Michele Riechman, Personal Trainer and Health Coach

[00:00:56] Sanjay Parekh: Today's guest is Michele Riechman, a personal trainer and health coach for women over 40. Michele started her entrepreneurial journey after realizing that she shouldn't be breathless after going up one flight of stairs. She started exercising regularly to keep up with her four children. And now it's her mission to help other women over 40 do the same.

Michele, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:17] Michele Riechman: Thanks so much for having me. 

[00:01:19] Sanjay Parekh: I'm excited to have you on because we often talk about health and wellness and exercise as part of the business, but that is your business. But before we get into all of that, give me a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today.

[00:01:32] Michele Riechman: Yeah. So, like you mentioned, I had four kids, so that sort of led me on my own personal journey of struggling after I had my third one. Like, how do I take care of myself? I'm trying to keep these humans alive and do all this other stuff, but I do have my doctorate in physical therapy. And then that sort of led me to start my business doing online personal training and health coaching and really just adding that to the life experience of having kids and being in a busy family. And how do we take care of ourselves? How do we keep things simple? 

Because when we go up a flight of stairs, that doesn't take long. We don't have to work out for 30 minutes or even an hour. We can start really small. And instead of complicating things, we can really go back to the basics and really start to take care of our bodies because it's hard.

We live in this diet culture driven world that tells us to follow these strict things and it just doesn't work long term. So I really love helping people get healthy on the inside so that they can feel good and really live a good life. 

[00:02:36] Sanjay Parekh: How long have you been doing the business now? How long has it been?

[00:02:39] Michele Riechman: Yeah, I've had my business for about a few years. It started with me just getting a yoga certification. And then it's like, hey, I can do this. Like I have my physical therapy. I could easily do personal training. I had done it before. And then really adding on the health coaching and getting nutrition certifications and other things to help with that, even though I had a lot of knowledge. So, it just sort of snowballed. 

[00:03:02] Sanjay Parekh: Is this your first time ever starting a company or had you done something entrepreneurial when you were younger? 

[00:03:08] Michele Riechman: No, this is my first time really starting something. So, it's been a great learning experience, like learning the business side of things and the backend and building my website and doing all that.

I do enjoy it. It takes time, but it's been fun learning all that and the marketing side of it too. 

[00:03:28] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Did you have any entrepreneurs in the family when you were younger that you got to see: parents, uncles, aunts, anybody like that? 

[00:03:35] Michele Riechman: No, not really. A lot of my mom's side of the family's all in the medical field.

So like nurses, other nurse practitioners, PTs, and my dad's side is more like construction, handyman, carpenter, that kind of thing. 

[00:03:50] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, so on that side was it working for people or did they have their own companies? 

[00:03:56] Michele Riechman: My one uncle does have his own company doing construction and building houses, that he has started later in life, but yeah. 

[00:04:06] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, so you never had an opportunity to work in anybody's business or company growing up that you got to see them being entrepreneurial?

[00:04:14] Michele Riechman: No, I will say when I was in college, I worked as a personal trainer under this one guy that had a small gym. So, it was his business, his personal training business. So, I did get to work under him. I did not learn much about the marketing or the backend, but I always thought that's really cool. Like he has this own business of his that he's running and it's growing so much, he's hiring people to come in and help. 

[00:04:38] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. So when you started this, it sounds like it was kind of a serendipity thing. You got a yoga certification and then you just snowballed the whole thing. When did you realize, oh, this should be an official business that I should actually start?

[00:04:53] Michele Riechman: Yeah, probably about six months in. Being as a physical therapist, I always worried about like malpractice. So I always had like liability insurance and things like that. But then pretty soon I just started the LLC just for more protective measures. And then that's when I really started like, okay, I'm going to build a website. I'm going to do some of this other stuff and really build up that back end of it. 

[00:05:20] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. How did you find your first clients or how did they find you? 

[00:05:24] Michele Riechman: My first clients came through Facebook. That is the social media platform that I use, that I'm most familiar with. So, I was reaching out in other Facebook groups and just learn different tactics to use on Facebook.

So that's how I started to get some clients. And I still do that. I currently now have a podcast, so that is where more of my leads come through, but that was a great way to start that's free. 

[00:05:52] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, were these people that were close to you geographically or were you dealing with them remotely? Like what was the makeup of the client base? 

[00:06:02] Michele Riechman: Yeah, a little bit of both. So, I did have some that came more from like local Facebook groups. And then I did have some that were a little bit of all over too. 

[00:06:13] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. And I imagine, having clients that are that different mix, being able to have some in person versus remote, you've got to deal with them very differently.

What did you figure out in terms of that, in terms of how it would work for you? 

[00:06:27] Michele Riechman: Yeah. I pretty much have done everything online. So even though some of those people were closer to where I lived, I still did everything online because I really wanted to grow my business online because I am a military wife.

So, we do move. So, I want to keep that component really strong for me. So, at the beginning I did do some yoga classes as a group, like in person. But most of my effort, most of my time was building up my online base and my online clients. 

[00:07:00] Sanjay Parekh: You touched upon something that's interesting there, that you're a military spouse.

How did that play into starting all of this? And was there anything that, you know, that you found that in terms of support for military spouses that you were able to leverage for starting this? 

[00:07:16] Michele Riechman: Yeah, and I think, for me, we typically stay somewhere for a little bit, three to five years. But it's hard if you're growing your business.

I keep wanting to be drawn to like doing things in person, even where we are now. And I only do it a little bit because I know long term, I can't build up a big business in person. I need to keep it online so it moves with me. 

And as far as support wise, I know there are supports out there for military people to start their businesses. I haven't really used anything since I'm doing it online. It's pretty low cost. There is a cost to things I am paying along the way, but it doesn't come out of my pocket. It comes out from my business income. 

So, I know there's resources out there. I am a part of a couple military Facebook groups online too. So that helps. And there was even the local base we were at when I started it, they have a group for military wives. And that's how I found some of my clients. They had a free post you could do weekly to advertise your business. And that's my most active Facebook group.

So, I still make sure to post in there once a week cause I think it's just that, military spouse to military spouse, you just trust people a little bit more. 

[00:08:38] Sanjay Parekh: That's interesting. okay. Never started a business before, never started a company before. You jump in with both feet a few months into doing this. Was there anything that made you nervous about trying this and how did you deal with that? And how did you overcome that? 

[00:08:56] Michele Riechman: Yeah, I think just the unknown, like unknown of it. Is this going to work? Am I wasting my time on this? Where do I spend my money? Cause it costs money to set up a website. Am I going to teach myself how to do it? Which I did, but just like figuring out all those little things and then marketing, oh my goodness, that's like a lot to know along the way.

At different points, investing in a coach or different courses or different things to help me to grow my business. But it really is just taking one step at a time and really being solid in my purpose and my vision. So I really feel very strongly that God created me to help other people get healthy and really coming back to that purpose and vision for myself when things like don't feel that great.

This is what I’m meant to do. Things are going to feel hard and bumpy at times, but if I can keep coming back to what is my purpose and just keep taking that one step forward. 

[00:09:59] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's quite interesting. So, you were talking about the marketing side of it being difficult for you. What was your challenge there and how did you figure out how to solve that for yourself? 

[00:10:16] Michele Riechman: Yeah, so the biggest thing marketing wise, social media just takes so much time to do, depending what you're doing with it. So, it's almost a little bit at first, it's trying some different things and figuring out what's working for you.

Like I was able to start to grow my Instagram audience organically, but really most of my people were still coming through Facebook. And for me, once I shifted to this idea of a long-term content, so that's like podcasts or blog or YouTube, where people can keep coming back to that. 

So social media, it's quick, it's gone. The long form content stays there. And so I took a course 'how to do a podcast' about, it's almost been a year. And that really changed because that has really helped to grow my audience way beyond my social media audience. And that stays there. So, I'll talk to people. I'll refer them back to episodes. I have lots of information that I can keep using over and over again. 

And then I've also been creating blogs and doing some Pinterest with it. And finally, seeing the Pinterest grow and like even a course bought just this weekend, it's working, these long-term strategies. They just take longer. So, you can't necessarily just start with that. 

But thinking of my business and my vision long-term going forward, that's what I want, to have this long form content and this stuff that sort of stays there that people can keep coming back to. 

[00:11:50] Sanjay Parekh: Give us a scale of how much it cost you to start this business. Are we talking 10 dollars, hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars? Like what did it cost, because you talk about like the website and all like all of these pieces. 

[00:12:04] Michele Riechman: Yeah, for me, I don't know the cost off the top of my head, but not very much. I was able to start getting some clients right away. So, I'm getting that income. So, I have never paid more than what I had in my business. 

But things like website, that's a few hundred. I also got a course platform that also has my emails and my funnels in it. That's like $647 a year. My podcast host, I don't know, it's 12 or 13 bucks a month. And insurance.

You have all these little things that add up. But, if you're having some income, I was still able to stay in that budget and make money some months. There's probably a couple months where I broke even, but overall I've been making money. But you just have to think, What do I really need to spend money on? What's really worth it?

[00:12:59] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I love that you set yourself up that way to never go into the red. How did you think about pricing then? That's another challenge for a lot of entrepreneurs. When they're starting out like, I don't know what to charge people for this. So where did you start and where are you at right now?

[00:13:23] Michele Riechman: Yeah, I started at 50 bucks an hour because I'm thinking, oh, that's like what you get paid at somewhere. But you're spending like so much time behind that. So right now, I'm at like $100 an hour. I do a personal training app, which is $197 a month, but I don't do one to one calls, like video calls or anything like that.

It's set up that I work with them. I check in with them. We do habits. So, my pricing started a little bit lower, but it really wasn't for too long. Then I bumped it up. Because you want to feel good about your pricing. I also like to think, What would I pay? And keep my pricing there too, because I know some people go way higher.

But I want to be able to feel good with it. So that means, would I pay for that? Or do I think that's a little too much? And I think as my business grows and my schedule gets maxed out, there might be another price bump. But I also don't like to, I don't bump my prices up on my current clients. That's just a personal thing, but I like to just keep that locked in.

So, if they started with me a long time ago, they get to keep that price. I do want to make sure, even when I started, I had a price that I felt good with that I wasn't like feeling, oh, I'm not making anything doing this. 

[00:14:42] Sanjay Parekh: What was it? So, you said you started at 50 and now you're at $100. What was the realization of, oh, this is too low. 

[00:14:51] Michele Riechman: Yeah, I think, then you start to just like, if you're a numbers person like add up the time you're working with people, plus all the time you have to do everything else and it's like, oh, that's not very much.

And if you think what a company charges, they're going to charge more like a $100 or $150 or whatever to pay for that, even though they may be paying their employee 50 bucks an hour. And yeah, just that value in it. And I think being able to, like I said, I did have a business coach along the way for a season.

And being able to just bounce and talk ideas, but still feel good about it. Cause I think sometimes working with business coaches, they have their ideas. So, you want to make sure you pick the right one. So, you're not feeling a little like too swayed towards them that comes out of, so you're not being who you are, if that makes sense.

[00:15:40] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, absolutely. So, it sounds like you might be a bit of a numbers person. How did you track all of this stuff in the early days and now to make sure that you had a handle on the business?

[00:15:52] Michele Riechman: I still use a google sheet. I tried to use Wave recently. It was like free accounting software, but like this is like taking too long to reconcile this with this.

So, I keep an expense sheet in Google sheets. And then at the end of the month, I add up my income for the month. I put all my expenses in there and that's then what I used to do my taxes. But for me, I don't have a ton of expenses. A few of them are like reoccurring things each month and then I'll have a few odd things.

So, I don't know what the average is, five to eight expenses a month. So, I can manually track that for me now. And then it also makes me look at my income each month, see what I'm making, see what my expenses were, what that actual income is too. So, I like having that just for me too. 

[00:16:42] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. By looking at that, is that where you're doing the math of okay, I spent this many hours on it. This is my hourly rate and that's way too low. Is that what you're doing or?

[00:16:53] Michele Riechman: Yeah I don't quite track the hours that I work like that, but I can see the income that I'm making. And I also know that each year I keep making a little bit more. So obviously the time I put in at year one, if I was doing hourly rate, it was really low, but I know that and it keeps going up. But I know this vision in my mind that if I keep working at it and building these things, it's going to keep going up.

[00:17:22] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, the business insurance experts.

[00:17:43] Sanjay Parekh: So, you're in a business of helping people with health and stress and those kinds of things. How do you manage the stress for yourself of owning a business, working on it full time, along with four kids and everything else that's happening in life? So how do you manage that for yourself? 

[00:18:01] Michele Riechman: Yeah, it gets easy to not manage it well.

And I like working on my business and I like doing that stuff. So, for a while I was almost doing it too much. So, this past school year, I don't know, six, eight months ago, I rearranged my schedule so that I actually had an off day to do house cleaning, to do the things for my kids, register them for sports. There's like always different things going on. 

So, I could separate that time since I'm working from home. I don't want to clean while I was working. It made the work day feel long. So, I separate that house, mom, family life from my work hours. So, I have more set times. And also, each week I am reevaluating what I'm doing and what my priorities are for.

So not just for my business, but for my family, for myself. Am I working out and exercising? Am I spending time with my kids that I want to? And reevaluating things as a whole. Because for me, even though I love this business and I want it to keep growing, like my family, my kids are important. They're really the number one.

So, making sure that I still feel good about that and then having this time for my work. And really prioritizing what I'm doing during my work time. I have a checklist, because I know the things that are most important and that keep moving my business forward. So, when I sit down to work, I'm really in tune to where I'm spending my time.

[00:19:31] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So that kind of touches upon another question for you. How are you managing the family life with the business? Specifically, because you're doing kind of these online clients and everything. They could ping you at all times of the day and night, really, and into the weekend.

So how do you keep this separated and making sure that you've got that time for the family? 

[00:19:59] Michele Riechman: Yeah. So, I do have one part of the contract though is I answer during normal business hours. So, they know that. There are times I answer out of business hours, but the expectation is there that I may not.

And I also have one night a week where I work in the evening. Cause I do some live health coaching calls with people. So, if people do have a day job and need an evening, I only have one evening a week where I will do that. So, it's really just setting some boundaries. And it was almost like those boundaries had to be pressed first because I didn't know they were there.

And then I had to create the boundary. So ,it's almost like when you're feeling that tension or you're getting frustrated with things is, What boundary do I need to feel better? 

[00:20:44] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's change gears a little bit. You've been doing this now for a little while. You've learned a lot.

Thinking back now, knowing what you know now, is there something you would go back in time and do differently? And if so, what is that? 

[00:21:01] Michele Riechman: I think the one thing I didn't really think about is the long-term content when I first started. Which is hard, because right away, you're not going to see traction on that. But I probably would have wished I would have started the long-term content in my podcast sooner because I have seen such a difference from that. I think I was so intimidated by that idea of speaking and starting a podcast. ‘I can't do that. That sounds too hard.’ But really once I took a course and knew what to do, it's launched and grown well.

So if I could have started that earlier, I think that would have helped. 

[00:21:36] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. What was the epiphany that you had of why you should do that? 

[00:21:43] Michele Riechman: First, I did podcast guesting, sort of like what we're doing here. I got used to speaking, but I heard from a couple of different people about doing podcasting. I kept hearing about long-term content, but more in the form of vlogging or YouTube.

I found someone who had this course and was sort of in her audience for a little bit. And that really was what went, Okay. I took some time to think about it and made sure that's what I wanted to do in my business and went all in on it. And got the course, put all my effort into it and really launched it well.

And it's really grown well because of that. 

[00:22:24] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, once you got the course, what was your next step? Did you buy some equipment at home or did you just start going based on what you already had?

[00:22:33] Michele Riechman: I went on what I already had. So, I did have a decent mic because I would teach virtual yoga classes. So, I had a Rode GO to start with. I now have a Yeti. But yeah, so equipment wise, I didn't have to get anything. It was the investment of the course and then the investment of the podcast host platform, which isn't very much. 

[00:22:58] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. okay. Last question for you. If you're talking to somebody who's thinking about taking the leap like you did and starting a side hustle or starting a small business, what advice would you give to them?

[00:23:10] Michele Riechman: Yeah, it’s to just get a little bit of a foundation, get some clients going. And then once you know that's what you want to do, start building up that back end, stop wasting time on things that aren't worth it. Have that checklist or however you want to have it. Those things that are going to move your business forward.

So that when you sit down to work on your business, you're working on those most important things. 

[00:23:38] Sanjay Parekh: I love it. I love it. Michele, this has been fantastic. I didn't ask you any exercise questions. I probably should have asked those, but we'll leave it for the listeners to find you and figure that stuff out.

And in which case, how can they find you online? 

[00:23:53] Michele Riechman: Yeah. Find my podcast. So, in your favorite podcast app, go to Healthy Beyond 40, and then you'll find my podcast. Different episodes about exercise, sugar cravings, belly fat, and really how to get healthy in a sustainable way without dieting. 

[00:24:10] Sanjay Parekh: That's awesome. Thanks so much for being on Michele. 

[00:24:14] Michele Riechman: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

[00:24:20] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or to share your own story, visit Hiscox.com/Side-Hustle-To-Small-Business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.