I am the owner (and founder) of Custom Strength, a personal training studio in Ottawa, Canada. Our team of seven (awesome) trainers provide semi-private personal training to help our 180+ regular clients enjoy better living through improved strength and movement.
Providing a great training option in a fun and welcoming environment was my goal when I started Custom Strength in 2010. The goal hasn’t strayed much since then. Something we do resonates as our clients tend to stick around a lot longer (average is 2.3 years) than is typical (less than 9 months) in this industry.
One of the things that makes Custom Strength a strong business, is that our trainers also tend to stick around for a long time. It turns out keeping (great) employees is much less effort than finding and training new ones. With a fringe benefit that happy employees provide great service to our clients.
I didn’t become a personal trainer (and start Custom Strength) until I was in my late thirties. I started my professional career as an engineer at Lockheed Martin where I learned that a) I wasn’t into military stuff, but b) I sure learned a lot in that environment, and c) as I moved into management, that I loved all things business, including the numbers and the red tape and the human resources stuff.
Eventually an outside opportunity knocked, and I jumped ship and became a management consultant, first for a small firm, and eventually set out on my own. Apparently I wasn’t challenged enough in this role, so I decided to start a board game business with a friend (while still working as a consultant). That was an experience! We did pretty well considering we didn’t really know what we were doing. We managed to: Sign on investors; launch our game (a Trivial Pursuit style board game for studying for the SAT) at Toy Fair in NYC; become finalists in the 2008 International Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards; secure the For Dummies branding for our game; set up overseas manufacturing, a distributor, and a fulfillment house, and landed our game in dozens of stores. We also came *this* close to finalizing a deal to put 5000 games in Borders stores across the US when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and decimated our entire supply chain. We hung on for a bit after that, but the writing was on the wall.
I continued working as a management consulting, but my heart wasn’t into it, so I started looking elsewhere. One day, I realized I was reading a strength and conditioning textbook instead of working (which meant not getting paid, since it was a pay for performance type of consulting). The “maybe this is a sign of what I should be doing” was probably the most important ‘A-ha’ of my life. I spent the next year learning, getting personal training certifications, and figuring out how I was going to make this work. Fast-forward to 2024 and it seems I made it work.
Now that Custom Strength is all grown up and thriving without much input from me, I’m keenly moving my attention toward coaching small business owners who could use a little boost to get them past a hump or help them sort out some of the numbers stuff. And I’m willing to do so in a manner where I take the risk if my coaching doesn’t help.
Here’s my thought process: I think most small business owners could use some guidance with their business, but also can’t afford coaching help, on account of they’re already barely paying themselves, despite working long hours. Plus, if I’m actually a good business coach, then the coaching I provide should help. So instead of just telling you that I’m a good coach, I’m willing to prove it by not getting paid unless it turns out I actually am a good business coach for you. If you’re a small business owner who is intrigued by this, drop me a note via the form below and let’s see if this is a mutually good fit. Note I only have so many hours in a day, and I don’t want to spend it all working, so I will limit how many people I take on.
Questions? Comments? Don't be shy!
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