We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leanne Thomas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Leanne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share an anecdote or story from your schooling/training that you feel illustrates what the overall experience was like?
Let me start by saying that fitness trainings are completely different from one program to another, and while there is accreditation given to programs who apply for it and go the extra mile to receive certification, all training programs are not made equal.
To be a great instructor, I think there needs to be a blend of anatomical education, relatability, enthusiasm, and musicality to guide a class where the student can cut-off mentally, and be led safely through challenges.
My training started at Exhale NYC, under barre industry leaders Fred DeVito and Lis Halfpapp. I walked into training in the Upper East Side with a love for barre-style exercises, nervous that I’d be sore from repeating moves. After 8 hour training days with 2 inch notebooks of diagrams, I walked out with my brain spinning with anatomical breakdowns and modifications for days.
They laid the muscular foundation that I didn’t know I needed, and now think every fitness instructor should understand. Then with hours of practice, stumbling over my words, standing on a yoga block to prevent nervous pacing, and plenty of correction, I was able to both recognize the smallest of details for impeccable form, and clearly communicate what you should feel during each exercise to get the most from every workout.
I didn’t realize how much I was learning in the moment — I flew home realizing I still had a long way to go. Looking back almost 8 years and thousands of classes later, I can proudly look back at my beginning. Their 30+ years of experience in dance and exercise built my foundation of anatomy, and crafted my outlook of a life-long wellness approach.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I grew up in rural North Carolina, focusing on every activity I could fit into my schedule, with a love for competitive dance and tennis. I headed to the University of Georgia for a degree in Graphic Design, and moved to New York City after graduation for my ‘dream job’ in corporate web design for an iconic department store. Small town girl moving to the Big Apple brought on a major lifestyle change. I found myself missing the dance studio, but struggled to find my place when riding the subway next to a clique of Radio City Rockettes. I tried gyms, expensive boutique studios, and online workouts but I never found a fit. Months passed feeling low-energy, achy, frumpy, borderline depressed, and lacking motivation. I had to make a change.
My now husband, got news that the Army was relocating him to Hawaii — so we packed our bags and said ALOHA!
In my ‘fun-employment’ and hunt to find new friends, I found a welcoming workout community at a small local barre studio. I signed up for classes day after day while hunting for jobs. The owner looked at me one day and said “you’re here all the time, you should probably be teaching it,” and I got to work. I flew back to New York City to train with industry-leading instructors, practiced endlessly, and fell in love with helping women like me, have fun in their workouts. While I never expected to work in boutique fitness, I found a passion for helping other women feel strong, and came home every day physically exhausted and fulfilled from a job that didn’t look at a computer screen from 9 to 5.
As years passed, I noticed how many women were struggling to fit workouts into their schedule, making it impossible to be consistent. Fast forward to the pandemic closing down studios — where everyone was left wondering how to stay active, and that’s where my new online workout community began. So in 2020, I created Daily Fuel to bring studio-quality workouts into your home! Within a year, I had over 100 guided strength, cardio, stretching classes available for an ideal routine for even the busiest for women.
Our workout community quickly grew and now includes personal accountability with daily text reminders, weekly guided workout plans via email, and the Daily Fuel App for a simpler routine and more enjoyable exercise. Fast forward to today, Daily Fuel workouts are helping women daily from Hawaii to Peru, to Italy and beyond!
My heart is to provide two things — workouts you love, and a positive impact on health + wellness worldwide. I’m proud to say the Daily Fuel community fights world hunger with every workout. 10% of proceeds supports our partner non-profit, Rise Against Hunger. To date, we have donated over 20,000 meals, and fund gardening initiatives in under-developed communities.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to unlearn the expectations of my former self. There is a big difference between training as an athlete with a game or competition in mind, vs. training for general daily wellness on a consistent basis. I grew up active in sports, so exercise was naturally built into my routine. As I got older, and the competitions stopped, I realized that I was lacking an end goal. I think high school, and especially college athletes can relate to this. Your relationship with exercise evolves with time.
Once I found workouts that I enjoyed, I started viewing fitness as a long-term approach, and the result is great sleep, energy, less aches & pains, me-time etc.
Can you open up about how you managed the initial funding?
The reason I started slowly, was because I didn’t raise initial capital. An online business is expensive in my time, energy and literal sweat of filming workouts, but the online structure can run at minimal cost. The main area I focused on for the past 2 years, was the best ways to make my workouts accessible, and the most popular way is with an app.
If anyone out there is running a fitness business, and thinks that an app would be beneficial, but it’s just too pricey… my advice is keep doing your research — it’s out there. I searched for months to find the right fit. I almost pulled the trigger on a program that was way beyond my financial means because I thought it was the only way. Prayer saved me in that situation.
My faith is my foundation, and prayer has taught me just how important patience is when starting and running a business. Flashback to around 1 year ago, all I wanted was an app. I had no idea how I was going to pay for it, but I was going to make it happen. So I started searching for every grant application that I qualified for. I applied again and again with no response. I prayed, and knew that an app was the next step. So then I was left questioning, how, when, and who was going to help me make this happen.
I continued on, grant after grant — nothing. Then someone mentioned an Entrepreneurship Program starting at a local community college near me, that required you go to 5 Entrepreneurship Classes, and then at the end you have the possibility to stand in front of a panel of judges and pitch for up to $20,000. I leaned in, and learned so much. Light bulbs were going off — questions coming up that I didn’t have answered about the future of Daily Fuel, and long-term projections that had been only in my head finally made it down on paper. I worked for months refining the details, to put into my pitch.
It’s easy to have an idea and say you have confidence in it. It’s another thing to have an idea with enough confidence to put other people’s money into it. When it was finally time to walk up on stage and pitch, there was a shift in my confidence. I didn’t just want an app — I needed an app for my community to thrive. At the end of night, I was awarded $5000. This was the largest financial push Daily Fuel had seen, but I had yet to find anyone that could provide an app within that budget.
Back to prayer. I sat thankful for all $5000, and now wondering what to do with it! I keep researching, praying, and trying other fitness apps. Finally after 2 months of staring at the money in my account, I came across a platform that checked all the boxes. I could build the app I wanted and fund it for 2 years with the $5000 I had been awarded. I finally felt at peace that the money and my vision lined up and I pulled the trigger.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dailyfuel.online
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailyfuel.online/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailyfuel.online
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leanneothomas/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpT3O9gu8Ja53lpCZHPzh-g
- Other: iOS App Store: Daily Fuel
Image Credits
Richie Biluan