#wegotgoals

Courtney Phillips is the co-founder of Gumbo Media, a storytelling platform and content engine that expands the narrative of Black life. She's also the co-founder of Gumbo Fit, a unique community powered by Nike Running that thoughtfully bridges the worlds of underrepresented populations and the fitness mainstream through a diversity of programming and content curation, while prioritizing the coalescing of Black and Brown fitness and wellness enthusiasts across Chicago to start, with a particular focus on South and West-side communities. In this episode, Courtney and Kristen talk about how Courtney's built a grassroots community for running, why running isn't as accessible to Black and Brown communities as you may think, and what her big goals for the future are. Resources Find out when you can run with Courtney and Gumbo Fit on their Instagram (and Courtney's on IG @courtneynphillips) Learn more about Gumbo Fit in this awesome video with Nike, "Sport Changes Everything" Courtney and her co-host/Gumb

When I reached out to Lesley Eccels - co-founder of fantasy sports app FanDuel and founder of the relationship health app Relish - it was the height of sheltering at home. Because of that, events coalesced that made me absolutely want to talk to her. I'd found Relish as my husband and I were at each others' throats one day - it was probably about the dishes, if I'm being honest. And shortly after my husband and I started using Relish, he listened to the book Billion Dollar Fantasy by Albert Chen on Audible. The book outlines Lesley's and her husband Nigel Eccels' path to building, scaling and selling FanDuel - and ultimately to Lesley founding Relish. Something that's discussed in the book is a now legally contested deal at the end of Lesley's time at FanDuel, which you can read more about in the Wall Street Journal and let your blood boil with mine. "She's a badass," my husband noted and I composed an email. On this week's episode of #WeGotgoals, you'll hear Lesley talk about building a tech ecosystem in E

Here's a sobering statistic that keeps Ashley Connell up at night: 43% of women leave the workforce to have children, and if out for just 3 years, a woman loses 37% of compensation power (Harvard Business Review). But at the same time, research shows that having women in leadership roles benefits the company in major, measurable ways. For example, firms with female CEOs often perform better in the stock market than those with male CEOs, and one study showed that female CEOs achieve up to 18 percent higher revenue per employee than male CEOs. So why the gender pay gap, if the benefits of having working mothers on your team are so obvious? That's what Ashley and I get into on this episode of #WeGotGoals, as we discuss the motivation behind the Prowess Project. The Prowess Project solves for two problems: first, teams struggling to find easy-to-hire, flexible talent that “hit the ground” running, and second, educated, experienced women who paused their careers, many to become caretakers, who want to get back int

When we met Beau Schmitt, co-founder of Sunday Scaries, he exuded an overwhelming sense of chill. But like so many entrepreneurs in wellness, his story is one of finding his purpose through adversity. He and his co-founder Mike owned a bar with upwards of 50 employees - a time of 14-hour days and "putting out little tiny fires" all the time. Around 2015, they were looking for something to calm them down without setting them up for failure the next morning. A friend turned them onto CBD - a cannabinoid that's now pretty ubiquitous in food, beverage, beauty and more. After they had trouble finding CBD online with a good purchase experience and with a certificate of analysis (COA), Beau and Mike decided to create their own brand of CBD that filled in those blanks for stressed out young professionals. The pair launched Sunday Scaries in 2017 and that also came on the heels of losing Beau's dad suddenly at only 63 years old. You'll hear about that on this week's episode of #WeGotGoals as well as Beau's goals - whi

Leaned up against his car, Brian Kent, waited outside of my home on a winter morning in Chicago with a proof of his book "Walked On" tucked under his arm. I've known Kent for a while - we trained together, we worked together, and I consider him a friend. On the pages of the book he hands me are the formative years of his life as an athlete spelled out in the details of opportunities and setbacks, which seem to occur in alternating order. I've heard some of the stories - I knew he met his wife in Nebraska, I knew he inevitably signed a contract with the Chicago White Sox (a team I vowed to care about at least a little when I married my husband) - but together, all at once it spells out a different kind of story of the college athlete. The story of the athletes without advocates trying to navigate an insanely complicated and ever-changing system. On this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, Kent and I discuss why he wrote the book, what it took to finally put fingers to keyboard and the goal of writing it all down in

One of my favorite things in the world is to find and try new products trying to shake up the grocery store. Cruising through food-instagram, I stumbled upon Lovebird Foods, which felt like a growing better-for-you brand. After three clicks that led to a half hour down this company's organic, whole-food cereal rabbit hole. I bought a three-pack of this cereal that's made of good stuff like cassava flour, honey, coconut oil, collagen, and sea salt. It's all stuff I can eat with my extra sensitive colon after I had a few inches of it removed last summer. I never thought I would have cereal again. And I immediately emailed the founder, Parker Brook, to learn more about him and the company he created. After connecting, I knew that I needed to have him on the podcast. On this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, he talks about why he created Lovebird Cereal, his autoimmune disorders, and why the company donates 20% of proceeds to childhood cancer. You'll also hear a lot about his key stakeholder, his daughter Yuki. Her

Vizer, an app that allows you to track your steps and donate meals, is currently one of the most popular Health and Fitness apps in the app store. If my email inbox is any indication, there are approximately infinity new wellness apps created every day. Vizer is doing something right - its users have donated 1.32 million meals to date. This app's concept is incredibly simple as you'll hear Dylan Barbour, co-founder and CGO, and Samantha Pantazopoulos, co-founder and CEO, explain on this week's episode of the podcast. As soon as a user hits 30 minutes of exercise or 10,000 steps in a day, they're able to donate a meal, which is furnished by one of Vizer's promotional partners. Move your body and do good. There are also a number of other perks for users like discounts and rewards with Vizer's expansive partnership network. In just under four years, the pair - who are not only co-founders, but also cousins - created and built the app to what it is today. The idea for it came to Pantazopoulos, who was fresh out o

"When we saw the initial purchase orders come in, they were larger than the revenue from our previous year," Chomps CEO and co-founder Pete Maldonado said of getting the bootstrapped businesses' goods into Trader Joes. "We had to survive on the cash we had in the bank and we absolutely did not have the cash for this kind of production run." So, he and co-founder and COO Rashid Ali put in the work to raise just over $1m from eight separate lenders from Friday to Monday - without giving up any equity. If you've ever bootstrapped a company or borrowed money from friends who know you well enough to write a check for a six-digit figure, you absolutely know that the story of launching nationally with Trader Joe's was exciting - but was also an incredibly stressful time. "We were going from producing 10,000-20,000 pounds a month to 300,000 pounds," Ali shared. "It put pressure on everything." And after a few months, it was a huge relief to pay off their friends and family. "We actually started sleeping after that,"

Content warning: this podcast episode and the post that accompany it briefly discuss eating disorders, recovery from eating disorders, and size discrimination within eating disorder recover. On May 20, we created a panel to close out our Take a Mental Health Day event called Loving Yourself Today. We think the conversation from that panel was so important that we want to make it available to you as an episode on our podcast, #WeGotGoals. During that talk, we discussed the language we use to describe our own bodies and others' bodies, a much-needed intermediary step between body negativity and body positivity, and the relationship between all of that and mental health. This conversation featured tastemakers in the size inclusive space - Charlotte Oxnam founder of Cue the Curves and Gianluca Russo, founder of the Power of Plus - who spoke on the body positivity movement, adding color from their lived experiences as well as the experiences of their communities. And rounding out the conversation, Dr. Marisa Toups

Charlotte Oxnam has a presence. She showcased that during Chicago StartUp Week when she wowed the judges all the way to taking home the top prize in a sea of some incredible competition. I was lucky enough to judge that group of competitors and I haven't let Oxnam get rid of me since. She's the founder of a platform that's equal parts community and commerce and meant to serve the needs of plus size women as they shop for apparel. Cue the Curves is the answer for the women’s plus-size apparel market, which is vastly underserved. It's valued at 9.8 billion U.S. dollars as of 2019, and the average woman lives in what's considered to be plus-size clothing - wearing a 14-16 on average. We've been talking about size inclusion all month on #WeGotGoals and we've spent a lot of time on apparel - it's not because clothes are the most important thing, but they are a thing that touches our lives every day. Today, women who wear sizes outside of what's considered a "straight size" face a dramatically different shopping ex

You’re going to hear from Sarah Piggot on this week’s episode - she was our guest last week and she’s the host this week as we continue to highlight more voices doing big things in body positivity. Coach Kanoa Greene was at the top of Sarah's list of inspiring humans she wanted to interview for this series. And there's a good reason why: she's getting a lot of attention for modeling her belief in the fact that plus size bodies can do everything through movement and surfing. She spends a lot of the interview talking through what it took for her to learn to surf, which she astutely describes as "riding a piece of fiberglass on moving water.” As a native of the Hawaiian island of O'ahu, she'd grown up around surfing. But before her, she hadn’t seen anyone who looked like her surfing. So she announced her plan to learn, and "embraced her body every step of the way." She’s been featured in Self, Glamour and Essence Magazine and so many other places. Her workouts can be found on the Joyn App - which is a body-inclu

CW: Eating disorders are discussed in this episode. About a month ago, we got an email from an aSweatLife ambassador Sarah Piggot who wanted to talk about what it was like to be a part of the aSweatLife community as a plus-size person. And this topic - inclusion and equity for people of all sizes in the fitness community - has been bubbling up inside and outside of our community a lot. And so we worked with Sarah to create a mini-series on #WeGotGoals to discuss it. Sarah Piggott started her blog, OfficiallyCurvy, once she decided to give up dieting and love her body as it is. This journey didn’t happen overnight. As Sarah “struggled” with her weight and to find clothes in her size pretty much her whole life, she challenged herself to run 13.1 miles. After dropping a half size or so when she completed the half marathon, she told herself, “alright, this is me.” Sarah, aka OfficiallyCurvy, showcases plus and size inclusive functional wardrobe staples and that you can be healthy at every size. So, in tandem with

When Kristen Recommended The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile, I grabbed onto the title. Ritual was exactly what I was missing in my pandemic life. Sure, I was doing a lot of the same things each day, but I wasn't doing them with the attention, intention and repetition that make a ritual. And Kristen has never pointed me towards a book that wasn't worth my time. What I didn't realize before I was pouring over the pages of ter Kuile's book (in a nightly bath/book ritual, thank you very much) was how much his writing style would make me want to be his friend. He's delightful on the page, and, as you'll hear on this week's episode (and if you've listened to him on podcasts Harry Potter and the Sacred Text or The Real Question, you already know this), he's even more delightful if you have the chance to speak with him. But beyond being our new best friend, he's dedicated his professional life to rituals and community as a Harvard Divinity fellow (and so much more). As ter Kuile puts it, he gets to think about c

Bri Zborowski and Kaycee Jones knew that Apolla Performance's socks would have a major impact on the dance community, a world notorious for punishing training schedules and injuries that can start in youth dancers. And with their roots in dance, they felt comfortable launching their compression sock for the audience they knew so intimately. But at the same time, their aspirations go way beyond dance studios; in fact, they're not too shy to say that they want one million people wearing their socks by 2025. And yes, if you do the math, that means they're more than ready to expand into fitness studios, homes, airplanes, and more—because Apolla is for everyone with feet. On this episode of #WeGotGoals, Kaycee and Bri share their origin story, which begins on a family vacation to a small Florida beach town. Then, you'll hear more about prevalence of injuries in dance and how Apolla Performance socks were created specifically to address these types of injuries. Bri and Kaycee also share the resources they've been b

A little over a year ago, the rug was pulled out from under so many fitness instructors who had relied on the traditional gym or studio model. Depending on the state and its laws, many of those trainers and instructors were 1099 contractors and weren't eligible for unemployment. As studios closed and their customers tried to figure out which room was best to sweat in, many trainers were quickly thrust into entrepreneurship without much of a safety net. That was sort of the case for Erin Schirack and her partner in creating the dance fitness brand MVFitness, Bobby O'Brien, except for one twist. MVFitness launched pre-pandemic and was hosting pop-up classes at the Essex Hotel. After The Day The World Stood Still, which is how I'd like to stylize the start of the pandemic henceforth, the pair started to create a grueling schedule of free instagram LIVE classes. You've heard this story before if you spent any time on Instagram in March of 2020. After the calamity of constant livestreams, the pair turned to The DJ

We've watched Bande grow from founder obsession to growing community living on a tech platform. And in creating a social network for boutique fitness, Rebecca Balyasny, CEO and Founder of Bande, has truly put herself into brand new territory. She's not new to setting goals and achieving, which you'll hear about on the podcast episode, but she IS new to starting her own business in the fitness space. Previous to founding Bande, she had a career she loved in finance - and while at Prudential she raised her hand to fundraise a $2 billion fund - a challenge that took her more than a year and left her "boss's boss's boss" scratching their head because "no one had ever volunteered for that kind of challenge before. And through that experience and her work with founders and startups, she caught the bug, second-hand. "I’ve always been really interested in founders and entrepreneurs and their stories and what they went through," she explained, noting that, "No one can ever tell you what it’s like until you experience

In this podcast episode, you'll hear Liz Hernandez, Founder and Creator of WORDAFUL, facilitate a signature WORDAFUL workshop. Through WORDAFUL, Liz has created a new form of storytelling that she hopes will encourage and connect you to the power of words. She believes we can create new realities for ourselves by changing our internal and external dialogue, ones that support more meaningful relationships and lives. Liz Hernandez is a Mexican American Emmy-nominated television personality and journalist. As a former radio host and entertainment reporter for Access Hollywood, E! News and MTV, her career has been built on words, but no chapter more meaningful than the one she is currently living with WORDAFUL, a video and live event series that focuses on the importance of how we communicate with others and ourselves. Our thoughts and words from yesterday are what make up our lives today.

When we met Nadya Okamoto for the first time, it was clear that she had a story to tell. Being able to share her story as an advocate gave her a thrill, but it also was trying for her mental health. She'll discuss the ways her natural inclination to organize communities for causes drove her to create. She'll also share the ways that building a movement all while running from trauma ultimately led her to check into rehab. In her keynote talk from aSweatLife's #Sweatworking Summit, she shares how the way she looks at menstruation and period poverty was also shaped by her own experience of housing insecurity. You'll hear her speak about what led to founding Period Inc in 2014 as a high schooler to help distribute menstrual hygiene products and to help end a state imposed tax on menstrual products – or, the period tax. She published her book Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement in 2018. And this year, she co-founded a company built around changing the period experience, August, most notably removi

This week's episode of #WeGotGoals features content from the #Sweatworking Summit - and honestly, it's been challenging to wait to post this until now. During Nicole Cardoza's keynote, the crowd was moved and I was a human goosebump. Connecting with Cardoza and hearing her say, "yes" to speaking at the #Sweatworking Summit helped us to create something that we were truly proud of. Cardoza is the brains behind Anti-Racism Daily, Wellemental, and the author of Mindful Moves. She's also the creator of Reclamation Ventures, which invests in underestimated entrepreneurs in the wellness industry. And she delivered a keynote with a poise that felt superhuman given what she and Texas - where she zoomed in from - had gone through that week. The week of the #Sweatworking Summit was the very same one during which Texas was hit with a winter that led to the death of at least 26 people and the loss of power and safe water for millions in the state. You'll hear her reference that as well as the response to community need i

Peloton's Jess Sims comes on the podcast to share her journey from teaching in a classroom to teaching in a Peloton studio. You'll hear her share more about her transition from education to fitness, why she didn't audition for Peloton when she was first invited to, her current big goal of prioritizing herself, and how she's reconnecting with others during the pandemic. You'll also get to enjoy some guest barks and growls from Sienna Grace and Shiloh. Jess Sims is a Peloton instructor in New York City who teaches classes on the Tread, on the Floor, and on the Bike, bringing her background in athletics and her relatable leadership style to the Peloton community. But before that, she was an educator and a Teach For America alum, who taught a variety of grade levels and held many different administrative positions within schools, including principal. In 2016, Jess left her Masters degree and career in education behind to pursue her first and obvious love: fitness. In Fall 2018, Jess joined the Peloton family, an