We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrea Isabelle Lucas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrea Isabelle below.
Alright, Andrea Isabelle thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?
Why Do You Get Out of Bed in the Morning?
Whether we consciously realize it or not, I believe we’re all searching for a reason to get out of bed in the morning—a passion, a purpose, some kind of exciting project or goal. What drives you? What excites you? What gets you out of bed? What’s the point of your life? Earlier in my life, I didn’t have any lofty answers for those questions. What got me out of bed was a toddler in a diaper who would be stagediving off the kitchen counter if I didn’t get up and supervise him. After having my son at age nineteen, I spent my early twenties in survival mode, just trying to earn enough money to feed and clothe us, pay the rent, and slowly work toward a college degree in… something. I wasn’t sure what my college major was yet, let alone my purpose! Building a legacy? Not really a priority. I told myself, “I’m still young. I have time to figure out all of that stuff later.”
The problem is that “later” creeps up quickly. Before I knew it, I was twenty-five years old, then twenty-eight, then nearing thirty. I began to feel a sense of urgency. “Time’s passing so fast. And I still don’t really know what excites me, what I want to be doing with my life.” It really bothered me. And I became determined to figure it out.
Through a combination of training (barre certification, yoga certification), college (finally having switched my major from English to women’s studies after realizing I didn’t want to talk about literature, I wanted to talk about the gender politics that burned me up within each piece of literature I read), conversations with friends, conversations with myself, and studying my past and everything I’d survived, I finally got the clarity I’d been seeking.
I want to help empower women and bring about equality for all people.
I want everyone to feel powerful and strong. I especially want to inspire women to take ownership of their destinies—to help them see that really, they’ve been in charge of their lives all along. I want to help women achieve their “Oh shit, can I seriously do that?” goals and get what they want. That is what my life is all about. That is the legacy I’m trying to build.
“But wait a second,” you might be thinking. “You run a fitness company. So, isn’t ‘helping people get healthy and fit’ your legacy?”
Not exactly. Even though I run a fitness company, fitness isn’t what makes me excited to kick off the covers each morning and plant my feet on the floor. Sure, I’m interested in fitness. Yes, staying fit is important. And yes, I love teaching—or taking—a kick-ass barre or yoga class, because it always feels great. But since the very beginning, my company, Barre & Soul, has never been about abs, legs, and butts—not really. Fitness isn’t my legacy. Fitness is just the vehicle—the service I’m offering to my community—but what really excites me is seeing women feel empowered and full of energy, seeing them find community and support in each other and achieve their biggest goals.
At the end of my life, I don’t want to be remembered as a woman who was extremely toned and fit or who helped thousands of women tone up their bellies and thighs. I want to be remembered as a woman who inspired other women; a woman who showed others that no matter where you are right now, you can achieve whatever you dream of with enough grit and determination; a woman who helped others see that having what you want in life is your birthright and that you don’t need anyone else’s permission to go out and get it. That will be my legacy. I’m determined to make it happen.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m Andrea Isabelle Lucas, an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, author, feminist, and life and business coach, devoted to helping women stand up for themselves and take radical responsibility for their own happiness. As a teen, I became a single mom and later had to rebuild my life after surviving domestic violence. I founded Barre & Soul®, a multi-million dollar collection of boutique barre and yoga studios, as well as the Barre & Soul Academy instructor training program. As a speaker, I’ve addressed audiences across the United States and have had the honor of sharing stages with Michelle Obama and Billie Jean King. I am the author of the book “Own It All” and have been featured by the BBC, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Women’s Health, the Huffington Post, and Boston Magazine, among many others!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
We receive a lot of conditioning that can remain in our blind spot until something happens that forces us to become aware. I didn’t realize how much I was waiting for permission to have the life I wanted until I called home to my family after fleeing domestic violence. I was injured and calling from the hospital to tell them about what happened. My father’s reply, sadly, was, “What are you going to do? You can’t leave.”
I’ve had a lot of time to make peace and feel genuinely sorry for the challenging life that would lead a father to truly believe his own daughter had no better option than to return to a violent home. But his statement was an important catalyst for me. It was when I realized no one was coming to save me or fix my life. I had to do what I knew was right for me, and I certainly would be leaving that violent situation once and for all.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
It took a lot of hard work to rebuild my life from rock bottom, but I learned how strong I could be. Recovering from that abusive relationship led me to barre, a career I only intended to do part time at first. Soon, I realized it was a platform that could help me create an empowering environment for other women like me who had a lot of similarly disempowering conditioning to unlearn, and I knew the ripple effect of a community like that could be huge.
That’s what gave me the courage to start my business even though I knew I would totally be learning on the job as an entrepreneur. After what I had survived from teen motherhood to domestic violence, I knew I could trust myself to figure out anything that came my way.
Contact Info:
- Website: barresoul.com, andreaisabellelucas.com, barresoulacademy.com
- Instagram: andreaisabellelucas, barresoul, barresoulacademy
- Facebook: andreaisabellelucas
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaisabellelucas/
- Twitter: andreailucas
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/BarreSoul
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/barre-and-soul-providence-providence