Freestyle Fitness Inc.
The Power of Positive Thinking
Stephanie Kelley
Carol is an incredibly positive person, and even though she encountered negativity and obstacles as she built this business from scratch she decided to turn a negative into a positive and persevere.
As a result, one year later, she has built up a clientele of incredibly grateful and supportive gym members. People have achieved amazing fitness goals at Freestyle Fitness and are proud to share their success stories with the rest of the community.
Carol a has achieved a life long dream with this business… to own her own gym and help others as she has helped herself realize her own fitness goals.
She has organized two Biggest Loser campaigns over the past year, that many local teams took part in. Setting and achieving fitness goals can be a rocky road if you go it alone, but when you work with a team you can realize your dreams, as many clients can testify.
A poster on the wall shows before and after photos along with personal notes from the clients that are truly inspiring.
Carol says ‘Make some footprints, laugh in the face of negativity and don’t ever look back!”
She went on to say ‘Two of my life’s biggest challenges have been losing weight, and building this gym. How does one achieve what at times seems like the impossible? For one thing, you work like you’ve never worked before in your entire life. You make choices in life that make you the person that you choose to be. You find your strength and you use that strength to pick yourself up, even when at times the outcome seems impossible. You learn to be patient, because nothing worthwhile ever happens overnight. You take the negativity that’s been thrown at you and make it into your positive. Most importantly, you never give up on trying to reach what’s important to you. No matter how tough you think the situation is, prove to yourself that you are tougher. You’ve got to be ready to make that one change and believe in all possibilities. When everyone else says it can’t be done, be the person to show them it can. You only have one life to live. Live it! If you’re not happy with who you are, then do something about it. Don’t wait for it to happen, make it happen. Remember, Talk is Cheap!”
Wow! Truly inspiring words to live by! And, Carol did face some astonishingly negative feedback during the construction of this business. In Doug Griffiths’ book “13 Ways to Kill Your Community” Doug describes how in every community he has visited during his time as an MLA ( and he has visited hundreds !) what happens when a new business opens.
People, he says, sit around and gossip about why the business opened, why it’s a stupid idea, how it will never fly in that town, how you can’t make money at it and on and on about the many reasons it will fail.
In fact, many people seem to relish the idea of watching someone fall flat on their face….amazing when you consider what a benefit it is to all communities to have new businesses open!
As Freestyle Fitness was underwent construction during 2012, people dropped in to see how it was going. One person stopped by to complain that the Dollar Store was gone, and, here are 3 real life examples of what Carol was told by complete and total strangers who came in to offer their valuable opinions!
1.) A gentleman…a stranger… came in, looked around and guffawed “This town is full of old people. What, you’re gonna have a bunch of seniors comin’ in here with their walkers?”
Carol commented, as she related this story to me, that there are 4 schools in this community full of kids, which means that they have parents around somewhere…. And these parents are not senior citizens! She went on to add, chuckling, that she does in fact currently have about 30 gym members who are 60 or over, but they don’t use walkers when they come to work out!
2.) It’s 8 am in the morning, and another total stranger enters the door as Carol is hard at work painting the walls. He walks up to her and says “You’re (f-bomb) crazy for doing this, you’re gonna fall flat on your face.”
Ooh…can’t you just feel the love and acceptance?
3.) And now we come to my personal favourite: yet another absolute stranger comes in the door, walks up to Carol and grabs her thigh as he says “You’re not fit enough to run a gym.”
These examples boggle the mind, but Carol put a positive spin on the experiences by saying, “Well, if it made them feel better about themselves by them putting me down then I’ve already achieved something!
Many other people simply asked “What are you going to do when this doesn’t pan out?” In their mind’s eye they could only foresee failure in Carol’s future.
However, Carol used their negativity to fuel her determination to succeed and make it her positivity, but she admits it was difficult sometimes, and that fear would raise its ugly head.
But then, she had yet another encounter with a total stranger…but this was a good one! She got to chatting with a lady at the checkout at the grocery store and as she told her about the business she was building the lady offered these words of wisdom: “You know when you’re going to succeed at your business? When you stop being afraid.”
Carol says that those words helped her to snuff out her fears and to forge ahead. She believes that Perth-Andover has a lot of potential and that residents need to realize this and focus on what we can do rather than what we don’t have. She says that at least once a week someone mentions that “Perth could have had McCain’s here but (insert your choice of villain here) wouldn’t let us have it.”
Now, one year later, Carol has built up relationships with her members that are overwhelmingly positive. Gym members bring her coffee when they come to work out, and frequently offer to help her for free!
She also has members from communities all around the River Valley who are willing to travel to her gym because they like it so much.
She has 10 members from Grand Falls, 4 from Plaster Rock, 2 from New Denmark and 4 from Florenceville-Bristol. She even has a regular member from Lower Sackville who is a trucker who stops in to work out on his way through Perth!
And, there are people from all over Canada who come in to work out when they come to town to visit friends and family.
Carol is a certified fitness trainer, and offers free workout programs to members. As an added bonus, every time members check in they get a milestone added to their membership. When they reach 100 visits, if they have an active membership they get a free week added to their plan. She’s given out 20 free weeks so far.
She offers a variety of rates and packages to suit all needs, and there is never an additional joining fee to become a member.
The gym offers full access 7 days a week from 5 am to 11 pm to members to accommodate any busy lifestyle.
The men’s and women’s changing rooms each have a shower and lockers to stow your valuables. You do need to bring a pair of clean, never worn outside sneakers to wear inside the gym to help keep the premises clean.
There are two Road Racers training programs available, an 8 week course for rookies and High Intensity Interval course for more experienced runners.
Carol is also currently training two members who plan to run in a Mud Hero Competition in Halifax next year. She commented that a local Mud Hero Competition could be held along our trails and riverbanks, another great idea for a signature event to bring people to Perth-Andover!
Call Freestyle Fitness at 273-2053 to find out more.
Just remember: Today it hurts but tomorrow it works!
