We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Janna Moretti. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Janna below.

Hi Janna , thanks for joining us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed

When I was in the Marines back in the late 90s, early 2000s, I got into a ton of trouble for things like underage drinking, disrespect to an officer, disobeying lawful orders, disrespect to noncommissioned officers. I lost rank twice. I was on barracks restriction for eight months, so after I spent my days working I had to check in every two hours and also clean the battalion headquarters. I had gained weight, got slower at running since I wasn’t able to leave my room to work out, and my unit was preparing for a deployment so  PT wasn’t consistent. I still did my day-to-day job with pride, but that didn’t come into play till much later. During this time I learned a few things. One, most people whom I had considered friends did not want to be associated with me. It didn’t matter that I was a hard worker or that I knew my job well. It didn’t matter that we had had fun together outside and inside of work previously or that they were involved in some of the things that I was in trouble for. It only mattered that I was seen as a troublemaker, and they kept their distance. I learned a lot about loyalty during that time.

The final NJP (nonjudicial punishment, kind of like a hearing with the people in your chain of command deciding on your guilt and doling out punishment), there was a chaser on standby to escort me to Quantico, where they jailed women prisoners. She wore a pistol on her belt, and I said goodbye to my few loyal friends before heading in to see the Commanding Office (CO). In that office where I stood at attention surrounded by the men in charge of me, my CO read portions of the letter I had written in defense against the charges aloud. Instead of stating reasons why I did the things I did, I took responsibility for breaking the rules, though I didn’t agree with some of the details. I didn’t cry a victim story. I took responsibility and urged them to reconsider sending me to the brig, the standard punishment after a Marine has been NJPd as many times as I had. I ended up walking out of the office that day a rank lower, with more days of barracks restriction as another punishment, more pay docked, but by accepting responsibility, I was given another chance.

When my new Warrant Officer (WO) came to lead Maintenance Platoon about a year later, he called me into his office on day one. He said, “I hear you’re a real troublemaker but I believe in clean slates,” and I said yes sir and he said to get the hell out of his office. I had turned 21, so I aged out of some of the things that were cause for trouble. And I started to see people who weren’t good at the job get promoted over me by virtue of time in the rank and not getting caught doing the same shit I had done. A lot of them didn’t know how to lead, didn’t know the job, but were put in charge of making decisions they didn’t fully understand. I had been in the shop a long time. I knew how to run the reports, fix the radios, rally people to help each other. I started stepping up to manage these things even though my rank didn’t suit these actions. I acted like the rank I wanted to be. This was acknowledged by my WO, so he agreed to my request to attend Corporals Leadership course even though I was only a Lance Corporal. I ended up graduating second in the class, and because of that I was nominated to compete on the Marine of the Quarter. board. I went on to win that competition. Then I was promoted to Corporal, went on to be selected as NCO of the Quarter, and then competed and won a board to be promoted meritoriously to Sergeant. I ended up reenlisting and running the shop at my next duty station. Years later, I heard from another Marine that my old WO told his Marines my story as an example of how a person can change.

This was a long time ago, but the lessons are still present in my day-to-day.

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 Janna Moretti, a competitive powerlifter, a new gym owner, an English professor, and a professional writer. All of these roles inform each other in some capacity. Being a competitive athlete, the patience I learn from focusing on skill development rolls over to other areas of my life. One day I cannot lift a weight, another day, I can move it slowly. One day that weight becomes easy. When I give the time and focus, things grow. I become more confident. I bring this discipline, focus, and confidence to other areas of my life.

I opened a powerlifting gym with my brother, Gainesville Barbell. It is less than two weeks old. Others have asked how it’s going and when I say “Great!” people are like “Oh, really?” I have a tremendous amount of support from my husband and other lifters. The gym would not already be what it is in such a short amount of time were it not for many wonderful people helping to make it happen. I aim to continue to build the sport of powerlifting here in Gainesville, Florida, by hosting seminars, community outreach, and of course–competitions.

I also work full-time as an English Professor, so I am perpetually honing the skill of translation–translation of an idea, a concept, into something that others have to understand and then apply it for themselves. I practice grounding abstraction into something concrete. This practice affects my training, my business, and my writing.

Through powerlifting I have come to know a different self, a more powerful self. I noticed other women on social media having similar upward trajectories. I wanted to talk with them and write about it. I reached out to Sisters of Iron, a hub of support for women in strength, and pitched the idea to the owner, Susie. I asked if I could post to her site because of her reach. She loved the idea, so the Sisters of Iron interview project was founded. I am a fiction writer by trade, so I use some of the fiction conventions to craft articles about lifters. For example if I want to make the reader feel the rush of approaching a bar for a huge lift, I think of what it feels like when I do that, then I write out those experiences in a repetition/run-on style to give the reader that impression. Through this project I have connected with so many other women lifters.

I bring this same excitement to the formation of the gym. I have so many ideas in mind I just can’t wait to put them into action.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Referring to my personal social media which absolutely impacted my ability to open a gym: I actually started out anti social media. My old powerlifting coach had asked if I’d get on Instagram so he could share videos from there in groups with his other athletes. I joined and stayed anonymous, no picture. Then my coach shared a video of me one day and another powerlifter who I had seen at competitions started following me. I decided to stop being an isolated weirdo and started posting my lifting videos. As time went on, I followed #powerlifting and #girlswhopowerlift and #sistersofiron. From there I found a ton of other lifters who I started following, and they followed back.

I approach IG as a support network. I’m not stingy with likes. I hit like just to show other lifters they are seen and they’re doing good. Even if the form is bad. Even if nobody else has liked it. I will also follow a person back even if they don’t have followers because I think one way to grow the sport of powerlifting has to do with supporting other lifters. It’s such an easy thing to do.

Over time I started writing what I was mentally processing while lifting. This built some credibility for my writing. I think it also did something beneficial for the algorithm because my following grew quite quickly for a lifting profile that doesn’t do sexy shots. I’m really just lifting weights and posting what I’m processing mentally. Every so often I’ll do a photo with the family.

I think that because I come from a place of supporting others, when it came time to open our gym, we had a lot of reciprocal support coming in.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Story about how we decided to go after opening a gym:

For years my brother and I have talked about opening a gym. We have both lifted weights since we were teenagers. When we go to visit each other we always train together. We did our first powerlifting competition together. Only a year or two ago we started mapping out plans to open a gym, but we got busy with our jobs, we decided to revisit it later. But about a month ago, when I found out the powerlifting gym I had been going to was closing, I reached out to my brother to see if he wanted to go in on getting the equipment from that place to set up our own powerlifting gym. He was all for it.

I wanted to set up as quickly as possible. As a competitive athlete, I understand the significance of having a place to train with the equipment you need. I wanted minimal time between when the old gym was closing and when ours was opening so we could, in theory, merge those members over to our new space.

We moved insanely fast. In the span of two weeks we had the LLC, a lease signed, loans taken out, relationships with remote trainers, a website built, etc. I slept very little. So did my brother. He drove all the way to Gainesville from Nashville with his family to bring a check, helped move the equipment and the flooring that same day, slept a couple hours, and then drove his family back home so my niece could be in school on Monday morning. My husband has also hustled nonstop since this was just an idea. He co-owns a tattoo shop, so he was offering free tattoos as payment to anyone who could help us move thousands of pounds in one day. He has designed the logo, the new deadlift platforms, and big wooden cutouts to hang on the walls. It is astonishing how that whirlwind led to a solid opening. Most of the members transferred to our gym. There was only six days between the old place closing and our gym opening.

I do believe that that month aged me about a decade. I lost nine pounds because I was so busy I wouldn’t stop to eat. I did continue training throughout all of it because I love powerlifting and that’s really what it’s all about.     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gainesvillebarbell.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janna_moretti/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/gainesville.barbell/
• https://sistersofironapparel.com/blogs/blog