IAM1740 – Pioneer Uses LYT Method to Offer Yoga Training

Why it was selected for “CBNation Architects”: In this episode of the CEO Podcasts, host Gresham Harkless interviews Lara Heimann, an international yoga pioneer, and physical therapist who has redefined the modern practice of yoga through her comprehensive LYT Method. Lara emphasizes smart alignment, functional movement, and spiritual wellness in her practice and offers online daily classes and robust online yoga teacher training, in addition to leading in-person workshops, training, and masterclasses internationally.

Lara discusses her journey to entrepreneurship, which began with her passion for identifying a gap in the teaching of yoga and wanting to spread good movement knowledge. She started teacher training and eventually created her own method based on a physical therapy background. Her success is measured by the number of people she has been able to empower with her message and the positive feedback she receives from them.

During the interview, Lara shares her CEO hack, which is taking care of herself and emphasizing daily habits and lifestyle. She also shares her CEO nugget, which is believing in oneself and accepting that not everybody will agree with you. Especially being a “people pleaser” and how that can affect hiring and how she put her heart into it. Lara defines being a CEO as being a leader and the brain of the business.

Overall, the podcast provides insights into Lara's LYT Method and offers valuable advice for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to build a community and serve their clients with white-glove customer service.

Transcription:

Intro 00:19

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.

Gresham Harkless 00:46

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you have been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories or topics or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, and what I like to call the CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organization.

This month we are focused on our greatest asset: talent management and hiring. Think from great resignation to the great renovation. And if you disagree with me, maybe these episodes might be especially for you. Life and especially business has changed. It is forced those that are within organizations to look differently at talent and how it's being managed.

When we talk about change, think about it, we have to realize that business as usual is no longer here. And that's evident in attracting and retaining clients but also in setting up people within organizations to succeed. Think onboarding, think DEI- diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. How it is working from home and even going back into the office.

Things are different. In this month we are going to explore these topics by featuring CEO hacks and CEO nuggets, but also interviews that focuses on these changes and how organizations can make sure they care for and attract the most valuable asset, their people. Sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today I have Lara Heimann of LYT Yoga. Lara, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Lara Heimann 02:18

It's great to be on the show. Thanks for having me Gresh.

Gresham Harkless 02:21

No problem. Super excited to have you on. Before we jumped in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Lara so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Lara is an international yoga pioneer and physical therapist focused on evolving the practice of yoga to empower movement and balance and miss a modern lifestyle of technology and sedentary. With an advanced degree in physical therapy in more than 25 years of yoga practice in education, Lara is redefining the modern practice through her comprehensive LYT method, emphasizing smart alignment, functional movement, and spiritual wellness.

She offers online daily classes and a robust online yoga teacher training in addition to leading in-person workshops, and training in master classes internationally.

Lara, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Lara Heimann 03:06

I'm so ready. I'm so ready. Thanks for that intro.

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Gresham Harkless 03:09

No worries. Thanks for doing so many awesome things. Before we fully jumped in, I want to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more on how you got started.

Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? What led you to get started with all the awesome things you're working on.

Lara Heimann 03:22

Yeah, I think I'm one of those accident CEOs. Maybe there's a lot of 'em. I think there probably are, where I had a great career as a physical therapist, was working in what would be considered like corporate, for-profit world and simultaneously had always been a fitness instructor of some sort and also very athletic.

I started teaching and practicing yoga about 25 years ago, and what I noticed as time went on was there is a gap. In the teaching of yoga, in other words, there was very inconsistent quality and a lot of it had to do with what I saw is this huge just burst of yoga on the scene. 25 years ago it wasn't a lot and then all of a sudden everybody started doing yoga. They had yoga teacher trainings, and these trainings were really not setting people up for good success as real instructors of movement in the body, just like very little movement education.

That led to a lot of teachers who don't really know much about the body, even though they're teaching movement for the body in the majority of yoga classes. So I saw this real gap and I just felt it was my calling. It was almost like I was dragged, but it was unwillingly. I didn't really want to start a movement or you see a gap and your passion is there. And I just thought a real calling. I had a calling and I was like, I've got to teach people how to teach yoga from this place of knowledge.

You don't have to be a physical therapist. But when you know something really, really well, you're able to distill it in two parts that people understand. I knew that I had a gift to do that and so I just started a teacher training and then I was like I got to start a studio because I'm gonna have all these teachers. Then it just snowballed from there. That was almost 10 years ago that I started the whole ball rolling, creating a method because the way I teach yoga is its own method based on a physical therapy background.

So, I like probably other CEOs started learning stuff, not having a business background and being like, oh, I got to have a business plan. I got to have this, I got to have this. Like I'm taking money. I knew that what I was giving was a quality product, but there's a lot more organization needed to that for growth.

So I just started reading, everything I could about marketing, learning, and talking to people. And yeah, it just kept going and I kept growing. I had to move to a bigger studio. Then I saw that people that weren't in my area, I'm in Princeton, New Jersey, wanted to learn this style but couldn't take three weeks out of their life and come and study. So I created an online teacher training and I also created online classes. Now we have class, we have people that are taking classes in almost 70 countries around the world.

It really started with this just compulsion to want to spread, good movement knowledge. Not necessarily wanting to be a business person, but I've really enjoyed it.

Gresham Harkless 06:36

Nice. That passion, obviously that you have, but also the expertise and hour and time that you put in terms of creating this methodology, that's helping out so many people.

Lara Heimann 06:45

Yeah, and I think the other thing is that I'm in a position where I'm really successful now, but it's not measured to me. Of course, financially it's great, but it's measured to me that, I have successfully been able to get this message to many people and that they have then felt empowered by it and that it's passed it on type thing.

And like you said, yes, I'm successful now, but if you add up all of the many hours that have been over 25 years, it was like less than minimum wage, right? It's what people don't, they have to put a lot of those sweat hours, sweat equity before and you have to look for the gap because you got to do something different.

I saw the need because so many people said to me like, I can't go to anybody else when you go on vacation because I feel like I'm gonna get injured. And I'm like that's messed up. You know what I mean? So it was just enough people saying that this was a need. Everybody has a body so I also tell people who are getting into it now, and it's a much more, I don't wanna say saturated market, cause I think that's a negative term, but it's also if you just look at it for what it is, there's a lot of people in it, and I just say everybody's got a body, you've got 7 billion people. There's a lot to spread. So don't let that stop you, find what people are needing and go to that.

Gresham Harkless 08:08

Yeah. So I know you touched a little bit on how you serve the clients that you work with. Are there any additional things that you do and your team do to serve those clients.

And what do you feel is what I call your secret sauce of the thing you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

Lara Heimann 08:22

We're really into community building, which is, I think anybody that's successful, I'm sure there are CEOs who are small businesses and they don't need community, but I can't imagine you don't need some kind of community and in something like what I'm doing, which is a very individual product lesson that is given to a larger community. And so the individuals could feel more lost in it if it wasn't felt like we're always bringing you in the fray. We are here for you.  So our customer service, it's like a white glove. You've got to be there for people. We're always trying to refine that. We're doing lots of work in our teacher training and in our online platform to be as inclusive as much as possible.

Yoga has been known over the years, especially in Western yoga, to be really a lot of white women and so we are really proactively expanding that. We've offered scholarships for the iPOC individuals, for our teacher training because we want everyone to come in and we wanna make the action steps to do that. So community building is huge. Everybody needs community and you can do it online. That's what's funny. I would've been the biggest doubter of that 15 years ago because I was like one of the elastic, all the techno-technological stuff. But you can do it if you're there for people.

So I think my secret sauce is, People think I'm doing so many things, I have so much energy, and I'm like, I'm reaching out to people, but I'm getting energy by connecting. So it's really a self-fulfilling cycle. Like if you look at it as an exhausting thing it will be. But for me, it's like communicating with my, I call them my family, my network of people. Is what brings me joy, but it's the secret sauce because then people want it. They're like, they are seen. That's what people want. They wanna be seen.

And so I think that that's a big part of probably any successful business person is figuring out what it is your clients need. And I just intuitively knew that and it also fuels me.

Gresham Harkless 10:28

Yeah, that's extremely powerful. It's so funny you said that because I was gonna switch gears and I wanted to ask you for one of those tools, I call it a CEO hack. So what might be an app or book or a habit that you have something that makes you more effective and efficient and add to your toolbox?

Lara Heimann 10:44

For me, my habit of taking care of myself as a non-negotiable is completely the reason I'm here and just taking good care of myself, my body, what I put in my body, how I feel myself, my energy. It's everything because so much of what I do is based on my creativity, which is based on really clear headspace and having fully engaged.

If I didn't take care of myself, which is weird if somebody's in a kind of body movement, but a lot of people can let it slide and that is just a non-negotiable no matter what. When you say habits, no matter how I feel, I will move because I'm so hardwired that feedback loop is there. I know if I start moving a little bit, I'll at least feel better. That's every single day I'm doing something. It doesn't have to be super hardcore, but it's some kind of movement and eating well and all of that so that I have a lot of energy.

Gresham Harkless 11:44

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. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell your younger business self.

Lara Heimann 11:54

I'm a people pleaser. So I would say to myself early on and some of this is age, but I do think if somebody had said to me like, you're not gonna be, not everybody's gonna like you and be okay with that, I think that some decisions that I have made or hiring people and things, I've been so like in my heart about it, and it wasn't always like the best choice. My best friend says it's like my kryptonite, but I see the good in everybody. And she's that person, she is like the voice, like, why did you hire that person?

So, I'm grateful I've had her because she has been that kind of big side of me. But I would say that a nugget would be I think you are leading something. You're growing something. Not everybody's gonna love it. Not everybody's gonna love you. And if you are somebody like me that has just conditionally wanted to be like nice to everybody and have everybody receive me well, that would've been a hard nugget to swallow, but really important one it's okay.

Gresham Harkless 12:58

Now, I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on this show.

So Lara, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Lara Heimann 13:08

I just think I'm a leader, a pioneer, and it's like a part of the car, that is really important. Can't drive the car, like the car can't work on its own. So it's the brain of the organization. But you've got all the other parts too, and when I talk about movement, we create movement in our brain first before it's put into our body.

So I think the CEO is the brain. I'm definitely the brain from the vision. And without it, it would just be a bunch of parts that could move, but the brain is gonna actually take it all to the different stages.

Gresham Harkless 13:44

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Lara, I truly 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, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and your team and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Lara Heimann 14:00

Thanks. I would say first just look up my LYT yoga which stands for Lara's Yoga Technique. But, fortunately, also is a great acronym for feeling really lit up, which is I think is what we're all after in life, nobody likes to feel dim and dull and fatigued and low. And especially now in this pandemic, we need so many things to help us feel recharged and charged up.

And so I know because the research supports it, and this is the way we're made, is that movement is medicine and movement will help you feel better. But the movement, not all movement is equal. So learning from somebody like me who's a physical therapist and based on these principles of how we have evolved to move is really important.

You can find all that out on the LYT Yoga and the LYT Daily, which is an online platform. You have over 365 classes that are organized in all different ways based on body parts, based on a beginner, based on if you want high intensity. There's a two-week trial, so you can try it out and see even if you've never been exposed to yoga, I've had so many. I work with professional athletes around the world who are not into yoga, but they love this because it's a kind of different type of yoga, because yoga's really about raising consciousness and that's like being awake, being lit up. So that's what it's all about.

So you can find me there, you can find me on Instagram. I do a lot of little sequences and drills there and nuggets of movement, wisdom, and other stuff too. I'm also a chef, natural food chef, so I talk about that a little bit. And my Instagram is lara.heimann.

Gresham Harkless 15:29

Nice. I absolutely love that, and I appreciate you for sharing all that with us. We will have the links and information and the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 15:40

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.

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This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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