We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Heather Shay. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Heather below.
Heather, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
I believe that life is full of risks and challenges!! How boring it would be without them. You also wouldn’t grow to be at your full potential without them. I think that doing anything in life is risky, it just depends on how much you believe in yourself to take that risk. I heard a quote once that has always stuck with me. Even through being a business owner these past 10 years. “Its better to have tried and failed, than never tried at all” And isn’t this true with life in general. We fail everyday. We do something the wrong way or think later why didn’t I say that instead. Or we maybe don’t always treat the ones we care for and love the way we should. We run late or forget something important we needed to do. Life is a risk every single day. But its how we deal with those risks that count. Do we give up and tell ourselves I am done forget it, I can’t ever do it! Or do we keep pushing forward and working towards where we are going and say ‘ Ill do better next time” that is trying. Because you never allow that risk to bring you down, worry you or stress you out. You are always working to be better. And really in life, to live it at its fullest you have to be OKAY with failing sometimes.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Wow! This is going to be a tough one to answer. There is so much to elaborate on. I love fitness and have since I was 13. I remember my mom doing sweating to the oldies or Jan Fonda first thing in the morning. I would sometimes go downstairs to workout with her. Then when I began to compete in pageants I realized that fitness is a big deal. Not to just look good but to be able to hold a hectic schedule and a job down at the same time with your Title appearances, you had to make sure that you were ready to tackle that. If you don’t have your health, what do you have? You need your health to function in everyday life. And you should take time for it. If you aren’t then you are just cheating yourself. And one day its going to be your biggest regret. Because once you lose being healthy, what is there?? And its hard to re-cover once you get there. I have seen it happen with people in my family, friends and even clients that don’t take their healthy seriously. You would think that would be important to everyone and it just makes me sad that it isn’t!!
That is what is great about our Method. When you have a busy life or barely any time in your day to fit it in, you can get a total body workout that builds strength, endurance, balance, flexibility, low-impact and complete total core focused workout in just 45 mins a day 3 times a week. Most people spend hours at the gym watching others workout. Or just can’t figure out what they should do. So they hire a personal trainer but then if your personal trainer isn’t very motivating what do you do? Our classes are set in small group settings so that you get a personal trainer, personal attention and a group to help encourage you the whole time. And it goes by so fast that you don’t even realize it sometimes down to the last 15 mins. Which somedays feel like the longest. I think most of my clients would agree with that. LOL!
I try to give my clients all the tools they will need in a class so that they can find the strongest versions of themselves. And somedays they won’t feel like that. But its okay, we all have those days. You just pick yourself back up and try again. I think that’s the one thing I try to instill in my classes teaching, its okay to be you. Its okay to have a not so strong day. But don’t give up or try just because you feel that way. You will always surprise yourself if you give that opportunity to yourself. You have to have the right mindset. A lot of people who have never done strength training don’t understand that as you grow in your practice, it will get tougher. I didn’t get that until I got certified to teach Lagree. Then I finally started shifting my mindset and realized that the only competition I have is with me. And somedays I am gonna suck but I am not going to let it stop me!! The idea in any strength training workout is to grow, get better and that’s what keeps you from plateauing. You have to want to get the results and put the work in to get there. Otherwise, you will just keep ending up in the same place if you don’t change the way your mind thinks.
I am most proud of being able to watch my clients transform and change into the potential they were meant to be. I love hearing the chatter coming from our Megas about how they felt or what they did in class. It reminds me this is why I love fitness so much and especially Lagree fitness. It will change your life if you let it.
I hope that anyone coming into the studio would just have an open mind. Remember they don’t have to be like the person next to them. They can authentically be who they are in the studio. The studio is a place where you will find encouragement, motivation and support. No matter what you do, where your fitness level is or how long it takes you to get there. Its a marathon, not a sprint. And if you want to get results in anything you are doing, you have to put in the work, be consistent, make no excuses and give it time. The more you do that, the faster you will see the results you want. It doesn’t matter what you are doing. And you can’t give up.
Have you ever had to pivot?
The top one that comes to mind is when I found out my Dad was diagnosed with FTD dementia. My husband and I had just move to LA to start our life together. But my dad had fallen and ended up in the ICU for about 3 days. I was thankfully in KC at the time it happened. We both were hone on a visit after we had just established our lives there. After his brain swelling went down and we knew he was going to make it out of the ICU. I ended up staying in KC for a month to help my mom take care of him. I debated on if moving was really a good plan after all. My mom reminded me that we are young and we shouldn’t worry about what might happen. And if we are going to do anything like that in our life, we should do it while we are young. We were both in our early 20’s. I had a job already which thankfully I still had after all that happened. And we lived there for the next 8 years ( with lots of trips back to visit of course). When I found Lagree Fitness, I knew immediately I wanted to get certified to teach it. I didn’t know that it was going to be within a month of taking my first class however. I was certified by the founder and owner Sebastien Lagree in his very first studio on La Cienega Blvd. I really didn’t have any clue at that time that I may actually own my own studio someday. We moved to Colorado wanting to be closer ( within driving distance vs flying) and so we opened in 2011 in suburb of Denver. Over the years my dad continued to have falls thankfully none of them were fatal, even though the Doctor told him if he did fall again, it could be. It was in 2016 we decided our lease was coming up and my parents were both having some struggles. My mom needed more help caring for my dad and things just were not going smoothly. I knew if something happened I wouldn’t want to be that far away.
To think about starting all over again was a lot and risky. It had been 5 years there and we had just started to get settled in our lives. But going back to my first chat over that, life is about risk and if you don’t take them, you won’t ever know. Flash forward to 2019 we opened in Overland Park, Kansas. It was as exciting as the first time and couldn’t want to share with anyone willing and wanted to try it. A short few months there and we had to close down due to covid in 2020. I will never forget that day. It was on my birthday and I couldn’t believe all that was going on around us. It was so hard to think that something we’d loved and just began to share with others might not ever have the possibility of evolving into more. I just remember feeling so in limbo and wondered if we’d get the chance to really share our passion and love of fitness again! Flash forward to 2022 and we are stronger than ever!! And its great when you go through something like that to really know the people that support you, stand behind you and will do anything to help you. We had so many members encourage us, help us financially and personally remind us that we got this!! We are getting ready to expand our class offerings and working to be bring in bigger and better than ever now. And I think through all of that, it just made us want to help people even more. Because like I mentioned before, if you don’t have your health, what is there?
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
Such a cheesy story!! We are boy and girl next door. For years our parents were neighbors. We went to grade school together for a short time and then met up again in our 20’s. Here we are 10 years owning a business together, 15 years married and 24 years together. Some of our friends say we are the Lagree Fitness power couple! Which kinda makes us laugh a little!
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