks in front of you is meant to be saved.

Toni: Really, because it’s like you said earlier, it really has to come from them.  You’re the facilitator.

Louise: It has to come from them.  It’s like quitting smoking or becoming sober or anything, which I’ve done both of.  I know that there are difficult obstacles to overcome, and those obstacles are normally within yourself.  They are something that you turn on in your brain.

Toni: Louise, when you think about the word inspiration for you, what do you need to be inspired?

Louise: Well, you know, for me, my big kick was from my doctor that said, you know, “You better know where your kids are going, because by the time you’re 40 you’re not going to be here.”  And that was when I was 34/35 years old.  So by the time I was 37, I was really making sure that I was taking care of everything that I needed to do to lose weight to become healthy to not have that hanging over my head, like “When am I going to drop dead?  When’s my heart going to give out?”  It wasn’t easy decisions that I had to make.  I did a lot of things, but bottom line is I had to lose weight, and that’s what I did.  It all comes from within.

Toni: Your inspiration came from your doctor saying “You know what?  You gotta get it together, because if you don’t, you’re not going to be around.”

Louise: Right.

Toni: So what inspires you today?  You’ve walked this walk, you’ve been on this journey, you’ve accomplished these things that you’ve spoken about in a very personal manner.  So when you reach a point now, Louise, when you know that you’re running low and you’re seeking inspiration, what do you reach for?

Louise: You know, it’s funny, because now that I’ve gone through inspiring … and I hate to use that word like this big inspiration, sometimes it’s just something that you say or something that people look at you and they go “You were 300 pounds?  Okay, so I can do it.”  Then it’s kind of going back to those people and seeing them, watching them, and going …

Earlier in the year I had a major surgery.  I had a broken neck, and I kind of laid here in my pity party and I gained 20 pounds.  I couldn’t do anything.  I couldn’t do the exercises that I always was doing.  I fell off the bandwagon as far as my nutrition.  I had all of these people that were calling me and saying “Don’t worry about it, you’re going to get back on that horse and you’re going to be our leader again, and you’re going to be the person that trains us.”  And I knew that I had to go back to that.

I knew that that was where I had to be, so I eventually had to just pick myself up and say “Okay, that’s enough.  It may be painful; I’m going to have to go through pain again.  I’m going to learn how to run again, and I’m going to have to learn how to do all these things that I already knew.”  But I knew that I could do it because I’ve done it once, and I had all these people that were kind of depending on me to show them that whatever happens, there are things that you can overcome.

Toni: Louise, were they depending on you or were they championing you?

Louise: You know, I think a little bit of both.  To me, I felt like they were championing me, but I also felt like I was the one that led them through, it came from … it’s hard to explain it, because I was the one that they were looking to when they were going through it.  And how horrible would that be if I just said “Well, sorry guys, I’m giving up,” you know?  I can’t do that.  That’s not right for me, it’s not right for my body, and it’s not right to show other people that I’ve helped through that hard time that if you hit another time … you know, we’re all going to have hard times.  We all are going to fall off the wagon.  We’re all going to have slip-ups.  It’s kind of the nature of the beast.

This is just my opportunity to be able to show them that, yeah, things happen, but you gotta get yourself up, wipe yourself off, and move on.  That’s just kind of what I’m trying to do now.  And I’m still going through it.  I’m still working at this.  It’s something that will be a lifelong thing.

That’s one thing that I learned from having my broken neck is that I thought I had it licked, I thought I was done.  I work out every day, I do all these things.  This thing was thrown into my life and it may have been … if you believe in kind of divine intervention, it was kind of that.  It was kind of God saying “You know what?  You might be getting a little big for your britches,” you know?

Toni: But did it have to be a broken neck?

Louise: Well for me, you know how stubborn I am.

Toni: My goodness.  There could have been more of a gentle nudge there.

Louise: He probably did give me other gentle nudges, I just didn’t allow him to show me.

Toni: Well, Louise, the final question here as far as the four is what do you need to continue to explore your own potential, and that can be personally or professionally.  Are you continuously exploring your own potential and what do you do to do that?

Louise: I think that your potential, your personal potential, is only as big or as small as you allow it to be.  My mom … I left a big corporation about 15 years ago, and I was having a really hard time leaving this job.  My mom said to me, “You know, if you plan on having 20 careers in your life, you’re never going to look back and say ‘Oh, I should have done this, or I should have done that.’”

Plan on having those 20 careers.  Plan on being a painter and a dancer and a corporate higher-up.  Do all these things.  What’s wrong with that?  You don’t have to stay at one point in your life and just stay there.  I think that people that are in that one point in their life sometimes becomes a little stagnant and maybe even complacent.  It doesn’t have to be like that.  You can learn so many different things, and you can learn it until the end of your life.

Toni: Is that what you’re doing now?

Louise: Well, yeah, I think so.  Right in the middle of going back to school is when I broke my neck, so I’m planning on going back to school again in the spring and hopefully — I’m sorry, the fall — so hopefully that will come about, and I will be able to do that.  I’m trying to get my nutrition degree so that I can offer the people that I train even more information and more direction, and it’s good for myself.   It’s good for my kids.  It’s good for my family on a bigger scale.

And I think that as I get older, I am more concerned about the kids that are coming up.  We have a huge obesity problem in children, in children under the age of 13;  this isn’t teenagers.  These are small kids.  That’s something that I’d like to explore in the future is kind of concentrate on the children that need some direction.

Toni: Well, based on the information that you’ve given in this interview with how you started your own fitness journey and there was a message that I heard in this interview, and you said it early on, which is what you do for others with inspiration and helping others explore their potential is you’ve helped to turn them on; and that’s what you can do.  You helped to turn them on.

And then what I heard as far as you seeking your own inspiration when you went through your own trauma with your health is that you needed to be turned back on so that you could reciprocate that for others to continue to turn them on, and that’s what I heard in this interview.

Louise: Absolutely.

Toni: That’s what you do.  That’s what’s been done for you.  And as far as exploring your potential, I heard that maybe you’ll be turning children on in order to not maybe go through some of the challenges that you went through.  For me, that was a really loud common theme through your interview, and I can only imagine what you must do for others when they’re in your presence, so thank you.

Louise: I think it’s all in the energy that we give each other and that we open ourselves up to be able to depend on each other, because we can’t go through this whole thing alone.  This whole thing, life or health or anything in life, you cannot be by yourself.  There’s others that you have to depend on, and sometimes they depend on you.

Toni: Absolutely!  Couldn’t have said it better myself.  Louise, thank you so very much  for your candid interview, and I really appreciate the time you’ve given to the Get Inspired! Project.

Louise: Thank you.

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For more information about Louise Steinbach:  weezie1629@sbcglobal.net

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Jeremy, for agreeing to be part of our Project, and before we go into the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Jeremy Likness: Absolutely.  My name is Jeremy Likness and by trade currently I’m a Senior Development Consultant; however, a lot of what I do involves not just writing software but actually working with other developers and helping coach and train them.

I do different speaking events in the technology world.   I also do a lot of writing and formerly held my own health and wellness business where I did a lot of coaching on the mindset of really losing weight and keeping it off.  A lot of different, I guess you could say, hats that I wear but excited and have a lot of fun with all of those.

Toni: It sounds like there’s a lot of variation of what you’re doing.  Let’s go into the first question.  When you think about the word inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Jeremy: I believe that it starts really right here at home.  That’s one of the reasons why I’m passionate about my current position where I can work out of the house, because I have a beautiful nine-year-old daughter, just about to turn 10, and I believe I inspire her and my wife, and it’s reciprocal.  They both inspire me constantly, and then it spreads out from there.

I’m definitely blessed with opportunity to inspire people in my day-to-day work as I consult and as I speak and coach and train.

There’s a large body of people, ironically, online that I’ve been able to reach out to.  I actually have a book called Lose Fat, Not Faith that I wrote to detail sort of my journey of losing weight and that reaches thousands of people around the world and I believe has been a very powerful inspiration in that method as well.

Toni: So when you are … really when you’re starting with yourself and setting the examples for your daughter and your wife and the people that you’re coaching and you’re training, how do you go about inspiring them?  What happens when they are with you?

Jeremy: You know, I really had a lot of time to think about this, and it’s something that through my career and through some talks and my coaching, I’ve had a lot of people come back and just tell me that it was effective for a certain reason, and I think that reason will amount to honesty and integrity.

I think that in this day and age, it’s easy to get caught up.  There’s a lot of marketing, a lot of sales, a lot of gimmicks, a lot of pitches.  When I set to really start my own business and when I write articles, when I share experiences, when I coach, everything is drawn just from my personal experience.  And it’s open there for people to see, so I really focus on being a person of my word and doing what I set out to do.

I think when people see, number one, that I’m honest, direct, and basically am the real deal, and then number two, are able to see what I’ve been able to accomplish in my life with the things I’m sharing, they realize “Hey, it’s possible, it’s real, and we can connect with this individual and really learn from that and go forward with it.”  It’s an exciting dynamic, and I think that’s what a lot of people look for.

I know when I prepare for my talks, for example, one thing I learned from a very, very good business mentor was not to use, for example, Powerpoint slides as a crutch.  The reason is that a lot of people want to have the cards and the books and the points, but the fact is if you’re speaking about something that you know about and that you’re passionate about, you know what you know what you know.  And so I think it’s important when people speak and connect and that, sure, you have some bullets and some slides that say “This is what I’m going to touch on”, but then everything else really comes on the fly, on the spot, from the heart.

Toni: When you go about it this way, what do you do to help explore the potential in others?

Jeremy: I think in this day and age, there’s a lot of media, a lot of technology, and people can sometimes get buried in just an onslaught of everything going on.  What I see a lot of is just, number one, is lack of belief.  It may be belief in higher power, it may be belief in oneself, but I think that’s the real key and the core that I start with other people, is helping them realize that there are so many gifts that every single person possesses.

I’ll just give the example in my life where when I started my journey, and I was extremely overweight and I was a depressed person, I said “You know, good things don’t happen to me.  I’m overweight, and there’s no way I’m ever going to be able to lose this weight; that’s something for other people.  Look at those fitness people.  They work out, but that’s not for me.”  There was just no belief.

I actually tried a million different diets.  I’ll tell you the craziest one that I did was this diet that I invented myself.  I just had no knowledge of nutrition and I said, “You know what I’m going to do?  I’m going to eat nothing but a can of pears every day.”

Toni: A can of pears?

Jeremy: A can of pears.

Toni: Okay.

Jeremy: That was the most ridiculous, insane diet in the world.  I did that for weeks and got frustrated, and I just couldn’t lose my weight.  I really thought that the solution was going to be finding the right diet, so I just kept trying this diet, that diet, 100 million things, and nothing worked.

It was amazing, because I ended up meeting an individual who had lost a lot of weight themselves and they were sharing their story with me.  It was Jeff Seidman.  He was one of the former Body For Life champions, so he was a big person in the fitness and the transformation arena.

So I went out and I met him and talked to him, and I realized “Wow, this is real.  It can actually happen.”  It was that belief that suddenly transformed things for me.  And so then when I set out and I started focusing on a program and a plan, because I believed that it could work, it did work, and I did change.

Then I said “Wow, so if it works just for something like losing weight, what about with business?  What about with learning new things?”  That’s where I really realized that it all starts really with that core kernel of belief.

So when I’m working with people and trying to pull out their inner power and to help inspire them to do the things that I know they deserve to do and can do, it really starts with focusing on that core belief and helping someone realize that “Yes, I can do this.  I can make these decisions.”

Probably one of the most important things for people to learn which was … it seems obvious, but it was amazing for me, is just that you can listen to your own thoughts and you can change the way you think.  So, when you have that little voice inside your head saying you can’t or you won’t or you shouldn’t, you can listen to that thought, or you can start ignoring that thought and you can replace it with a new thought.

I think people once realize that they’re in control of their own thoughts and their own inner dialogue and they start to change those thoughts of can’t with “I believe I can, and I will”, that amazing things can happen.

Toni: Thank you for that.  That’s really an awesome way to describe how what you went through helps others with exploring their own potential of what they can do, so thank you for that.

When you look for inspiration, what do you need to be inspired, Jeremy?

Jeremy: You know, there’s a few different things, and I think in this day and age it’s become almost politically incorrect for some people to express their beliefs and views, but I really think we operate on two levels.

We operate on sort of a day-to-day where we’re in the “mix of life” level, and there’s certainly lots of inspiration that we can find here.  There are stories of people who have just overcome great adversity.  I love reading biographies of individuals, especially people who came from an obscure background and just created something amazing.  I love learning about companies that went from average companies to grand enterprises and understanding all the dynamics and pieces.  I love things that cover conquests and courage and overcoming obstacles; all of those things are great.

I know that a lot of people listening to this may have been to a seminar and heard just an inspiring speaker and been just motivated and ran out feeling like “Man, I can take on the world and do everything.”  That’s great, and I think we need that daily in our lives.  We need to avoid the constant news network and all the things that we’re exposed to that are a negative and focus on that.  But I also think the second level and the important level where I feel inspiration from is my faith.

I have a very strong core of faith.  My family and I participate in our events together.  We’re a Christian family and we focus on our core Christian values, and that is truly the root of my inspiration, because I thank frankly if all that inspires you is contained within your life, then you’re only touching the surface.

I think there’s something greater, and when we tap into something that’s bigger than who we are and lasts longer than how long we’re going to be here on this planet, that that is a true source of inspiration that allows us to just overcome the day-to-day obstacles by realizing that there’s really something bigger than that for us.

Toni: And what do you do when you take all of this that inspires you on both levels that you’ve described?  Does it flow into helping you explore your own potential, or are there other things that you need to explore your own potential?

Jeremy: I definitely need things to explore my own potential.  I think, you know, it’s popular for people to say “Hey, I’ve got religion” or “I’m spiritual” or “I have this and that”, and I think it’s important for us to tap into that.  But we’re also here in this world where we’re slave to our five senses and the things that we do day to day, and I think we’re wired on a biological and a chemical level to overcome adversity.

I think that the biggest mistake that anyone can make is to take the happy path and to really avoid resistance, and this is easy and comfortable; and I think it’s very easy for people to get caught in what’s comfortable.

I know I had a major decision when I was younger.  I was, you know, with a crowd that was just not the right influence for me.  I was doing a lot of things that just weren’t healthy and weren’t right for my life, and I really had to pick up and move to a new state, and that was tough for me because I was leaving my hometown.  I was going out on my own.  I didn’t know anyone.

It was the hardest decision for me to make, but when I made that, things started changing in my life.  I met my wife the first week that I moved to Atlanta, and I started pursing my own business.  And so what I found in my life is that I need constant challenge, and that the way I continue to inspire and grow is by continuing to seek those opportunities that I’m afraid of, because it’s where the fear is that really is the opportunity to become inspired and to shine and really step into what I think we’re intended to do here.

Toni: Well, you have put this beautifully with what you’ve been through even just personally with your own challenges and coming out of the other end of that, to what inspires you but also to not be afraid of the fear, but to almost seek opportunities from that fear.  And I can imagine how that then translates into how you help others to frame their own fear so that they can work towards their own potential based on your experience.  I would imagine that’s pretty powerful.

Jeremy: It’s very powerful and I mean, I think the fundamental thing for people to realize is that fear is not real.  It either comes from something happened in my past that was painful and I don’t want to repeat, but you can learn from that and have the power not to repeat it.  Or it comes from the unknown, but the unknown is just … it’s simply not real.

The “what if” gets us nowhere.  It’s embracing that and understanding how to deal and react that really causes the catalyst for change and where we discover potentials that we just never knew existed within us.

Toni: Well, Jeremy, I can’t thank you enough for the information that you have given, the personal inspiration that you have described in this interview.  I know that the people who are coming to the Get Inspired! Project will benefit greatly from your interview, and I thank you on behalf of the Project team for your time today and what you’ve given us, truly.

Jeremy: Thank you.  I appreciate the opportunity, and I’m excited about the Project and what it can do for people.

Toni: Thank you, Jeremy, take care of yourself, and I hope that our paths cross again soon.

Jeremy: Absolutely.  Thank you.

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For more information about Jeremy Likness:  csharperimage.jeremylikness.com, jeremy@jeremylikness.com

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