Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
EP574: Lexie Ward - The Slower But Surer Road To Success
135 Plays1 year ago
“It's about the quality of your work, not the quantity. Scaling too quickly can cause details to get lost and diminish the quality of service you provide.”
Ever wondered what it takes to overcome serious health challenges and transform your life completely? why maintaining muscle mass is crucial as we age? Did you know that without resistance training and proper nutrition, we start losing muscle mass around the age of 30?
We’ve all been there - struggling with health issues, feeling the weight of societal expectations, and trying to find our way to a healthier, more confident self. Today, we have an amazing guest who has been through it all and came out stronger on the other side. This episode is all about transformation, resilience, and the power of proper nutrition and fitness.
Lexie Ward is one of the founders of Lady the F Up. She's a former national trampoline champion who has faced and conquered numerous health challenges. Lexie is now dedicated to helping women all over the world achieve their best selves through fitness and nutrition. She started gymnastics at just two and a half years old, tried various sports, and eventually focused on trampoline, where she achieved national success. But despite her athletic prowess, she struggled with her health for years, dealing with misdiagnoses and chronic issues.
In today's fast-paced world, where demands from work, family, and personal life often compete for our attention, prioritizing our health can feel like an uphill battle. With constant distractions and obligations, finding the time and motivation to incorporate healthier habits can indeed be challenging. Despite these challenges, prioritizing our health is crucial for our overall well-being and longevity. Incorporating healthier habits doesn't have to be a monumental task. It can begin with small, manageable steps that fit into our daily lives. Whether it's making smarter food choices, finding time for regular exercise, or prioritizing self-care practices like adequate sleep and stress management, every little effort counts.
Follow Lexi Ward on Instagram @lexircise and Lady the F Up for more tips and inspiration on fitness and nutrition.
Expert action steps:
- Pay attention to how you feel day to day and what you're eating.
- Always have a goal to work toward.
- Make time for rest and play.
Visit eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Women's Wellness Mission
00:00:03
Speaker
I have now made it my life's mission to help women feel better, learn how to fuel themselves. And of course, with my athletic background, love activity, love building muscle, love being more. Choosing to grow muscle, show up as a person who is growing and evolving rather than focusing on shrinking and eating less and seeing the number go down on the scale. We want to be overall
00:00:27
Speaker
a better person with more energy that feels better and can show up not only for yourself but everyone else and everything else that needs you in life as the best version of you possible.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Ballou. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, find your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders and learn the secrets of how they built a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.
00:01:10
Speaker
Welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast of Thought Leader Revolution. I'm your host, Nicky Baloo. And boy, we have an exciting, amazing, awesome guest lined up for you today.
Introducing Lexi Ward and her Journey
00:01:22
Speaker
Today's guest is one of the founders of Lady the F-Up. She is a close personal friend and business partner to my close personal friend and health and fitness mentor,
00:01:38
Speaker
the hammer, the goat mentor, himself, camera. I am speaking, of course, of none other than the one, the only, the legendary Lexi Ward. Welcome to the show, Lexi. Thank you, thank you. That was quite the intro and I really appreciate it.
00:01:59
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever watched UFC fights, but the announcer there is a man named Bruce Buffer. And I think he's the goat of all announcers and introducers. So I'm going for the Bruce Buffer kind of standard over here when I make an introduction to somebody awesome. There's a lot of really good stuff to come.
00:02:17
Speaker
I love it. I love it. So Lexi, this show is aimed at the crazy ones, the misfits, the square pegs in the round holes. These are the ones who aren't fond of rules and they don't like the status quo. And they listen to the show because what they want to do is they want to change the world and they want to make their visions and dreams come alive. And they don't come here to listen to me. I'm here every week. They come here because of you.
00:02:43
Speaker
But before they can open themselves up to you, they need to get to know you. Tell us your backstory. How'd you get to be the great Lexi Ward? Oh, it has been quite the journey. So I have been an athlete my entire life. I started gymnastics when I was two and a half years old. And from two and a half until 10, I tried a whole bunch of different stuff. I tried soccer. I tried ballet. I tried horseback riding. And through my time in gymnastics, my
00:03:11
Speaker
favorite apparatus was trampoline. So when I was 10 years old, I switched from recreational gymnastics and all the other sports to focus on trampoline. And within six months of my recreational classes there, I was recruited for the competitive team, won my first couple of competitions, spent a couple of months in the interclub division,
00:03:32
Speaker
and then went on to the provincial and then national level 12 years in trampoline and in 2016 I retired as Canadian champion and Canada Cup champion. Now despite all of my athletic success I
00:03:47
Speaker
struggled so much with my health, with injuries, with digestion. And I saw so many different specialists. Because I was a national athlete, I was referred to all of the specialists out there. I was sent for MRIs, tests, you name it. No one could figure out what was wrong with me. And I was given the diagnosis of UM-IBS, irritable bowel syndrome.
00:04:07
Speaker
And when the word syndrome is used in a medical diagnosis, it essentially means we don't know what's wrong. It's just a group of symptoms and we're just, this is your new normal.
Lexi's Health Transformation and Societal Critique
00:04:17
Speaker
So I was suffering with migraines. I was sick all the time. I had tendon injuries. So occasionally there was a bad fall in trampoline that would create some tears that I would then have to train around and recover from. I had a couple of concussions throughout. None of them were from sport.
00:04:35
Speaker
A lot of them were just fluke freak accidents in my life. And those were things that I had to overcome. Retired in 2016, did a whole bunch of really cool jobs after that. I managed a couple of trampoline parks. I managed a zipline park. And then in 2018,
00:04:53
Speaker
I came across a nutritional supplement company that I started working with. And the chief science officer there is the most brilliant man that I have ever met in my life. His name is Dr. Pastore. We actually ran a podcast together for about a year and a half in our time together. And in that podcast and my
00:05:11
Speaker
social media work for his brand. I learned so much about digestive health, about nutrition, and the quote unquote irritable bowel syndrome that I had was not irritable bowel syndrome. It was actually reactions to foods that I was eating every single day. And when I removed those foods,
00:05:31
Speaker
Everything went away. I had more energy. I was sleeping better. My skin cleared up. I rarely get sick anymore. And it's because of how I fueled my body. So I have now made it my life's mission to help women feel better, learn how to fuel themselves.
00:05:47
Speaker
And of course, with my athletic background, love activity, love building muscle, love being more. Choosing to grow muscle, show up as a person who is growing and evolving rather than focusing on shrinking and eating less and seeing the number go down on the scale. We want to be overall a better person with more energy that feels better and can show up not only for yourself, but everyone else and everything else that needs you in life as the best version of you possible.
00:06:16
Speaker
Wow, that is a heck of a backstory. And I love what you said at the end. Say it again, you want to help women grow and evolve versus shrink and what? So we want to be more in a society, especially growing up when I was I'm a nineties baby. So growing up, it was the tabloids in the Victoria's Secret fashion show and America's Next Top Model and this
00:06:40
Speaker
celebrity is now stick thin and anorexic, oh, but now she's too fat. So all of that social media messaging, well, not social media, media messaging before social media was a thing that was imprinted upon us as in order to be successful, in order to be perfect, you need to be ex weight. And it was always eat less.
00:07:01
Speaker
No one ever told us to eat more. No one ever told us to prioritize protein. No one ever told us to pick up a dumbbell and move some weight and build some muscle. It was always go do cardio, eat your salad, and focus on that scale going down. And if this number on the scale doesn't drop, then you're not good enough.
00:07:17
Speaker
So we are breaking that norm. We are focusing on the number on the scale. Fuck it. It doesn't mean anything. What matters is how you show up for yourself and how you show up to the process and come with patience and determination and consistency because it takes
00:07:34
Speaker
a hell of a lot longer than you think it's going to, but when you enjoy the process, when you are process-focused instead of results-focused in terms of I want to be X-shaped by X-date, you get so much more than just the results. You get an entire 180 on your life where you are enjoying most days, obviously there's gonna be down days, but you are a happy, confident version of yourself who chooses to be more in your life.
00:08:04
Speaker
Damn, girl, you are a heck of a podcast guest. You bring energy, you bring fire, you bring passion, you speak in complete sentences and paragraphs. I love it. So why do you believe that
00:08:20
Speaker
So many women have been susceptible to this disinformation, to this lie that to be the best version of themselves, they need to be less and not more.
00:08:36
Speaker
It really is the messaging that was given to us and still shows up. I mean, social media, Instagram, all of that. Now, everyone only sees the best version. And with Lady the F up, we have been in business now for almost five years, which blows my mind. We have worked with
00:08:53
Speaker
thousands of women in those five years and no matter where you are in the world. I've worked with women in Australia and Europe and South America and the Middle East and all over North America, no matter where you are, whatever your situation is, you can be living in a mansion in Beverly Hills or a one bedroom apartment in a really poor area, no matter where you live.
00:09:16
Speaker
you have that same struggle of, I am not enough because my body doesn't look the way that magazines or social media portray that it should. When really, it's not about that. And what we see in the media, what we see these movie stars, these celebrities, that is all with professional services behind them to make them look the absolute best for that moment.
00:09:43
Speaker
For me personally, back in November, I did a fitness photo shoot. I've done many, many fitness photo shoots over my career. But that photo shoot that I did in November, I was the heaviest that I have ever been because I am choosing to be more. I'm choosing to eat more and I'm choosing to build.
00:09:58
Speaker
more muscle, but I stepped in front of the camera and I was nervous. This is the first time I've been nervous in front of the camera in a couple of years because I didn't look the way that I did even last year when I was in a competition prep and I was shredded and I had a six pack and I was 25 pounds lighter. And going into the shoot, I was like literally shaking. When I got the photos back and I got those proofs, I was like, oh,
00:10:24
Speaker
it like I actually still really look good and I'm confident with the photos I liked what I saw but what I was comparing going into the shoot was my everyday look without a spray tan without professional hair and makeup without the professional photo shoot lighting to emphasize all of the muscle that you might not see in the day to day and I was comparing my photo shoots when I was lean
00:10:47
Speaker
to my day-to-day. And that's what women do. We compare ourselves to other people. I've tried to get out of that, but I still compare myself to past versions of myself. And those past versions, even though aesthetically and visually they look different, I'm still the same person.
00:11:04
Speaker
If anything, I'm better now than I was last year and the year before when I had that shredded six pack. And I know in the future I'll have a six pack again, but it's not about how I look. It is about who I am, how I show up for myself and how I show up for those around me.
00:11:22
Speaker
There's a lot you've said here. And I was on a group training call with a fellow that mentors me, and he and I teach programs together. And today, he quoted Mark Twain, the great American novelist from the turn of the 19th century, the one who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Aquabelly Finn.
00:11:47
Speaker
And he said, Tom Mark Twain said that comparison is the thief of joy. Yes. I use that line so often with my clients. Right. And, you know,
00:12:01
Speaker
What you said about, you know, how you looked at that photo shoot and how you look now, like I look at you,
The Importance of Energy, Strength, and Self-Image
00:12:08
Speaker
I think you look dynamite. Like you got energy. It comes off of you. You radiate of energy. And a positive, energetic, enthusiastic person is immediately more attractive, like period. Like everybody wants to be around that kind of energy, you know, and it's not just like a man woman thing. It's just, hey, it's a more attractive energy. It's like people are going, oh, my God, I want to hang out with this person. Right.
00:12:31
Speaker
And that brings you forward. And let's face it, you're not exactly somebody who mistreats her body and doesn't exercise and eats all that crappy food. You're somebody who's going on a journey. So I look at you and I go, yeah, Lexi looks good.
00:12:47
Speaker
You know, you were at the event that, you know, Amer put on for the Hammer Fitness Group of companies back in January, right? And I remember what you said. You were talking about how it's time that women stood up and started taking up their place in the world and becoming fit and strong and not trying to eat and be anorexic. And you said, and how I know that our message is taking is there's a whole lot of spectacular asses out here. And I just laugh at them.
00:13:16
Speaker
my ass off when you said that and I looked around and you know my lady was with me and I wanted to be discreet when I said honey she's a hundred percent correct and she said yeah you're right she is. Yeah I mean the glutes are just one of the visual
00:13:33
Speaker
aspects that we can see in our community of the work that these women put in. When they check in with me, they're going through so much in their life, but they choose to continue to show up for themselves. And that is so inspiring to me as a coach. I have off days too. There are days where I'm like, I really don't want to get out of bed. And then I think of the single mom that's working two jobs that's getting everything done. And I have her doing more than I'm doing right now. I'm like,
00:13:59
Speaker
If she can do it, I can do it. And that's what I love about this community is that we feed off of each other. And when someone is low, there is someone there to pull you out of that and say, you know what, I've been there too. I believe in you. Keep going. And it's not just the athlete and coach relationship or the lifestyle client and coach relationship.
00:14:21
Speaker
It is all the women that we have in this community, and we really see that come out in the 60-day challenges that we have, or any time where people are working towards a goal together, where your process is entirely different, your program is entirely different, but you have committed to something, and you are going through this with a group of anywhere between 50 and 100 women that are all cheering you on, and they want to see you succeed. Yes, it's competitive, but it is collaborative too.
00:14:49
Speaker
competitive yet collaborative. That's a very good phrase. So speaking as a man.
00:14:59
Speaker
I never really thought much of working my glutes. I kind of thought it was a girly thing, you know what I mean? And I'd always had back pain, you know, a fair amount of back pain. And I got injured in the process of doing the training work that I'm doing with Amber, preparing for the competition I'm doing at the end of July.
00:15:24
Speaker
And I got injured in my shoulder, I got injured in my knee. And Amer did a session with me and he kind of looked at my whole body and he said, okay, here's what's going on. He said, you got issues in your feet, which is leading to imbalances in your knee.
00:15:40
Speaker
which is also being compounded by the fact that your glutes are weak compared to your abs and lower back, and it's causing strains on your knee, on your back, and on your shoulder. I'm like, huh?
00:15:56
Speaker
Like when he said all that, I'm like, how's that even freaking possible? He says, the body's connected. You're not just working a muscle in isolation. It's connected to a whole bunch of other muscles in the ecosystem of the body. And that's what's going on for you. And he said, you need to start working glutes. I'm like, like Teresa, like my lady working glutes. What are you talking about? And then, OK, so I said, OK, fine. You're the coach. I'll start working glutes. So we started working glutes.
00:16:21
Speaker
And it was tough. It was way harder than squats. You know, I'm like, shit, this is not easy at all. Within two or three sessions of working glutes, though, I started to feel my butt feeling my pants.
00:16:40
Speaker
And it felt good. It felt strong. You know what I mean? It felt strong. It's not that, hey, look at my butt. Look at my ass. It looks great. I felt a strength and a power from that lower part of my body, from from my butt to my back and my legs. There was a there was a more solid feeling. So I'm like, there's a scientific basis to all this. It's not just aesthetics and girls hot. It's all about.
00:17:06
Speaker
having your body be fully in balance. So to me, what you're teaching in Lady the F up isn't just how to have confidence, although that's super important, how to believe in yourself, and that's super important. And how to look spectacular. You're also teaching them a scientific approach to optimal health. And I'd like for you to expand on that if you wouldn't mind. Yeah. So when it comes to aging,
00:17:35
Speaker
After about the age of 30, unless you are resistance training and you are consuming an adequate amount of protein, the body is going to start breaking down muscle. And decade over decade, you are going to lose a larger percent of muscle. If you don't use it, you are going to lose it.
00:17:53
Speaker
And having muscle is one of the most important things to offset those long-term diseases that can come up. So things like heart disease, diabetes, even cognitive disease like Alzheimer's and dementia, resistance training has been proven.
00:18:12
Speaker
to decrease the likelihood. And when you have more muscle, you can live independently for longer. You don't need to be in a home helping someone get you on and off the toilet because you have strong glutes. You have been building them for decades up to that time. There's a lot of people that have low back pain that I've worked with as well that
00:18:34
Speaker
couple weeks or a couple months into it, when we focus on glutes, that pain goes away. So now you're living a better quality of life because you're now pain-free, because you're strengthening the things that were weaker, that were causing other things, like you said, in this whole body chain to take the force because you have to move.
00:18:52
Speaker
So when we think of the long-term sustainable approach, that's the thing with Lady the F up. We are not going to put you on a 1200 calorie diet and give you hours and hours of cardio, and then you get to your point and be like, cool, congratulations, see you later. We make sure that every single woman is set up for success so that they can continue these habits for the rest of their life. Yes, the resistance training is important, but it's also eating the right amount of food.
00:19:18
Speaker
particularly protein and fiber. Those are the two things that the majority of women know. I personally only work with women, so I'm sure this is a thing with men as well, but it's not my realm of expertise. I can only speak on behalf of coaching women. This is something that the majority of women are lacking. And when they start with us, I'm like, here is your starting nutrition plan. They're like, oh my God, this is number one, so much food. I'm full all the time. And number two, so much protein.
00:19:44
Speaker
But call it four, eight weeks into it, they're seeing the changes, they're sleeping better, their mood is better, they have more muscle definition, they're less inflamed, their body fat is starting to come down, and they understand it. And teaching someone how to eat, you don't have to track macros for the rest of your life. I don't expect you to whip out a food scale and be like, hold on, let me just make sure that this is 150 grams.
00:20:08
Speaker
Wrapping your food for about six months or so at minimum gives you an idea of how should I be filling my plate when I do eat in my day-to-day, and it shows you how much garbage there is in fast food, in restaurants, and then just fill the middle of the grocery store.
00:20:29
Speaker
So, it's about providing this sustainable lifelong process that they can follow whatever degree it is. Like, are you going to get into the gym five days a week for the rest of your life? Maybe not. But if you can do three days of resistance training, even if it's 20 minutes, that is enough to preserve what you built in our time together and keep that going. There's going to be seasons of pushing where you're
00:20:52
Speaker
physical progress is a number one priority in your life. And then there are going to be times where it's a priority, but there are other things that take up more of your time. So it's like, what can you do with the day to day when life is throwing things at you? There's always something and it's breaking that all or nothing mentality of I'm all in, I'm on this restricted diet, I'm doing hours of cardio to
00:21:14
Speaker
Okay, what can I do? I can do some bodyweight squats. I can do some push-ups in my environment. And when I go out to lunch, I'm going to order a chicken breast to make sure I get some protein in. No, that is bang on. And I can say this, this is something that I think is going to make women feel strong.
00:21:39
Speaker
And it's also going to give them the ability to mentally feel good about being a woman, you know, good about having sleek, lean, beautiful muscles and a sleek, lean physique.
00:21:55
Speaker
you know, and strength, physical strength in their body. It's just going to be good. And in my opinion, this will make them better at work. It'll make them better in their major life relationship. It'll make them better with their kids if they have kids.
00:22:10
Speaker
This is only good. This is like a win, win, win for the world. It's a win for for you, obviously, because you get to fulfill your mission. It's a win for your clients because they get to be the best physical, healthy version of themselves. And it's a win for all the people they love and that love them because they get the best version of mom, of sis, of wife, of girlfriend.
00:22:39
Speaker
And it takes a lot longer than people want it to.
Long-term Health Transformation and Client Success
00:22:45
Speaker
There's a very common trend when women start to work with us that like they think they should be way farther ahead than they are eight weeks into the process because all of a sudden I'm eating healthy and all of a sudden I'm working out. OK, you're two months into it when you have spent three decades
00:23:02
Speaker
gaining weight, living your previous lifestyle. And yes, you're starting to make that change. You're starting to feel better internally. We're starting to see some upper body definition coming out. Typically, when we work with women, the biggest places that we see changes first are in the upper body because from a biological perspective, our body is designed to protect our reproductive organs at all costs because that is our biological purposes to repopulate. So we hold more fat
00:23:29
Speaker
in our lower stomach, in our thighs, in our glutes. But when we start to see a little bit more upper body definition coming in or a little bit less of the back rolls, that is a sign that we're on the right track. But women automatically think, okay, I'm eating healthy, where's my six pack? Your six pack is months and months down the line of consistency and patience and perseverance. I have a woman who just in the past couple of weeks stepped on a competition stage. We have been working together for four years.
00:23:58
Speaker
And in our four years together, she has lost 100 pounds, but it has taken four years for us to do that, because before that, she was over 200 pounds for three decades of her life. And we cannot undo three decades of unhealthy living, of turning to food to cope, of smoking, which she no longer does. She has done a complete transformation internally and externally when it comes to her
00:24:25
Speaker
health, and that is showing in her physical results. But again, she's been with me for four years. We have been building muscle. We've been losing body fat. We've gone through cycles of cutting and dieting and then reverse dieting and going into builds. There are seasons you cannot constantly be dieting for four years. Your metabolism will adapt. There will be a point where you get stuck.
00:24:48
Speaker
and you push harder and all you get is more exhausted. So this is where having a professional to have a look at what is your dieting history. Have you been under eating for the past couple of years? Okay. When you come to me, I'm not going to put you on low calories. I'm actually going to increase your food over time, which means it's going to be slower, but it's going to set future you
00:25:07
Speaker
up for success. So you need to be patient with the results. And that's, again, going back to enjoying the process, enjoying eating more, enjoying building more muscle, enjoying being stronger. If you are tracking your resistance training, if you're doing more week over week, that in itself is progress and it's showing. It's just slow to show. And that's why you need to be patient and see this not as a quick fix, but as a true lifestyle change and it becomes part of your identity.
00:25:38
Speaker
The slower but surer road to success by Lexi Ward, you know?
00:25:44
Speaker
or as I like to say to Lindsay, another spectacular ass by Lindsay Martens. She's she's she's Teresa's coach. So Teresa's like they're like the same height kind of blonde girls like old Lindsay showed me a picture of her when she got started. Her body type was exactly like Teresa. She looked like the two of you are like
00:26:09
Speaker
mother-daughter, like, you know what I mean? Look alike. And Teresa just comes to me. She says to me all the time, I want to ask like, Lindsay's. That's what I'm going. I'm building it. Ask like, Lindsay's. And it takes the years and years and years. Building muscle is the slowest process. I mean, I'm 11 years into it and I'm trying to get the bulky that women are so scared of. I'm 10 years into it. I've been training hard. I am moving the most weight I ever have. I'm the strongest I ever have. I'm eating the most I ever have.
00:26:39
Speaker
and I'm still not bulky yet, but I'm trying to get there. I recognize that a lot of women don't want to get there, and that's okay. Keep working for years. If you get to a point where you're like, nope, too bulky for me, too muscular, you can pull back. You can reduce the amount of volume that you are doing.
00:26:55
Speaker
And that will automatically, well, not automatically, but over like a couple of weeks and months start to change your physique. Remember, if you don't use it, you lose it. So when it comes to glutes, that is an ongoing process. And I have a transformation that I'll be sharing on my social media in a little bit from 2016 to now. So that is about eight years of work where in my 2016 photo, I look like a rectangle.
00:27:19
Speaker
Just like you said, you know, those before photos with not a lot of glutes, I had a thick core, I was inflamed, didn't have really strong glutes. As a trampoline gymnast, I had really strong quads. So it was very, very quad dominant. Posterior chain, not so much. So now with the resistance training that I have been doing and the builds that I have been in and most of my builds, when I go into a building phase, a lot of women are like, oh, I'm scared to gain weight. Let's do like six months of building, then go back into a cut. My builds are a minimum of a year.
00:27:47
Speaker
ideally close to a year and a half or two years because it takes that long to put on muscle. So I would rather spend more time in the muscle building phase rather than building a little bit of muscle, pulling back body fat. Oh, there's not as much change as I thought.
00:28:03
Speaker
let's go back into a build pull back oh nope still not as much growth. I want a lot of growth as fast as I can which is still really slow and then a year or two down the line okay now let's see what we built underneath this cushiony layer of body fat and really show those lines in the shape.
00:28:27
Speaker
I really like what you said, and I think it applies to more than just physical fitness. I think this concept of creating success for yourself applies really to any and all areas that are important to you in life. I think about it for business. Let's imagine that a client comes to me, right? And what they want to do is they say, you know what?
00:28:50
Speaker
I've never made six figures a year. I want to consistently make six figures anyway. I'm like, okay, this is good. To get you to six figures a year, we got to look at how you're operating your business right now. Why it is that you're not at six figures a year is because you're not doing X, Y, and Z. And if you're not doing X, Y, and Z, that's why you're not at six figures. The number one reason most people aren't at six figures in business is because they have
00:29:15
Speaker
a magical thinking philosophy of what it takes to generate sales. They think that sales should happen without them actually having a conversation with a potential buyer, without them asking for business. People should just come and inbound buy from them. Horse manure doesn't work. Frickin' world does not work.
00:29:34
Speaker
You want to make money, you want to have sales, you must speak to people, you must build a relationship with them, and you must get good at having a conversation with somebody that's honest, that's authentic, that's not about, am I going to get the sale? Oh my God, what if they don't like me? What if they don't buy them? Are they going to think, no, that's about
00:29:52
Speaker
This is a person that needs my help. And if they, if I'm the right person for them, I'm going to absolutely put myself forward as such. And it takes time to learn how to do that. It's not a one and done situation. It's you got to keep doing it. You got to keep doing it. You got to keep moving forward with it.
00:30:07
Speaker
you know, there's people that go, okay, well, in 90 days, I want to make X number of dollars. I think that's good. I think it's good to have those kinds of targets, just like you do with your 60-day challenges. But if you really, on an ongoing basis, want to be a six-figure earner, it's going to take you more than 90 days to fully get that going on. And let's say you are a six-figure earner and you want to become a half a million dollar or a million dollar a year earner.
00:30:30
Speaker
And again, it's going to take a certain amount of time to change your thinking and your business practices to allow that to happen. And folks just don't want to accept that. Folks want the quick fix. Folks want the, well, I want to do it, but I don't want to be seen as that pushy sales girl or sales boy. You know what I mean? No, no, you've got to not be pushy, but you absolutely have to be a salesman or a saleswoman.
00:30:55
Speaker
There is no getting around that. And I really like what you're saying, because it dovetails nicely with a lesson that I want to give tomorrow in a group coaching session we're doing in our program for people, the slow yet sure way to sales success to business success. And I'm going to quote you, I'm going to say I had Lexi Ward on my show yesterday, and she was talking about how it takes so much longer than you think to build a healthy, strong, beautiful body.
00:31:25
Speaker
That applies to business, and it's going to take you so much time to build a healthy, strong, beautiful business. When we look at Lady the F-Up, in July 2019, when Reema and I launched Lady the F-Up, it was our first 60-day challenge. We didn't have any lifestyle clients yet. It was her and I, and we had 20 challengers.
00:31:47
Speaker
And now, five years later, we work with anywhere between 500 and 600 women around the world, which blows my mind because it was just the Toronto area, somehow word of mouth, like we don't do any sort of paid advertising whatsoever. But by word of mouth, we have stretched across
00:32:05
Speaker
across the world where we now have anywhere between 500 and 600 women working with our team of eight. So we've grown from two coaches to eight coaches, and I absolutely love our team. Every single one of them has a very special niche role in the collaborations that we do.
00:32:23
Speaker
And like you said, you know, if you're trying to close someone, I've had multiple conversations with women that book a call with me and they're like, yes, I want to work with you. I hear about their background and I say, you know what? I'm actually not the best coach for you. You would probably be better working with Coach Deborah because she has these qualifications that I don't.
00:32:42
Speaker
She's been through very similar life experiences with being pregnant and raising children. I have no kids. That's not something I can relate to. And that's what I love about what we have built. It was slow. In the first year, we went from two coaches to four. And then we went from four coaches to five.
00:32:58
Speaker
And then we tried to grow really, really quickly and we brought on, and I think at one point we had like 14 coaches, but it was a hot mess. So we pulled them way back to just focusing on our core team. So we've learned so much about it takes time. You cannot scale that quickly because the details are going to get lost and you aren't going to be able to provide the best service to the people that want to work with you. And at the end of the day, it's about the quality of your work, not the quantity.
00:33:29
Speaker
I agree. It's very impressive that you're up to five to six hundred women. But if I may just say so, I honestly think you're you need to get to a lot more women if you're really going to transform the conversation that women have around health and fitness globally. You need to be you need to probably add three or four zeros to that five or six hundred women. You know, you need to get to five hundred thousand to six hundred thousand or five to six million women.
00:33:54
Speaker
And I think, as I said to you offline, I think you are a particularly good messenger because of your powerful enthusiasm, your ability to articulate things well. And I think you and Reema should do this, and obviously you should get your coaches to do this, but the two of you are the face of the brand and you should be out there in a bigger way on more shows. From a podcast point of view, I think you should have a book.
00:34:22
Speaker
each and a book for the brand. And I think that you ladies can and will reach a massive audience because this is a message that's timeless and it's a message that a lot of women need to hear.
00:34:38
Speaker
But the only challenge that you have is that most of them don't know that they need to hear this. They don't know what they don't know. And this came to me yesterday. In addition to my business, I lead a men's organization and we had a men's what we call overnight retreat. And there was a young man there, you know, who said one thing that blew me away. He said, I am so glad I've done I've ended up doing this work.
00:35:07
Speaker
And the reason I'm glad is because I had no idea that I even needed it. And that was like an eye opener for me. It was like, OK, most of the people that need our help and I would submit for sure most of the women that need your help have no clue that they need it.
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, they come thinking, OK, tell me what to eat. Tell me how to train. Give me that. Yes, that's our main foundation of fitness and health coaching, but it's the mindset work. It is the process. It is the habits outside of your training and nutrition. Are you managing your stress? Are you getting enough sleep? You're not getting enough sleep. All of the training in the world, you're not going to be able to recover from. Therefore, your body is going to be too stressed to see the progress that you want.
00:35:54
Speaker
So what we do is so much more than teaching women what to eat or how to train. And we are slowly working on how to scale. What we really pride ourselves on is that like one-on-one interaction with women and being able to develop a
00:36:10
Speaker
with true relationships. But we are in the process of starting to build new things that teach the lessons without necessarily having to pay for the one on one coaching services, which can be, first of all, hard to scale, I don't work with more than 75 women at one time, because then I get details mixed up in my brain. I know that a couple of our other coaches can do a little bit more. But after seven possessions, the train is just
00:36:37
Speaker
a capacity for one-on-one, which is why I have these visions for all these different programs that I want to release. And there's one that I'm currently building right now, and hoping it will be released by June, called the Lady Beethoven Foundations Program, which is going to talk about needing more focusing on resistance training and just teaching those foundational habits that women can implement in their life at their own pace.
00:37:04
Speaker
I think that's great. I think the way you're growing your business is smart. You don't want to double the coaching staff overnight. You want to bring on one or two coaches at a time, make sure that they're able to do the work well. And I believe that, like I say, if you continue to be the face of the brand, you and Rima, and you continue to put this messaging up, I think you're going to add the zero, two zeros, three zeros, four zeros to the business.
00:37:28
Speaker
And I'm here to support you in Rima and Amr and what you want to do.
Lexi's Advice on Health and Connection
00:37:33
Speaker
It's changed my life in a dramatic way and I want to help you guys get it out there. I want to partner with you more than as your client. I want to be your business partner in this regard because I think the world needs what you have to say.
00:37:47
Speaker
We like to end off each episode by asking you as our guest expert what are what we call your top three expert action steps. These are your bullet point best pieces of advice for my listener to take their life, their health, their success to the next level. So what do you say?
00:38:09
Speaker
Number one is pay attention how you feel day to day and have a look at what you are eating. So for me, if I go back to when I was diagnosed with my IBS, quote unquote, I was sick all the time. I had low energy. I had panic attacks occasionally. All of that was because the foods that I was putting in my body did not agree with me. So if you are someone who eats on the go or barely eats or buys your food,
00:38:37
Speaker
and you find that you are gassy and you are bloated and you are sick all the time and you're inflamed and you're tired, pay attention to what you're eating and ask yourself, how can I improve this? That might be cooking meals at home. That might be starting a food diary where you write down the foods that you're eating day to day and you reflect upon how those foods make you feel. What is measured can be managed. So when you write down all of that data, you can look for trends over time and start to make some changes so that mentally you're clearer
00:39:07
Speaker
you're less inflamed, and you can feel better in your day to day.
00:39:12
Speaker
Number two, I would say is always have some sort of goal to work towards. So if you don't know where you're going in life, you're never gonna get there. If you have a goal for me personally, that is to become the FMG, which is the federation that I am pro in, FMG world champion. That is one of my goals in training. I do not care how long it takes. It can be five years, it can be 10 years, it can be 20 years, but that is one of the prime drivers for me when I'm in the gym.
00:39:40
Speaker
that I know when I'm at the bottom of a really heavy squat and I'm struggling to push up, that is my why. So always having something to work towards. It doesn't have to be fitness related. It can be personal. It can be career with Lady the F up. Obviously I want to continue to grow that. So there is a vision of where I want to go and I'm headed in the right direction. The path might change to get there, but always have something that you are working towards.
00:40:04
Speaker
And then number three would be make time for rest and play. You cannot work 24 seven without burning out. I learned that the very, very hard way multiple times where either my immune system crashed because I was pushing too hard for too long or I just mentally burnt out and I didn't enjoy what I was doing in my life. So now I make time and I block it off in my calendar. No one can book calls with me. Hey, Lexi, are you available at this time? No, sorry, I have a prior commitment.
00:40:33
Speaker
It is okay to have commitments for yourself so that you can recharge and again, show up as the best version of yourself for everyone else and everything else that needs you when you are resting or when you are playing. Don't feel guilty about it. When I let go of the guilt of there's so much to do, I should be doing other things. That is truly when my mental health took a turn for the better.
00:40:57
Speaker
And I recognize now in my day to day if I'm working too hard, even if I step away for 20 or 30 minutes, I can come back and I'm more efficient. I get the stuff done that I needed to get done without the stress, without the anxiety and a better quality.
00:41:14
Speaker
These are three amazing expert action steps. Pay attention to how you feel day to day and what you're eating. That's super, super important. Always have a goal to work toward. You have to have a strong why. I love your FMG World Championship goal. That's amazing. And make time for rest and play. You got to block it off in your calendar. And not only don't feel guilty about it, but actually feel good about it. Feel good about it. It's important, yeah.
00:41:39
Speaker
This is really, really great. Lexi, if people want to jump on a call with you or one of your coaches, what's the best way?
00:41:46
Speaker
So you can find us on Instagram. If you go to at LadyDFUp, my Instagram is at Lexercise. So it's Lexi and exercise combined. The links in there have a link to direct sleep booked with us. You can also search Lexercise or even just Lexi Ward Fitness on Google. My website will pop up. There's a big button at the top there that says book a call. So any of the social media platforms or online
00:42:11
Speaker
is the easiest way. We typically get back to everyone within 24 hours because there are no days off in the entrepreneurial hustle, which is why that rest and play is so important, but never hesitate to reach out. You will never ever be bothering us. We want to help as many people as possible.
00:42:28
Speaker
And I want to say this to you, listener. Lexi Ward is a dynamo. She is incredible. This is our first substantive conversation, and I'm glad we got to have it. She's amazing. I want to do a lot more of these conversations with you, Lexi. Take advantage of getting on her calendar. I really encourage you to do that. And if you're a man and you're going, well, what about the men? There's a man, the F-up, that's part of Amer Fitness as well. We've had Jay Stevens on and Amer himself.
00:42:58
Speaker
get on their calendar. One of the men in our men's group saw my transformation. And he said, I think I need to do what you're doing. And I said, yeah, here. So he contacted Amer. Amer passed him off to Josh.
00:43:17
Speaker
Josh is amazing. Love Josh. So, this man sent me a message over the weekend. He said, I started off at 247. I'm now at 212.5. It's been only two and a half months. And he said, I feel better. I look better. I saw him at a Hammer HQ, Hammer HQ, I should say, the other day. And he looked so much better than I've ever seen him look.
00:43:40
Speaker
And he did it just because he saw what I created for myself and he wanted something similar in his own life. And if you're listening to the show, I just want you to understand that nothing is more valuable than your health.
00:43:56
Speaker
Health is the crown on the well person's head that only the sick person can see. Let me say that again. Health is the crown on the well person's head that only the sick person can see. And if you know your health isn't where it needs to be, if you want to do better in business,
00:44:12
Speaker
you've got to optimize your health and nothing is going to get you there faster than actually paying attention to making your body physically stronger and eating good food and having a real set of experts guiding you. Because if you knew what to do, you'd already be doing it. Absolutely. You'd already be doing it. And listen,
00:44:37
Speaker
I get zero commissions, Lexi will attest, zero commissions from Hammer Fitness for talking about this. I'm doing this from love. I'm a pure amateur and amateur is a person who does something from love. I'm a pure amateur in this game and I'm passionate about you having this because
00:44:56
Speaker
When I transformed my health and fitness listener, it made me a completely different man. It made me a better man in a relationship with my lovely beloved. It made me a better father. It made me a better businessman. It made me a better human being. It'll do the same thing.
00:45:15
Speaker
More. I chose to be more. So I just want to tell you, please make sure that you get on Lexi's call if you're a woman and on one of her colleagues calls if you're a man. And let's let's get this going for you, because isn't it time already that you get to be your best self from a health point of view, that you get to look the way you want to look, you get to feel the way you want to look? I say it's time. And if you agree with me, then make sure that you get on Lexi's calendar.
00:45:45
Speaker
Lexi Ward, the Lexerciser herself. Thank you so much for coming on the show, man. You are a rock star, girl. Just a rock star. Thank you so much for having me. I would love to come back in the future if and when we have the time for it. Let everyone absorb what we just chatted about first.
00:46:04
Speaker
Well, I think you and I spoke a couple of weeks back about doing some sort of really cool secret episode. And I'm excited to have you be a part of that as well. So let's make sure that we do that, because I think that's going to be very, very exciting for folks to be able to listen to that episode. So stay tuned. Lexi and company are putting together the greatest health and fitness episode ever anywhere. And it's going to be happening here on the Thought Leader Revolution podcast.
00:46:33
Speaker
and it's gonna help you in your business, so make sure that you get a chance to be a part of it. And that wraps up another exciting episode of the podcast, the Thought Leader Revolution, to find out more about today's amazing guest, the one and only Lexerciser herself, Lexi Ward, the future FMG world champion. Go to the show notes at thethoughtleaderrevolution.com or wherever you happen to listen to this episode, be it Spotify,
00:47:02
Speaker
iTunes, Google Play, Audible, YouTube, Rumble, or what have you. Until next time, bye-bye! This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.