We were lucky to catch up with Gail Gould recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gail, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

When I was a little girl growing up in Dallas, Texas, my dad would often say to me to find work I love to do since I would need to work when I grow up. I took him at his word. It took me a while to settle in on what I am doing now, but I have always tried to towards finding work that I love and find meaningful.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been a professional CPR instructor for 32 years and trained 10k people to save lives. My mission is two-fold: to CPR train as many people as possible since you never know when you might need to use it and for no parent to ever have to lose a child to choking. Right out of college, I was a group fitness instructor and personal trainer and was getting tired of being in a leotard every day. I went back to college in 1987 to earn a graduate degree in Exercise Science/Health Promotion. When I graduated, my plan was to work for myself in corporate health promotion. I can remember sitting in my upstairs office cold calling large corporations and asking if they were interested in any health promotion programs like weight management, healthy back classes, corporate exercise classes, and CPR/First Aid training. The program they were mostly interested in was CPR and First Aid training. This is how I got started. It started off a little slow so I also worked as a health coach for Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and a large physician practice group in Houston.
Over the years, my CPR training business grew as I gained more clients. I feel very proud that I can teach people something that might possibly help them to save a life one day. The life you are most likely to save is that of your loved one.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I have always felt like it was extremely important to be very knowledgeable, reliable, and professional. I truly love what I do and enjoy working in the corporate environment so these traits are really important if I want to keep growing.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My son was born when I was 49 years old. My husband and I adopted him at birth and our adoption process took 8 very long years to find him! As much as I loved working, my son was my top priority. I wanted to be there when he took his first step and uttered his first word, so I had to pivot and hand over a lot of my work to someone else. I was fortunate to find someone who was highly reliable, honest, and knowledgeable. It was hard for me to hand over a lot of my business to another instructor, but my son was my main priority so I knew this is what I wanted to do. As he grew older, I was able to manage more of a workload and I thought it was good for him to see me as a working mom.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.houstoncpr.com www.cprandsafetylady.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecprandsafetylady/
• Facebook: (4) houston cpr / fitcore – Search Results | Facebook
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gail-gould-8189a330/

Image Credits
Houston Chronicle Mark Mulligan