We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Colleen McIntosh a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Colleen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I get asked a lot about what’s the secret behind the choices that I make and how do I know how to make decisions when there are a lot of voices who have their own opinion. When I go back to the beginning of this adventure of owning a business, I can’t help but think about a few different experiences.
It all started great! We were an exciting new thing in town and everyone wanted to try out the new fitness facility that was being created. Many people came from word of mouth, but many tagged along with instructors that joined us. After 3 months, one instructor decided that they would rather make more money and keep control of their own members so they asked for more pay. This just didn’t sit right after everyone had agreed on getting paid the same and working together. So I sat with it for a while and eventually made the decision to wish them well. 4 years later, we have a great working relationship and it’s even better for all of our members.
3 months after that, gyms and businesses all over the world were being shut down and gathering in person seemed like a sin. But this did not seem like a healthy way to live life and locking our doors was no longer an option after a couple of months. We stayed open and those that came were so grateful. There was a lot of hate and immaturity from others, but we made a healthy decision to allow members to make their own decision about staying fit with us.
The point is, there are tons of people who think they know better than you. But YOU have a vision and every moment you need to walk in that vision. Things evolved, maybe even change, but keep listening to what you know on the inside to be true and take care of your people and love people well.

Colleen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

After spending many years talking poorly to myself and not enjoying the body that I had, I was very lucky to find a fitness movement on YouTube one day while on maternity leave. It was sexy, weird, and hella hard! But it allowed me to get in tune with myself and begin to love what I had, and make improvements where I wanted to. Fitness was not a big part of my life growing up so finding it as an adult was interesting for sure! I got certified as a fitness instructor because of how it made me feel and I wanted to share that with everyone that I could. As I spread myself out too thin by teaching at many places, I saw many other amazing women doing just that. We were all making it harder on ourselves just to teach more people about health. So, I thought, why don’t we create a place where we can all share what we love and our students can stop hopping around by coming to one space. This, combined with my love of natural wellness with essential oils, was a perfect plan. We educate on health through movement, natural products, have a massage therapist, a coffee/smoothie & protein bar so that they are fueled from the inside, out. This was an important creation for me because I could never find myself ‘fitting in’ to a regular gym setting, or even in a large group before this. When I realized that I felt uncomfortable in these situations, I knew that I needed to create the invitation for others to feel at home.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Who hasn’t had to pivot multiple times in the last few years, am I right!? But even before 2020, I found myself thrown out of a career that I planned on dying in. When this happened, there was a choice. After crying on my couch for a couple of months, I brushed myself off and decided that since my fitness journey was starting to branch out to others, that maybe, just maybe I could start a business that had to do with sharing health with them and getting paid for it.
Jump ahead to having a successful studio when 2020 hit and gathering in public was suddenly a sin. We saw it coming and immediately moved forward with a virtual platform. We got all the equipment needed to keep people moving through their screens and did as much live classes as possible to keep high morale and workouts a regular thing. This change caused many of our instructors to leave the studio. Life didn’t slow down as we hustled to keep members happy, memberships active, and our doors open. It all seems like a blur now that we are past that insanity and now everyone is over the online workouts and just wants to be in person, haha. Our instructors now are vital to our success and appreciated by everyone as they encourage and build up those around them.

Any advice for managing a team?

Stop controlling! That was my internal dialogue for so long as I struggled to micro-manage in every single job I’ve ever had. No one can do it faster or better than me, right? This is not leadership. There’s nothing like getting fired to show how replaceable you are. When this happened, I really had to rethink how I was treating people if I could be treated so poorly. Did I ask for this? No. But life knew that there was a better option for me and what I had to offer others if I could learn from my previous mistakes. My advice for leading a team, is to not treat them like they are employees. I look for people who are leaders, themselves. They choose what they teach, those choose when they teach it. There are always suggestions, like ‘here is a time that we’ve seen members asking for, do you want it?’ or ‘we’re finding that this style is a need right now, does anyone specialize in that?’. Everyone gets checked in on to see how things are going and if there are any changes that need to be made. There are 12 of us who teach under one roof and it’s easy for months to go by as member numbers increase and instructors are going through the motions. The last thing I want is for someone to come to me after their feelings were hurt or something happened that I wasn’t aware of. The best way to get an overall feel, is to do a lot of communication. Everyone is on a group message and the little things matter. They hear if there’s a leak in the ceiling, a sticky door lock, power went out, snow needs shoveled, if a member was having a hard day, if they have a new member in their class I will make sure they know before starting, etc…And in return, they keep me in the loop. They have great relationships with each other and not everything has to go through me. They take care of their own substitutes when needed and I do not control the things that they can handle. They feel like they belong and I’m proud of that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.peaklifestylestudio.com/
• Instagram: peaklifestylestudio
• Facebook: Peak Lifestyle Studio
• Youtube: @peaklifestylestudio3532
• Yelp: Just set up, coming soon

Image Credits
Peak Lifestyle Studio Staff & Isabella Evans