Episode 128 – Janis Isaman

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Janis Isaman 0:00
Every bit of that reality is actually meant to help people with that wheel of life where we can incorporate the idea of alignment. And that starts with the body. It starts with what we’re eating. It starts with that movement. But what I would like for all of my clients is what I get to feel which is and i and i had to work on it, you know, for over a decade is everything is actually the way that I want it to be.

Richard Matthews 0:32
Heroes are an inspiring group of people, everyone of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do every hero has a story to tell. The doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedoms, to the police officers and firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people I can make a difference and they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the hero show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host Richard Matthews and we are on in 3, 2, 1…

Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews and today I am live on the line with Janice Isaman, Janice, are you there?

Janis Isaman 1:35
I am. Awesome, and

Richard Matthews 1:37
Did I get your name correct?

Janis Isaman 1:38
You didn’t but that’s okay. So how are you supposed to say it? You’re supposed to say it and I do put that in quotations. Iseman. Iseman. Okay.

Richard Matthews 1:47
I generally checked four time four time and I forgot today so I just went with it so. That’s okay. is Iseman. So for those of you who follow along with our podcast and our my wife and I travels, we are still stuck in Kissimmee for our travels. But we are finally out this next week. We’re going down to the to the keys, which should be fun. Where are you coming in from Janice?

Janis Isaman 2:09
I’m in Calgary, which is an Alberta which is in Canada,

Richard Matthews 2:12
Alberta. So you’re on the other side of the the border? How’s it starting to get cold there yet?

Janis Isaman 2:18
Yes. Yes, we do start winter a little earlier than you will be in Florida.

Richard Matthews 2:25
So I have I have a good friend of mine who lives up in Toronto. And I always tease her whenever winter comes around, because she starts taking like pictures of you know, like, she’s going for a walk and there’s like seven feet of snow. And I’m like, people go outside. Like, wait, you don’t go outside. So my favorite little meme is there’s there’s a meme that goes around every winter that I always send it to her and it’s it’s a and like an iced over like, and it’s got a fishing hole in it. And some guy pops out of it, and then hops up onto the ice and then skates away. And the meme the title of the meme says another Canadian was born.

Janis Isaman 3:06
Yes.

Richard Matthews 3:09
I was like that’s it. That’s how it happens

Janis Isaman 3:11
That’s how it happens.

Richard Matthews 3:16
Nice. Okay, so what I want to do for our audience, Janice is just go through a brief introduction. So those of us who don’t know who you are get an idea and then we’ll dive and talk about your story. So Janice is the founder of my body culture, which is a one on one private studio, you provide customized individualized movement and nutrition coaching and you have certifications with ADP, critical alignment, yoga therapy, Rainbow kids yoga, STOTT Pilates I don’t know what that is – STOTT, TRX suspension training, Yo, was lots of things. I don’t know what Yeah, you know, body rolling yin yoga. I mean, you’ve been quoted and all sorts of places that I’ve actually heard of so Reader’s Digest prevention, women’s health, cosmopolitan working mother, sparkpeople, My Fitness Pal and even beach body. Your unique discipline agnostic approach has helped hundreds of people navigate their body issues through education and movement techniques to full body sustainability. You’re also a speaker, a facilitator, instructor and a mother. And now of course, a podcast guests, which I assume something you do pretty regularly.

Janis Isaman 4:20
Yes, that is sure.

Richard Matthews 4:22
So I’m Janice to start off with what I’d like to do is find out what is it that you’re known for? So basically, who you know, who are you now what is it that you do? What do you sell to people? What problems do you solve that kind of stuff.

Janis Isaman 4:36
I solve the greatest problem. I work with people who come in and pain and I think that is the greatest problem because that is the moment that they are not functioning at their best. And when I describe pain, it’s usually those aching nagging sensations in the back. So that’s low back mid back, upper back Shoulders, its neck, its hips, its knees, it’s all of those places in our body, where we A lot of us just kind of hope that they go away and spontaneously disappear. And then they don’t. And typically, I work with clients who have gone to at least one other practitioner, that’s not mandatory. But typically, they have gotten to one of a chiropractor and acupuncturist, massage therapist, another discipline like that, and I actually work with a lot of those practitioners, myself, we refer clients back and forth, I have gone to those kinds of practitioners myself, but what generally happens is, those practitioners will work on a client’s body, and then that client will go and sit at their desk for eight or 10 hours. And that problem comes back. So I help them really build the musculature and decompress the joints and tissues that are actually creating the underlying problem. So they can often continue to work with those other practitioners and get deeper results. But the work that I’m really doing, is getting them back on their feet, getting rid of those aches and pains, getting rid of those problems that are actually starting to interrupt life, because it’s not fun to sit at your desk for eight or 10 or 12 hours with a sore neck or sore back. It’s just not.

Richard Matthews 6:23
No, not at all. Yeah, it reminds me, I mentioned before we got on the call that, uh, that I have a coach, Coach, and, you know, like body professional that I work with, as well. And one of the things he just had me start doing was, he called it a foundational training, which is like, it’s like a 12 minute stretch exercise that’s basically designed to like, strengthen and align the spine muscles. Yeah, for that exact reason, right, it’s like, it’s like, the underlying problem with all of these aches and pains is, is those kind of things and you got to get the muscles right and stretch properly and working properly, then they can handle sitting down for a little while or

Janis Isaman 6:57
it is, it is , yes, I talked about fitness as a bit of a pyramid. And people often will kind of start at the top of the pyramid. So we’ll go to fitness classes and go to spinning and we’ll grab the weights, and those are great things to do. But if we’re in pain, we’re building strength on top of pain, we’re not taking the pain away. And so if a lot about pain is actually because everything’s compressed, then we’re actually adding to the problem. And so I’m a huge fan of all kinds of workout styles, but we need to really work on that base of the pyramid, when we’re in our 20s, we often can just go do that, when we are not in our 20s anymore, that’s when those problems start to really become. And

Richard Matthews 7:41
that was, that was a big a big wake up call getting into my early 30s and realizing that Oh, not everything just works anymore, you have to actually like try and if you don’t try things hurt, that’s right, you think a lot more before you go jump off of buildings or swing off of trees or whatever else you might uh do, that’s right, without a thought when you were 20s.

Janis Isaman 8:00
It’s not quite the spontaneous remission that we often do remember from our 20s. But I think that’s another as a huge myth that we have to be uncomfortable and achy and in pain for 30 to 50 years of our life because we are older. So I hear clients say that, yeah, that’s I’m over 35 this is what we expect in it. And it really shouldn’t be a functional body can happen at any age and a pain free body can happen at any age.

Richard Matthews 8:30
Yeah, that was that was one of the things that really surprised me, right? Because I came into working with him thinking I was healthy, right? Like, you know, you think you’re healthy kind of thing. And and you realize that, like I was I was just on a downward trajectory, because of things that I was doing and not really thinking about it. Right? So you’re like, you’re at healthy and unhealthy is down here. But if you’re heading that direction,

Janis Isaman 8:50
You’ll eventually intersect with it. Yes. Yeah, I think, yeah you’ll eventually hit

Richard Matthews 8:55
that point,

Janis Isaman 8:56
I think a lot of that is there is that there’s kind of a fitness over culture, and we get all of these different messages. And we are told that if it doesn’t hurt, we’re not actually being effective. So then when it hurts, we think, Okay, this, this must be the way so and it really and it really isn’t because we shouldn’t be waking up with a stiff neck, we shouldn’t be throwing our back out because we turn to reach for something on the desk. Those are beyond what we’re looking for in pain and like that.

Richard Matthews 9:32
Yeah, and it’s a it’s it’s certainly fascinating to go from like where we are sort of like on a slow downward trajectory to sort of changing out where you’re getting healthier. I’m healthy now than I think I ever have been, which is cool. But it’s also like, you know, sleeping better and you work better and like the workout programs that you’ve got me doing like there’s no pain involved, right? It’s like you don’t have to have pain for growth, which is apparently that’s a misnomer. It is.

Janis Isaman 9:59
All of my clients are surprised by that, actually, you don’t even need to sweat to get great growth and change in the body. Yeah.

Richard Matthews 10:06
So we’ve been, he’s been putting me through some pretty simple, it’s like, doesn’t even take 10 minutes a day. And like, I’m seeing massive changes, which is crazy. So anyways, let’s let’s just sort of like personal experience lines up with a lot of what you’re teaching and doing. And I think, personally after having gone through it, even though it wasn’t with you, I think everyone should find someone who teaches what you teach.

Janis Isaman 10:25
I agree, I ofcourse agree.

and learning it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually, I had some conversations this week that were about the idea that we didn’t have time to work out and work on our bodies. And that is another huge myth that we need to carve out that hour. And the truth is so many people, especially in that 35 to 55 year old age range, where we’re raising kids and building our assets and working on our career, that energy and time maybe doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that we should do nothing. And in fact, those shorter periods are often often more effective. We don’t need that full hour if you have it, and or you enjoy it great. But that’s a huge myth that’s been given to us. And, and so many people just give up because they don’t feel like they have it.

Richard Matthews 11:17
Yeah, yeah. So what’s crazy to me is like the workout that I that he’s gonna be doing in the morning, takes like, seven, maybe 10 minutes if your child interrupts you kind of thing. I’m like, That’s such it’s such a short amount of time that you can just fold it into your morning routine. Like it’s nothing

Janis Isaman 11:33
Exactly. like

Richard Matthews 11:34
I had a 14 minutes, you brush your teeth, comb your hair, you put on your shirt, and you do you do seven to 10 minutes of this workout, you move on.

Janis Isaman 11:40
Exactly. Yeah, I had a 14 minute routine for a long time. And it was quite effective. I do a different routine now. Because I have found a bit more time and I’m teaching more clients online and doing it with them. But seven minutes, 10 minutes, 14 minutes can actually make significant changes in the body.

Richard Matthews 12:02
Yeah, yeah, I have biceps for the first time in my whole life.

Janis Isaman 12:05
Yes. Awesome.

Richard Matthews 12:08
That’s always fun. So what I want to talk about next, then is your origin story, right? So we say on the show, every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. And we basically want to hear that story where you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to become a fitness hero? Or did you start in a job and eventually, you know, move on to the entrepreneur career path, basically just want to know where you came from?

Janis Isaman 12:35
Well, I have a lot of little elements to my hero’s story. So we’re gonna start the comic book on a farm. So I grew up on a farm. And that is something that I actually hadn’t until very recently tied into my entrepreneur story. But farmers are entrepreneurs. So I grew up with parents who work for themselves. And frankly, I didn’t really realize the difference. But now that I have spent eight years as a full on entrepreneur, a lot of what gives me the resilience and the ability to continue day to day is just those lessons that I was actually handed as a child without even realizing I was being exposed to that. But basically, I got off the farm as quickly as I could, fled to the city to go get educated. And at that point, I was a super non athletic child. So my superhero cape did not involve any running and jumping, I was not athletic in a very traditional sense to this day, if you throw a ball at me, it’s likely to go over my shoulder or fall at my feet, as opposed to me being able to hit it back. So I was definitely that child who was sitting in my high school Phy Ed, teachers office crying because my Phy Ed Mark was literally pulling down my average. So I headed into school to get a Bachelor of Commerce and found that I really like running. So this was something totally new to me. We hadn’t really explored that in Phy Ed class. And because I didn’t come from that athletic background. If I knew then what I know now, I actually ended up injuring my knee. And I could tell you now it was because the rest of my leg muscles weren’t in condition to actually be running up and down hills. But I developed a syndrome called Runner’s knee. And essentially, that is a it’s classic symptomology of the glutes not functioning in a runner’s body. So it would run and it would hurt to walk up and down stairs, it would hurt to sit, it would hurt to study, etc. And I did exactly what I described it my ideal clients do. I went to a bunch of therapists and trainers and different places, I went to this crazy old sports doctor who told me to tie a rope with a rock and do some leg things and I knew that there must be a better way. So this was in the 1990s and I am ended up at a pilates studio and immediately fell in love with the work. And I decided that at some point, I would like to become not only a teacher, but actually studio owner. Um, and back in those days, we had magazines, and nobody really talked about vision boarding, but I would just create my own little magazines of things that I wanted in my life and I pasted that in a note can carry it around my pocket. And 10 years past, I went forward with a completely different career path. And I ended up eventually living in Toronto, the home of your friend, um, and I was working in the media and knew that I was actually going to be moving to New York. So the very last year that I lived there, Toronto is actually the headquarters of the world’s largest global pilates friend, STOTT Pilates. And I decided that I needed to either kinda get this little image that was in my Facebook, out of the Facebook or move on and do my training. So for a year, I would literally ride my bike, it was about a mile up a hill, and took my pilates training, I had no intentions of becoming a teacher, I just knew it was good for my body, I love the work, etc. And then I moved to New York, and I continued adding some of those trainings that were on your list. But I also continued my immediate job. And eventually, I decided to make that jump into being a full time entrepreneur. So after six years of getting all my training, buying equipment, really, this was just a personal passion in my in the back of my head. But when I moved to Calgary, and I saw kind of what I owned the equipment and the certifications, and the fact that I had client experience, I had actually been working towards that for about six years before I actually made the jump to full time entrepreneur. So I left my corporate job and rented a commercial space and never looked back.

Richard Matthews 17:05
So that’s a that’s a fun story. All the way through, right, just the thing that popped in my head, by the way, when you were said you were you were not very athletic as a child, my wife says the same thing. But her phrase, her phrase always cracked me up, you might enjoy it. She said she had the athletic ability of a flat rock and went through her hard enough, she could skip across the lake. But that was about it.

Janis Isaman 17:24
Yup, me too. So I laugh about that to this day, because although I do work with some very athletic people. Um, by the time I figure an exercise out, by the time I’ve kind of broken it down into my own body, I could teach it to literally anybody. So I that is one of my greatest assets is actually not being athletic. And I’ve heard it said, and it’s super true. If you want to find out how to get great results from somebody in terms of your athleticism and your body. You go to the person who had to struggle with it, you don’t go to the to the guy who’s always been built, or the woman who’s always

Richard Matthews 17:59
been fit and, yeah

Janis Isaman 18:01
Because that’s genetics, you’re never gonna learn that. But working with somebody who’s actually come through that struggle, you’re gonna get.

Richard Matthews 18:08
you had to fight for it. What’s that? Someone who had to fight for it?

Janis Isaman 18:12
Totally? Yes. Yeah.

Richard Matthews 18:14
So speaking of fighting for it, how, how was how was that transition from being someone who was working in a corporate environment to starting your own business? Is that something that was a struggle, something you had to fight for as well? Or was it an easy transition for you?

Janis Isaman 18:29
It was a bit of both. So I’ve always been told that starting your business, business is very, very hard. And I actually didn’t find it hard. But there were things about it that I didn’t really expect. And what I’m about to say, sounds really silly, because we all know this, but it just was unexpected to me. So I didn’t really expect too much time doing basic things like eating the floor, we’re going to take I didn’t expect how much time applying for the business license and working with insurance companies and doing all the marketing, etc, we’re going to take so I knew that I had to do those tasks. But I think it’s that long term. Week in, week out month in, month out year in year out where you are responsible for all of those things that to this day still catches me off guard. So eight years later, I’m still like, what, wow, this really takes a lot of time. So I, I was

Richard Matthews 19:27
I was legitimately before we get on the call working on budgeting, right? Because that’s the thing you have to do. It is a thing.

Janis Isaman 19:33
There’s a lot of things. And so I think that in a corporate environment, even if you think that you’re doing it all, you’re not doing it all. You don’t think about where the phone line comes from. You don’t think about who is renewing the domain name. You don’t think about the website, you don’t think about the phone number and paying the phone bill. So there is probably 1000 tasks that are just handled in that corporate environment. they’d actually add up to a lot of time.

Richard Matthews 20:03
Yeah, yeah, that’s a that’s like my, my current struggle in my business is learning how to get as many of those things off of my plate and into capable team members hands that are well trained and, and can do those things. And like, that’s, that’s a that’s another interesting struggle that you don’t ever really have in the corporate side. That’s right, because someone else does that.

Janis Isaman 20:22
Someone else does that. And they’re good at that. And I mean, I’ve had a couple of hires, or whether they be staff members or contractors. And that’s a skillset that you know, I’m not an HR department. So it’s a, it’s a skillset that as an entrepreneur, we don’t have a lot of wiggle room to make a mistake. And if you make a mistake, because you don’t have the skillset yet, those are very expensive to small business.

Richard Matthews 20:51
They’re expensive, but you learn the lessons quick that way,

Janis Isaman 20:54
It is true.

Richard Matthews 20:57
You pick up the skillsets, because you’re like, Oh, I’m not gonna do that. Again.

Janis Isaman 21:01
Yes It’s true. Yes.

Richard Matthews 21:04
And I think probably everyone who runs a business who has just heard that probably had something pop in their head be like, yep, I’ve done that.

Janis Isaman 21:11
We’ve all done this. Yes, yes. Yes.

Richard Matthews 21:14
So I want to talk a little bit then about your superpowers, right? Every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by a genius ntellect, or the ability to call down Thunder from the sky. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, right? It’s a skill or set of skills that you’re either born with, or you’ve developed over time. And it really energized all of your other skills, right? It’s like the common thread through all the things that you’re doing really well, you know, what, that’s probably the one thing that really lets me do what I do. So the superpower is what sets you apart and allows you to help your clients, the people in your world slay their villains, so to speak, and come out on top of their own journey. So with that sort of framing, what do you think your superpower is?

Janis Isaman 21:55
Well, there’s it there’s a couple of things I was gonna say. Um, classically, and historically, stubbornness wasn’t seen as a superpower. My parents certainly did not think so when I was growing up. And is actually one of my core assets. So when I set my mind to something, it is going to happen. And that is that so I would call my, if I had a little cape, it would be captain stubborn.

Richard Matthews 22:20
So I identify that without a lot, but it wasn’t, it didn’t really become a thing in my life that I was aware of, until I had my second child, who was just as if not more stubborn than I am. And when you realize, Oh, that’s me.

Janis Isaman 22:37
Yes. That’s Well,

Richard Matthews 22:39
I’m like, Oh, I’m a stubborn sob. And I’m being paid back for it right now.

Janis Isaman 22:45
This is true, I actually laughed because they totally gave birth to a little clone, which actually makes it easier to parent a child who’s just like you, because my parents never really understood me in that sense. But, and I do understand my son, but yes, sometimes I’m like, Ah, this would be an asset when you’re an adult. So think of asset when you’re an adult.

Richard Matthews 23:06
But they’re, they’re very, very stubborn. And I was, I was definitely like that as a child, too. I was one of those. One of those kids that always like, once I set my mind to it, it was gonna happen. Yeah, one way or the other, I was gonna find a way to do it and figure it out. And my problem my parents had with that, was that the things I chose to be the things that were going to happen were not like normal things.

Janis Isaman 23:27
Yeah.

Richard Matthews 23:28
Right. They were like, I, I was the kid who was trying to start a business at 13. And they were like, you can’t start a business because you’re not legally old enough to sign documents. Sounds like I’ll find a way.

Janis Isaman 23:40
I’ll find a way anyways, yes, even when I was opening my studio, I still would settle my mind on ridiculous things. I wanted a white leather carpet in my front entrance. I mean, there is a reason that they don’t really make white leather carpets and to try to buy one in Canada is a whole other component to it. So some of the things that I am stubborn about are ridiculous, like the white leather carpet, which by the way, I found one, um, and other think. It did work out? Yeah, it’s great. But I figured out why they don’t really make many of them because people like to walk in and walk on it. And I’m always like, get off the way leather carpet. Because you can’t really clean white leather rugs and I’m like, Okay, I see why this is not a fully available thing. But there’s other there’s other ways in which that resilience really pays off. So that’s my little. That’s, that’s one of my zone of genius is

Richard Matthews 24:41
So so what do you think is probably one of the biggest things in your business that’s helped with,

Janis Isaman 24:47
Um, I’m going to give a very recent example about COVID so I was I was online and serving clients within three hours of being shut down, because I just knew this is where we’re flipping the switch, the doors are shut, we have to serve clients, I have clients now let’s solve the problem. And so rather than getting caught up in the problem that stubborness says, Go find a solution. Because you cannot do it now. Yeah. In that case, yes, it was do it now. But there’s been a lot of instances where I mean, the the statistics say that businesses, many businesses closed within five years, and I fit in the sub category of being a single parent and 95% of those businesses don’t actually remain in operation. I can see why. But I have an attitude and a spirit that says, I will not fail. And when that is present, that means you are looking for the solution.

Richard Matthews 25:49
Yeah, yeah. It’s a one of one of the things that I I used to as a younger entrepreneur, I was naive. And I thought that anyone could be a business owner. Anyone could do this. No. And if they just had the right training, or the right things that they could do it. And I realized, as I’ve grown up, that that’s not true. It’s more true that anyone, like a great business owner can come from anywhere. Yeah, right. But it’s not true that anyone can do it.

Janis Isaman 26:16
No, it takes a lot of inner reserves to actually tolerate. This is where I was risking risk tolerance is and other things. That’s where I think that farm background is really, really, it’s in me to a deep level, because we would have years when very unexpected things would happen, the crops would get hailed out, there wouldn’t be enough rain and things like that. And you know, you’re sitting on a piece of land on you go. And so that’s the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur. And entrepreneur says, this will not be, when I’m hailed out, we will still plant next year.

Richard Matthews 26:56
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the flip side, of course of your superpower is your fatal flaw. So just like every Superman has this kryptonite, and every Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that held you back in your business, right? Something that you’ve struggled with, maybe it’s for me, it was a couple of things, things like perfectionism that kept me from shipping product, right? I would always want to tweak and play with it before I’d ever actually ship it and get it to the market. or lack of self care, which meant that I let my clients walk all over me, right? It’s just one way that that comes about, or you know, being a visionary, like you have big visions, but then you really, really suck at the minutia. So things never get done. So I think more important than the flaw is, how have you worked on it. So our audience who might be listening can learn a little bit from your experience.

Janis Isaman 27:49
I can relate to everything you said, actually, this is my second business. And the first one failed because of all of those things. So I could list any of those. But I’m going to list something for my present business. And that is, I struggle actually with structure. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs are really great at being nonlinear, we can vision things we can be in this flow in this creativity, I can execute my client sessions, because I don’t come in with a plan, I don’t have it all kind of written down. So when it comes to emails, and admin and accounting and actually executing those, it is something I fight with, I struggle with it exhausts me. And so I have currently I’m actually working with a life coach to try to mind that balance. And somehow I think, I think it’s that I say yes to everything. And then there’s too many things. And then I look at all the things and I get exhausted by the things. So I am constantly trying to improve my skill at being able to load my plate, still have that say yes attitude, but actually rid some of that admin, and I have outsourced admin before but it doesn’t really take care of the problem. Because it it, you know, client bookings all come through me, it doesn’t matter how much I have an assistant to do it, it still all comes through me because I have that direct one to one relationship with my clients. And all of those things still swirl in my head, I’m still responsible for them all. So just that, you know, that’s that’s my solution to it at the moment is actually getting the life coach to learn the underlying skill of this might feel urgent and important. And it actually could sit in a slightly different box, or come off the list altogether.

Richard Matthews 29:48
Yeah, that’s actually a really interesting skill is learning how to I call it learn how to say no, or when to say no. Yeah, I think it’s more important. So it’s not just that you like it’s you have to learn what what you can say. No to, and also when you should say no to them. And because because being an effective business owner effective entrepreneur a lot of times is learning what to cut out, right. So you can focus on just the core things that you need to be focused on.

Janis Isaman 30:14
Absolutely. And I think that all of the conversation around that says to outsource it all. But that costs a lot of money to outsource it, even if the dollars per hour is relatively inexpensive. So instead of outsourcing, I’m kind of hitting it underneath and just trying to learn what even needs to be there. And then I outsource what needs to be there as opposed to saying, Oh, this all needs to be there. Let’s outsource it,

Richard Matthews 30:40
which is what I’ve done in the past. And outsourcing also has with it a idea of scale, that may or may not be in your goals.

Janis Isaman 30:49
Correct.

Richard Matthews 30:51
And so for someone like me who’s trying to scale, outsourcing more is is an important skill to learn alongside that. But to your point, it, just because it’s being done doesn’t mean it should be getting done and paying someone else to do something that shouldn’t be done is just as bad, if not worse, than to do it yourself.

Janis Isaman 31:11
Absolutely, yes. And so I think that if I was to kind of go back five years, I would have done what I’m doing now back then to try to, I don’t even know if it’s gonna make the list shorter. But hopefully it makes it feel more manageable, and then look at what I need to do to manage it, as opposed to just saying, continuing for and trying to chuck pieces at someone else.

Richard Matthews 31:39
So just just because I sort of, I feel like this fits along the same line, when it comes to scale and the type of services that you offer, are you are you ever looking at bringing more people in to teach or to train, train them what you do, looking to keep it as, as just you and your one on one kind of stuff?

Janis Isaman 31:59
That’s an awesome question, because I actually had staff, and then I downsized them, I got rid of them. And that, for me was not an enjoyable piece of my business. And it had nothing to do with the particular humans that I hired, I still keep in touch with them. I think they’re phenomenal people, they have great careers and are just awesome. But it just wasn’t for me. I have a very small space and a very particular work technique. And in particular relationship with my clients, that is actually really hard to replicate. So when I first opened, my idea was to have six locations to train people to do it. And then I realized, and actually that came in management component wasn’t, it wasn’t actually generating a ton of revenue, because it would take away from my billable hours to manage the staff who were actually earning less money than I was. And then it just, I mean, my child is nine now and my business is eight years old. And so if you dial back a few years, I had a small child. And I felt like I was going to work managing the humans there and coming home and managing the humans here. And I just had nothing left for me. So it was a very, very difficult decision. But I decided that that actually was not going to be my growth model. My growth model was going to be in digital in speaking and writing in actually branding myself. And it took me a couple of years to really get there. But now I’m here and I’m not planning to look back. I mean, never say never. But

Richard Matthews 33:38
yeah, I’d imagine like a more group programs and things like that, that allow you to scale sort of scale the income without scaling your business beyond herself and maybe a VA or two correct,

Janis Isaman 33:49
exactly. There’s there are ways when you are a single person business to actually generate additional revenue. I have moved into product sales, I teach other instructors that that’s a it’s a it’s a program that they sign up for take and then go off and do their own thing, not at my business. I do have a writing income. I have group programs that exist online. And then I still have the core business, which is one to one. Now I can do that digitally, though,

Richard Matthews 34:23
which is also awesome what’s what’s interesting too, is you probably have found that as you’ve built yourself up as an expert in your space, that it’s easier to fill the calendar for your one on one stuff.

Janis Isaman 34:33
Absolutely. Absolutely. And what I do find with that, I have a very specific service. So I’m working with people who want body sustainability and to your point that doesn’t need to be an hour. It’s definitely a way of thinking it’s definitely somebody who is coming in looking for a solution. Not necessarily for I have an hour and I need to do this certain technique. I need to take a spin class. It’s I want to solution to feel better and to make my life work better show me how the clients who do come in, have clearly followed my Instagram or Facebook, they’ve clearly read my website, they know what they’re buying, they know who they’re buying. And it’s just, it’s, it’s a perfect fit. Whereas I found before, it was definitely a wider breadth and range of clients. And now it’s everyone is right on target. And they were just integrating a match.

Richard Matthews 35:29
They know exactly what you’re looking for. Yeah. And it’s like that sustainability point is such a key thing. I know, like, when I started working with the coach, I’m working with one of the things that, like I was asking for, and why we fit together so well is because I was like, I don’t want to learn how to do a diet or how to do specific exercises, I want to learn how to eat in such a way that is sustainable. Like, I want to retrain my, my relationship with food, so that it can just be a forever relationship. And it’s always good and healthy. Right? And I want to have retrain my, my thinking on, on working out and, you know, taking care of my body. So it’s just it’s a sustainable thing, not like, you know, I’m going to do a spin class or do yoga for six weeks and then go on to something else, or, you know

Janis Isaman 36:14
and there’s nothing wrong with that part. But But yes, you’re right. And I consider myself almost more of an educator than I do a, you know, some people ask me if I’m a personal trainer, I mean, it’s not unlike that. But I would call myself much more of a teacher and educator than a trainer or a fitness instructor, because it’s really about that deeper underlying education that allows somebody to then walk away and apply those principles themselves as opposed to, and 10. Nine, you know what I mean? Yeah,

Richard Matthews 36:50
yeah, absolutely. So actually, I think that’s a good transition for my next question, which is your common enemy, right? So every superhero has an arch nemesis, but just the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. Right. So in the world of business, it takes on many forms. But generally speaking, we’re putting in the context of your clients, right? The people that you’re working with on a daily basis, and it’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw that they’re coming to you with, right? That you’re constantly like banging your head against the wall and going, you know, I wish I could just make this go away. And if you had your magic wand, you could pop all your new clients on the head with it, and it would just wouldn’t be a thing you had to deal with. Yeah, so you could get them better, cheaper, faster, higher degree of results, what is that common enemy that you’re always have to fight against with new clients?

Janis Isaman 37:29
Well, last year in the year before, I would have actually told you is the keto diet, but it pretty much died with the pandemic. So you know, the pandemic killed it, because the first thing people did was go to the grocery stores and wipe the shelves out of all the beans and oatmeal and all the other carbs. I was laughing because I was like yeah, that that was the quickest death of a bad diet that I’ve ever seen. But it’s basically the fitness health diet over culture, which tells us that

Richard Matthews 38:02
men need to be fed, whatever the fad diet that’s happening right now.

Janis Isaman 38:06
And that there is this one singular magic solution. I find that we’re rolling through these a lot faster at the Internet, and we did a decade or two ago. So you know, in the past couple years, we’ve gone gluten free, and then we had paleo and then we had keto. And we’ve had the spinning class trend, etc. But basically all of these, intermitent fasting, have you seen the new one that’s coming up, right is the carnivore diet, right, which is another iteration of same, same same. And so basically, if people people looking for, if I just do this thing for 30 days, the rest of my life, like my whole past is going to be erased, and this will be miraculously easy and, and forever, which we know it’s not gonna be. But and that that idea that comes along with it, you know, there’s all these means starting way back with Nikes. Just do it where we have to work our hardest. And we have to have this discipline, and we have to suffer. And we have to actually, even the fact that our bodies are supposed to only look this one certain way. So I want to get rid of that whole thing. I want to take fitness and diet, pop it on the head and get rid of it.

Richard Matthews 39:23
So just out of curiosity, where do you think this obsession with suffering in order to be healthy comes from?

Janis Isaman 39:32
I don’t know. Actually, that’s a great question. I’m going to I’m going to research that because I don’t actually know. But it does seem like, It’s very common, at least in our culture. Yes, it is. And that ends up being something that some of my clients end up being really uncomfortable with because they don’t sweat and there’s some of them I have to almost hold their hand and say Trust me. This is going to get you results in six weeks, and results that you don’t even imagine right now, because you’re not grunting and groaning and sweating and moaning. And, and not to say that there isn’t a level of discomfort. It’s just not what people expect to get them a result. So I don’t know, that’s some hangover from a puritanical idea. But the Puritans existed long before working out whatever did so I don’t really know where that came from it had to have been born in the 1980s. Because people didn’t work out before the 80s. I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the 70s. But that was still not in common culture. People didn’t run until the 80s, or 90s. aerobics was really a product of the 80s 80s and 90s yet, so it had to been somewhere in one of those decades that, you know, my first answer and I don’t even know if it’s actually factually true is we can blame Nike for their Just do it.

Richard Matthews 40:59
Yeah, it’s such an interesting mentality that we just as a culture, we struggle with this idea that that change comes from struggle. Yeah. And like, there’s some truth to that there’s there is definitely struggle in change. But sometimes, the biggest struggle is here, right? It’s just understanding what the, what it is you need to change. And I know, like, for me, and for a lot of the coaches that I’ve talked to in this space, a lot of times the biggest struggle is like, is learning how to change your relationship with exercise or change your relationship with food.

Janis Isaman 41:35
Yes.

Richard Matthews 41:36
And it’s not, it’s not the actual, like the grunting and the sweating. It’s the mental relationship you have with those things.

Janis Isaman 41:43
The reality is that the way gyms are set up, and to be clear, I don’t think the gym is a bad place. But less than 20% of people even have gym memberships. And then of the people who have gym memberships, there’s a huge percentage that don’t go. So the reality. factual evidence says most people don’t like it. So instead of going and forcing yourself to exert all this willpower to like it, find something that is palatable that is on the more enjoyable and that maybe doesn’t feel like you’re being torn apart. So whether that’s taking a walk, we call that athletic

Richard Matthews 42:21
hobby,

Janis Isaman 42:23
yeah, yeah, exactly. So we need something to move our body and to eat in a in a reasonable, rational manner. But it These things don’t need to be on this extreme. So I think it actually creates a mindset for people where they, they think it either has to be this hard, extreme program, or else there’s no point. And that’s not true.

Richard Matthews 42:45
One of one of the clients I had a couple of years ago, he was a spiritual educator, but one of the things he he talked a lot about was health, right, and how important you know, your body was to having a good spiritual relationship with with your Creator and everything. And it’s like, if you’re, your body is falling apart, you’re gonna have a really hard time doing these things. And he, he mentioned that that’s what the athletic hobby thing came in. That was one of his biggest, biggest things that he taught people about is like, be like, you don’t even have to have like, you don’t have to do what everyone says you need to do. You need to find something that you love to do. Yes. Right. And for him, it was tennis. For me. It’s like kayaking and hiking with my kids, those kind of things. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s something that’s moving you right, because we have with modern technology, and all kinds of stuff and work everything, we’re very sedentary lives. You know? Yeah, that gets you up and gets you moving into the Body Body going. And that’s most of the battle won.

Janis Isaman 43:47
Absolutely. At some point, in the last six months, I did a little presentation, and I did some very rough math. So this isn’t statistically accurate. But we have 24 hours in a day, we sleep for eight, that leaves a 16. The average person actually isn’t achieving 10,000 steps on their Fitbit, but we’re going to be generous and say that they are and we’re going to be generous and say that this takes an hour and a half to do. So that’s leaving us 14 and a half hours where we are not in motion. And if we actually say okay, maybe some of that standing at the kitchen sink or standing, I don’t know, standing somewhere not moving. Let’s give that even another hour and a half just to be you know, but that still leaves 12 hours a day where we’re sitting. And unless we actually make an active choice to change that everything in our culture directs us towards our butts and not in the good way. So that is something I share widely now because I just don’t think most people put it in that those mathematical terms. Most people don’t self identify as being sedentary. But if we aren’t getting 10,000 steps in our foot Fitbit, and or we’re not actually engaged in an athletic hobby. That’s what the reality looks like you’re sitting down for 12 to 14 hours a day, and you’re not going to have your whole life, you’re not going to be optimally productive at work, you’re not going to have great relationships. And all the way up that pyramid.

Richard Matthews 45:21
Yeah, I do, I do crazy small things to help with that, like I parking the, you know, the 1040, when you go to Walmart, so you have longer to walk. And it’s just because I like to have more opportunities to to walk more, or, you know, walk to go get the mail, and you know, whatever, it’s just, you know, we have, we have such easy access to everything that sometimes you just have to set yourself up to get a little bit more activity and during the day.

Janis Isaman 45:48
That’s right. And that’s also where I actually feel like a large part of my job is just educating people about their body because we were never told what our body should feel like we were never told. Most of us learn really basic musculoskeletal stuff, like we know where like bone is, and the we’ve heard of the abs. But most people have never really learned anything of any practical substance when it comes to the body. So I don’t think that most of this is the reason that most people are sedentary and not getting in those little moments is because they actively choose not to I think we just didn’t get that educational component. And then we’ve been told, well, you need an hour, or you might as well not bother, you know what I mean? So it’s, yeah, there is so much value in having that education matched with those little tiny steps that will get you 90% of the result that you probably want.

Richard Matthews 46:48
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it’s a it’s such an interesting, interesting, like problem, right? Because you you think you get educated in school about things that you need, but then you get out into the real world and realize that like, you didn’t learn how to do finances, you didn’t really learn about diet, you didn’t really learn how to take care of yourself. And like, he might be able to identify all your major systems in your body, but you know, that you actually know what they do or how they work or, or, you know, what, what, how your lifestyle impacts them. And you don’t until you start looking into it yourself.

Janis Isaman 47:21
Correct? Yeah. And then I then I feel like you do need to seek that out. You need to seek out somebody who can help you with that education that you didn’t get in school. And it’s not the school’s fault. That’s just not how our society set up. We learn math, we learn social studies, we you know, remember, I learned the history of Brazil, that’s not ever been useful for one day of my life. But yeah, that’s the kind of stuff we learn.

Richard Matthews 47:46
interesting, it’s such an interesting thing, right? Because, like, you, it almost seems like, like, you know, P.E with physical education was like, I remember, like, pe was like, you’re gonna swim for an hour, or you’re gonna play kickball for an hour, you’re gonna like, we didn’t never actually learn anything about our bodies.

Janis Isaman 48:04
No, we didn’t.

Richard Matthews 48:06
And it would have been fascinating to actually like, like, learn about nutrition and learn about feeding yourself and learn about like, actually, you know, how muscles grow and how you can impact that, that growth, and those kind of things and then, like, put them into practice in school that would have been so much cooler than what we actually learn.

Janis Isaman 48:24
Absolutely. And, and body awareness. I mean, a lot of what I do is actually education, meaning body awareness, because how do we know we can maintain our own body when we’re aware? It’s similar to being able to maintain a car or home. Yeah. If I’m driving down the road. The sounds and what not, a Clank yes, you know there’s something wrong. Exactly. And so if somebody, I have very low car knowledge, so. But I know a lot of people who have great car knowledge, and they can identify based on the sound, the car makes exactly what is wrong. I just hear a sound and they say something is wrong.

Richard Matthews 49:05
So I can call my brother and hold the phone up to my car and be like, what is this and he can tell me what’s wrong with it?

Janis Isaman 49:11
Exactly. So our bodies are actually the same way. So many of us actually have an awareness when we reach that pain level, like the transmission has fallen out of the car, or the car is now parked, you have to get a tow truck,

Richard Matthews 49:22
if there’s a bone sticking out, you know, there’s a problem

Janis Isaman 49:25
Exactly. But everything leading up to that our body’s actually giving us a ton of signals. And, and, but we were never taught what any of those meant. And so it’s everybody can relate to the car piece. Where you know, for task to maintain a car, we all know somebody who can identify all of that stuff and then actually preventatively maintain the car, I’m gonna have to take it into the Auto Body Shop once it’s already wrecked. So that’s actually the approach that we have culturally taken for our body. We Go to the chiropractor when we’re already wrecked, we go to the massage therapist when things are damaged. Nobody’s actually teaching us that underlying awareness of, hey, there’s a little sensation of compression, there’s a little sensation of rotation. What do you do about that before it actually becomes this epic crisis. And I mean, I don’t I don’t begrudge these people, that’s choice. But I’ve had people that leave those problems for 20 years, well, at that point, the car is rusted, is like, is a beater, right? And so then it’s going to take a while to actually kind of get that vehicle functioning again. Whereas if we all just learned this, when we were either kids or, you know, young adults, we would never get into that place in the first place. But it’s never too late to learn it.

Richard Matthews 50:49
Yeah, and one of the things that, like, fascinated me, right, because this is this is journey I went on this year was like, learning all of this stuff about myself. And I realized, like, a lot of things that I just thought were normal things like, like, you know, took me a while to fall asleep, right, or having, you know, a little bit of pain in my shoulder from, you know, like, injuries when I was younger. And things like, you know, the the, the things that go with hormone dips in your 30s, when you haven’t taken care of yourself the way you should, and like they were results of those kinds of things. Like all those things, you just like, this is all just normal stuff. I’m aging, I realize that those aren’t those it’s not, it’s not it’s not a sign of aging? No it’s not, it’s a sign of like, you have things to take care of.

Janis Isaman 51:31
That’s right. That is actually the biggest, you know, I’m gonna change my answer. When you said, what, what is the arch nemesis, it’s actually aging. And it is the fact that 90% of people will talk up anything negative that’s happening in the body as aging. And it’s because again, we haven’t actually been told, okay, this is something normal for aging, skin wrinkly, eventually, we’re gonna get wrinkling skin. That’s normal for aging. But gaining weight every year, that’s not necessarily normal, not being able to sleep is not necessarily normal, not having bladder control is not normal, having aches and pains and stiffness and cracking and popping when you wake up, that’s not normal. Um, but we kind of culturally assign all of that it’s while you’re old now. So, you know, live without, for the next 40 years. And it

Richard Matthews 52:20
doesn’t have to be , it was, it was really fascinating, because like, I learned all sorts of things that were like, that’s actually a result of like, you have a parasitic load in your body. Like, if I removed that things change, right, you have toxic load in your body. So it’s like, you know, shoulder acne and like, my face is clearing up and like, I have less wrinkles, and all these kind of things. And, you know, come to find out the whole idea that like in your 30s, your testosterone starts to drop off, or if you’re a woman, your estrogen starts to drop off. That’s not a thing. Like you can have your testosterone levels stay the same through your whole life if you take care of your body, right?

Janis Isaman 52:52
Yeah, yeah. So I think that, but when we’re always told that aging has all of this negativity associated with it, you just sort of intellectually flag everything that’s happening in your body is okay, well, I guess this is the way it is. But when we also think about this, it’s the stuff starts happening at 30, 35, 40. I mean, we’re living with it for 40 to 50 years. That’s longer than we deal with it. So that that doesn’t actually make rational sense. But it’s what we’ve been told. So, yeah and we have

Richard Matthews 53:27
you have people, like if Jacqueline can swim the English Channel at 95, or whatever. Right?

Janis Isaman 53:33
Exactly. And so I think you said something super important. That’s our body giving us information. That’s the car making a noise, saying, hey, there’s a little clump back here. And I wouldn’t expect an average person to just completely ignore the clunk in the car. But that’s what we do in our body. And we say, it’s just old. Even though 35 is actually not old, 95 is old, but 35 is not. Um, but it’s just so interesting, because with our belongings, or physical belongings, we wouldn’t just say, Well, I’m just going to ignore that, or I’m going to disregard that information. But we do that in our bodies, we don’t think about the fact hunger signals are a signal that we take action on it. Pain is also a signal people. So that should be actions, because it’s not normal.

Richard Matthews 54:24
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it’s fascinating, right? Because it doesn’t take a lot to put to fix a lot of those things and your body, your body responds to positive change very, very quickly.

Janis Isaman 54:38
And it’s because A, your body can usually remember not feeling that and be your body isn’t meant to feel broken down. Your body wants to take steps to actually recover and be healthy and feel great. And if you just edge it towards that it’ll go in that direction. like a little child. Yeah,

Richard Matthews 54:58
yeah. And It’s like, the whole, the body’s like ability to heal itself is is fascinating, to me at least. And like all the way down to, like I’ve noticed a couple of weeks ago, I sliced my finger like almost off like a chunk of it off with a razor blade on accident. And I remember like, last year, I did something similar cut my hand took like six weeks to heal. And now that I’m significantly healthier than I was took like three days

Janis Isaman 55:24
That fast

Richard Matthews 55:26
Right. It’s like, like, it’s, you know, when your body’s not dealing with trying to keep everything that should be functioning well, like this, you know, I don’t know how you call that, right? Like when you have when you have, you know, toxins in your body and parasites in your body and you’re like not feeding it well. And like it’s trying, it’s doing a lot of work just to keep you going. But when you sort of get everything going properly, then when you’re when you injure yourself, it’s like, oh, I can focus all my attention on that and get it done quick.

Janis Isaman 55:51
This is this, it is the same though as other stress loads in the body. So if we have a to do list with 180 things on it, you add one more thing. And it’s it’s like, you know, it’s not going to get done right away. You’re You’re very busy with the other 180 things. If you are down to three items in your inbox and an email comes in, that’s getting actioned and tasks right away, right. So that’s the same, we can all relate to that. But we don’t think about that in our body. But if your body is working on, like you said, parasites and illnesses and crappy nutrition, and 14 hours a day of being sedentary and improper sleep, cutting your finger is not the priority that’s getting dealt with that’s behind the 180 other things in your to do.

Richard Matthews 56:38
It’s got bigger things to worry about right now. It’ll get around to fixing that at some point.

Janis Isaman 56:42
Yes, yes, our body has chores survival above all else. And you know, fitness and nutrition are key to that, because that is basic maintenance 101.

Richard Matthews 56:56
So I think that’s actually it drives really nicely into my next question, which is your driving force, right? So the flip side of the common enemy is, is your driving force. And just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman if I save Gotham or Google fights index and categorize all the world’s information? What is it that you fight for? Right? Why do you do what you do?

Janis Isaman 57:15
I love working with people and getting results. They’re the ones who actually get the results, but just helping people with everything that we’ve just been talking about showing a different way and getting those results. And it literally without exaggerating, I get texts and or emails and or you know, Facebook, Instagram comments every single week about Wow, I can’t believe how different my body feels. I can’t believe the changes I’m seeing my life. And those changes are not limited to health and fitness. It’s not like oh, wow, I have a bicep. Now it is people are interacting with me differently. I’m happier. I’m getting more done at work. I have different relationships. It’s a whole life, it is more profitable. Yes, it’s a whole life change. Right people are, people end up leaving jobs they don’t like they end up making huge life changes because their bodies feel better. But I remember one client who said that she had gone into a store before she started working with me and they sort of pushed her off. And then she went into the store afterwards. And her posture was taller, she had a sparkle in her eye and they treated her totally differently. And she was just amazed by this, but it’s your physical presence in the world. That’s just you out there. But yeah, I think I do what I do, because I don’t have a single day of my life where I think oh, man, I just really don’t want to go help that client get a better life. And it’s just so fun to me to see people experience this monumental growth and shifts and change and education and things they didn’t know before and moving differently. And I could go on it’s just it’s it’s a great will.

Richard Matthews 59:11
I’ve been amazed how making those changes in my own life have changed so much more than just like I The reason I got I wanted to do the work was because I’ve got children that you know, I one of my last podcast guests said that age is a privilege. And not everyone has the privilege right so you know you should you should take with it. You know the responsibility have that and I was really struck stuck with me and like one of the things that like I started this last year was was like, I want to be healthy when my kids are growing up. Right? I want to be healthy when they’re having kids right? I want to be there to still go hiking with them or take my grandkids kayaking and I’m like I know that I have to put in the work now in order to not have a rusty beater when I get to that age right. And, and like so that’s what I was expecting to happen right. I was expecting to get healthier. But the things that you mentioned just a second ago, were none of the things that I wasn’t expecting any of that I wasn’t expecting to have better posture, I wasn’t expecting to have people notice the way that you look is different. I wasn’t expecting my business to get more profitable and my ability to have ideation, right and like actually run through and do get things done get better. And yet, all those things have happened.

Janis Isaman 1:00:22
Yes, in the Buddhist philosophy, there’s something called the wheel of life. And I don’t remember how many spokes it has on it six, I’ve seen other iterations of this 8, 10, 12. But they’re, they’re all interrelated. So it’s your spirituality, your creativity, your education, your nutrition, your home environment, your relationships, your social life, your physical body. It’s all spokes on a wheel. And you can’t just take one of those folks out work just on one, because they’re all interrelated. And they always will be. So it always comes as a surprise to people that suddenly they’re, you know, I’ve had clients to take on the Marie Kondo home, cleaning project and freshen up their home, or change jobs or, you know, get a divorce was something that wasn’t working and move on to something that is, etc. So I think if it does come as a surprise that is interrelated, but these things are because that your body better leaves is the root foundation through which you’re living your life experience, your five senses are in your body, and how everything is passing through. So you’re not as capable at work without that foundation. And again, as we’ve already said, it doesn’t need to be crazy. You don’t need to be Arnold Schwarzenegger in the gym. It’s taking a 20 minute walk in the morning, and then making sure eating your vegetables, you know, it’s just basic stuff.

Richard Matthews 1:01:55
Yeah, I yeah, one of the other unexpected things that’s happened is, uh, I have been asked if I was a teenager, like three times in the last couple of weeks.

Janis Isaman 1:02:03
Oh, wow.

Richard Matthews 1:02:03
Which, you know, because I have a, I have a 10 year old son, and they’re like, Oh, it’s so nice to be to take your younger brother out. I’m like, he’s actually my son.

Janis Isaman 1:02:10
That’s awesome. Yeah. So I mean, your whole is your whole essence has changed. That’s awesome.

Richard Matthews 1:02:18
Yeah. So it’s super cool. So my next question for you is more practical, then right? I call this the heroes tool belt. And just like every superhero has a tool belt that’s got awesome gadgets, like batarangs, or web slingers, or laser eyes, or big magical hammer, I’m gonna talk about top one or two tools that you couldn’t live without in your business could be anything from your notepad to your calendar, to your marketing tools to your product delivery, this something that you use, like a protocol you use with all of your clients that you just couldn’t live without? What is something that you think is absolutely essential to getting your job done?

Janis Isaman 1:02:53
Um, I don’t even know if this is if this is too broad of an answer. So if it is just tell me but my iPhone is quite essential. So because I have a job where I’m not sitting at a desk for eight hours, I am back and forth. I do at the, for the last six months, actually, we are sitting in my home studio, and then I have a commercial space that is my commercial studio. So I’m back and forth between the two all day. But even in between clients, I can quickly send a text, I can answer something, I can book my sessions on my iPhone, I literally couldn’t run my business without my phone. I heard earlier today that the average person spends two to three hours a day on their iPhone minus like seven or eight, because that’s where my social media it’s coming from. That’s where my booking system is from. That’s, that’s that is my business sitting right there. And my phone.

Richard Matthews 1:03:48
Yeah, I have I have been blown away by how much of my business I can run from my phone nowadays. Yeah. Or my tablet. It’s kind of insane, actually. And I have been, I’ve been in the process of trying to get myself off because I do a lot of digital work and trying to get myself off of my computer more and more onto my phone. And not just this, the specific reason for that. And this might be different than where you’re at. But one of the things that I’ve noticed is, my phone is really, really good at management. And my computer is really, really good at creation. And I’m trying to get myself out of the creation and more into the management because I’m hiring team and growing staff and stuff like that. And closing the lid on my laptop and pulling out my phone or my tablet means that I have to focus more on the management stuff because it’s a better device suited for that, interesting.

Janis Isaman 1:04:38
And phones right now are I mean I could I happen to be on my computer just because we’re on a larger screen, but I could create this on my phone as well. So I think phones have really moved a long way in the last couple of years. Because we basically have all the same apps on the phone as we do on the computer.

Richard Matthews 1:05:00
The other day they’re there. They’re certainly blurring the lines between devices. Absolutely.

Janis Isaman 1:05:07
So the other tool that is really indispensable for me is Shopify. So that is a e commerce management tool. And that’s where all my product sales go through inventory management. Some of my client billing goes through there. So I I live and die by Shopify, is courses and stuff there, too? I haven’t been but that’s something to look into.

Richard Matthews 1:05:34
Yeah, I was just curious. I don’t know if they can or not, because we we do a lot of our clients courses through like WordPress, LearnDash, WooCommerce, sort of set up. I was just curious if you could, if you could do if they did any sort of learning management inside of Shopify, but I’m not sure if they if they offer that or not.

Janis Isaman 1:05:49
I don’t know actually, they have a lot of tools that I’m not even using. Honestly, they Shopify is E-book myth at this point. And they have so many different tools. And that’s actually one of the reasons that I think it’s an amazing tool, because if I wanted to, it almost wouldn’t matter what commerce problem I had to solve, they probably have a tool for that.

Richard Matthews 1:06:13
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So my next question for you then is your own personal heroes. Right? So every hero has their mentors, right? Frodo had Gandalf Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi Robert Kiyosaki had his rich dad, Spider Man has an Uncle Ben. Right, who were Who were some of your heroes, were they real life mentors, speakers or authors, maybe peers for a couple years ahead of you. And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

Janis Isaman 1:08:13
One of my original Heroes is my great aunt Ruth. She was the very first dean of Nursing at the University where I actually attended many, many years later. And she was this was going back many, many years, she would be over 100. Now if she was still alive. So she was an original career woman back in the time when if you got married, you were asked to leave your job. And she decided to give her life to basically being a feminist and to creating a role at the university, which at that time wasn’t acknowledged because the male departments got to have a dean and the female ones did not. And so she fought to make that happen. But as a child, of course, I didn’t recognize any of that. What I noticed was that she had amazing clothing, amazing jewelry and amazing art. And those are things that I witnessed as a child. Wow, that’s really cool. She travels and she goes and buys really unique pieces, and she brings it back and puts them in an apartment. So I live in an apartment. I have a you know, jewelry store. Yeah. So she was actually the first person to kind of allow me a doorway into a different kind of adult lifestyle. And she really was a bit of a mentor to me, she was a second grandma. And in my studio space, right beside where I work, I actually have a vintage suitcase that used to belong to her.

Richard Matthews 1:09:49
That’s really cool. And it just reminds me of the whole this whole concept that I like, I always look at my life and you know, politically we’ve had this huge discussion about privilege. And, and I’m not a huge fan of the way it gets discussed politically, but in my own head, the my definition of privilege is the work that my parents and my, you know, the people that came before me did, so that I can start, like, I can start by standing on the shoulders of giants, right? And and it’s like, you know your your your aunts work in the feminist movement to make it so that women can do some of the things they can do. Make it so my wife can do what she does, and you can do what you do. We have we have the privilege of history,

Janis Isaman 1:10:31
we do. And it really is astonishing how recent in history, I remember the day that my grandma told me, she used to work in a newspaper. And they she told me that when they got married, they got fired from their job. And I was like, what, that wasn’t that long ago, you know, and I completely agree, the world has been paved in a totally different way, because of some of that work. And one of my ancestors who actually knew in person, you know, helped create that world where women can be recognized in the medical community as having valid education and having valid professional careers. And that seems we take that for granted. Really?

Richard Matthews 1:11:18
Yeah, yeah. It’s certainly worthwhile of the moniker hero, right? Yes. Because, you know, they’re the ones that let us do, do what we do, right. And, you know, I tell people all the time, like my, my dad, he grew up without a dad, right? His his father passed away when he was eight, in a car wreck. Oh, my grandmother grew up in that timeframe, right, where it was very difficult for a woman to provide for her family. But she had four kids, and my dad had to start working, like 14 helped put his brothers through school and help take care of his mom. And it’s like, he had nothing. He came from nothing and built himself up to, you know, one of the one of the premier scientists in the world, which was super cool. He got to work on like, the the space shuttles, and, and some things like that does some really cool work. But like, he said, he set me at a place where like, the place that I started, is so much further ahead than where he started. Right? Which means I can go further than he ever went. And so much so many of us have that. That kind of privilege, right, that comes from the heroes that came before us.

Janis Isaman 1:12:24
I agree with that. Yes, it’s it’s quite fascinating how much has changed in a couple of generations. But the fact that my aunt literally had to give up her personal life she couldn’t ever get married, to actually fight for that is, you know, that’s just to your point, that easy. crazy, crazy. We will never have to face right now. We don’t have to make that trade off. I don’t have to make a trade off between my personal life and my career. Because 50, 60

Richard Matthews 1:12:54
years ago, this path, you can choose to be a mother and a career woman.

Janis Isaman 1:13:00
That’s correct.

Richard Matthews 1:13:03
that’s awesome. So last question for you is your guiding principles, right? It’s one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code, right? So for instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, talk about top one or two principles that you regularly use in your life, maybe a principle you wish you knew when you first started out on your own hero’s journey.

Janis Isaman 1:13:26
What am I mean principles is to be real slash authentic slash honest. So that gets executed in a whole lot of different ways. But one of the ways is, I openly share on Instagram, my own struggles with health and fitness. This isn’t coming easy, even to a professional. And so instead of posting photos of me doing yoga out in the mountains, and pretending that this is just falling into my lap, you know, this week, last week, I wrote a post on how I didn’t actually want to workout I didn’t want to do my daily routine and how to kind of step back into that even when I don’t want to, I’m real about weight loss and weight gain and real about being tired. But then in a another way, in the studio, I translate that to clients by being that practitioner, who, when I’m observing them for the first time, instead of just kind of taking notes, and then putting it in a file and never telling them what I see. I share the information with them so they can walk out with it. And every bit of that reality is actually meant to help people with that wheel of life where we can incorporate the idea of alignment. And that starts with the body. It starts with what we’re eating. It starts with that movement. But what I would like for all of my clients is what I get to feel which is and i and i had to work on it, you know for over a decade is everything is actually the way that I want To be, and that doesn’t mean that everything is flowing smoothly every day, I get flustered, I am late things like that. You have a 10 year old I mean, you probably

Richard Matthews 1:15:10
fairly regularly throws wrenches into your plans

Janis Isaman 1:15:13
A 100%. But I’m not living any partial portion of my life out of alignment where I am doing something fundamentally that I don’t want to do, I am not in relationships that I don’t want to be in, I’m not in a career, I don’t want to be in nothing in that wheel is kind of way out of whack, for any extended period of time. And so I hope that by being that exemplary model for that, and actually walking my clients through that path that they can actually get there. So that is why that is one of my guiding principles. But it really is, you know, it’s alignment. Also, honesty, just

Richard Matthews 1:15:53
a further sort of questions we were talking about earlier that I think lines up really well with that is once you get to a point where like, you know, for lack of a better metaphor, everything is firing right on everything, you’re filing on all cylinders, and everything is working the way that you want. Does it sort of it becomes easier to notice when something is

Janis Isaman 1:16:15
Yes, for sure.

Richard Matthews 1:16:16
You’re like this relationship isn’t good, or this whatever like it, it doesn’t feel good. And it’s far more obvious than when you have a lot of things wrong. Your nutrition isn’t good, and your fitness isn’t good. And all these other things, having, you know, a negative relationship in your life is not that different from everything else? Correct.

Janis Isaman 1:16:33
So that comes down to two things. One is awareness. And two is if you’ve ever done a cleanse, or any kind of more extreme dietary program, those usually lasts for between 12 and 21 day

Richard Matthews 1:16:49
cleanse and a couple parasite cleanse, they were crazy.

Janis Isaman 1:16:52
Oh, I’m sure that that is crazy. Then if you go and you eat something that specifically was excluded from the diet, usually your body’s like, Whoa, what is this. So for example, if you go on your pizza, after getting a parasite cleanse, you’re going to notice much more acutely does not probably what your body wants. And so I think that once you start cleaning the house in a proverbial sense, you’re going to notice the things that don’t fit there anymore. When you’ve got clutter all over the place. You’re not gonna notice something that’s kind of out of place. So I think that just getting that awareness, a lot of people actually are very afraid of having that awareness because they think it’s going to come to me, they’re sensitive or soft. But what it actually does is give you great boundaries about what to get rid of, so that there’s not just be stuff everywhere.

Richard Matthews 1:17:44
Yeah, and the other thing I’ve noticed, which is, and this is specific in the diet realm, but people are worried that I’m going to give up things that I know I want now. Never right. And you’re like, you know, you a lot of a lot of the things that you think you couldn’t live without are actually their addictions you have that your body doesn’t actually need. And once you break the addiction, the desire goes away with it. Correct?

Janis Isaman 1:18:07
Yes, I always tell people I eat exactly what I want. There is an implied assumption that that means that I’m eating pizza and potato chips, but truly, that my body does not love those things, I eat sometimes half of them, but I’m already doesn’t really love those things. And so you end up loving things that you never thought possible. And again, our culture is kind of cool that pizza is delicious, chips are delicious, vegetables are gross. So then you’re kind of surprised that your body wants the foods that nature has provided, which is kind of an interesting marketing problem. But, um, we use a skew over towards those healthier choices, because that’s what our that’s actually what our body actually wants. But,

Richard Matthews 1:18:52
you know, I, the other the other thing I’ve noticed sort of in that same line too, is that like, if everything is good, like if you got everything like in line, if you’re gonna go out with friends, and they’re all going out for pizza, you can go out and enjoy pizza with them. And it’s not going to like wreck your body because your body is healthy. You can handle having I can handle having a pizza, you know, every once in a while and not like breakdown on you.

Janis Isaman 1:19:15
Correct. But I find that because I’ve gone through my own nutrition. I mean, I have a nutrition certification because I went through my own pathway with that, um, those very much what you said those cravings aren’t there. I’m not sitting on my couch, unable to think about anything else but pizza or Oreos. That just disappears. Because actually that’s a signal. A lack of health too, because honestly, those foods don’t even actually exist in nature. There’s no Oreo tree. There’s no pizza tree, so

Richard Matthews 1:19:52
it’s pretty sad because Oreos. Oreos have a special place I think in every American’s heart

Janis Isaman 1:19:59
especially when you take Take out the center of at least a couple and you do the double stack.

Richard Matthews 1:20:05
Yeah, that’s a it’s a thing that everyone should experience at least once in their life. It’s true.

Janis Isaman 1:20:10
More than once for sure. But so what we’re looking for is not to not ever have that experience. It’s not sit there and have obsessive thoughts where we’re thinking about eating it and sneaking in the pantry or eating a whole box at once. It’s to actually make those moments special and make you smile.

Richard Matthews 1:20:31
My, I’ve actually, and this is, I know, some people are gonna think this is insane. My wife currently thinks this is insane. is like we do actually have Oreos in the house. But I like a different type of Oreo that my wife likes who will buy a package, and like, my package of Oreos will go stale before I eat them all.

Janis Isaman 1:20:49
Oh, wow. I

Richard Matthews 1:20:50
was like, how does that happen? Coz like

Janis Isaman 1:20:54
Let’s see.

Hmm, you’re like the only I don’t like I don’t

Richard Matthews 1:20:59
I don’t crave them. Yeah, it’s just like, you know, I’ll have one Oreo, and I’m good for like, several days.

Janis Isaman 1:21:05
You need to I don’t even know if they make little Halloween packages of Oreos. That sounds like what you need. You need like the little one. Yeah, yeah.

Richard Matthews 1:21:15
Cool. Well, that’s basically a wrap on our interview. But I do like to finish every interview with a simple challenge I call the hero’s challenge. And I do this really as a selfish thing. So I can get access to stories that might not otherwise find. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your network or in your life that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? first names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story on our show?

Janis Isaman 1:21:41
Am I telling you this right now?

Richard Matthews 1:21:43
Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Who are they? And why do you think they should come tell them tell their story on our show? First person that comes to mind.

Janis Isaman 1:21:49
Um, the first person who comes to mind is my friend Nicky Brumley, he she used to own a food truck. And she is a vegan chef, who now is actually a vegan chef for me. And she has taken a completely even when she had a food truck most whose tracks are greasy, etc. So she actually always kind of marched to her own beat. And now she’s creating a totally new kind of business where she’s serving vegan food. And she’s taking that digitally. And she’s, you know, spreading the mission of health and deliciousness, and really serving, but she’s serving amazing food and making people’s lives better.

Richard Matthews 1:22:37
That’s awesome. Yeah. So we’ll reach out after and see if we can get an introduction to her and get her on the show and get her her story. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd at the end who claps for the acts of heroism. So as we close but I want to do is I want to find out where people can find you. If they want your help in a future, where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, you know what, Janice, I would really love to for you to help me. And I think more important than where is who are the right types of people to raise their hand and say, you know, what I would really like to work with you.

Janis Isaman 1:23:10
We’ll start with the right type of people, the right type of people are people who are at a moment when they feel like their body is hindering them in some way. And that doesn’t need to be a super significant way. I’ve had people I’ve had CEOs who back when we used to fly, I’m told me that, that it was embarrassing to get off an airplane because the creeks and the creeks and the aches, and then they would start to engage in professional meetings and clearly be in pain. So that was the moment for that person that made him say, I need your services. Other people have told me that they’re being held back by doing their hobby, that could be gardening, it could be playing with grandkids, it could be there’s a lot of different hobbies out there. I’ve had people who’ve been motivated by wanting to do sports, or athletics, and just can’t kind of close, close that loop. And I’ve had people that tell me that they go to the gym and just feels like they’re working really, really hard and not getting any results. So basically, all of those folks have one thing in common, they have a reason why they feel like things are just not linking up with their body and that their body is actually holding them back from their life goals. Those can be tiny, little goals. They can be huge goals. And I really work with people who want that underlying education. So if you just want kind of choreography and a list of things to do, not your girl if you actually want to learn what’s underneath that it’s like body School, where you’re going to learn and that could be nutrition school, but you want to dive underneath there. And I love people that have a huge curiosity about why I want people to ask questions. And get involved, it’s your body’s knowing why and knowing what’s happening under the hood of your body. Um, and then that it can be people of any age. So I serve people digitally one on one, I also serve people digitally in groups. And then I do have a live studio space. So you can travel to me or I can travel to you. So my business name is called my body couture. It’s three words, first word is my and my second word is body Bo d y. Third word is couture. Co, ut RE, and I am@the.com. I also on Facebook and Instagram, under those names, I write for elephant journal. So you can look me up under my first name. I’m on LinkedIn under my first name. And then I have a YouTube channel under my first name.

Richard Matthews 1:25:49
Awesome. So thank you so much for coming on the show today. Janice has been fascinating to talk to you about this, this subject. You know, it’s been a recent fascination of my life. So thank you for coming in and sharing your knowledge with our audience. And if you’re listening to this, and you’re in that place, I can tell you from personal experience, learning that underlying stuff in your body is really impactful in a lot of ways, especially like if you’re like me, you’re an entrepreneur. It impacts your business in ways you probably would not even imagine. And my business is more profitable. I’ve got more staff members, we’ve got more clients, I’m getting got more revenue coming in than I ever thought possible. And a lot of it I can directly attribute back to getting healthier, right and getting myself into a place where I have those things. So if you’re looking at that definitely take the time to reach out to someone like Janice, and Janice, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate your thoughts and your education here. Have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

Janis Isaman 1:26:48
Yes, get up off your bum. Only one thing you take away from today. It’s really that math about how much you might be sitting and develop that conscious awareness about commercial sitting. So whether you ever see a professional whether you ever see a practitioner about your body, that is the number one thing you can do is just get that awareness of how much time in a day you’re spending sitting. Yeah,

Richard Matthews 1:27:15
I had someone tell me a number of years ago that sitting is death.

Janis Isaman 1:27:19
It is death and you know what I’m gonna say superheroes. Don’t sit.

Richard Matthews 1:27:24
There you go. Thank you so much for coming on today. Janis. Really appreciate it.

Janis Isaman 1:27:27
Thank you.