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

Jai, appreciate you joining us today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

When I was 6 years old, my mom took me to the Detroit Public Library to see Les Brown speak. At that time I had just lost my first job where I made $25 an hour (great pay for a youngin) and was experiencing a huge devastation because I grew out of the role. In a search to create additional income, I had adapted an entrepreneurial spirit and just in time for my realization, I heard Les Brown say, “It’s possible.” My mom taking me to hear that talk gave me every ounce of belief I needed to carry out this dream and I have been on a mission to do so ever since.

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’m the founder of Girl, Get Your Body Fit which is growing to be the #1 fitness community for black and brown women to thrive in wellness.

In 2012/2013 I set out to lose 50 pounds but found frustration in the different home exercise programs, attempting to become a runner, and not knowing how to use the machines in the gym. Then in 2014, I lost 50 pounds, and I had barely noticed because I was just intuitively working out and eating different foods to find out what was triggering my acne, swollen ankles, and bloated belly. What worked for me was following my intuition.

At the time, I was apart of a devout religious community, and the women in my congregation had noticed my weightloss and asked what I was doing to lose weight. From that point I started developing a program to help women build habits to follow their intuition on their weightloss journey.

This is what created my best-selling product: PHITNEZ 21 – a 21 day journey to develop the foundation, habits, and beliefs, to thrive in wellness. Through this program women average a weightloss of 13.4 pounds then transition to our Summer Body Bootcamp, where they continue to experience the support of our community and dance the belly fat away.

I’m most proud that the Girl, Get Your Body Fit community doesn’t encourage one-and-done mindset. We have created the resources to help our athletes get results and keep results and embrace their truest idea of being well.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I am extremely inspired by Lisa Nichols, particularly her interview with Tom Bilyeu on Impact Theory. Lisa Nichols shares her journey of being one of two, African-American, female founders, who has a company that is publicly traded on Wall Street.

One thing she said in that interview that I have embodied is, “you want to make me great, because it let’s you off the hook.”

As a young founder I have constantly heard, “if only I knew that at your age,” or “you’re so fortunate to be so much further than your peers,” – I use to feed into this idea. However, when I reflected on this interview it made me question this perspective others had of me. Is it true that I’m unique? Or did I become relentless towards my vision to accomplish my dreams? And is it possible for me to encourage others to become relentless too?

That last question was a game changer.

Once I became dedicated to helping my athletes become relentless towards their vision my company’s revenue grew by 219%.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

As a founder and CEO it is so easy to be driven by reports. Is revenue up? How is profit? In what ways can I get my subscriber churn rate lower? And while being obsessive with these numbers are important, I had no idea that the reason I was genuinely obsessed with these numbers is because I thought they defined my worth as a person, not only the worth of my company.

It took some personal development work of understanding where my shame and self worth comes from which was triggered by losing a major stream of income. During my reflection work, I was able to separate how my business does, from how I feel about myself, which allowed me to manage my emotions better and not be afraid of the lows of business ownership. Before I dived deep into this work on myself, I would avoid risk because my identity was attached to the outcome, but now I can risk, and thrive strategically.

Contact Info:

• Website: girlgetyourbodyfit.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/girlgetyourbodyfit/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100079867944428