IAM852- Yoga Teacher Passionate About Empowering People

Kelly Bryant is a Yoga Alliance Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher (ERYT-200) and Registered Prenatal Yoga Teacher (RPYT), Certified Personal Trainer (NASM-CPT), and a realist. She is committed to helping birthing people understand their bodies — specifically their core and pelvic health — and adopt a mindset around movement that addresses physical and psychological components. She is passionate about empowering people through all stages of life from prenatal to postmenopausal, to take care of themselves so that they can show up and do their work in the world. Prior to quitting her job to travel in 2016, she worked at health & fitness startup, Noom, where she led content and community marketing efforts and soaked up everything she could learn about psychology and behavior change.

• CEO Hack: Looking at the brain everyday
• CEO Nugget: Scarcity is never real
• CEO Defined: Leading yourself first and owning your thoughts

Website: https://www.kellybryantwellness.com/

Instagram: instagram.com/kellybryantwellness
Facebook: fb.me/kellybryantwellness

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Transcription

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00:02 – 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.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless:

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Kelly Bryant of kellybryantwellness.com. Kelly, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:38 – Kelly Bryant

Thanks so much for having me Gresh. I'm super excited to be here.

00:41 – Gresham Harkless:

No problem. Super excited to have you on as well. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Kelly so you can hear about all these awesome things that she's doing. Kelly is a Yoga Alliance experienced registered yoga teacher and a registered prenatal yoga teacher, certified personal trainer, and a realist. She is committed to helping birthing people understand their bodies specifically their core and pelvic health and adopt a mindset around movement that addresses physical and psychological components.

She is passionate about empowering people through all stages of her life, from prenatal to post-menopausal, to take care of themselves so that they can show up and do their work in the world. Prior to quitting her job to travel in 2016, she worked at a health and fitness startup, NUM, where she led content and community marketing efforts and soaked up everything she could learn about psychology and behavioral changes. Kelly, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:32 – Kelly Bryant

So ready.

01:34 – Gresham Harkless:

Let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear kind of how everything got started. I know I touched on it a little bit. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with your business.

01:42 – Kelly Bryant:

Yeah, absolutely. So I worked at a couple of startups early on in my career. I studied journalism, but nothing to do with exercise science or biology or any of that stuff. But I graduated in a recession. So I don't recommend that for anybody, you know, who's who you're on in their CEO journey. Avoid that if you can. Yes. When I moved to New York, I was kind of like, all right for anybody. I wanted to work for a magazine, in print media, and that wasn't going to happen. So digital media it was. And I worked first at Greatest, which was purchased by somebody else. I want to say like Healthline, but purchased more recently by somebody else. And that's where I started learning about health and fitness.

So I had no fitness experience or knowledge prior to that, but I kind of started doing yoga. I really liked that. I was recruited away from Greatest by Noom, who is a household name now, but was not when I worked there. I was probably employee 13. I think they're at several hundred now. So it was, there was one other person who worked for the company who was not an engineer, maybe 2, and me. And I wrote all of the content that was inside of the app. I did all of the marketing. That was really where I kind of transitioned from just purely writing that journalism background over to marketing. And also was doing a lot of the, you know, just reading research studies, like learning about what I had to write about.

So that has definitely influenced where I ended up now. I burned out from working in New York City at a tech startup. And my husband and I quit our jobs. And we traveled around the world for a year and a half. And when we came back to the States, we decided to move to the town where I grew up. I started working full-time in fitness. I like, it was like, what's the what's a job I can do that's kind of like not doing a job? And so I became a full-time yoga teacher. It was sort of inevitable. I can't help, but like get really involved in the marketing and the business. And so I ended up managing a fitness studio. And then I opened my studio, which is in-person and online.

We're starting to reopen to in-person, but it was really important to me from the beginning to do a lot of the work online for accessibility reasons, just so that people anywhere in the world have access to high-quality information about pregnancy postpartum and all of the changes that happen to women throughout the course of their life. The reason I ended up in this field is because I was training and teaching yoga full time, got pregnant, and the information that was out there and available to me was just not great. It's just not awesome. So I think like a lot of CEOs, I ended up creating this company to answer a need that I had. And for that reason, I wanted it all to be digital and to be very strongly evidence-based. That's what my background was. And of course, I had the kind of the somewhat of the business and inside knowledge of how to scale and sell and do all of the marketing.

04:50 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's absolutely huge. I love that story as I wasn't a journalism major, but I was an English major. I too graduated, you know, during the economic crisis. So I would also caution against doing that if you can make that possible. But I love that you've been able to kind of, it sounds like take pieces of your experiences and build it into what you're doing now. Like the technology part obviously is throwing, it's coming through everything that you're doing. And of course, the knowledge that you have to be able to help that. And of course, they experience of being able to create something or scratch your own itch, so to speak for something that wasn't created at all.

05:22 – Kelly Bryant

Yeah, absolutely.

05:23 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I know we touched on it a little bit. I want to hear a little bit more about what we can find on your site and how exactly you're serving your clients. Can you take us through a little bit more of that?

05:32 – Kelly Bryant

Yeah. So I did this, I built this whole thing kind of backward, which is not what I recommend to people who are moving into the digital space. I'm like, do your one-on-one offer online, and then build your group offer, and then build your membership. I did the whole thing backward. So I have all of these various options. And what I generally tell people is like, slide into my DMS and I'll like tell you what you need. Because I have an online studio membership, which is, you know, for everybody, it's live and recorded group classes. So it kind of has that mix of like what Peloton and who else is in that space.

Obey is another one that's in the fitness space where you get the live classes. I also have recording classes, which are similar to like a glow, formerly yoga glow, and a little bit of both. And then I have my group, which is slightly higher touch, slightly higher price point. That's postpartum-specific. So I generally say 3 weeks to 3 years postpartum. The Reclaim group is the best place to be because everyone's in a very similar boat. So we do a lot of like unpacking birth stories and trauma and dealing with the realities of being a new parent. And I think that that in a group environment is just like very, very nurturing and supportive.

And then I have my very high touch one-on-one, which is always right on the cusp of being sold out because I tend to work with people short term because so much of what I do is recovery-based. Some people start working with me and they're like, I love this style of fitness. I want to do this forever. Sign me up. But most of my folks cycle in and out on a 3 to 6-month period. So that's why I've got the high touch group and membership available. I do some in-person stuff, but I'm going to guess most of your listeners are not in Stuart, Florida.

07:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, but just in case you are, you know where to look up. Kelly and all the awesome things she's doing. So it kind of sounds like, and definitely, Craig, if I'm wrong, especially like going through that experience. And I don't know if this spoke to you when you were kind of going through that experience. It sounds like the community piece is really, really big where I guess when you're going through somewhat of a difficult period like that, you want to be able to lean on people, like you mentioned, being able to kind of know that other people have gone through it or are going through it and you can kind of reach and understand and feel like you're not by yourself.

07:49 – Kelly Bryant

Yeah, 100%. And one of the things that really makes the way that I train very unique is that we look at the nervous system and I'm not going to bore your listeners with a deep dive into the nervous system. But like suffice it to say when you're getting a massage, when you're doing personal training, when you're in yoga class, or anything that you're doing with your body, you're communicating first and foremost with your nervous system and nothing is going to work if your nervous system is afraid. So if you're in this fight or flight like oh my gosh, I'm gonna die When you're getting a massage, you're not gonna relax like it's not gonna work, right?

So I have some clients who are like I hate massages and I'm like, I think that you've actually just been Not like I'm dismissing them like I'm not gonna gaslight them and be like no you like massages. You're just doing it wrong. It's like something about a massage is threatening to your nervous system and you're not able to get the benefit from it. So don't do it. And it's the same with people who are postpartum, prenatal. This is like a very strange time for your brain and for your nervous system because it like doesn't understand what's going on everything's super weird and you have to come in from this perspective of understanding where people are coming from and giving yourself permission to be there. And that's why I think what I do works.

09:06 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and 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?

09:17 – Kelly Bryant

I'm gonna say that it's looking at your brain every day. And that looks different to different people, right? So for some people, that's gonna be a 10-minute meditation every day. For some people, that's a gratitude journal practice. I do something called self-coaching. I am part of the life coach school. If you haven't heard their podcast, go check out the Life Coach School podcast, but they have a self-coaching protocol that they suggest you do every day. And it's basically just like emptying out the crap that's in your head before you go start your day because that like the thoughts and the feelings that are in there are going to influence the way that you show up.

09:55 – Gresham Harkless

And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. If you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self this.

10:04 – Kelly Bryant

It's that it's kind of in the same vein of that. Everything is just a thought like scarcity is never real. You don't have to believe it in your own business and you don't have to sell it to other people. Right? So I, for the longest time would say in my business, like personal training spots are running out, limited consults, like I'm, you know, like all of this stuff and it's BS. It's not true. Like if I had been like no more Personal training clients, no more consults. If someone had like slid into my DMs like a week later, I'm like, hey, can I get a consult? I would have been like, yeah. And it's a lie. Like we are trying to lead from the front. And if we're going to lead from the front, we don't lie to people. So scarcity is a lie.

If it's not true, Of course, like you might say, so right now I'm in a place in my business where I just posted on Instagram, like literally, this is my calendar of these are the slots I have available if you want one-to-one training. Of course that could change next week, right? I always have people cycling in and out, but That's the truth. Like if someone comes to me a week later and is like, now can I have it? I would be like, no, it's gone. Like it literally doesn't exist. So scarcity isn't always a lie in the marketing sense, but you don't have to run your business that way if it feels icky to you.

And this is where like I'm talking to the folks maybe with a little bit more feminine energy who feel like they have to have someone else tell them how to sell and how to market because they don't know how to be their own hype person. And all I want them to know is you don't have to move from scarcity if that doesn't feel authentic to you. You can just, the reason that there's urgency to buy is because the buyer isn't getting what they want. Like that's all of the urgency. All of the urgency comes from being like, for me, it's like, Hey, this is the transformation. I'm right now selling my 3-month program. I'm not like, I'm never gonna offer this again. You have to do it now if you want to get in.

It's like, I'm gonna do this every 3 months, you can do it now or you can do it February 1, whatever you want. But like, if you don't do it now, it's 3 more months that you don't get the transformation that you want. And then of course, the same thing is true in life, right? We think, if I don't, if I don't do what the guru says if I don't do what the marketing geniuses say, then like, I'm not going to have a business. It took me a lot of self-control and willpower to be like, these are the days that I work. I do not work like my family's weekend is Friday and Saturday right now.

Cause I work Sundays that, you know, that works for me. It works to what people want, But I have to not work Friday or Saturday. It's hard because you're believing the lie that if you don't train 5 days a week, I also have Mondays off for my business admin and being able to do all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Scary. I'm essentially a solo printer right now. Don't tell my husband, he works in the business too. But I mean, it really is this scarcity is a lie.

12:56 – Gresham Harkless

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

13:05 – Kelly Bryant

I think being a CEO means leading yourself first. There are all kinds of different jobs and hats that you can put on in your business. But if you're the CEO, if you are the leader, the executive, then you have to manage yourself first. And I'm like pretty ruthless about that. Like there's some people who, you know, I don't think that means not being vulnerable. I don't think that means being perfect all the time, but I think it means owning your own thoughts and your own stuff and taking care of your body, taking care of your brain, taking care of your family, and not having this idea of like, this is my work. And when I'm at work, I'm like going to shut down the whole rest of my brain so that I can perform. I think you bring your best self in Being a CEO starts with the way you take care of yourself in the background and you can't perform as a CEO if you're not doing that.

13:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, That's so huge. And I absolutely love that because we often skip over ourselves. We always think of, you know, leadership or being a CEO or entrepreneur, whatever title we give as you know, outwardly focus, you need to manage this person or this is how you manage. But sometimes we forget that the person that we mean to manage the most is ourselves and be able to look at our mindset, the things that we're doing, and make sure we're holding ourselves to the high standard that we want others around us to have as well. So I, absolutely love that definition. I appreciate that. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:36 – Kelly Bryant

Yeah, absolutely. I think the most important thing that I want everybody to get from hearing about my journey into fitness and about what my business does, in general, is that you get to feel good in your body. That is like a thing that is a birthright for all of us that everyone has a right to do. And your ability to feel good in your body and to exercise in whatever way you want is not at odds in any way with being successful in other parts of your life. In fact, it only amplifies your success because whatever it is that you believe in most, whatever it is your core values are in your business, you treat yourself that way first. For me, it's love, always love. I have to do that for me.

And then the way that I show up is gonna give that out in my business. And so whatever it is you wanna feel powerful, in control, whatever, it starts with yourself and then it goes into your business, into your customers, and out into the world in general. If people wanna get in touch with me, they can jump to my website, kellybriantwellness.com. I am also at Kelly Bryant Wellness in all of the places, Instagram, Facebook, and even TikTok. I have Lots of ridiculous TikToks. Go check them out if you really want or join me. Instagram is probably the place where I'm most active.

15:53 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I truly appreciate that, Kelly. We will have the links and information that's shown us as well too, including TikToks so that everybody can follow up with you and see all the awesome things that you're putting out. But I truly appreciate that reminder as well, too. I think so many times we forget that we got to keep our own cup full and our cup should overflow and that allows us to give even more. But if we don't have anything to give, if we have our cup empty, that doesn't allow us to serve the level that we hope that we want to and hopefully are able to as well. So I truly appreciate that again, Kelly, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of

16:22 – 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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