Putting Your Passion To Work: From Ideation to Execution and Everything In Between

Part One - Interview with Beauty & The Bod’s Christie Preston

We’re excited to bring you the first part in a three-part series featuring the ever-moving, fit, fun & fabulous Christie Preston. In Part One, learn about the legendary Bod Squad, Beauty and the Bod and how Christie builds a strong community around her brand. In Part Two, see how Christie tackles making changes, facing and overcoming challenges and accepting help when needed. Then in Part Three, hear how Christie develops sustainable partners and how she does it all!

Written by: Erin Munro

We are super excited to hear more about what you have been up to in the past few years with building Beauty and the Bod. It’s great to see fellow Branksome Girls out there making things happen. So, Christie, let’s jump right in! Could you tell us a little about how you got started with Beauty and the Bod?

Hi! Yes of course, thank you for featuring me!! After getting a great education, many people I knew were saying things like, “Well, I am going to go to Law School and be a Lawyer, or I am going to get my CFA and be an Accountant, or I want to be a Doctor”. All of these were great options but I always knew that they weren’t for me. It was tough to go against the grain but there came a time when I just knew that I had to pursue my passion for fitness first or I’d always look back and wonder, what it? As you probably remember from my involvement with Branksome rowing, that I love fitness!

As lame as it is going to sound, fitness has been a true calling for me ever since I was about nine. I guess it all started when I asked Santa for a medicine ball for Christmas one year! So far, this whole follow your dreams thing has been an awesome ride! It is cool to get recognized and to hear you guys say that you are interested in my story. It’s easy to keep your head down and focus on the details of running a business so it’s really cool to look up from that and get recognized!

I started all of this in 2010, wow time flies! I was working at SickKids Hospital Foundation where I had a great 9-5 job. In my off-hours, I started this just for fun boot camp, we called it the Bod Squad. That’s right, I had a squad five years before Taylor Swift! At first Bod Squad was just kind of this thing that I ran behind my house that I lead for my sister, my parents and a couple of other neighbour friends. We would meet at 6:00 am and we would work out for an hour and that was the Bod Squad.

Then Matt, my boyfriend at the time (now my husband), told me that he wanted to live abroad for a year after University, and this was something we had always planned on doing together! I jumped at the chance to move overseas and see what that was like. When I was in England, I had some time to reflect on what I wanted to do when I came back. I knew that I needed to give building my own business a shot!

I came back and promoted Bod Squad for profit! I handed out flyers, made a facebook page, designed my own super basic website, I gathered the old neighbour group back together and that became the first official Bod Squad for the summer. My parents are an awesome influence in my life and business, they are supportive but also pretty strict. They insisted that after university they would not be supporting my sister and I, which I am grateful for now but at the time it was pretty stressful! I wasn’t really sure of my plans but I thought let’s just do this and see how it goes, I just knew that I needed to get started.

After the first summer of Bod Squad, I moved into this tiny apartment with Matt, and I couldn’t afford a car, so I had to use my bike to get around everywhere! In the middle of that winter, I had 3 personal training clients that I would train 2-3 times per week to their houses. I was doing anything and everything to keep training and to get my name out there. The next summer, I restarted Bod Squad and it was a bit bigger, and I knew that this was something I wanted to keep going with all year, so I started shopping around for an indoor space!

I’d like to talk a little more about building a community around your business. At the beginning of Beauty and the Bod, you mentioned it was mostly neighbours, family and friends, How exactly did you decide what to add, how to add it and when to add it? How did you make some of those decisions for change?

Definitely! I love my Beauty and the Bod community, and all of the great partners I work with - Lululemon and Totum Gyms which you’ll hear more about in Part Three. I believe that you really do become a lot like the people you spend the most time with. The energy of a class and work environment is SO important to me. I want people to leave feeling like they’ve had a great workout but also like they’ve had a great time with supportive, awesome people around them. I’m big on inclusiveness, everyone is welcome in my classes. There’s no typical gym uptightness, we are all friends … and if you’re not friendly, well then you can just move on!

Building a great client base and great partnerships was a lot of intuition, and I think that is something I am good at naturally. I also have a very open communication style with my clients. In any given class, there are only 6 people in the room so there is a real sense of what is and isn’t working.

Since I am doing most of this on my own, another great learning moment for me was investing the time in myself to learn how to build and maintain a website. I took 2 weeks to painfully teach myself and I never really looked back. Now it is a skill that I have forever.

As you can see, I am kind of a do-it-yourself, make-it yourself, build-it-yourselfer! That has been a great asset, but it is something that can hold you back because I am not really interested in having a lot of people help me out of things, but I am certainly able to put up my hand, but I think if you can do it yourself, then make that your first priority.

I have learned through trial and error that Instagram is my best tool and the simplest way for me to connect to everyone and leave a lasting impact. We share milestones with each other, and I constantly learn from them as well. Being receptive to change, and open to their thoughts helps me build a supportive network where everyone can come and feel welcome.

Thank you so much for sharing Christie! I think this is a great spot to leave off on until next time.

Schmoozers love a good metaphor. We’ve learned from Christie that fitness, and the journey to a healthy lifestyle is a great metaphor for entrepreneurship and running a successful business; you only get out of it what you put into it.We can’t wait to hear more about Beauty and the Bod in Part Two next week! Stay tuned…

Did you love hearing about Christie Preston’s journey? Among many other awesome things to get you talking, Schmooz features new and exciting entrepreneurs every month! To learn more, check out Annie and Angela’s story on building their company Agouti or Jessica Cheung’s story on seeking balance and changing paths.

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Christie Preston is a Toronto native, fellow Branksome Hall graduate and the creator of Beauty and the Bod. Christie’s Bod Squad is the next level workout class! Christie offers group training out of Totum Gyms, Pop-Up locations and of course from the comfort of your own home with personal training packages. If you want a comfortable, friendly atmosphere surrounded by likeminded, fit, fun, and awesome people who are there to support you and cheer you on with every drop of sweat then you've found the ideal place! Christie goes beyond the role of trainer with an interactive blog sharing beauty tips, favourite recipes, travel experiences and so much more! Her kinetic energy will sure get your pulse jumping whether you’re watching and using her workout videos, or joining a class!