It.
Well, hey, everyone.
It's Pat and Angie of local vibes.
And today we have a very good friend of mine, Sarah Schlevert.
Not so much, Pat.
No, not friends.
Not yet.
You'll end up loving me.
We'll see about that.
And she owns the business, 20 717 wellness.
Sure.
I say it.
One a.
It is a mouthful.
Yes.
And your name is a mouthful.
And I usually just botch that up on everybody.
I don't know why you make me do the intro.
Oh, Sarah is her name.
Okay.
So.
What we're just going to talk about today is just how you got started.
You're an entrepreneur.
I said that correctly, didn't I?
Usually.
Can you spell it?
Yeah, but can you spell it?
Can you type it?
I cannot.
I get my spelling from my dad, so I'm completely horrible.
So we just want to know.
We'll just be asking about you, your background, what got you into this, what kind of
things you're interested in, book, podcast, you name it, we'll go into it.
Even if we already know.
Let it go.
That's all right.
Let things buy.
I have zero filter, so you good?
There's no filter on this one.
We kind of made that.
Not safe for work.
We made that clear from the get go in the beginning, I think, didn't we?
We're trying.
Don't hold back.
I'm good for an f bomb here and there.
Filters are.
If you don't like that, go right now.
Yes.
Check out.
All right.
So why don't you introduce yourself?
Sure.
So, as they said, I'm Sarah Schlivert and I own 20 717 wellness, which started out as
shockti fit.
And I used to be an art teacher for eight years.
I did not know that.
Yeah, I was a high school art.
Teacher for eight years.
Took a lot from that profession, a lot of lessons from that profession.
One of them being I didn't want to stay there.
She told me when I was setting up the camera, she used to teach photography.
She was no help at all.
I sat on my phone and let him do all the work.
I didn't know you did that.
So I have a bachelor of fine arts.
Well, yeah, I do know.
I've seen you take pictures and stuff like that.
I went to Bollingerine fresh out of high school, like we all do and like a lot of us do,
not having a clue what I wanted to do.
And with some not so subtle urging from my ma, I got a degree.
I was going to be an art teacher.
And I had a couple painting professors pull me aside my junior year, and they were kind of
terrifying.
But, like, in all the best ways, you want to respect your professors.
They were very serious.
Critiques were hard but helpful.
And they were.
I don't know.
I think that sometimes when we think of artists, we think of, like, can be kind of flaky.
These two were not.
They were very serious artists, very serious professors.
And they pulled me aside.
Oh, my gosh, why do they want to.
And they talked to me about changing my major to a bachelor of fine arts instead of a
bachelor of science in education.
And I'm hearing like, I love you, mother, but my mom wanted me to play it super safe when I
went to college.
I had all sorts of ideas of majors, and she wanted me to get something consistent.
And I get that.
I get from a mom's perspective why she kept pushing.
And I wanted to please my parents when I was a kid.
I don't know that they would say that to you, but I thought, my mom's, like, bull crap.
But in that way, I really did.
And I thought mom and dad know best.
So I did end up going to be a teacher.
And when my professors pulled me aside, they said, we really want you to consider changing
your major to a bachelor.
Of fine arts, Pat, painting.
And we want you to be professional painter.
And all I'm thinking is starving artists.
And I was, like, painting houses.
And I literally said to them, I do not come from money.
I have a crapload of debt just from being here, and I'm not going to step into the world
with debt and this big question of whether or.
Not I'm going to make any.
And I really, like, I was so flattered, and I appreciated their confidence in me as a
professional artist.
But in my world, what I knew.
Where I came from, that was like, it was not a thing, right?
So I humored them and I did double major, and I did end up getting a bachelor of fine arts
and in painting and drawing because I couldn't settle on just one.
So I had to do some summer.
What was your favorite?
Did you think you were a good painter or were you drawing?
I didn't understand until they brought me aside that I was a good painter.
I got that feeling, and I really solid background at that.
And I don't know why I see it.
I don't know.
I did not know that we had this in common because I had a scholarship to Ohio State in fine
arts.
So that's what I started out in.
But then I was on the same kind of track where well, number one, I was paying my school.
So since I was paying for it, after, like, a year and a mean, the next step up, you were
buying, like, a $1,000 worth of product and stuff that you needed.
I couldn't do that.
Yeah, it was an expensive major.
It was a very expensive major.
And I was doing a lot of commissions through college.
Like, I was already getting paid to paint, and I still didn't have confidence in it.
So I did get my bachelor of fine arts.
Like I said, took me a little longer than four years to get out of school by that point,
but got my bachelor of fine arts and took the first teaching job I was offered in Mount
Vernon High School.
So I did teach there for eight years, and I taught the gamut, drawing and painting, level
one and level two arts, taught digital photography and graphic design.
Now, I was not trained in either of those things when I taught them, none of the teachers
there were.
So it was like, who draws the short straw?
Who wants to do this?
And I was like, I mean, I'll try.
Yeah.
So I self taught.
I actually didn't take any photography classes in college, didn't take any graphic design.
I didn't have a computer at my house when I was in high school.
We were, like, the last family in the world to get a computer, so I was terrified of
graphic arts.
So I had zero college training.
So it was self taught there as well.
Thankfully, the school I taught in, we could only afford, like, the most basic adobe
photoshop, and so I could get good at that.
So I taught those two things.
Never would have thought those would come around and touch my life again after I taught.
But I do photography on the side now as well.
So back to me.
I did teach for eight years.
I was unfulfilled, really unfulfilled.
My first year of teaching, I remember literally waking up, being excited to go to work that
first year.
There are hard realities in any job, but as a teacher, there are hard realities.
And the biggest one for me, I'll never forget it.
It was three years before I resigned, was I was a coach.
I taught summer school.
I did all the extracurriculars.
I was a strength and conditioning coach.
For a couple of the team.
And I remember one day, the vice principal pulling me aside and asking me.
To do this favor of handling this.
Last period of the day, 150 freshman study hall in the big study hall room.
Okay.
And he asked me because there was a new male teacher and an older male teacher who were
assigned to it, and I was seven years into teaching.
At this point.
And he said, you have such good rapport with kids.
Essentially, he was saying, you're so good at your job, will you do this bottom of the
barrel duty that none of the other teachers want to do?
Because we know you can.
And we know that this seasoned teacher that was supposed to be assigned with this new
teacher, we know he can't handle it.
So will you do this?
So, in that moment, it told me, you're really good at what you do.
This person who gets paid more than you has been here longer than you isn't.
We're giving him this cake duty.
You come do this thing for us.
Because you're good at this.
And they kept trying to put the icing on it, like, you're good at this.
I'm complimenting you.
So this doesn't feel like we're telling you to go clean the toilets.
And it was in that very moment, and there were other aspects of that job that were similar.
It was that moment where I was like, man, I'm good at what I do, and I feel like I'm
getting punished or taken advantage of.
Taken advantage of getting punished.
And any good teacher knows what I'm talking about, but they just do it.
They just suck it up and do the thing.
And I admire them for it.
But I was like, I am not here for that.
I am not here for it.
I want to be responsible for my successes and or my failures because of my performance.
And unfortunately, that's just not how the teaching profession works.
So.
What?
Pause.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I don't know that my app or my audio is going in.
And surely Angie remembers where we left off.
I remember take two, and it probably sounds way better.
Everybody.
Sorry.
Our audio was messed up.
The audio guy is on strike right now.
He's in California.
Okay, well, I think I remember where we left off.
Teaching school or something.
Yep.
I was teaching school, and then I didn't.
So you were talking about what they were trying to make you do.
Yeah.
Kind of the reality of being a teacher and how this was before all.
The crap of the last few years.
Yeah, you didn't have to go through.
This is before it even got bad.
This was when teaching was still easier.
How soft are you?
I know.
Seriously.
And that's why I have the utmost respect for teachers, because it was rough when I was in
there, and it is way worse now.
Oh, I know.
So I spent three years.
So I did decide in that moment, like, I want to do something where I'm in charge, not where
I'm in charge of everything, although I will say I love that.
But where I'm in charge of how hard I work is going to determine how successful I am.
How lazy I am will determine how unsuccessful I am.
Somebody can't control you on that.
Yeah.
And I will admit, too, that there were some of the.
I'm not suggesting I didn't touch the lives of some kiddos.
I know I did.
There are plenty of them.
I'm still in contact with that.
I've even done photography jobs with and stuff that I know I helped them very directly, but
I did recognize in that seven years of teaching that I wanted to be affecting people even
more directly.
Like, if you worked with me, your life was better.
And I knew it.
Every single one, not one in 100 kids.
Yeah.
So it did take me three years to decide where to go from there, though.
And I will never forget the moment that it hit me, because it was like, oh, my gosh.
Duh.
So I did.
I spent three years.
I don't make moves very quickly.
I spent three years trying to decide, okay, what is next?
And I will never forget the day it hit me.
I looked around.
I just couldn't figure out what is the next step here.
I spent all this money on this college degree.
I'm still terrified to try to make it as a professional artist.
What am I going to do?
And there was one day, I looked around at all the books, all the magazines, the things I
was spending my time on outside of teaching, and it was fitness and nutrition.
And it was that moment where I was like, oh, why did I not realize this?
But I did hold on to this thing of, but I have this college education.
I have to use this.
I spent thousands, and I'm still paying off thousands of dollars of education.
Why would I just waste that?
And I have a friend, Joel Carter.
And I will never be able to say it as eloquently as he did, but he essentially was saying,
sarah, it doesn't matter.
Like, that is such a small chapter.
I know it feels like a big chapter.
I know it feels like a lot of money.
But if it's not fulfilling you and you are not happy, you're not stuck there.
You can do whatever you want.
You have a lot more life left.
Go do it.
Go do what you want.
So I did.
So I finally left teaching.
Excuse me.
I did my math a little bit wrong there earlier, but it was five years into teaching that I
recognized I didn't want to stay.
I left at year eight, and I got certified as a personal trainer the summer before I left.
And actually I did train a couple of people, like in a park that summer.
And when I resigned, teachers get paid.
Well, that district paid you year round.
So when I resigned, I had three months where I was still going to get paid through the
summer to figure it out, to figure out my next step.
And so I was at a wine dinner with a group of friends that I all teachers, and they knew
kind of the direction I was leaning.
And one of them, Jeff Gottke, said he was a history teacher at the time.
He said, well, what are your like?
Well, you know, I've, I've interviewed at all the big gyms.
I'm going to get paid crap per hour at first, but it is what it is.
It'll get me moving in the right direction.
And he's like, well, we have this building in downtown Mount Vernon.
Would you be interested in renting a small room on the second floor?
And I was like, absolutely.
And the rent was next to nothing, was $200 a month.
Oh, my God.
I know.
And it was cute.
Like, it was about the size of the room we're sitting in right now.
It was small.
And I had like six sets of dumbbells, a couple of little weighted balls, some mats, maybe a
couple of other dinky pieces of equipment.
And I started my gym there.
Some of those big med balls we used to do, big medicine balls we used to use.
And I started there.
So, yeah, eight years of teaching knew it wasn't right for me.
Figured out what I was passionate about, knew that I could help people more directly if I
went in that direction.
And so I did.
And that was roughly ten and a half years ago.
And here we are.
And that's when you called it.
So that's when I first opened up.
It was shockedy fit.
And how I got that name, I.
Was just going to ask that.
So this is an interesting story.
So I wanted to be a yoga studio.
Nutrition, coaching and training.
However long it took me to get all three things going, I was in for it.
So my sister in law, my brother's wife, and I started looking around for yoga teacher
training.
She was interested in it as well.
Probably the coolest thing I've ever done in my life.
And I give her the credit because she found this one was, we did a yoga teacher training in
Guatemala, I kid you not, the whole camp.
It's called the mystical yoga farm, and it is at the base of a volcano, an active volcano,
mind you, in Guatemala on Lake Atitlan.
And we flew to Guatemala City.
We had to take at least one boat, maybe two boat trips to get to this island, to get to
this base of this volcano.
And we spent, like, night boats.
Or was this.
I mean, they worked, but they were not nice.
So you were like, am I really going there?
Yeah.
I mean, it was incredible.
And I get extremely motion sick.
So I'm, like, on this boat, on this leg.
Like, started out the whole trip, motion sick.
But two boat rides over, we get there, and it was just the experience of a lifetime.
And again, I give my sister in law Jamie credit for this, because she found it.
I would have never gone to this one.
I was looking for the swanky ones in Greece, places like that.
Was this to get some certification or just.
Yes.
So this was to get a two.
It's called a 200 hours teacher, 200 hours yoga teacher certificate.
And so we did that this summer.
I quit teaching.
I resigned from teaching.
And it was a month immersion.
So we were in Guatemala, but traveled a little bit over a month.
We had a couple days off within that month where we could tinker around at islands nearby.
And it was.
Was.
We had, like, a compost toilet that we all used.
We had water that was filtered, I believe, at least four times.
And lots of people still got sick from it, really, myself included.
Not till the end for me.
I got lucky the very first night we were there.
We were all sitting around the fire, and they said.
If we feel an.
Earthquake, which we will while you're here, if it goes longer than 30 seconds, this is
where we meet, because we need to get the heck out because it means the volcano is moving.
And that was the first night of the month, and I was just like, what?
And it was really cool, though.
I mean, just scorpions and never saw a tarantula, but spiders as big or bigger and as furry
as tarantulas everywhere.
We stayed in these tiny little cabins.
No, they were little shacks that we stayed in.
And I think the first or second night there, one of our instructors got stung by a
scorpion.
And in her yogi way, she literally was telling us about the experiences.
She said, you know, I just used it as a moment to just experience it, and I just sat with
it, and I'm like, what?
Sat with it?
She stayed calm.
She didn't wake any of us up.
It was when she got in bed, she got stung on her ankle, and she did.
She just freaking handled it.
Like, don't let a fluffy yoga, but.
Like, they're tough when you just sit with it.
What will it do anything for it?
Did she kill it, or did I.
Doubt it because they didn't want us to kill anything.
So then you just know it's there.
She may have, like, flicked it or guided it out of her cabin, but I guarantee that.
Again, yeah.
Please don't sting me again.
I'm sure she did not kill it.
And there were seriously that biggest spiders in your cabin?
We had one.
I'm sure they visited us, but I never saw one.
We shared cabins with people.
I think I had.
My sister in law, me and one other gal were in our little cabin.
The only thing I ever saw was I had a village like a road of ants by my head every night
that just were traveling.
And that wasn't, like, in comparison to what else was there.
That wasn't a big deal.
But there was one night that my.
Good friend Kara, outside of her cabin.
Was a huge, red butt, furry spider.
It was black, and then its butt had red fur all over.
It was disgusting.
Like, when you say huge, so I'm.
Talking the size of my hand, and, like, no, its butt being around the size of my palm here.
And it was right outside her cabin door.
And we went to one of the instructors, and she was like, please don't kill it.
Please don't kill this.
It won't bother you if you don't bother it.
But my friend Carl was terrified of spiders.
And mostly.
Mostly spiders, but bugs.
And so I didn't smoosh it, but I just threw a shoe at it to shoe it away from her cabin so
that she could maybe sleep that night.
But we were encountering things like this on the daily.
But it was, again, the most incredible experience ever.
We ate a vegan diet while we were there because we ate off the farm.
We ate what was growing in the garden.
We had these Guatemalans that took care of us.
We would wake up to the smell of freshly made corn tortillas every morning.
It was really cool.
It was by far the neatest experience I've ever had in my life.
I will never forget any of it.
And I'd love to go back at some point and revisit.
Despite the scorpions and spider, I would.
Have a very hard time.
I would not be able to do it.
You'd have to drug me.
About a mile away.
I can hear a spider.
So do you have to get recertified then, in that particular yoga, all the.
Time, you have to keep up hours of training.
And there are other levels of yoga, teacher teacher training you can do.
So right now, I'm a 200 hours Eryt, which means it's 200 hours extended.
Yoga registered yoga teacher.
So it just means I have taught more than 200 hours.
So if I wanted to pursue it again, which in the future, I would love to do this, I would do
a 500 hours yoga teacher training.
And that's pretty much the top right there, really.
So it was an extremely valuable training.
We learned a lot about nutrition there, a lot about physiology and anatomy, which was
really cool.
That was very heavy in the anatomy and physiology, which was part of the reason we chose
that program.
And then I got an american college of Sports medicine training certification.
I now have, and I've done a bunch of nutrition certs, and some of them were just absolute
garbage, really.
Nutrition is a very new, I'm not surprised.
Shocker.
Nutrition is confusing.
What?
So nutrition is an extremely new science in the world of sciences, so it's ever changing as
a lot of things are in science.
But I got a couple of cruddy ones at the beginning that weren't great, but the most recent
one I got a few years ago was through precision nutrition.
So they have a level one, and then they have a master coach that you can do, and their
level one is just chock full of all the good science.
The level two is more of the psychology of being a coach.
And I needed that because I was just having this discussion with a friend yesterday.
I am a very black and white person.
I have trouble with, like you say you want these things, why aren't you doing the things
I'm telling you?
Can't understand why white people won't do it.
I must have a little bit of that.
Yeah, I'm not good at the gray area and the empathy.
And I knew as a coach, I was not strong in these areas, and I wanted to be like, my
intention was there, but the way that my brain works, I was having trouble helping my
clients connect the dots.
So I got the precision nutrition master.
Coach cert, which was lovely.
It was all online, but it was, you had to show up to class, you had live classes, you had
to work collaboratively.
Woo.
Tripped over that one.
Well, with your peers every class, I mean, you couldn't just sit there and pick your nose
or be on your phone.
You had to be engaging.
Yeah, it was excellent.
I love that.
I loved that.
And then currently, super excited about this.
I'm in my third month of something called the active life professional program.
So I'm what's called an active life ALP candidate, which just means I'm going through the
program.
It's roughly 13 months long.
Some of it is self study, but then we are expected to show up to a certain number of labs
every week where it's similar to the precision nutrition cert.
We get to engage with peers, share ideas, brainstorm together on client issues that we
might have.
And the purpose of ALP is to bridge the gap between fitness and health because neither one
of them are doing the freaking trick.
Right.
How much money is spent, billions of dollars spent yearly in the fitness industry.
And America is fatter than ever.
We are sicker than ever.
We have the information, but we don't know what to do with it because we know this.
It is mental.
It is not a lack of information.
I can't tell you if I had a dime for every client that came to me and said, I know what.
To do, but always excuses.
I hear somebody in my head, I can't remember who it was, but they used to say, you know,
that diet and exercise is the answer, but you want it in a pill.
Yes, that's what everybody wants.
Make it easy.
And unfortunately, those pills are becoming available to us now.
Yeah, well, and that's all the doctors want to do, cycle.
So doctors, unfortunately, well, they're not trained.
No.
They take one semester in nutrition, early in their education, and it's kind of a blow off
course for them.
They're very well trained in prescriptions, but not in nutrition.
So anyways, ALP active life professionals, they have active life.
Rx is their kind of like for the average bear Instagram account, you can follow excellent
information put out every day, multiple things daily.
And then they.
Yes, and then there is an active life professional account as well, and anyone can follow
it.
And it's extremely valuable information if you're not a fitness professional.
Some of it might be like a little overhead, but I'll be honest, sometimes it's over my
head.
Yeah.
And I'll be like to my mentor, Linda, oh my.
Like, am I supposed to know these words?
And she always says, don't worry, sarah, you're going to get there.
But it is the most valuable program out there for fitness professionals that I have ever
found.
It's a really large financial investment, but.
You will see the results of it.
You will get that money back instantly.
Instantly.
I joked with you guys earlier, it's a really full bodied education for a fitness
professional.
It's not just the anatomy and physiology and the programming, although those parts are my
favorite.
And that's the stuff I want to dig into.
It's the business, it's the finances.
It's marketing.
And I joked with you guys earlier that I'm like, marketing and or finances.
Don't want to talk about that.
But you got to deal with it if you're going to run a business.
It has been so incredibly valuable.
It is insane.
I just can't even express enough how much that has changed my game and that's always been.
Have you noticed a difference with your clients?
Absolutely.
Really?
And the cool thing is, despite me ignoring the marketing like it's the plague, my clients
have increased drastically since I started that program.
And it's simply word of mouth.
It's not me trying yet to get new clients.
It's the quality of the service.
And I've always considered myself an extremely high quality trainer.
I'm always looking for the best certs, not just the cheap ones.
Just shout out if you are trying to be a fitness professional, trying to be a trainer,
don't use ace.
Like, don't use the crappy $150 search.
Get something juicy.
It's going to pay off eventually.
And people need to know because a lot of people know me.
And if you've listened to any of the podcasts, I'm in Crossfit and I'm in Crossfit with
Sarah.
And I think it's interesting and it's great that you are a trainer yourself, but you're
coming to somebody else and going to different places for coaching yourself in different
areas.
And I think my hats off to you because I think a lot of people, and I've heard that with
friends of ours, like their kids may be coaches or trainers somewhere, they all were like,
oh, Crossfit, you know how we get with that.
But you're open to being taught by other people and finding the strengths in different
things.
So that's cool.
No matter how good this training is that I'm doing and previous trainings that I've done,
there's always something to learn.
Every good coach has got a coach.
You guys know this?
Oh, yeah.
I've always been coached or mentored since I started this business.
I've always been enrolled in something and I can't imagine not.
When do you reach the point in your profession where you're like, I know it all.
I don't think you ever better than.
We say it about our kids.
We had one that went to a little bit of college and the other two just didn't want to
because what we do, we know you don't need it for what we do.
You'll be behind.
We're not against college.
We're against most college.
If you don't need it, it's a waste of money.
But I probably have spent six figures on coaching.
To do what?
I don't even know how much.
I mean, it's been 25 years.
I've always had coaches.
I currently have coaches and mentors.
I currently pay other people to teach me what I ended up teaching other people.
All the books in the library, but.
Even the people that I've paid are paying somebody above them.
Absolutely.
I never want to be the smartest person in the room.
And if we are, we're not getting any training.
And I can't imagine myself not being enrolled in some sort of training to better my
profession.
And unfortunately, in Ohio and most states that is not monitored, you can call yourself any
kind of coach, any kind of trainer, and not be held accountable for any credentials.
And that drives me nuts because you can.
And then people believe them.
Yeah.
And they take what they say and think it's true because this is a professional, quote,
unquote, that I'm paying, so they trust them.
And this is how you injure people and especially with nutrition.
Like, nothing makes me crazier than a person who's giving nutrition information and they
don't have any business doing it because you are drastically affecting that person's life.
And hopefully you're not friggin messing it up.
Hopefully you are not affecting them in a negative way.
So, yes, high quality has always been what I'm seeking.
We get that in our business, too.
I fight this all the time when I'm on sales calls with people because they've all been
taken advantage of, because they'll be somebody that's just gotten into the business where
we have 25 plus.
Years, everybody's been scammed by a marketer.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
I mean, I'm not joking just about every single sales call that I have when I finally get to
have them, because I think people think, oh, you guys must have people coming right and
left.
No, it's not like that.
It's not easy.
I have to convince them, and it takes tons of touches to be able to convince them.
Hey, number one, I'm american and I can speak English and I've been in business for a long
time, so you can trust me.
But people are.
It's sad.
They get taken advantage of by people who really don't have the knowledge, certainly.
Yeah.
But we talk about it in the marketing, and it's probably the same way the websites,
especially of marketers and website design, the generic our team does this and we do that
and there's not a name or a face anywhere and people get sucked in.
And for me, I'm like, people will comment stupid shit on my business post about you're a
scammer.
You're doing like, dude, I'm on my personal profile, go look.
And you can see everything I've done and nobody else.
People that know me aren't saying that.
So I know trainers are the same way.
If you've got a trainer that doesn't have any following, you probably ought to think twice
about following.
You do a lot of good pictures though, too.
You do a lot of good posts.
And a lot of good pictures.
And of your clients allow that too, a little bit.
So that's good.
Yes, and I'm grateful because my clients are open to that.
I have a good friend, Jen.
She told me years ago, Sarah, you need to put yourself on your socials more.
You need to put pictures of yourself because people come to you because they want to look
like you.
And I 100% understand that thought process on the client's end as well as on her end.
What she's saying is, regarding marketing, I'm 100% comfortable with putting my face out.
There and putting me out there, and.
You can physically see that I'm doing what I'm preaching.
However, who gives a crap about that?
How many fitness moguls are out there shooting pictures of their butts?
And you know what I mean?
That is not how I roll.
I don't want you to come to me because you like the way I look in my leggings, okay?
I want you to come to me because I know my shit.
I know what I'm talking about.
And you're going to see that by seeing my clients, by seeing how they move, by seeing how
healthy they are, by seeing the vibrance when they're in their workouts.
That's why I want people to come to me, because they can see that I know what I'm doing
safely.
I can help you safely.
So, yeah, the marketing thing is not my favorite.
I'm pretty inconsistent with it.
But I do try to put valuable information out there because my biggest thing, too is I want,
whether you are a follower of my socials or a.
Client of mine, my goal is to.
Teach you some autonomy.
I want you to be able to do the things that I'm teaching you without me there eventually,
because life brings changes, clients are going to move.
I might move, which I have done a lot of since COVID My business has scooched around a
little bit.
The finances might not be available for them to stay with me forever.
Whatever it is, I want people to be able to do it on their own, or at least be able to
apply it.
At least if they choose to be able to apply the knowledge they get from me, without me.
That's the ultimate goal.
Always.
Yeah.
So rewinding a little bit from that little tiny room with a few dumbbells, how did it
progress from there?
So when I opened up Shakti fit, I had no idea.
And you didn't tell us how you got the name.
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
So, Shakti fit, when I was in Guatemala, that's how we got to Guatemala for that teacher
training, yoga teacher training.
We all got a spiritual name at the end, and everybody got these really sweet, gentle,
spiritual names that meant, like, peace or hope or this or that, and I stood out.
You can maybe imagine.
You guys know me well enough to know that in a room of yoga teachers, Sarah's going to
stand out a little.
Yeah, if you've done any of my yoga classes.
Same thing.
You know, I'm a little different.
And I was, like, admiring all these people.
My sister in law, hers was Shanti, which means peace.
And then they gave me mine, which was Shakti, which means power.
And I was like, that's it.
And you were bugged about, say, that's.
Such a girl's reaction.
Come on.
Damn right.
And I should have been flattered that I've spent my life with women telling me they're
intimidated by me.
I get that.
It's never my intention.
Right?
I don't know if you felt that way when you first met me.
Angie, we've known each other from afar for years and years and years.
Maybe a week and a half ago when we did 300 burpees and she got done 14 minutes ahead of
me.
Yes.
Sometimes my presence or things like that can be intimidating.
I guess I wasn't intimidated just because.
It probably happens in other gyms.
I'm not sure you are, crossfit.
Because it's a different.
Yeah.
And, Angie, you're my breed.
I think that's why, for you, it was just like, oh, okay, cool.
Yeah.
And I've had people tell me that my whole life, and I don't necessarily like it because
that is never my intention.
I'm not walking into a room trying to be, like, the alpha.
You don't want that to be the.
First thing that in my mind.
It was just like that reminder when they gave me that name.
It was just like that reminder of like, sarah's intimidating and powerful, but there's no
soft part to her.
That's the problem, I think today is that women, when they have.
Women have a perception that power is a bad thing.
Right.
And just you saying that now, I'd be like, damn.
Yes.
I'd be excited to have that sort of thing thought about me.
So I think it's great.
But I can see where I'm sure when you step in everywhere, everybody's like that.
Yeah.
Guarantee.
And some people, you're beautiful, you're strong.
You're everything that a lot of people.
Want to be and don't on the camera.
You're black on black.
So you can't.
Sarah's jacked and fit.
Hey, trust can't.
No.
So it was that moment of, oh, because I went to this thing for a bit of a.
You.
You lay at the base of a volcano for a month, and you think maybe the parts of you that you
haven't been able to convey of your personality might, like, maybe I brought that more
forward.
And so in that moment, it was just like, oh, another person telling me I'm powerful.
Like, I know that one.
But are you seeing all these other things?
So anyways, I don't want to say I was disappointed.
It was just like, well, okay, guys.
But then after I got home from Guatemala, I was opening my business a few days later in my
little room.
Yes.
Literally three days after I got home.
So I had to come up with an.
And I didn't have a name for the business yet, so I was like, I got to do that.
I got to come up with a name.
So I was like, well, I guess I will use shockti.
Evidently, that describes me well.
So I came up with shakti fit, and I loved it, and it did serve me well for a lot.
There's been lots.
Well, now I understand.
Even cooler when you.
Yeah, there's been a lot of.
One sweet old man one day came into my gym to ask questions, and he goes, now, how do you
say it?
Is it shake it fit?
And I was like, no, but that's so good.
That's actually pretty cool.
So that's how the name came about.
And then very recently changed it to 20 717 wellness.
And I was looking for a name that embodied the community, not just me, but the community of
what shock d fit.
And now 20 717 is.
And so 20 717 is a proverb in the bible that says, I figured, yeah, as iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another, and my clients feed me as much as I feed them, right, we
are bouncing that power off of one another.
We share it when they don't have it.
One day I hope to give it to them.
When I don't have it, they rub it off on me.
And although I'm mostly personal training, I.
Do have a couple duels and small groups.
Who is let in that gym matters to me.
I don't just let anybody in.
If you ever go to my website, we have coffee first.
We decide really together if it's a good fit, and it isn't always.
And not just like, me being like, no, I don't want you at my gym.
The other way around, too.
I am not everybody's cup of tea.
And that gives us the opportunity to see if we're a good fit.
And I'm very clear with that.
When I communicate with my clients in the initial consult, like, this is for us to see if
we think this is a good fit.
Not for me, not just for them.
For us to see if it's a good fit.
So that 20 717 change meant a.
Lot to me because it embodies the.
Impact I want to have on my clients, but also lets them know that how they show up matters
to me.
How you walk into that gym, even if you're just overlapping the person before you for five
minutes, it matters how you show up.
It matters how you engage and interact with the people around you.
Right.
So that means a lot to me.
So that was the brand change very recently.
Last spring, I believe.
Yeah.
Remember that?
Yeah.
Cool.
So can you tell us?
Well, okay, so she answered your question.
Did I elaborate enough?
I went from a small, tiny little baby room.
Yeah.
And then the building owners opened up the top floor to me at that point, which was this
big.
It used to be a ballroom when the building was first built in 1811.
So you're right.
Downtown.
Yes.
Got you.
Old beautiful building downtown.
And then the Williams flower, where at?
Like, down to alcove or.
Right next to alcove.
Really?
Yes.
The shop just north of the alcove.
Yep.
Right.
So then the business that had been in the very bottom floor for years, Williams Flower
shop, she bought a building even further north in downtown Mount Vernon and moved out.
And so then they offered me that bottom floor.
And I had nine yoga teachers, seven.
Trainers, myself included at that point.
And we encompassed the whole building.
Yoga classes and training, some group classes then as well.
And then we outgrew that building.
We moved just around the corner on Gambier street, also in downtown Mount Vernon, and then
Covid hit, and then we had to close our doors.
So I tell you what, though.
Are you kind of glad it happened?
It was a blessing for me, and I don't say that lightly, because I know a lot of people
suffered, and I did too, but came back so much stronger.
So Shakti fit grew so quickly, and I was like this small town of Mount Vernon.
I didn't know how they were going.
To feel about yoga.
Yeah, some people who don't really know much about yoga think it's a little, like, culty or
buddhist or it's a certain religion.
No, that's not how I ran it.
It was a physical practice, physical and.
Mental practice, but it was very well received.
And I was a teacher, so I knew a lot of people through that.
I got a lot of teacher clients or people that worked in the district, and I started growing
so quickly that I lost sight of what I wanted to do, and I was just trying to hire.
I had some good trainers and teachers, don't get me wrong, but that's the.
Business part of it that you said, yes, you don't.
I did not.
You're not.
That's not.
Your strength.
Was not my strength.
And you grew fast.
I grew very quickly physically in the building.
And then we filled it.
We filled it with clients, and I hired fast and fired slow.
You got to hire slow and fire fast.
I was doing the opposite, but I was just trying to serve the clients that were coming in,
desperately trying to serve these people.
So Covid gave me the opportunity to.
Unfortunately, financially, it was a struggle.
Of course, I had about a third of my clients that stuck with me and let me train them
outside, which it was chilly at first when Covid.
When we had to shut, we were.
Outside in March, and I did yoga over the yoga classes over Zoom.
So that was great.
I am so grateful to this day for the people who stuck with it, because they could have just
been like, no, sir, I'm not training outside in front of people.
I'm not doing yoga over Zoom.
When I had this gorgeous ballroom studio.
Of yours, so I still had to pay rent, and I could have taken.
My landlord to court, but then we would have been paying court fees.
I would have been out more money.
So I paid rent for three months and not able to use my building, and I was like, enough is
enough.
I can't do this anymore.
So I used that opportunity to just pivot and figure out what I wanted to do.
I actually went back to school to be a nurse while still serving some clients, moved my
business to my property.
At that point and built up the.
I took some really cool classes.
I got some two anatomy fizz classes done for nursing.
I was going to say, you went.
To be a nurse.
Now, seriously, I was going to be a nurse because I was like, they kept their jobs.
True.
If the government can just tell me I have to close my doors like, I'm a single income,
like, what am I going to do?
Handle that.
It was terrifying.
So money was very tight.
It was terrifying.
My mom desperately wanted me to get a nine to five or go back to teaching again.
And I was like, I can't do that.
I have tasted self employment, entrepreneurship.
I can't go back.
I love running my own show.
I love, my level of effort is matched in my success.
I loved that.
And I almost did, man.
I almost gave it up.
I was accepted into nursing school.
I had done all the little prerequisite courses.
Not little, the prerequisite courses I needed to do, which were a couple of anatomy,
physics classes and a microbiology class.
Super glad I did that because those classes just added to the value of me as a trainer.
So I had my business on my property.
I did not accept the seat in nursing school, and I just kept trying with shock defit.
Was still shock defit then.
Yeah.
Just kept pushing and got myself ten.
And a half years into a space where it's finally comfortable.
It's exactly where I want it to be as a business.
I have some five year dreams down the road, but right now it's precisely where I want it to
be.
My clients are just like the coolest people you'll ever meet.
Hardworking women, a couple of men as well.
And professionally, as far as where I am, the level of quality, I'm right where I want to
be as well.
I'm in a group of peers that I admire.
I am not the smartest person in the room at all with my active life peers, so I love that.
So, yeah.
Covid was a moment to figure out what the heck I was doing because I was flying by the seat
of.
My pants for a long time and.
Just trying to serve what clients wanted and lost my own vision there.
I kind of lost, like, I didn't stop to go, okay, Sarah, but what do you want here?
I just kept growing and hiring more people instead of trying to figure out, and that's not
what I wanted.
I didn't want to be a big old gym.
I wanted to be 20.
717 is about relationships and being intimate with clients and being available to them and
not being that trainer who says, oh, you can't make your Tuesday session.
Sorry, I'm booked out.
I can't move you.
You just have to miss that week.
I've got flexibility with my current clients.
They are my priority.
Not filling, filling, filling, filling my schedule.
So I've gotten myself to a place that I didn't know I could even be here.
So I'm really glad that I kept pushing and my mom's finally comfortable because I can pay
my bills.
Well, they're not.
I mean, and our parents are the same way as always.
Most of them have never understood what we do in being entrepreneurs.
That you pivot and you got to expect it.
It's going to happen.
And we can tell you that 25.
Years in keeps happening.
Yes, it pivots.
Like what?
Every five years, something's going to hit and we just know it and we can handle it.
We can prepare for it, and we can pivot the business and take it where it needs to go.
But there's no way we could work for somebody else now after that long.
I couldn't do it.
And if you're stubborn in your business and you're just going to keep digging your heels
and stay put, you're not going to go anywhere.
You're going to stay stagnant.
I mean, it's just like self growth.
If we just like.
I am who I am.
I'm 42 years old.
This is who I am.
Just take it or leave it.
But think of how many people don't have self growth.
And I can say for sure that I didn't have a whole lot of it before having cancer.
I mean, once that hit, boy, that was a big change.
And it made me look inward, too.
And then we were still going through all the COVID stuff, but I started digging into books,
into podcasts.
We were watching Tony Robbins, we were digging into all these kind of people, and we still
do, and it just changed us.
But I think there are so many people in the world.
Most people.
I think we are definitely not like most people.
Most people just take what they've got as what it is.
They don't open up their mind to growing and being better and keep getting better.
They're happy with the status quo.
That's not in my makeup.
We talk about, we can never remember who it was, but it was a long time ago.
Somebody told us about struggling in business and entrepreneurs, and they said, just no
matter what, never shut the doors.
Just keep trying.
And most people don't.
Who knows what happens in the future?
But that's the way we've always been.
You just keep on pushing.
Yes, absolutely.
And my sister said to me once, we were walking around a boutique together in Finley having
a conversation.
I'm from Finley, Ohio.
We're having a conversation about my profession.
And she.
Sarah, when stuff is going well, why do you always want to change it?
And it was in that moment that I was, like, I recognized how different I was from all of my
siblings, I think, in a way, and we're all our own unique person, but my way of thinking is
just very different now.
My mom was self employed when I was growing up.
She ran a daycare in our home and did craft shows.
She was a basket weaver, really.
I get the self employment bug from her, but it's also why she's terrified of me being self
employed, because she knows that it's harder, difficult.
You don't just get to show up to someone else's success story and help support it.
You are it.
I'm making the assumption.
You said that was your sister that said that.
Yeah.
And most people would say that being locked into a nine to five job, that you don't have
any freedom and you got to stay there for 40 years before you can retire is good.
Yeah.
When you hear it, you say, why do you quit when things are good?
That doesn't sound very good to me.
People are locked into nine to five with retirement and all that.
You might get two weeks vacation.
Two weeks vacation now get an extra day every year for the next 30 years.
And they think that is good.
Yes.
And I admire it.
So, she has two children, and she's one of the smart.
She's one of the brightest women I've ever met.
My sister is so incredibly intelligent and strong as an ox, mentally.
And I know in her head it is.
She's got two kiddos.
She wanted that stability, and she's got it.
And she's built a beautiful family from it.
And I have the, quote, luxury in that way.
I don't have children.
I just have to take care of myself.
And I've had a lot of support.
My mom has financially helped me out since COVID multiple times, and I know that was
pivotal.
I don't know.
Without her help, what I'd be doing.
I might have given in and done the nine to five thing, or I.
Might have gone back to teaching.
So I have a lot of blessings that have hit me here.
I've had some challenging things.
My third year into my business, I went through a dissolution that was extremely
challenging, because third year into a business, you're not really making money yet.
You're lucky to break even.
And I was breaking even, but then I was suddenly breaking even and getting a new place and
buying new furniture and having all these extra expenses I didn't have before.
So I've had some challenges that Covid other things along the way, but I've also had some
parts where God was like, here, let me give you this little care basket this time.
And I've had a lot of help for sure, to keep me going.
And I finally feel ten and a half years in, I finally feel self sufficient, finally good.
But I wouldn't give it up for anything.
It's the hardest thing I've ever done and the most rewarding thing I've ever done at the
same time.
And I wouldn't give up that roller coaster.
You guys know this.
It's like feast or famine.
You're either.
It makes you stronger, for sure.
And it's like, I don't know, my.
Sister might be right in a way.
I probably tend to take the more challenging roads sometimes, but it's because I think it
leads to the bigger reward in the end.
And that's how I treat my business as well.
I'm selling training packages, but what I'm really trying to sell you is grit and mental
fortitude if you look hot when we're done icing on the cake, right?
But what I'm trying to sell you is you're capable of bigger things than you know, bigger
things than you had in the past, bigger, better things than you even know you can do.
They're on the way.
And that's the service I'm trying to sell.
Getting you healthier, making you move better.
That stuff is awesome.
But it's the mental, it's the mindset that I'm trying to ultimately improve among humans.
And it makes a huge difference.
Huge difference.
We do that all the time.
If my mom's listening to this, if she ever listens to this, I mean, it's something I get on
her case all the time, too, because.
I even.
Have some sisters that are probably like this.
They look at the glass half empty versus half full.
And I.
I always try to change it.
I always try to say it in.
A different way when.
When they'll say something.
Changing people's perspective.
But you have to.
When it comes to training, if you don't change their perspective in exercise and stuff, if
you don't change that mentally, they're not going to be successful, they're not going to
stick with it.
If you meet with me, and I don't make you uncomfortable.
In our initial consult, I didn't push hard enough.
Because the reality is, if you're coming to me with these goals, whether it's fitness or
nutrition that we're focusing on.
Or both, my question to you is.
Are you ready to change as a person?
Because that is what we have to do.
You got where you are currently being who you are, and that's not like you're a bad person.
We have to change who you are.
No, but you do have to change who you are as a person.
You have to create this avatar of who you want to be.
And every decision you make, every day, you have to wake up and go, what would that avatar
do in this situation?
Would they call off sick from their workout, or would they show up?
Would they make the healthy dinner or would they order a pizza?
And don't get me wrong, there is room for pizza, ice cream.
I make room for it every week or two.
But you have to change who you.
Are as a person.
You just do.
If you want betterment in health, fitness, entrepreneurship, your career, I mean, you guys
know that in all the things we.
Teach it, we say it.
It's fitness, it's in profit, business, whatever your goals are, who do you have to become
to be the person that gets that goal?
Oh, yeah, because I put it out the other day, our goal for our business is we're trying to
double our revenue this year.
What we've been doing ain't going to double our revenue.
So we need to become something that some business leaders that will be able to double
revenue.
Yeah, and you got to the same thing.
Yeah.
You got to sit and name the things.
And that's what I help clients do.
Sarah.
I want x, y, or z.
Okay, great.
But we're not going to just sit and wish for, like, we have to do these things.
We have to do these tactical things each day to get there, and you cannot focus on the end
game.
You have to focus on the things you have to do every day to get to that end game, or you're
just going to make yourself crazy.
Yeah.
So, speaking of that, what's, like, your most memorable moment so far, or do you have a few
of them with clients?
With clients?
Well, specifically with clients, I would say.
I had this client, Abby.
Abby is a recovering addict.
She is the other podcast I have done.
You guys asked me if I've done other podcasts.
Abby has a podcast called Perfectly Imperfect.
Wonderful podcast.
And Abby worked so hard when she worked with me.
She recently moved so we had to end our professional relationship.
She's a little too far away now to work with me in person and has had some other personal
things come up as priorities.
And she was working out one day, and this has happened to me multiple times, but this
particular day, I will never forget.
She was working so freaking hard.
I'm standing behind her, and I could cry right now thinking about it.
I just started crying because I was watching this girl who's going through something really
hard.
As a recovering addict, every day is a battle, and some of those battles are harder than
others.
And knowing what she was going through with her daughter at the time of alcohol or all the
things, everything, mostly drugs.
Okay.
And watching her just push that day.
In her workout, and it was like you could physically see this layer coming off on her, this
weight coming off as she was beasting it on an assault bike in the moment, the moment.
I remember, oh, my God, with all the things.
And my clients hate the assault bike just like everybody else does.
But watching that, I came to tears that day, and I've had that happen in yoga classes, too.
There are yoga classes I've taught where I look around at the varying abilities, the
varying body sizes, the varying humans, and watched them each doing their own version of
the practice.
That has just brought me to tears because they don't let ego get in the way.
They show up, and they do what they can do that day, what's best for them.
And those are the moments, I think, in what I do that are the most memorable.
Those are the ones that stick with me.
And the why of why I started shock defit originally was mostly, I want to be fully
responsible for my success or my failure.
But that has morphed a little bit, just like everything else pivots as an entrepreneur,
that part hasn't changed.
But the other part to it is that fitness and focusing on my health has saved me in a
personal chunk of five to six years.
When my marriage ended, three years into my business, I went emotionally numb.
And I'm not saying to exercise away your shit because you got to deal with your stuff.
That came later.
But fitness kept my head above water in that moment, and so my why started to pivot to
that.
And now it is that, just as.
I said earlier, to show people that I'm personally in a space, personally and
professionally, that I didn't know even existed.
And I remember a moment with my therapist years ago.
It was through Covid, when we had.
To meet over Zoom.
And I remember saying to her, I used to always say, I want to be where I was, you know, x
number of years ago, I just want to be that woman again.
But I reached this point where I was like, nope, I know better is there.
I know that I can be an even better person, that life can be better professionally.
I can be better personally, I can be better.
And that is my why now.
Because I've seen that and I've seen what the COVID of the book is.
Fitness.
The innards are different, the pages are different.
The stuff, the mental transformation you're going.
To go through when you focus on fitness.
Fitness is just like the thing that.
Catapults it, but bigger things come from that.
And my why has kind of changed to that.
I see people, I do have a lot more female clients than males.
So when I say women, I do mean people in general, but women in particular.
I just see them floating and thinking that things just where they are, it just has to be
that way and they can't change it.
But you can.
There are so few things that actually cannot be manipulated.
We can manipulate almost everything we're going through.
To your point earlier, Angie, when you.
Went through cancer, you used that to your good, right?
You didn't swim in it.
We all have our thing.
We go through.
We all have our heart.
Everybody's got it.
Freaking trauma that we go through, whether you call it trauma or not, whether it's to that
extreme.
We all have the thing.
You might not have gone through it.
Yet, but you likely will.
And it is choosing to not swim in it, but choosing to better yourself through it.
And that's all I want to convey to people, that you don't have to just stay stagnant.
You don't have to just float through your life.
You don't have to be in pain.
Like, we joke about being over 40 and with every year over 40.
Over every decade over 40, yeah.
Comes physical challenges, let alone mental and emotional challenges.
But we get physical challenges every year.
But we don't have to just stay there.
We don't have to swim in it.
There are things we can do about it.
And that's why we seek out mentors, we seek out other professionals, we seek out coaches.
But isn't it fun to see that light bulb go off with people?
And I think that's what Jason likes, too, and I think that's what Jason talked about with
the crossfit and just seeing people.
It's kind of like an onion.
You peel them away.
I've seen especially, I mean, the women especially.
Holy shit, I can lift a barbell.
And it is okay.
I can slam it down.
Yes.
And that is awesome.
Yeah.
I remember when I first started working with clients and still I have to tell them, you can
drop that deadlift.
You don't have to set it down nicely.
Like, we have bumper plates in a rubber floor.
Drop it.
And I have an 84 year old woman that I'm working with now.
That is.
You've had her.
You just posted about her, didn't you?
I just got her permission posting about her.
And she is the biggest inspiration to my existing clients.
And I hope other people out there, because Mary Jo hasn't done anything like this before.
She's done all the name a freaking diet.
She's probably done it.
She's done the trends, but she's not really worked on her fitness.
And her daughter works with me, who is also obesity.
Her daughter, Mary Martha works with me.
She's 64 and she is just such a boss in that weight room.
And I love to see it.
And that was amazing to me, too, because she's 64 and she decided to do this thing.
And now I have her 84 year old mom in there.
And again, Mary Jo.
Yeah.
Like, mary Joe's not done stuff like this before.
And she walked in the first day and had these dangly layered necklaces on.
I mean, she dresses to the nines to train, but she still works so hard and she's adorable
and she's so strong.
I underestimate how much she can lift all the time.
And I'm getting better at it now that I get to know her more.
She's a few months into training with me now.
And that's so important.
That's the biggest thing is as you get older, you lose that.
And I wasn't even very old when I was in the hospital for those eleven days.
And that's what I told him when I got out.
I'm like, oh, my God, I'm not even old.
I don't consider myself old.
And I lost a ton of muscle.
And these older people that were either coming in after me or just older people that I see
in general.
They have no muscle whatsoever.
And I'm like, oh, my God, this is horrifying.
I said it.
When I turn.
You talk about that magic 40 number.
When I turned 40, I blew my back out.
I suffered for two years.
I thought it was three, it was.
Two that I just didn't walk because it hurt.
I laid down in a ball for two years trying to figure it out.
But I always told her, that's been 15 years ago.
My legs still ain't the same because I didn't do anything.
I got nerve damage and all that stuff.
But I always told her, I'm like, I now understand how an old person gets injured and sits
down and never gets back up.
Absolutely.
Because I had to work to get back up and my legs are still weak.
And hip surgeries that happen in people's seventy s and eighty s are like a death sentence.
If they don't decide to get up and do that tough physical therapy, their life is going to
end within a few years.
And with like Mary Jo had, she had anything.
Many issues at.
She's a, she's a breast cancer survivor.
Awesome.
She hasn't had any other huge things happen to her body, but her muscle mass is very low.
And really from thirty s on, no matter how healthy you are, we all experience sarcopenia,
loss of muscle mass, but we can fight it.
It's why we have to be careful with how much protein we eat because protein builds muscles.
I wish that cupcakes built muscle but.
They don't when you're really annoying.
Yeah, I wish that like peanut butter built muscle but it doesn't.
But most people think that protein in it.
Side note, peanut butter, hate that.
Peanut butter is not a protein and it's a fat people.
Thank you.
So her coming in there and bothering with this, right?
She's 84.
She could 100% be like, I'm 84.
I'm going to eat and do whatever I want.
Because where do we hear that anybody's parents out there?
Anybody?
But instead she was like, I'm watching my daughter do this thing.
And her daughter encouraged her to come in because when she first came in, she was blunt.
She said, you know, I'm here because Mary Martha wants me to be.
But now she walks in with standing up a little taller, mentally and physically standing up
a little taller.
And she leaves standing up an inch taller.
I swear, every time.
How long has she been coming?
Just a few months now.
And we're actually this week taking her body composition again to see how much lean mass,
how much muscle mass we've put on her, which I'm so excited to do because I know that
woman.
It's incredible.
At 84, it doesn't friggin matter how old you are.
At 84, her lifts have gotten so much heavier.
What kind of stuff do you do with her and what did she start with?
Mary Jo is not that limited.
She has some overhead limitations, her range of motion, overhead with one arm, which.
Is probably most people.
Really?
Yes, with one arm in particular.
I cannot remember in the moment if it's her right or left.
I believe it's her left arm.
She has a little bit of mobility issue there, but otherwise, she moves pretty well, so
she's not very limited.
She does Barbell work wise.
She does Barbell chest presses and sumo deadlifts, and she loves her sumo deadlifts.
Her and her daughter.
I swear it's genetic for them.
They'd love deadlifting.
She does dumbbell deadlifts.
We do a lot of dumbbell work, and the reason we do Barbell work, because it's empowering to
work a barbell, especially, I think, as a woman.
Oh, yeah.
To know what you're doing with a barbell is just frigging cool.
We do a lot of dumbbell work, though, because she needs unilateral work.
She has balance.
Yes.
As we all do.
She has a side that's much weaker, and so we need to make sure we're using dumbbells so
each side is working equally.
And her strong arm can't help her pull that barbell all the time.
So we do a lot more dumbbell work than we do with the barbells.
But we get that in there because I want her to experience it.
I take videos, and I send them.
You do?
To her.
And she loves to show her sons because they're impressed, and they should be.
They are impressed that their mom is in there moving her bells and barbells.
And kettlebells.
And we modify what we need to modify.
Like, when she does squats, she sits to a bench still every time.
But holy smokes, she went from having to rock, have her hands on the bench to that woman
can hold a 26 pound Kettlebell and just stand up and down off a bench for multiple reps, no
problem.
Really.
I mean, in a matter of just a few months and just a couple of days a week, and there are
some weeks where she only makes it in one day a week, so she's not given up a lot.
She gives me 2 hours a week.
Maximum, and that's it.
And she has seen massive changes, and the rest of her life is now going to be completely
different.
What does she say?
I mean, has she noticed herself?
I'm not sure.
I think she has.
And she will know when she sees the hard data this Friday when I take her body composition,
I know it's going to help, and I can't wait to take it.
I made her wait a little longer because I wanted consistent attendance in there.
I think if you asked her today, she would still kind of say she's kind of there because her
kids want her to be there.
But I see it in her eyes.
I see when she's doing a lift, and you can see it in her videos, too.
Her eyes literally sparkle when she's doing something that she couldn't do the week before
or the month before.
She probably has never done in her entire life.
And I know she doesn't want to admit it yet, but she's curious and she asks questions,
really.
And she asks about nutrition.
See, this is the thing.
She's 84.
It's one of the biggest pet peeves of mine is when I hear somebody say, well, I'm getting
old.
I shouldn't be doing that, or you shouldn't do this because you're too old.
And I know, you know, all the people I'm talking about that say it, and it drives me
absolutely insane.
You are too old.
They are too old.
If you're admitting it, you're just going to be.
I hope to God that is never my excuse for ever staying in shape and doing something.
Yeah, you're right.
If you tell yourself that, then, yeah, you're going to stay right there.
You're going to just get worse.
But you just don't have a whole mental thing again.
You just don't have to.
And I love that Mary Jo has given this.
She's given it a solid have been.
I was nervous when she first started.
It's so rewarding.
No matter what age my clients are, every single client I work with, there's something that
we've done together that has been such a big reward for them and for myself.
But with Mary Jo, it's just something special.
Working with an 84 year old who has never lifted a weight in her life is unbelievable.
I've told people that.
I mean, you know, when you lift weights, if you stop, it's hard to get back going.
But there's that point, depending on how hard and heavy and how often you go, it could be a
couple of weeks, could be a couple of months.
But then there's that time you're like, shit, I can feel something.
You can see.
People start to say, I can see some definition.
Usually you start to feel there's some tonedness coming back.
And that's when, okay, now I'm going to keep going.
And no matter if they've ever done it or not, there's a point.
If you can get them to that point before they quit, you can look at them and say, you feel
better?
I can tell.
Yes.
And that's the thing with Mary Jo is I just wanted her to get to that second, and I didn't
take her body composition right off the get go, because that can be terrifying.
It can be a hard thing to very.
I have to pinch you.
So I have to pinch their skin on their arm, above their hip bone, and on their thigh.
So it's like in your personal space.
So I didn't hit her with it right away.
I waited till she was with me for, I think, a month or a.
Month and a half.
But I cannot wait to show her that, because, exactly to your point, she might just be doing
it partially to satisfy her kids and partially because I do think she finds some
satisfaction.
Maybe not when she walks in the door, but when she walks out the door, her daughter always
jokes with me and says, yeah, because she's glad it's done.
I'm like, okay, partially because it's checked off the list for that day and that week.
Well, it can be hard.
All of mean.
It is hard.
If it's not hard, you're not growing.
We had our kids when we used to take them to crossfit kids, and they didn't want to go.
When they know, middle school, high school, they hated it.
They always complained, and they dragged their feet.
They didn't like it.
And on the drive there, they're grouchy and grumpy, and on the drive back, they are like.
And we always tried.
You see how you feel.
Just notice how you feel now.
It's just the endorphins and everything going.
But it's hard to get people to realize that.
I mean, if we think literally, like, sit and think to yourself, what would I be doing if I
only did what I wanted to do in the moment every day?
Oh, my gosh.
I'd be sitting around freaking, eating cake and, like, chicken wings all day long.
If it didn't hurt us in the end.
Yes, I do happen to love movement.
I've always been an athlete.
I do like it.
But do I want to show up to every workout I show up to?
No, absolutely not.
But I'm always in a better mood when I leave.
And to your point earlier, I get asked that question frequently.
You have a gym on your property.
Why do you pay to go to a crossfit gym?
There are a couple of reasons.
One, again, I want to be coached.
I want to be coached.
But mostly, crossfit is my sport.
It's my social hour.
It's the thing I can still compete in as a 42 year old woman.
And I love that.
And there's like minded people.
Yes, and there are like minded.
I'm blessed to be able to work with those kind of people throughout the day and then to
also have them in what again, I call my social hour.
That's my happy hour.
I don't go to the bar and drink.
I go to crossfit or I meet with a friend and do a bodybuilding workout.
That is my social is.
Or we ruck.
Or we ruck in the mean.
And also I work in my gym for seven to 8 hours a day with clients.
I don't want to go have my meal and then go back.
It's like going back to your office for your social hour.
And I have a beautiful gym and I love it and take pride in it.
It's gorgeous.
It's very comfortable.
It's beautiful.
But it is still my career, so I got to get the heck out of there sometimes.
But yes, I want to be coached.
And Jason provides that for me mentally and physically.
And I think he loves that.
I mean, I think there's a lot of trainers out there that would be offended that other
people that are training other people come to their gym.
He welcomes it.
I know, and I've loved that.
I've been in CrossFit gyms where my.
Presence was, I don't want to say.
Unwelcome, but they were intimidated.
They were intimidated.
There were moments when people would ask me questions.
Yes.
And I would be answering because if you ask me a question about nutrition or a lift, I'm
not going to go, let me go get the boss.
I'm going to freaking answer it no matter where I am.
And I've had that happen at previous Crossfit gyms where it was like they have a side eye
on me at all times.
I'm like, I am not here for your clients, okay.
Like I pay you for this service.
I want to be coached.
I want to be in this group of people throwing heavy crap around.
But you're right, Jason has never once felt that way or I've never felt that energy from
him where he's row.
I don't think he looks at people.
That other trainers that way at all.
No.
And we will collaborate in the future, I'm sure of it.
That speaks high or low of the know that they are there to help people.
It's not just their business.
Whatever it takes to help people.
Right.
And we know the other places that I can probably name where it was, but they're not as
confident in what they do.
And it's more of a business than, like you said, it's your hobby.
Yes.
And I'm sure you guys find this too in the fitness realm.
It is very difficult to find other fitness people who are willing to collaborate or join
forces because it's exactly that.
You're our competition.
CrossFit's really bad about it in June in this county.
I think it's everywhere.
And the saying, I say it all the time, know, especially small businesses that even
CrossFit, you're fighting planet fitness, but you can't compete with guys.
But when the CrossFit gyms, I always say it's like the know, downtown Newark, there's a few
restaurants, they're getting better, but a lot of times they've always competed against
each other.
Don't go down.
Know they're gossiping when it would be better for them.
Know, as a marketing compete together is what I always say.
Bring everybody in and try.
The more people you get downtown, the more people eat.
The same thing with CrossFit, the more people you get to try, whether you guys, I mean,
there's only three in this area.
They should be doing things together.
Yes.
And then let people together.
Yeah, nobody choose all three.
You're going to choose one or the other.
But the more you bring into it, the more you just got a bigger bucket.
Yes.
It would build up this area in that so much because they are all three different and they
all have their tribe or their vibe, their local vibe.
That's one thing that we wish happened, we hope happens someday.
Do you find it in your type of business, like when you meet other trainers, are they
intimidated by you or are they welcoming for you?
The only ones that I've come across in my ten and a half years of business, I've hired
them.
So they've worked for me.
But, like, for example, I had one trainer that when she started with me, I actually used to
teach her in high school.
It was like the coolest relationship.
I knew her from 14 on, taught.
Her in high school.
She got her exercise science degree, got her ACSM cert.
Worked for me for a little bit and I 100% knew and we talked about it.
She would be opening a gym and wouldn't be working for me forever.
And I did not have, what are they called?
Non compete contracts.
I never had my employees or my subcontractors have to sign something like that.
And I will admit, partially because it just wasn't on.
Like, I wasn't aware.
But when I realized I needed to be aware of it and had some I don't want to call them
issues, but just, like, some weird situations due to that, I still didn't want it.
I didn't want any part of it.
And this girl's name was Maddie.
And maddie actually opened a gym right next to mine, literally across the hall in the same
building.
And we seriously, because we worked together, we agreed.
We sat and had the conversation, like, here is the line, here is your service, here is
mine.
Because, as you said, I am under no, I do not think I can.
Serve every person who needs help with nutrition and fitness.
I don't have that kind of time.
And I know that I can serve a certain kind of person.
I know that Jason can serve a certain kind of person.
I knew that Maddie had her niche, and so we opened our businesses intentionally right next
to each other on Gambier.
Street in Mount Vernon.
And to your point, it was like, oh, sweet.
Like, I can do Sarah's yoga class, and then I can go over here and do this.
She had a lot of group classes, this group class at Maddie's, and we shared clients we
never once felt in competition.
And just like you, like, we've talked about that, about Newark, they're getting more and
more good restaurants, and instead of it being like, oh, there's competition.
It's making me drive to Newark on a night I want to go out to eat versus driving all the
way to Columbus, because I have all these options in Newark.
So I'm in Newark so much more often because of that.
And the industry that I always talk that does it the best is the breweries, because they
all carry each other's stuff.
They never carry the big brands, and they promote each other, and it's become a thing.
I mean, 20 years ago, you wouldn't have dreamed about making beer because Budweiser makes
it.
All right?
And they said you can't compete with them.
Well, they do.
And I think it's a lot because they compete together.
They have a passport that you can go to.
They tell you which one to go to next because they know people.
They can't serve everybody, right?
And not every people with that.
They travel.
But I think that's that whole thing.
They're competing together.
Yeah.
It's that abundance mindset versus the scarcity mindset.
There are so many people who need.
Help in fitness and nutrition.
I mean, so many of us need help with that.
And like I said, that's why I love Jason.
I've never once walked into that gym or him.
And I have business talks all the time.
Never once have I felt like he was, like, feeling me out to see what I'm going to do, to
manipulate what he's going to do.
And I'm sure he doesn't feel that way about you.
Not at all.
And I've definitely felt that in the past, so I love that.
And it is rare to find in the fitness industry to find people who want to collaborate and
support one another.
It is rare, but they're out there.
It is sad.
And even the places I've had a negative experience in that category where they thought I
was competition, so kind of pushed me away a little bit.
There have been moments where I've had clients that can't afford my services anymore or
maybe I can't serve the time they need that I have referred them to those places because
I'm like, this is a little lower price point for you.
It's a group setting, so it's a lot different.
If you're not intimidated by a group setting, go here.
And I remember one gal that I told to go, I'm not naming names here, but I told to go to a
crossfit gym that I used to go to.
That was like a real issue with the competitive thing, which was a shame because we were
just about to collaborate, and then all of a sudden it was like, really?
No.
So she told me that the owner, when she said, yeah, like, sarah referred me here and she
said, he just had this look on his face, like, really?
Yeah.
And I've referred multiple clients there.
Way back when I first started, I referred a guy that I used to train there because I
couldn't do the times he needed anymore.
He was really hit or miss with his travel work schedule.
So, like, being able to say, sarah, I'm going to see you every Monday, Wednesday, Friday
was tough.
Yeah.
He would need to have something more open, like a group class schedule.
So I referred him to that gym.
I had a couple I used to train.
The wife lost their job.
The husband, his revenue was low there in the mortgage industry.
They needed something, Pat, a lower price point.
I referred them to a crossfit gym.
I don't care what other people do.
I'm going to live to my standard.
If people don't feel that way toward me and my business and collaborating and that kind of
thing, whatever.
I don't care if I think they have a good service that's going to serve someone, I'm going
to refer them.
I do that.
I do the same thing because I'm starting to get a little bit pickier on the people not
picky more.
So I need to make sure that.
A hard end time.
So we're going to just our services.
And what we have to offer.
They're going to use it and they're.
Going to use it.
Right.
And if they're not going to do it, there's no point in being on the phone conversation and
taking both.
What's your favorite book?
So it's really just.
It becomes more work for me because my favorite podcast or YouTube or whatever that you
like because I know one of them.
I think I know one of them.
I love podcasts.
My absolute favorite podcast is the lab.
Yes, yes.
The Huberman lab.
Have you listened to Breca yet?
Gary Breca?
Yes.
I'm not actually an enormous Breca fan.
I like his info, but he's a little, I don't want to say he uses scare tactics, but he's a
little bit, like urgent about it.
Salesy.
Yeah, a little salesy.
A little bit like just below scare tactic.
And it's just a little too extreme for me.
He does get put out some good info, though.
But he is a little salesy.
I like Huberman, too.
Huberman is.
Sometimes.
I can't know, it goes above my head.
But yes, he's very professorial.
Yes.
Love the Huberman lab.
I also like chasing excellence is one I listen to every week as well.
It's Ben Bergeron.
Oh, yeah.
He was an elite crossfit athlete coach.
He has a box in New England, so he's wonderful.
Also the consistency project, I was trying to think my last one.
So Ec Sinkowski is nutritionist and she does the consistency project.
That one's really good.
Very nutrition based.
So those are my top three.
Those are the ones I hit all the time.
But I also love the Arnold podcast, the Pump Club.
It's really short.
You get like six to eight minute little snippets.
Excellent.
I'll have to check into that one.
Yes.
I will say literally the best episode I've ever listened to was the Huberman Cameron Haynes
collaboration.
And it was on Cameron Haynes podcast.
He had Huberman on there.
And I like a big, juicy, like two to three hour podcast.
Yeah.
Hopefully you guys do too.
We do long.
That's not as long as you think.
So that was one of the best podcasts I've listened to.
That might be personal to me, though.
Because Huberman opened up like I've never.
Heard him open up before.
He wasn't all science.
You got to learn a little bit about his life.
You'll have to send me this one.
Oh, it's so good.
And him and Cameron's dialogue was just spot on.
It was just spot on.
It was.
So books.
Okay, that's a big question.
So I have a client, Kate, that nudges me to read fiction more than I do because I am always
reading something nonfiction.
We've talked about this before.
Most of the books I have in my library actually haven't read yet because I buy them up, and
I am always reading, but I don't give myself enough time in the day to read.
One of my favorite books, though, is Arnold's new book.
Oh, my gosh.
And I can't remember what it's called.
The seven something or other, but it's Arnold Schwarzenegger's newer book.
It's excellent.
Just talks about the things he's learned in life that have.
Oh, I love these kind of books.
Yeah.
That have got him where he is.
Yes.
And another one that I'm not finished with yet, but it's a fantastic nutrition book is Adam
Bornstein's you can't screw this.
So he.
It's very much how I coach my nutrition clients.
Not trendy, not any bull crap, no brands, just, this is how you find balance in your
nutrition.
And he talks a lot about how I coach as well, about how it's mostly a mind game.
It is mostly a mind game when it comes to nutrition.
So those are my favorite books.
I'm also reading fiction wise, although it is based on a true story, boys in the boat,
which I'm loving right now.
There's a movie out, too, but you got to read the book before the movie because the book is
always better.
Yeah.
So I think those are my favorite podcasts and books at the moment.
Awesome.
So with finishing, first off, tell people how they can get a hold of you, and if there's
any ending advice or anything you want to tell people that are listening or watching this.
Sure.
So to find me, I have a website, 20 717 wellness, that is also the name of my Instagram
account.
I am on Facebook with the business, but I don't utilize Facebook very often.
Instagram is the platform that I put all the good info out on.
There is a blog on my website.
There's some good stuff on there, but I will tell you, I do not add things frequently, but
there are some really great base pieces of information when it comes to fitness, nutrition,
and recipes and things like that.
That is really good if it makes it to the blog.
It's stuff I want you to know.
Nice.
But also on my Instagram account, there's some really great basic nutrition stuff.
How much protein you should be eating on my highlights, on my Instagram account, how many
carbs you should be eating, how many fats.
And it helps you calculate according to you because there is no answer across the board for
everybody.
There's no number of calories we should all be eating.
There's no specific number of proteins, carbs and fats that you, pat and I should all be
doing.
It's going to be different for all of us.
Right?
So there's some really good tactical information there.
So that's where you can find me.
My gym is in Utica.
I don't have an enormous amount of openings for nutrition coaching or fitness right now,
but I do have a remote training opening, one training face to face opening, and one
nutrition coaching opening currently.
And then the last piece of advice that I would give.
Is simply to.
Let yourself have better.
Let yourself have better and stop staying stagnant.
Don't stay stagnant.
In life, there is always room to grow.
There's always room to room to learn.
Let yourself have better.
Seek it out, whatever that is for you.
Just keep seeking, keep reading, keep searching.
Don't stay stagnant.
Yep, that's good.
Awesome.
That's good.
So I think that is it.
So thanks again, Sarah.
Thank you guys for joining us.
Thanks for putting up with our technical difficulties.
I'll get with professionals next time.
You make a good cameraman.
Hey, that's probably my best angle.
All right, well, see you later, guys.
Bye.
That looks good.