We recently connected with Kristy Cronister and have shared our conversation below.

Kristy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Success looks different for each individual person so the first step is being able to define in certain terms what success looks like for you or your business. Once you define success you must identify the daily actions required for you to achieve that success. The hard part of achieving success is that you must execute on those actions every single day. The major difference between those who achieve success and those who do not is an unwavering commitment to execute at the highest level every single day. There will always be days or even seasons that bring more struggle or obstacles than others, but being unwilling to compromise your personal standards and commitment to your goals will always result in success over the long term. It takes an extraordinary amount of self awareness and a willingness to honestly assess your effort each day in order to achieve at the highest levels. Most people are capable of incredible discipline that leads to success, but because they don’t put the effort into developing discipline as a skill they fall far short of their potential. Be willing to examine your mindset, your daily actions, and effort with brutal honesty. Tell yourself the truth. Make a commitment to yourself to give 100% effort every day, to accept responsibility for your actions or inaction, and to develop a growth mindset. If you choose this path, you choose success.

Kristy, 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?

From an early age I felt a strong calling to work in the medical profession and I followed that path with a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the University of Iowa in 2007 and spent the following eight years working as a Neurosurgery Intensive Care Unit nurse in multiple cities across the country. I loved my work and had a very successful career, but the emotional toll of seeing people suffer and so many die as a result of their injuries or conditions became a dark cloud that I could not get out from under. During that time, I suffered from depression and anxiety that began to consume my ability to find joy in any aspect of my life, but then I found weightlifting and everything changed. The weight room allowed me to turn off my mind, to release stress and anxiety by putting all of my focus into pushing my body to extreme physical discomfort and exhaustion. This newfound love changed the entire course of my life.

In 2016 I became a Certified Personal Trainer and left the nursing profession to pursue a career in personal training at a local fitness center. I combined my love for helping others become the healthiest versions of themselves with my passion for physical fitness and have never looked back. I worked twice as many hours and twice as hard building my personal training clientele, but it has been worth every second of difficulty. I was eventually promoted to fitness director, met my now husband Nathan Cronister, and developed many relationships that I maintain to this day.

In 2020 while 9 months pregnant with our son Atreyu our fitness center was purchased by a large corporate gym and we were faced with the scariest decision of our lives. We knew that the way this new organization operated was not in line with the way we wanted to train our clients and there were no other local fitness centers that could meet our needs. Our only real option was to start our own business.

In November 2020 we opened the doors to Kansas Built Fitness and it was the greatest decision we have ever made. Kansas Built Fitness was born of our passion for helping others, our love for each other and our son, and our desire to have the freedom to do things our way. After 22 months of grinding, building, and pushing through all of the tough days we now employ five other personal trainers, have helped over 350 clients and have grown over 150% in revenue.

Kansas Built Fitness is a private personal training studio specializing in individual personal training, personal trainer led group fitness classes, nutrition counseling, Reformer Pilates, and sports performance. Our team of personal trainers are highly skilled and experienced which leads to incredible results for all of our clients. In the corporate fitness culture, the emphasis is on selling, but Kansas Built Fitness is focused on providing high quality training services, giving people the tools they need to change their lifestyle, and welcoming every client into a supportive and encouraging community.

Nathan and I are so proud to provide our team with well-paying and satisfying careers so that they can focus on providing life changing personal training services to our clients. We believe our focus on helping people become the best possible version of themselves is the reason Kansas Built Fitness has been so successful.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Nathan and I met my first day as a personal trainer. Nathan had only been a personal trainer for a year, but had already established himself as one of the most sought after personal trainers in our fitness center. As such, he was one of the first co-workers I went to for advice or help navigating the aspects of the job I was unfamiliar with. He was always willing to answer my questions and had a very easy going and likable personality. I learned a lot about personal training from watching how he trained his clients and very quickly saw him as the trainer to “beat”. We would often have sales contests amongst the training staff and we were often ranked according to our monthly sales and the number of sessions we would deliver each month. He and I were often the top one and two, quickly learning that to beat the other we must be at the top of our game. I respected his work ethic, the rapport he had with his clients, and his ability to connect with everyone whether they were a high school athlete or an eighty year old woman. We shared an office at the gym and were often the only two trainers there for 12-14 hours per day so even though we are both introverts and didn’t spend much time conversing we developed a friendship based in our love of lifting heavy weight and training our clients.

That friendship developed into a romantic relationship and within three years of meeting we were married and both promoted to leadership roles in the gym. We found very quickly that our compatibility in our romantic relationship also made us an excellent team in our work relationship. His laid back nature is a perfect compliment to my Type A personality and at our core we both believe in hard work, performing at a high level, and taking care of people.

There are times when it is very difficult to navigate the multifaceted dynamic of our relationship as husband and wife and business partners, but we share a belief system and set of goals that keep us on the same page. We have found that the differences in how we do things can be frustrating at times, but we recognize that those differences are exactly what have made us a successful team both in marriage and in business. I genuinely believe that we are a perfect example of how beneficial it can be to team up with someone whose weaknesses are your strengths and who can fill the gap of your weaknesses with their strengths. There is nobody I would rather partner with in any aspect of life.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Personal training is so titled because it is in fact a very personal relationship between people. The most foundational aspect of the reputation Kansas Built Fitness has developed is that we take care of people and put people first. We have created a culture that is respectful, motivating, and inclusive for both our staff and our clients. We believe we can best lead our clients to the results they are looking for by first connecting to them at a personal level and meeting them where they are at. Change is difficult for everyone and making major changes to your lifestyle with fitness and nutrition is one of the most difficult journeys most people will go on.

We were able to open the doors of Kansas Built Fitness with over 50 paying clients because of the reputation and relationship we had built with our long time clients. The training staff we have been able to hire are individuals we have worked with in the past either as personal trainers or even as a former client of mine who pursued personal training as a second career after our time working together. We believe that our strong values and commitment to excellence have continued to attract people to Kansas Built Fitness and will continue to be the reason we see high numbers of client referrals and an incredibly loyal client base.

There are thousands of fitness professionals who can put someone through a tough workout once in a while, but Kansas Built Fitness has a team of trainers who will change your whole life.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: @kansasbuiltfitness
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/selfmadefitness.ks/
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn0E6bl7yGvJoL4qLxjE_Bw