#wegotgoals

We're highlighting episodes of our podcast #WeGotGoals this month that taught us something or stayed with us for one reason or another. I spent my life watching women break into sports — but so has anyone born after 1972 when Title IX passed. In 1995 at 10-years-old, I saw the first women's hockey team in my puck-worshiping Minnesota town and vividly remember the town's debate around girls playing the sport. In 1997, women played basketball professionally with the creation of the WNBA. And with this, women fought be a part of sports media — a fight to get coverage and a fight to get airtime as female sports reporters. It never really felt like my fight until I started to meet the women who earned their places within sports — either competing or reporting on them. One woman of particular impact is Sarah Spain who we spoke with on episode 11 o. She's effortlessly hilarious, dazzlingly professional, a natural athlete, a human sports statistics bible, and she's not afraid to take a stand. And damn it if she didn'

As one of the hosts of the #WeGotGoals podcast, I've had the privilege of hearing from insanely cool goal getters, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and leaders in the health and wellness industry. This week, though, I wanted to revisit an episode that fellow co-host Jeana Anderson Cohen led months ago. Episode 37 is with Jen Ator, Fitness Director of Women's Health. In this episode, you'll hear Ator talk about a truly wild goal she trained for and accomplished: The World Championship IRONMAN at Kona. I wanted to revisit this episode for a few reasons. First, hearing Ator talk about the training process,  what she calls "the most transformative thing" she's ever done, had my jaw on the floor for about 30 full minutes. Ator went from a fitness enthusiast, someone who ran a few miles a week, to training for six months straight to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run a full marathon, all in one go. She describes being terrified at first to say "yes" to the challenge, but ultimately, she decided it was an opportunity to sh

Ironically, it's often during the "most wonderful time of the year" that time becomes a rarefied commodity. Ads and jingles and carols are pressing the importance of spending quality time with loved ones, but between shopping, holiday parties, pageants, and oh yeah, all the stuff that occupies your time in any normal week, you're hard-pressed to spend quality time with anything besides your Mary Poppins-esque work/gym/random White Elephant present bag. I'm guilty of this too, and that's exactly why I decided to take 30 minutes and revisit this old episode with Laura Vanderkam, a time-tracking expert and author of I Know How She Does It. Not only do Laura and Maggie discuss tried-and-true techniques for tracking your time, but they also talk in a bigger sense about the story you create about your time. For example, why do some people feel calm about time management while others feel stressed? Why do some of us feel like we have to be stressed or anxious about time in order to feel busy or productive? How come

Sure, there’s a lot to be said for shiny new presents left underneath the tree (and we have a whopping 10 gift guides to help you in that effort). In other cases, though, great treasures come from digging deep in the back of your closet or dresser drawer to find that shirt you’d forgotten you bought, that necklace you were gifted by your grandmother, or some other item you once wore regularly but is now long-buried. This holiday season, the #WeGotGoals team is unearthing some of our shiniest gems from the past. If you tuned in somewhere along the way of our almost two-year run (yep, we’ve been at this podcasting thing for a while), you might not have heard these episodes at all. But even if you did, dusting them off and listening to them again might reveal new wisdom in a different era of your life. That was certainly true for me when I thought back on this interview Jeana did with wheelchair racing superstar Amanda McGrory, which originally aired in July of 2017. As I mention in the new intro, one thing that

To some, success might mean setting a clear goal, then crushing it. But Tim Faith, research and development brewer at Goose Island here in Chicago, knows sometimes the biggest wins come when you adjust your aims along the way. Take sports. In high school, Faith thought he’d play football. After two weeks of camp, he realized the complexity of the game didn’t suit him. “I’d rather run in a straight line and call it a day,” he told me at Goose Island’s Fulton Street Tap Room, where we recorded this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals. So he joined the cross-country team instead. He was fast, and kept speeding up even after he graduated—his personal-best 5K time of 15:25 came after college. He ran his first of three Chicago Marathons in 2015, and his fastest the next year (a 2:44—and while that’s a swift 6:15 per mile, he knows he’s capable of finishing even faster). More than anything, running became a part of his lifestyle, something that manages stress, connects him with friends, and fuels the creativity required t

Prior to Thanksgiving week, aSweatLife hosted a breakfast-and-learn focused on gratitude practices - a buzzy topic to be sure, but one that we were excited to talk about in a very different way. Editor In Chief Kristen Geil led us through a few gratitude visualization exercises, and we all went into the day feeling all kinds of warm-fuzzies alongside the rest of the 50 attendees. On this episode of the podcast, the four hosts break down what we did during that breakfast-and-learn and why we did it, as well as what our own gratitude practices look like. A few weeks before the breakfast-and-learn, we asked attendees to do the following: Submit three photos from your camera roll on your phone that make you feel grateful. As you're searching, look for the hidden gems, and make sure you select at least two photos you don't mind sharing with the group. Together, Geil led the group through visual gratitude exercises, and if you're looking for a way to bring your family together this upcoming holiday week and beyond,

(Please note that this episode has explicit language) Meet Jacqueline Gould, wellness coach and shining individual who knows exactly who she is and where her true north lies. Gould's journey onto the #WeGotGoals podcast began in quite the opposite state, however, as she describes her past as one where she had "zero self-worth." I interviewed Gould about the path that led her to founding a company in which she aims to reach girls and women everywhere to help them light their fire, or as she likes to call, ignite their own "inner babe." On the episode, you'll hear us talk about some pivotal moments in Gould's young life that led her to founding the company, like her experience in a clinical outpatient program which did ultimately help her overcome an eating disorder, but still left her feeling lonely and unseen. "I know it's because I didn't have that person back then who could really look me in the eye and be like, 'I see you,'" Gould told me during our chat. This realization led Gould to becoming a certified

At least once a week, I have a slight crisis of environment. We're lucky enough to work from home pretty regularly, but as anyone who works from home full-time can tell you, it's not always all it's cracked up to be, and there eventually comes a time where you're going to go batshit insane if you have to stare at your home's walls for another minute. But at the same time, leaving to go somewhere else wouldn't necessarily be an improvement — sure, you could go to the corner coffee shop, but the outlets are usually taken and the lattes are criminally overpriced. What's a woman to do? Molly Goodson lived that conundrum over and over again as a remote worker herself. As an added layer of complexity, she and her friends were starting to plan workout dates more and more often — but the struggle to hang out post-sweat was real. Most studios were too small for comfy conversations, so they'd have to change locations, often after waiting for a shower in crowded locker rooms. (And as Molly was telling me this, I was vig

Chef Stephanie Izard invited me into the in the basement of her restaurant Girl and the Goat while the staff prepared for parties, evening service and nationwide expansion. And while we talked about goals, business, family and what it takes to be a boss, we were just steps away from where the the story of an empire sprawling all took place. She's planted her adorable goat logo all around Chicago's west loop at Little Goat Diner, Duck Duck Goat, Goat Group Catering, and Baobing. Titles for someone as accomplished as Izard are almost better suited for a wikipedia entry. Chef and Partner at all of the hot spots in Chicago's West Loop as well as the author of two books - Girl in the Kitchen and Gather and Graze. And if you've ever turned on the Food Network, you know her face from her victories on Top Chef and Iron Chef. But what you don't know about Chef Izard is that she's sort of my idol - she's a lot of people's idol. She's brimming with the kind of humility you only find in the midwest, packed with the work

Maybe you’ll be lining up next weekend at the TCS New York City Marathon, or watching the Bank of America Chicago Marathon has you pondering a big race of your own. Or perhaps you’re facing a job change or another challenge in your life that has you “scited”—scared but excited—hoping you can handle it but afraid you’ll fall short. Coach, author, marathoner, and aSweatLife ambassador Denise Sauriol has a message for you: You can do it, and even if you think you’ve failed, the struggle will be worth it. “Do things you think you can’t do. It will transform you on the other side,” she told me on #WeGotGoals. “That's when we are really showing up in our lives.” For this week’s episode, we headed back to the Hotel Moxy the week before the Chicago Marathon to soak up some pre-race run-spiration from the woman her runners call the “marathon whisperer.” Sauriol was fresh off the publication of her new book—Me, You & 26.2: Coach Denise’s Guide to Get YOU TO YOUR First Marathon—and was about to take on her 100th mar

For so many of us, setting SMART goals feels natural. It feels like the most promising way to achieve success. For Paddy Spence, CEO and Chairman of Zevia, there's a time and place for time-boxed, specific goals, but there's also room for much, much more when it comes to goal setting. On this episode of #WeGotGoals, I got a dose of Spence's refreshing take on non-binary goal setting, and heard how it played into his business journey that led him to purchase the massive sugar-free soft drink brand. "You plot your course, but you just don't know where you're going to go," Spence said. "I knew I wanted to run a business, I knew I wanted to be in the natural foods industry, and didn't know much beyond that." His first post-graduate school job was with Kashi cereals, a time he describes as "constant discovery, learning, and trial and error." Spence explained further his non-linear journey, with steps forward and equal or more steps backward, while exploring the natural foods industry. But he attributes his outlook

“There’s something about the power of a group to push you to your limits so that even when you're on your own, you're stronger,” Cindy Kuzma astutely summarized the theme of community through the lens of the marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge. And on this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, we talk through community and how a supportive group can help one person achieve bigger things than he or she thought possible. And that's the way community manifests itself at aSweatLife - the support of the group enhances the goals of everyone. We're constantly beating the drum of "everything is better with friends" and we took the opportunity to say that phrase at least a dozen times on this week's episode.And on a host-full episode, you'll also hear stories from inside the walls of aSweatLife, in particular, how we learned to not only embrace a community, but to start to make it a part of the fabric of everything we do. And community is especially top of mind as we close the aSweatLife Ambassador applications. "The

When a lifelong learner falls in love with fitness, you get Edward J. Buckley Jr., CEO of Peerfit, a universal account for fitness that is accessed as an employee benefit through major insurance providers. And Buckley and his team didn't just create a better way to do workplace wellness, they did it the hard way - connecting the healthcare and the fitness industries. “How do you build a bridge between traditional healthcare and all the incentives that go in the fitness industry?” Buckley said, "We like to say, 'it's a billion dollar bridge, we'll build it for you.'" After years of work proving out the Peerfit model, the group celebrated signing a contract with its first major insurance carrier. But after the champagne bottles (or matcha, it's a fitness company after all), the carrier told them they needed to renegotiate the contract - or they would "tear the contract up." Overcoming obstacles is a big part of starting a company, but Buckley and team had to fight for their lives. “Put the blinders on and look

As little kids, most of us entertain the idea of becoming a pro athlete at one point or another. In 1996, for example, I was seven years old and totally convinced that I was going to become the next Brandi Chastain and spend my days on a soccer field, having abs and shooting penalty kicks. So what if you had that opportunity — the chance to be a pro athlete and achieve a lifelong goal that's limited to a select percentage of the population — and you turned it down? Even crazier, what if you had that opportunity in three different sports and you turned it down each time? That's the choice trainer Pat Gilles was fortunate enough to face — and the reason he turned down professional careers in hockey, golf, and sailing led me to view goals from a different perspective. "I didn't know at the time exactly which path would be better or not," admits Gilles, who won the title of America's Most Inspiring Trainer in 2017. "All I did was trust my gut. And I always say, I don't think there's a wrong decision — you just ha

    Caullen Hudson is always seeking to inspire - it's just a little different from place to place. In the gym, he's encouraging fitness enthusiasts and flipping tires. Outside of the gym at the company where he's Founder and Executive Producer - SoapBox Productions - he's encouraging youth and flipping aldermen. On this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, Hudson talks about the intersection of wellness, race, and media. His spot on the Venn diagram is right where those worlds intersect and he uses his spot to spread ideas and encourage action. In naming and branding his company, the soapbox sends a pretty clear message about what he and his business partner David A. Moran are creating. SoapBox Productions creates media - or micro-docs, as the teams calls them - to spread an idea and encourage incremental change. It all started with a documentary that Hudson produced as a Film Student at DePaul University when he studied and documented the parallels between drill rap and activism in Chicago. That project - Chi DNA

Amanda McGrory rekindled her love for her sport—wheelchair racing—by going back to graduate school. Late July founder and CEO Nicole Bernard Dawes finds sanity and stress management when she steps out of the office and onto her Peloton bike. Exhale executive vice president Fred DeVito never set aside his passion for music, continuing to play the upright string bass even as he built a high-powered career in the fitness industry. Based on these examples from our high-achieving guests, we at #WeGotGoals HQ set out on our own experiments, pledging to try new things or re-engage with activities we’d loved in the past. On this week’s hostful episode, we reported back on what we found. Jeana Anderson Cohen signed up for a three-day intensive course at improv institution Second City. Each day featured eight hours in the classroom and a nightly homework assignment to write a four-page script. “It was hard. It was fun. It was revealing. It was everything,” Cohen said. Ultimately, the course provided just the creative b

From the way he talks, you'd think Devan Kline (co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp and author of Stop Starting Over: Transform Your Fitness By Mastering Your Psychology) grew up in an idyllic suburban community, with plenty of room to play T-ball and adoring parents who cheered him on from the sidelines as he played baseball from elementary school all the way through a minor league stint with the San Francisco Giants. You'd be way, way wrong. As Kline will matter-of-factly tell you, he grew up in an abusive environment in Battle Creek, Michigan. "It was rough, you know? It forced me to grow up really quickly at a young age. Twelve, 13 years old I was dealing with mental and emotional stresses that I see some of my peers at the CEO level in the fitness industry struggle with." But maybe it's a testament to his perspective on life that Kline has grown to appreciate the silver lining in wanting to spend as little time at home as possible. "I pretty much knew what was waiting for me at home on any given day. I

Adam Whiting, now a well-known yoga teacher around the world for his smart sequencing and anatomical focus in class, was at one time just trying to understand what was going wrong in his body. After seeing doctor after doctor in Manhattan, trying to diagnose massive dizzy spells, headaches and seemingly random spouts of numbness throughout his body, he was told by all accounts that his body was "fine." "I was diagnosed with having anxiety disorder and panic attacks," Whiting told me. "And it didn't fit for me, because it wasn't presenting itself as anxiety. I wasn't stressed. I wasn't depressed. And in my mind, at that point, my knowledge about anxiety disorder was so limited that I was sort of in denial." At that time, Whiting was working in New York as a musician. But in order to pay the bills, he worked nine-to-five at an insurance agency - a job which, he describes, was a major catalyst for his anxiety disorder and also the catalyst for him finding what he was truly meant to be doing. "A friend introduced

Triathlete and coach Sharone Aharon faced some obstacles en route to completing his first Ironman. First of all, he’d never done any type of multisport event. He didn’t own a bike. His longest run was about 20 minutes, done as part of his training for the Israeli Secret Service. The first time he got into the pool, he swam 200 yards—then went to the locker room and threw up. Still, 10 months later, he finished the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and full 26.2-mile marathon at Ironman KONA. As Aharon explained to me on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals, getting there required a combination of confidence and naïveté. “I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that I would make it,” he says. “Look at little kids—when they fall down, they don’t think, ‘OK, I will not ever try again.’ I think that’s what happened. I was this little kid who found a toy and dedicated his entire being to that.” Plenty of challenges—he calls them “mosquitos,” because they sting but aren’t serious—popped up along the way. Still, so many things f

Some of the best athletes in the world. Founders and CEOs. Authors of bestselling books, internationally known fitness gurus, even reality television stars. For 62 episodes now, we on the #WeGotGoals team have had the good fortune to interview some pretty impressive individuals. We’ve learned so much about what’s powered them to the top (and we hope you have, too!). But the more goal-getters we talked with, the more something dawned on us. Nearly every single one of them had a failure story, a way they fell short en route to what they viewed as their biggest high. What’s more, they nearly all volunteered to share it with us in a conversation about what was most essential to their achievements. So co-hosts Jeana Anderson Cohen, Maggie Umberger, Kristen Geil and I took a moment to do another guest-less but host-ful episode--we’ll be recording one of these every month or so from now on--to discuss what these failure stories taught us about resilience. Resilience--something Cohen admits she’s “kind of obsessed wi