For Fishers wellness trainer Lindsay Willard, health is not about getting skinny.
“The only times I’ll turn someone away — and this has happened lots of times — people will say things like, this event is coming up and I have to lose like 40 pounds,” she said. “Like, no. I don’t want this to be sort of a ‘quick fix, I want to get skinny’ kind of thing because I don’t feel like that’s what nutrition, coaching and fitness stuff should be all about.”
Willard works one-on-one with individual clients who want to improve their health, but another focus of her one-woman business is corporate wellness. She previously worked for companies that provided wellness programs to corporate clients, and then one year ago, decided to take a chance and work full-time for herself, instead.
Willard, now 45, already had been providing individual coaching as a side gig through her business, 10 More Seconds. Moving to full-time meant more effort reaching out to potential corporate clients. Sometimes, she knew someone who knew someone in a business.
“But then a lot of it was just me, seeing a company and thinking, ‘OK, I’m going to research them and find their HR department, reach out to them and see if they have any interest in bringing wellness onsite to their company,” she said. “And, you know, a lot of people said no, but then people were saying yes.”
Willard’s corporate programs include lunch-and-learn sessions covering a variety of health topics, as well as on-site health coaching, where employees can sign up for a session.
“It’s been really fun to have it be my own thing,” she said, adding that as a one-person business, her overhead is minimal. “It’s just me, so I’m able to charge a lot less.”
For 1-on-1 clients, Willard said she likes to have an initial consultation at a coffee shop, for example, rather than her basement gym.
“I meet with them somewhere neutral first because people might not be comfortable coming to some random woman’s house,” she said. “‘Come into my basement’ has like a creepy connotation.”
And for all her clients, she stresses health, not weight loss.
“I feel like there’s such a movement right now with body positivity and body acceptance and you can be not a size 2, and still be a super, super healthy, strong, happy, confident person,” she said. “Maybe somebody can run a marathon and maybe a woman can bench press 50-pound dumbbells, but she’s also a size 14 or 16. I really like the idea of not making so much of this focus on the aesthetic side but making more of it on the, I’m taking care of my health side.”
Willard wrote a book this spring called “80 Days to Better Health.” It offers advice, tips, exercises and recipes, and space to journal and reflect throughout the 80-day journey. She said she chose 80 days, because that’s about how long it takes to form a new habit, and 80 seems less daunting than 100.
Willard’s book is available on Amazon.
For more, visit 10moreseconds.com.
