IAM699- Consultant Owns and Operates Over a Dozen of Fitness Facilities

Dr. August Leming is an internationally recognized speaker, consultant, author, and coach. As a consultant, Dr. Leming has worked with the Qatar Gas company in Doha, Qatar, Guidehouse consulting in London, England, and City Fitness limited in Wellington, New Zealand. Nationally, Dr. Leming currently consults with Navigant Consulting, Independence Blue Cross, and a host of Universities including the University of Washington and the University of Virginia. As a business owner, Dr. Leming is the Founder and President for Ivy League Health and Fitness for over 20 years. As such, August has owned and operated over a dozen of fitness facilities throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As perhaps the only fitness professional in the world who currently holds a Ph D in counseling Psychology, has successfully lost 160 lbs on his own fitness journey and has personally delivered well over 20,000 hours of individual coaching. August has many meaningful stories to share.

• CEO Hack: Meditation
• CEO Nugget: Breath
• CEO Defined: Most profoundly human person in an organisation

Website: http://augustleming.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/augustleming
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrAugustLeming
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/augustleming/

Audible: Psychology of Coaching: Fitness Professionals Guide to Behavior Modification

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:30.10] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have doctor August Lemming of august lemming dot com. Doctor August, awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:41.10] – Dr. August Leming

Thank you very much, my friend. There was a little bit of a delay there. Thank you very much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

[00:00:46.00] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Doctor August so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Doctor August is an internationally recognized speaker, consultant, author, and coach. As a consultant, doctor Lemming has worked with Qatar Gas Company in Doha, Qatar, Guide House Consulting in London, England, and City Fitness Limited in Wellington, New Zealand. Nationally, doctor Zealand currently consults with Navigate Consulting, Independence Blue Cross, and a host of universities across the University of Washington and the University of Virginia.

As a business owner, doctor Lemon has been the founder and president of Ivy League Health and Fitness for over twenty years. As such, August has owned and operated over a dozen fitness facilities throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As perhaps the only fitness professional in the world, he currently holds a PhD in counseling psychology and has successfully lost a hundred and sixty pounds on his own fitness journey. He has personally delivered over well over twenty thousand hours of individual coaching. Doctor August also has many meaningful stories to share, and definitely, super excited to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:02:00.40] – Dr. August Leming

I am ready to go.

[00:02:01.79] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Let's do it. So I know you have a lot of stories, but I hope you know the story that I'm going to ask you. I wanna know what led you to get started with your business. Can you tell us your CEO story?

[00:02:11.19] – Dr. August Leming

Oh, sure. Absolutely. You know, in my earliest memory, I seem to have entered the world of business through at least the side door. Maybe the back door, but I don't wanna compare my journey to anyone else's. But I know that it hasn't been through the front door. Mhmm. From a very early time in my childhood, the emotional experience I recognized most in my life was fear. I just felt like I was somehow ill-prepared, to be human. And so my methodology of handling that was through a very myopic view of perfectionism. So, like, academics and being perfect and being the perfect boy were really the things that kinda drove me. And I was capable of maintaining that illusion until life got really complicated.

I was lucky enough to get into Columbia University as an undergraduate student even though my parents didn't graduate from high school. So it was it was really outside of my lineage, and it was really outside of my space. But, you know, intellectually, my ram was high enough for me to be there. But socially and economically, it was just a completely different world. Right? So alcohol was another, you know, a tool that I had used to make peace with my world from a very young age. Started around twelve years old drinking, but always had was always able to manage that and create the illusion of having my my stuff together.

And when I graduated from Columbia, not knowing what to do with that degree, another one of my, you know, compulsive stopped eating, which was something I had done before in my life when I was unhappy with how I looked or what I thought people thought about me. And so because of that, I just really did a lot of damage to my metabolism. And then so slowly as a result of the drinking and just the general stress of being sort of, you know, misdirected, undirected, or confused. I graduated from Columbia. I worked in nightclubs for a long time as a security guard, and that really allowed me to drink the way that I wanted to.

And when I woke up at twenty-four years old in a punk rock club in Boston, Massachusetts, I was three hundred and sixty pounds. And had an Ivy League degree, and it didn't seem to be doing much for me in terms of what I was doing. So I came back home and took all of that obsessive energy, which a lot of people would think or would label as discipline, and it wasn't. It was an obsession, and it's a very different energy. One is far more rewarding and benevolent than the other. Obsession is not a very kind energy. It'll get a lot done, but it isn't very kind. So I was able to I didn't drink for a few years, and I was able to I was able to, really, really take all that obsessive alcoholic energy and drive it towards, training.

And so I did use the RAM I was blessed with and, you know, looked into the truth about how is it that you get a human body that wants to weigh a certain weight to weigh less. And it's not easy, and it's it's painful. And I did it, though, for three years obsessively and wound up losing a hundred and sixty pounds. And so now I had the story of losing a hundred and sixty pounds and this degree in psychology from Columbia. And I was able to sort of marry the two, And I started my fitness journey as an entrepreneur twenty-three years ago. And it took off because I could speak as I do, and I had this story. And the money came in, but, unfortunately, the drinking started again when the money came in because I just didn't know how not to do that because I thought it was what I always wanted.

I was finally gonna be seen as someone who was successful. I was managing, you know, thirty people at the time, which I wasn't really skillful enough to do because my only management tool was to just show people how to do it, which is not a great way of doing it. You know, the ability to demonstrate is necessary, but it's nowhere near sufficient to be a leader. And so all I wound up doing was making people feel less than because I was, you know, a high performer, didn't know how or why I was. I kept showing it to people, wanting them to approve of me. And after the first time I showed it, they got that message, and now they just thought I was arrogant. So I didn't do a really good job of of bringing out the best in other people.

And then I drank and started drinking again, and so the whole thing collapsed very quickly. Within about a year of having built this business, I went to recovery and went back to graduate school because I knew that I could be safe there. That's what I did well. Seven years later, I came out with a Ph.D., and now I was sober now for by that time, you know, eight years of sobriety with the PhD, with the fitness history. Now I had a product that had some real value. Now I knew quite a bit about, you know, what it is that drives human beings to act in hurtful ways towards themselves and others. What is it that gets in the way of us experiencing, not achieving? Because it's not something that's out there.

It's something that's here right now experiencing our true potential. And if you can create an environment for people to do that, they tend to become very loyal to you as a brand. You know? That's a remarkable experience. And so I've helped my employees do that, of course, as an owner of a business, and that's what I help my clients do when I consult with companies as I come in and I introduce the possibility that there can be a driver for performance that's not a sense of lack or a need to be somewhere or something else that it's a sense of loving kindness and acceptance of who we are that frees us up to do a tremendous amount of work at a higher level of accuracy and with the proceed with the perception of less effort.

Like, it's a win. The reason we don't do it is people are terrified of letting go of fear because if they do, they're they're they're they're a new fear that's piled on is the fear that they'll somehow lose their edge is what people will say. You know? And I often say you will lose your edge, but you won't lose your power. And there's a difference between having an edge and having power. So, you know, my journey into becoming a CEO has been through a litany of beautiful mistakes, you know, a litany of being a very high-speed person going in the wrong direction. And the beauty of that is I went in the wrong direction and hit the wall, which is a blessing because then I recognized it was the wrong direction. The really sad thing in the human experience is when people are headed in the wrong direction, they're doing it slowly. And so they just never know.

Right? So the beauty of my story was that I went in the wrong direction, but I did it quickly, and I hit the wall. I lived through it, which is a blessing in and of itself. And I had the support of so many different mentors along the way. And my mentors would so would would sort of evolve as I did. You know, my first mentor was just someone who had a lot of money because I thought that's what I wanted. You know? Then my mentor was sober for twenty years because that's what I wanted. And so I've been blessed to have the help of men and women, you know, across the journey, that certainly makes it all possible.

[00:08:41.39] – Gresham Harkless

August, I truly appreciate you for telling that storytelling your story. Do you feel like your awareness, of that is what I would call, like, your secret sauce? The thing you feel kinda sets you apart. Is it the ability to see, recognize, and help people to execute that?

[00:08:56.50] – Dr. August Leming

Yeah. I think the secret sauce for me is a combination of a multitude of factors, the majority of which have been completely outside of my purview. Right? I don't deserve any credit for them, but they are a part of who I am. So it's one of the things that I teach people to do is to recognize what is what is beautiful about you. And it doesn't mean that it's more beautiful than anyone else, and it doesn't mean that there's less beauty out there available. It's just an honest observation about what's special about you. Right? And so the special sauce for me is a very complicated history of a very bright person being misdirected in many different ways and gaining so much wisdom from all of those experiences that I can now bring to the table without having a disregard for the value of the confusion.

So when I enter a business or a person's life, I don't try to dissolve that. That's not my right. That's not what we want. It's to help people become aware of it. Because it's becoming aware of the mud that is what allows the flower to bloom. You just have to become aware of it because awareness as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, is sort of like sunlight and rain. You bring awareness to mud and the flower blooms. But to bring awareness to the mud, you have to have a real kind of strength because it's dis it's disheartening. It hurts. You know? And we live in a world that doesn't respect hurt. And as a result of not respecting hurt, we cause more of it than is necessary. Do you know what I mean? Like, look at our penal system. It's deeply flawed. It doesn't work.

I worked in a prison for a couple of years. You know? So I mean, I speak from personal experience. I mean, it doesn't work. But because we don't know how to address the sort of disconcerting, discomforting elements of our experience as humans, we try to deny them. It makes them more powerful. So that is my special sauce. Yes. This idea of awareness, understanding, and compassion are the most powerful drivers in the human experience. And I spend a good amount of my time consulting with high-performance athletes as well. I'm a performance psychologist for athletic teams. And to see people's output improve almost immediately the second they begin to regard their own fear with a sense of friendliness, that's immediate, especially with rowers because you can see their output on the air. You can see their wattage and how it's affected by them becoming or versus and just watch the output go up the second they smile. It's a beautiful experience.

[00:11:17.10] – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:25.79] – Dr. August Leming

Yeah. I try not to rely on it too heavily because it's it's been sort of oversold over the last few years, but I gotta be honest with you, brother, that meditation is from my experience an absolutely essential tool if you're ever gonna create the capacity to become aware of what is and also to develop the sensitivity to know when you have fallen back into unconscious action. Because it feels different and powerful.

[00:11:54.10] – Gresham Harkless
So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, something you might tell a client, or if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:12:06.10] – Dr. August Leming

Very simply put, is breathing. Breathe.

[00:12:11.20] – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're open to having different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, doctor August, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:12:21.29] – Dr. August Leming

Being a CEO and from where I sit at this point in my career, it means to be the most profoundly human person in an organization.

[00:12:31.29] – Gresham Harkless

Appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all of the awesome things you're working on.

[00:12:44.79] – Dr. August Leming

I appreciate that, and that's only something I've started to do now. I started to do some social media stuff and stuff like that, which I'll offer before I leave you. But, I get I think I think, you know, a commitment to cultivating, you know, what I call the four streams off of compassion-based high performance, and I have a course online on, Udemy that is the four, or Udemy. I'm not even sure how to pronounce the platform. Mhmm. It's called the four streams of compassion-based high performance. So anybody involved is interested in sort of experiencing the full landscape. Like, we all are born with a particular landscape, a certain plot of land, if you will. And it seems like it would be intelligent to go visit the corners of that landscape.

Like, go see what your property looks and feels like because you're gonna the house is gonna look different from each place in, you know, in your yard. And so if you wanna experience the entire landscape of what it is to be you, I invite you to consider the four streams of compassion-based side performance. The first is intelligent movement, that there's some form of intelligent exercise that needs to be a part of all of our lives, whatever that may be. I'm not doing a silly CrossFit or marathon running, like, intelligent, compassion-based exercise to celebrate the beauty of this machine. The second is intelligent consumption. What you feed yourself is what you are. Every cell in your body is made up of stump something you ate or your mother ate, and it's all been borrowed. It was not created for you, and it will go back and be used by something else. It's all recycled. The third stream is the practice of mindfulness.

So I invite people to engage in some practice of meditation. Yoga is not meditation, neither is jogging. There are yoga and jogging. Different words. Meditation for its own purpose. The practice of simply being, of just sitting. And then the fourth stream is to begin exploring what we call compassion. Like, what is it? It's a very complicated thing, but can we muster up, enough loving kindness so that when unexpected and unwanted events happen in life, we can respond to them with love and kindness instead of with aggression?

So that's what I would suggest people take a look at. And with regards to me, August Lemming dot com is my website. I am at August Lemming on Instagram and at Doctor August Lemming on Facebook. Just started to do a little bit of social media because it has not been my practice to sort of put my stuff out there. I usually wait for it to be, requested, but I'm learning now, especially at at the time that we're experiencing as we film this, that it might be necessary for people to hear my message, and it doesn't have to be about me or my success. It can just be about helping them. So that's what I'm trying to do.

[00:15:20.20] – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that, doctor August. And we will have the links and information in the show notes, for you and as far as, like, the course as well too so that people can follow up with you and and learn more about, you know, how best to, truly be present, to be aware, to be able to reach that higher level. Because as you said, so eloquently, if you don't necessarily do this, that door isn't open for you to kinda step through it and kinda take advantage of, I guess, what the world has, but even what we have within ourselves, which might be even the deeper, opportunity that we're all, maybe not taking as much advantage of as we could. So Yeah. Truly appreciate you, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:15:59.29] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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