“IT’S HOW YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR BODY!” I MARVELED WHEN I HAD THIS REVELATION. 

When I first started teaching Pilates back when I was still bulimic, I worked with hundreds of bodies and I saw that it didn’t matter whether you were technically fat or technically thin, whether you worked out 5 days a week or once a month, or whether you ate healthily or you didn’t…

WHAT MATTERED WAS HOW YOU THOUGHT ABOUT YOUR BODY - THE STORY THAT YOU TOLD YOURSELF ABOUT WHY YOU HAD OR DIDN’T HAVE THE RESULTS YOU WANTED. 

Now, as a business owner, I see the exact same pattern with the leaders I work with and the results (aka income) they’re bringing in.

IT’S ABOUT THE STORY YOU’RE TELLING YOURSELF ABOUT WHY YOU HAVE OR DON’T HAVE THE RESULTS YOU WANT. 

Why is it that most small businesses fail in the first 3 years? It comes down to one thing - the mindset of the leader. And that ripples into the skillsets they acquire, the...

“Who do you admire?” I asked my client.

“Well...Tony Robbins, Rachel Hollis, You, Brendon Burchard.” 

I stopped in my tracks. Just to be listed among that list of my mentors - I mean,  words of affirmation are my love language, and I received an avalanche at that moment. Holy moly. “Receive it. Receive it,” I thought. I did and then from that place I asked her…

“Why? What is it you admire them?”

“BECAUSE THEY INSPIRE LEADERS.”

So many people out there are so busy counting how many followers they have - do I have more or fewer followers? 

Yet, “influencers” with audiences, or at least follower counts way bigger than mine are broke and struggling to monetize their audience - struggling to make even 4-figures a month, let alone five. 

...But they’ve got a FOLLOWING.

And that’s the problem.

WHEN YOU CREATE A CULTURE OF FOLLOWING IN YOUR BUSINESS - YOU AS THE “GURU”...

Do you live for those precious morning hours? Do you love the smell of the crisp, fresh morning air when it’s still dark out?

If you had told me when I was 16 that I would easily be waking up at 4:15 every morning...and LOVE it...I would have said you’re on something.

Back then I was a total night owl.

Burn the midnight oil!

That was my motto. 

My best friend and I would jokingly, and kind of seriously call each other late in the evening with questions about school projects. Sometimes we’d just call each other in solidarity of working together past midnight...even if we weren’t working on the same project.

Then, there was a time in between when I first started teaching Pilates where I tried to do both early mornings with 6 AM clients and late nights at networking events in Hollywood or pounding away on my keyboard writing the latest draft of a screenplay. Sure, I’d take a siesta in between. And that worked through my twenties, but not so much now...

HOW TO FIND A ROUTINE THAT FEELS BEST FOR YOU

“The early bird gets the worm.”

“Early to bed early to rise makes a man (or woman) healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

I could go on and on with a slew of morning routine quotes and cliches (hey, they’re cliches for a reason) about how important taking some time for yourself in the mornings can be. 

Here’s the thing…

It doesn’t matter whether you roll out of bed, into your clothes, to then go about your day, or you wake up every morning like a Stepfordpreneur at 4:30 AM to be at the gym in full hair and makeup by 5 AM, or if you’re militaristic about your harsh morning routine of black coffee, cold showers, and perfectly made beds. 

ALL OF THOSE ARE ROUTINES.

For me, I’ve tried at least 4,635 types of morning routines.

They’ve evolved as the demands of my life have changed. 

In high school, I was 100% asleep till the last minute, “Just five more minutes,...

Ever had the belief that you couldn’t be ALL of yourself? That you had to hide some part of you in order to bring in customers or charge higher prices or do anything in your business?

YEAH, FOR ME THAT WAS WITH PILATES. 

When I made the shift from Pilates into solely High-Performance Coaching. Pilates was like the ex-husband I didn’t want to talk about or have anyone know about because I had the belief that it would somehow make me “less qualified” as a coach. Pshaw.

Ridiculous, right? 

Isn’t it funny how our egos can trick us with silly little lies?

It wasn’t until this lockdown started that I came to terms and realized - Pilates WAS my coaching training ground.

I put in my 10,000+ hours teaching Pilates. 

I LEARNED HOW TO COACH, TEACH, TRAIN, LEAD, WITH PILATES. 

I trained and coached hundreds and hundreds of bodies over the 13 years I taught.

I learned how to listen on a deeper level beyond the words to the tiny micro-muscle...

I used to be habit-obsessed. And, no I don’t mean I was obsessed with nuns, even though I did go to a Catholic school. I was obsessed with having PERFECT habits. Impeccable. Immutable. Consistent AF Habits. 

I’d write them all down in my color-coded pens in my planner, in proper Virgo, Type A style, each one to match the seventeen new habits that I was going to master in that year. If they needed file folders for tracking those habits, those habits would be color-coded and folded away in proper, borderline-OCD style. I was sixteen, obsessed with being perfect, bulimic, and beating my brains against the check-mark standards of habit perfection. To-do. Done. To-Do. Not done. Bad. Bad girl. Kim! To-do: Done. Good girl. You deserve a reward. 

The problem was - the habits I was doing were all surface.

Habits are the results of the thoughts you think, the feelings you feel, and, most importantly the BELIEFS that you hold to be true.

Back then I had some pretty crappy...

“I don’t know,” my client said to me.

My private clients know all too well that I NEVER accept that answer. Why? It blocks you off from knowing. It commands your subconscious mind to do exactly what you are commanding it to do - not know. It’s a statement that cuts you off from possibility. 

THUS, AS A WARRIOR FOR POSSIBILITY, I FIGHT “I DON’T KNOW” WITH FULL SOUND AND FURY IN MY SESSIONS. 

“What if you did know?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” I could tell we were in a loop.

“What would this situation look like if you looked through the lenses of trust and imagination, rather than your past programming?”

BOOM. BREAKTHROUGH. 

The dam broke and the flood of ideas, inspiration, new possibilities was open.

WHAT IF YOU LIVED FROM A PLACE OF COURAGE AND FAITH RATHER THAN NEEDING TO “KNOW” THE EXACT NEXT STEP AND PERFECT PLAN TO SORT OUT EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE?

Here’s the thing...

You are the fire. The all-consuming, everlasting, eternal flame.

You cook up creations, businesses, opportunities, relationships that would be cold and stale if it wasn't for you.

You illuminate the sky.

You shine brightly.

SOME ARE DAZZLED BY YOUR MAGNIFICENCE.

Others fear it because they don't understand it. They're scared to get close to it. They don't know how to "handle" it.

Like you could ever be "handled," reigned in, toned down - hardly.

“I don’t do lines.”

My then-boyfriend looked at me astonished. We were at this swanky club in Santa Barbara and there was a line outside the door of schoolies.

My then man - possibly the reason why he was a then and not a now - was prepared to head to the back of the line like cattle and wait his turn, for permission, for whatever...

I was not.

I walked straight up to the security guard told him I was there to see a client of mine - all true. Flashed him a smile, maybe even a wink, and he pulled back that velvet rope and let us in. 

I saw a couple of the mouths of the schoolies stare perplexed, in awe, aghast that this woman could be so bold. 

My then man looked at me under the hum of the neon lights stunned.

I TURNED, “I DON’T DO LINES.”

Un-freaking-apologetic. Cool   as cucumber water on a hot summer day. And confident AF. Queenly, some might say. 

It was at that moment I claimed a piece of me.

I WASN’T ABOUT TO LIE...