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

Michele, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

It takes an itching idea for me to get going on executing it. By itching I mean, once I’ve thought about it, it keeps coming into my mind every day until I decide to do something about it. This is how starting a coaching business started for me. I always wanted to be able to help people with running, and I already was via my instagram @missshellshock. People were asking me questions about running almost on the daily. I thought that there wouldn’t be a need for a coach like me, someone who was more of a cheerleader and understood what was needed to get motivated and started with running rather than someone who showed up at races and stood on the podium. It turns out, there is a BIG need for coaches like me because there are a lot of people who have been interested in running but held themselves back because it seemed like it was only for the “fast” people. Once I realized that there was a need, I quickly put together a plan of creating a logo, taking an official certification for coaching, building a website and figuring out how I would market. Since my instagram was where people in the running community knew me, I started there when I first announced it and it quickly grew into the small business that I wanted it to be. Something that I could do on the sidelines so it wouldn’t be about so much the money as it was helping the athletes and being their cheerleader.

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 am what I have classified for myself, a running/adventuring coach. My main purpose with coaching is to help people either get started with running, find their passion for running again and/or stay motivated with their running. I consider myself an adventure coach as well because I personally trail run and climb mountains and I truly believe that running isn’t about how fast, how many times you’ve beat someone else or being competitive with your friends; it’s about the adventure of it all. Discovering nature; the sounds, the feel of it underneath your feet and the rhythm it can create within your mind and your body.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Something that I had to unlearn before I could even become a coach was the toxic mindset that can come with running as an exercise. It’s really easy to fall into running as a form of losing weight and have that be your main motiviation to do it. Now, I am not against having that be a happy side effect for someone but it can start to become toxic and even turn into disordered exercising if we let ourselves fall into that being our sole motivator for the sport. Running can be something that puts you in tune with yourself and your body and can be something very joyful when you let all of this go.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I first started posting on my instagram to gain a following, I had a really unhealthy mindset about it. I posted all the time, even if I didn’t feel like it, spent a lot of time thinking about my hashtags, what I wrote, etc. Then once I started to realize that I was making my social media more of what other people wanted than what I wanted, I really turned things around. I started to post intentionally and only when I wanted to and what I felt like talking about. I may have had more followers at one point before making this change but what’s important to me is that I’m my genuine self and the people who are on my page, want to be there because of that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.missshellshockcoaching.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/missshellshock
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-dillon/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/MDRunsUltras
• Other: Podcast I did on my coaching: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Xry9eM8W3q28fvqOEelG8?si=jiLCqFhKRce6WZX97tlaxw&nd=1

Image Credits
Logo : @movedbythemountains