Wednesday 28 January 2015

How My Procrastination Fight Turned into a Business Idea


I'm a lazy person. I'm a very lazy one. Not that I try to postpone stuff.. or maybe I do? Well I caught myself once on the idea that I'm quite lazy to do sports. I thought I definitely need to do something about that because my office based job doesn't really help a lot in terms of exercising physically. 
Next thing I've done was buying a gym membership. happily enough I was going there for couple of months on a regular basis... and then.. I caught myself on the fact that each time I was tired after work of I saw the weather was not really nice and rainy (those who live in Ireland know what I mean ;)) I was just NOT going to the gym.
fair enough.. maybe gym doesn't motivate me a lot and I need to do some other sports activity like jogging. I've done that couple of times and the same weather issue stopped me again (or was it not?)
I was drinking my evening tea and a genius idea (!OMG those ideas are visiting me quite often) came to my mind. I know how I can push myself to do sports without finding any reasons to stay home or not to go etc. I need to be a trainer or instructor myself and being a very responsible person by nature  that was something very much suitable for me.
Next step was to find out which sport I was to practice. So here I have started all types of sports that were quite interesting at least to try: yoga normal and hot was too much slow and no action (not that I'm too much into action but I was falling asleep), zumba was interesting but kind of seemed to me just dancing (though I like Latin american dancing), then just fitness instructor didn't really worked well for me as well and then I went to a Pilates class with one of my friends (was actually her idea to bring me there). That was nice with a kind of "doing nothing" and feeling everything after the class which was cool and quite relaxing exercises and stretching.. so I saw a lot of benefits it that.
After choosing Pilates I went to look for becoming an instructor. I have made some search over web and found a studio where I can do the workshops and certification with exams as well. Half year later I have become a certified Pilates instructor Mat 1 from Balanced Body University. Well.. was quite challenging as being not a native speaker to learn a lot of new words and terms and then take an exam using them all, perform a class which I had designed on my own and lots of stuff. But I loved it! It was fun and very interesting. Luckily enough I was invited by that studio to work for them as a part time instructor. I'm really thankful I got this offer because without having any hours of teaching classes (basically that's your CV and experience in the filed) you are more likely to not get the gob. Fair enough because everyone want a qualified instructor who knows all the exercises by heart, self confident and does those exercises perfectly as well as explanations to them. Unfortunately straight after education like in any field you don't have all the above and therefore it's difficult to find the job straight away. But I was lucky there and here I'm - the Pilates Teacher.
I still remember my first class where I was standing in front of 20 people I've never seen in my life and I need to show how cool I was as a Pilates instructor and how well I can explain everything and do exercises myself. That was challenging! However it worked and I loved it even after several classes. And I was happily teaching for a couple of years which actually helped me a lot to fight my procrastination just because being a teacher is a responsibility and you must come because your customers will be there and if you just don't come it will damage your image as a teacher. That was a perfect motivation for me including on top a lot of positive feedback from customers!
Couple of years later I decided to start my own studio and that was really great. I have learnt a lot already and even created my own sequence of exercises and stretching, learned how to teach the group of different levels and a lot of other useful things. On top of that I wanted to keep on going and I loved the idea of my own startup.
This is the way I have turned my procrastination into a business. Have you a similar story or maybe you already have a business idea? ;)

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