We recently connected with Kianna Hill and have shared our conversation below.
Kianna, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
The biggest risk that I have ever taken has been the risk of leaving my full time job in January 2020, to pursue my personal training business full time and homeschool my daughter full time. The decision to leave my job was to prioritize my health due to working in a toxic work environment. I would come home from work exhausted, angry and had minimum energy to be present at home and even for my clients. In order to give my all to myself, my family and my business, I felt that leaving my job would be the best decision. I left my job with one personal training client on my books and little did I know, two months later, the world would shut down. Once everything went virtual, my business went from one client to a completely booked schedule with virtual personal training clients. Being able to operate my business from the comfort of my home and homeschooling my daughter allowed me to be the best version of myself because I was able to show up for myself, my daughter and my clients. Taking a risk with no concrete plan in place, just a vision and a purpose for life, I have learned so much.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My introduction into health and wellness started in high school when I took a Sport Medicine class. I knew that in some way, I wanted to pursue a career in health and wellness. My first thought was to become a sports medicine specialist for a professional sports team (NBA or NFL) and then I went to the University of Eastern Shore to study Exercise Science. While in college, I started training friends and did it because I enjoyed doing so. My first job out of college was a Physical Therapist technician where I assisted Physical Therapist with their patients treatment plans and truly enjoyed the science and connections made by helping patients in pain. Once I realized with my degree in Exercise Science, that I could do more than assist, I became a Personal Trainer at LA Fitness in 2013. I have worked at two gyms in my career as a Personal Trainer and took the experience and knowledge to start my own business in 2014.
Through Personal Training, I reached a point where I wanted to do more than help clients physically, so in 2015, I started meal prepping for clients and helping them with their nutrition. Once I realized your nutrition and physical health is related to your lifestyle, I started helping clients improve their overall health by helping them integrate healthier lifestyle habits. So now, in 2024, I have reached a point where I help my clients and community understand the correlation between their health and their mind, body and soul. You can’t elevate in one area of your life thinking that the other areas don’t require elevation as well.
My business Gem Bodies is a holistic company that is dedicated in supporting women and their families on their healing journey to better align their mind, body and soul. We empower women through our services by providing them with the best customized programs that will help them reach their personal health goals. It is our mission to provide our clients with elite holistic services that enables our clients to have the knowledge, tools and resources needed to walk confidently in their healing journey. I offer Personal Trading, Health Coaching, Wellness Events and Vegan Meal Prepping. I want to be able to provide my clients with the complete wellness package that can improve their total health and wellness.
I just released an e-book called, “Turning the Page: Transitioning Into A Plant Based Lifestyle”. This e-book encourages people who are interested in transitioning from eating meat and into eating more fruits and vegetables as a lifestyle change. I have successfully transitioned myself and my daughter to a completely plant based diet and we have seen major improvements from our physical health, skin health, mental health and just our overall wellness. My goal is to help encourage families incorporate healthy options into their lifestyles to improve the health of themselves and their families by offering health and wellness workshops in schools and in corporate settings. Education is the first step towards change.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
A lesson I had to unlearn is that the harder you work, the easier your dreams come true. As a business owner, I have experienced burnout, fear, thoughts of quitting and just not believing in myself. I have been learning how to apply my relationship with God into every decision that I make in life and in my business as well. It’s very complicated in times like today where social media says one thing and you try to apply it to your life and the results aren’t what you expected. I have been making sure that I am doing the inner work for myself personally so that when I am making decisions for my business, I am pulling from a place of alignment and discernment instead of urgency and trends. The overall goal for life is freedom and I am not saying times won’t get stressful or hard but if you have clarity and understand what you are here to do, apply yourself and trust that one day, you will reap what you sow. The normalcy of living in such a microwave society, can make you feel like if you aren’t a millionaire in the first year of your business, you are failing. We have access to seeing the highlights of everyone’s lives but have no idea of what it took for them to get to that highlight. As long as I am waking up everyday, asking God to use me however He sees fit and I stay in alignment, I know that I am walking in my purpose.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
If I could go back and choose a profession, I would go back and become a chef. Before I went to college, I wanted to become a chef but didn’t pursue it and decided to pursue Exercise Science. I love cooking and I use my creativity in the kitchen a lot. My daughter has been manifesting us opening up a plant based restaurant into existence where we provide breakfast, lunch and dinner. I love to cook for people and just have fun with it, especially on a plant based diet. In 2023, I looked into pursuing my culinary career but the programs I liked were all online or abroad, and I really would like to have the full, hands on experience. I am still young and won’t completely count out the chances of becoming a culinary chef. I would like to eventually become a menu curator where I collaborate with restaurants, malls, airports, airlines and other businesses to develop healthy plant based options and not only just have the options of processed vegan foods when going out.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gembodies.org/#services
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gem_bodies/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kianna-hill-a08180238/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Eatplantslove
