SHOW NOTES 

 

Intro: I'm here today with Chalene Johnson. Motivational speaker, New York Times bestselling author, and fitness celebrity, Chalene Johnson is the number one female in direct marketing, you guys. The first female to host two number one infomercials, Chalene has sold over ten million DVDs. The former CEO of Powder Blue Productions, she has built and sold several multi-million dollar fitness and lifestyle companies. Chalene is the CEO of business and lifestyle coaching company Team Johnson, where she has taught her personal and business development systems to hundreds of thousands of people. Chalene is also the founder of personal and business development programs and internet academies, including Smart Success Academy, Marketing Impact Academy, and Courageous Confidence Club, where she shares what she has learned to help other business owners create even greater success and more balanced life. Chalene, thank you so much for letting us come today.

Chalene: I'm tired after reading my bio. I need to nap.

Kelsey: It's impressive! I'm kind of tired after reading it. Thank you for letting us come today, and come into your amazing and beautiful home and interview you.

Chalene: You have beautiful eyes.

Kelsey: Oh, thank you so much.

Chalene: Oh, beautiful eyes. Can you zoom in on these eyes?

Kelsey: Thank you, I appreciate that. Okay, so I have been following you—when I started this whole process a few months ago with The Pursuit, many people recommended you. So I was like, “Alright, I'll go check her out.” And of course I was—

Chalene: You didn't know who I was?

Kelsey: I've been. . .well, I—

Chalene: Just kidding.

Kelsey: —maybe I'm not so fit. That just shows that I'm not into fitness, doesn't it? (laughter) And uh, and then of course I became obsessed, like everyone who finds you. But what's interesting is then, when I dug a little deeper, you know—I think when people find you they think that you were a fitness TV personality that just made a big brand. And they don't realize like, whoa, it goes way deeper than that. So what I'd love for you to do is start at the beginning of when—back when you were a paralegal. And how you went from you know, working as a paralegal trying to get some fitness class gigs, all the way to—let's start to, go to like Turbo Jam.

Chalene: Yeah, okay that sounds good. You know, for me, my entrepreneurial journey started when I was a teenager. We didn't have a lot of money growing up—I didn't know that—but we didn't have money growing up. And so, rather than my parents saying to me, “We can't afford that,” or you know, “You think money grows on trees?” like I never heard those comments. I saw them on TV but I never heard those comments. Anything we wanted, my parents—in particular my dad—would say, “Well, let's come up with a plan. Let's figure out what you can do, let's figure out what you can sell, let's figure out what type of work you can do around the neighborhood. And find—create a plan so that you can buy that.” So very young I realized that I was going to have to buy my own car, pay for my own clothes and those kinds of things. So I started a business flipping automobiles. Buying used vehicles from the state auction really, really cheap, and they would be like, in decent shape from an engine standpoint—mechanically—but they would be just, you know, because they were state-owned, they would be like really dirty and painted orange. Because in the state of Michigan they painted their vehicles orange. So I would buy these vehicles, and I would have them painted for $99 by Earl S———. I would sell them and then make money, and that was my first taste of business, and I later went on to Michigan State University and was still flipping cars to make money and working as a paralegal, but the flipping cars became really inconvenient and kind of scary—like having people come to my house. Strange men, or me going to people's scary neighborhoods with cash in my purse, and I thought, “There's gotta be a better way to do this.” So I started a business where people brought their vehicles to one location and sold them privately to and from private owners and sellers. And that was kind of my first entrepreneurial, like, “Hey, if I have a problem, I bet other people have this problem. And if I solve this problem, it feels good and I can also make money.” And so that was my first experience with it. Then working as a paralegal, I was teaching fitness classes and I thought, “Why does anybody do this?” You don't get paid anything. I mean, it's really fun, but it ends up costing you money because you'd have to download so much music and spend hours creating routines, and I thought, “Why don't I, you know, I remember my mom teaching Jazzercise when I was a kid. And I remember that she would learn the routine—they would send her the routine and the music and I thought, “God I wish there was something like that now,” but that was, you know, for what I was doing—which was kickboxing—and so I thought, “I should just create that.” ‘Cause I thought that would solve a problem for a lot of other people. And so that was just an attempt to again, solve my own problem. It wasn't my intention to go into fitness or for that to be what it ended up being. I thought I wanted to be a paralegal, but I was miserable to be honest. I wanted to be a paralegal because I thought I would be an attorney, and if I was an attorney, then that would mean I was important. You know, that it would make my parents

very proud to say, “Our daughter's an attorney.” You know? And that was legitimately the driving force behind me wanting to go to law school. It wasn't like—I mean, because I knew wasn't—I was gonna be in court every day, that's just on TV. I knew I'd be reading depositions, and I knew it was gonna be, you know, no offense to the attorneys out there, but I just knew it wasn't for me. But it was still really hard to give that up 'cause I'm like, “Well, how will I be important if I'm doing fitness?” You know?

Kelsey: So now you're doing these fitness classes, and then you started auditioning—or did someone approach you?

Chalene: No, then I started this business, and it was called Power Blue Productions. And what we were doing was creating kind of a paint by—we would give you your class—

Kelsey: Oh, for other instructors.

Chalene: Exactly. So we started just word of mouth like, telling other instructors, “Hey, here's the choreography, here's the music, here's a video of how you teach the choreography that you can also customize and make it your own. And, you know, for sixty bucks here you go.” And people started, you know, really talking about it, and there was a ground swell and it created this kind of tribe around it where people—it was very much, Turbo was kind of a mix between like cheerleading sound effects and hip hop music, but like cool kickboxing and it built this like, tribe around it. And then we started creating like an . . . fitness apparel to go with these workouts. And before long, we had like sixty thousand instructors around the globe teaching this format. And when you've got sixty thousand instructors, that means you have millions of people—

Kelsey: Right.

Chalene: —taking the class—

Kelsey: Yeah.

Chalene: —that don't even know who I am. They only know their instructor. And so what that resulted in was people sending me letters, like just massive amounts of letters saying, “I want to show you what my students have done.” And they would send me pictures of their before and afters. And they are saying like, you know, “They've been doing this workout with me for three years, and they've lost a hundred pounds, and I just want to share with you what my students have done.” I collected those, and I put them in a folder. And people knew about this folder because I was so excited—it wasn't my students, but I was excited to show them what other people had done. And it was about the time that Tae Bo and Windsor Pilates were really popular and so word kind of spread within the infomercial industry—'cause they were looking for another like, thing you like, “Oh hey, fitness is working on TV.” So they were looking for somebody who had a program, and I think rumor spread that I had this notebook and that's how I started getting phone calls.

Kelsey: Wow. Excuse me. Now I wanna go back because what you just said is already huge, because a lot of people could have an idea to solve a problem, or an idea to create something other instructors need, but still the odds are in the first one to five years you're gonna fail. For all these things—I mean, even with your car business—

Chalene: Sure.

Kelsey: —so let's go back and talk about, what do you think were the keys that got you through those first couple years till the real momentum?

Chalene: Yeah. Perseverance. Because no one makes money initially, no one's an overnight success. I mean, it's pretty rare. It's easier today no question about it, it's so much easier to be a successful business today because of the internet, because of the opportunity like this to reach millions of people. I didn't have these opportunities you know, I had to get on TV to have millions of people see my program. Other than that it was all word of mouth, it was having to spread the word in person, so it required incredible perseverance and just not giving up but most importantly connecting with people who had been there, and listening to their advice, and really not being stubborn about it when someone would say, “That isn't gonna work.” You know, I hear sometimes people give the advice like, “Never let anyone tell you your dream's not gonna work,” or “Never let anyone rain on your parade.” Or you know, “Don't believe the naysayers.” and I say, I disagree with that advice. I say you have to listen to them, because they might have some good feedback, and they want you to go in a slightly different direction, and so I would really listen to what people would say and especially experts, and read and be a student of personal development and business development and just be patient and do my—I think the reason why, to be honest, we've been successful in every business that we've had is I look for good-hearted, caring people. And I will figure out what you can do for me later. I never look, I never have, and I never will look for skill first. I look for heart first. I look for good, true, honest, genuine, loyal, caring, people who I want to be around and I like who they are and we'll figure out what you're gonna do later—

Kelsey: Wow.

Chalene: It's worked.

Kelsey: I feel like that's—

Chalene: We never run an ad.

Kelsey: Really?

Chalene: Never.

Kelsey: I feel like that's different than the usual like, find whoever's best at their skill and then hire them.

Chalene: I think so. And you know, and there's, and it's slower that way, but it's so much more enriching. And when I say it's slower that way, for example, sometimes we'll bring someone on

just because I've fallen in love with them as a person. I'm like, “This person's such a, they're such a good person, and they're so fun and I just, I love their energy. Let's figure out what they can do for us, and then I'm like hey, we need somebody to do social media or whatever it is and then we hire them on and we're like, “They're not that good at that, but they are good at this, and we move them in to whatever they're good.” I'm like, if it's a good person, we'll find what you're good at, 'cause when you're doing what you're good at and what you're passionate about, then it doesn't feel like work to them. And it doesn't feel to me, I mean, I just want to be around happy good people.

Kelsey: That's awesome. Now, let's go back to Turbo Jam because you weren't again, you weren't just a fitness, you know, I guess I wanna call like talking head sorta thing, but you owned part of it, or they, how did that that relationship—

Chalene: So, what happened was I had this book. Then I owned Turbo Kick. And Powder Blue Productions. We created a multitude of fitness programs that we called pre-designed, meaning the music was there, the choreography, Turbo Kick, Hip Hop Hustle, PiYo, All Star Presenter Camp—and so we had this book of before and afters, and so I would give that to people who are starting any kind of business—no matter what it is, if you've helped someone and they've said that to you, ask if you can save their email. Ask if they wouldn't mind putting that on video, and just say, you know, “It really means the world to me. If you've got time, would you just hold up your iPhone and just say what you just said, because we believe other people, you know what I mean, and so those testimonies—and I know some people think well, “I don't know how my business is the right kind of business to collect testimonies.” But they all are. I mean, doesn’t matter whether you're a lawyer or a fitness instructor, but I had these testimonials. And when you watch a fitness infomercial, that's what sells an infomercial is testimonials.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Chalene: And I had this big book of before and afters and people started calling us. So we got calls from Guthy-Renker, King Star, a lot of companies that have since gone on to business, but at the time they were big in the infomercial landscape—which has changed a lot. And Beach Body was one of those companies. It got down to offers between Guthy-Renker and Beach Body. At the time, Beach Body was brand new. They had I think one other show on the air, which was Slim in 6. They hadn't done P90X. Or P90. And I—we had a bigger offer on the table from Guthy-Renker. But I did the same thing that I always do, is that I like these people. I liked Jon and Carl. I liked that they didn't want me to change anything. I liked that they got excited about the stuff that like, nobody got excited about that! Like sound effects. Like no one got like—

Kelsey: That's funny.

Chalene: Sound effects like, when I do a jumping jack and there's a [makes sound]. That's huge. And they are like, “We love your sound effects.” I'm like, “I'm doing business with you.” It was a—a company that was less proven, and I was so nervous to make that decision. And I called my agent, and I said, “What do I do? Do I go with the big reputable company, the bigger offer? Or do I go with my gut?” And he just said, “I wish I had a crystal ball for you. I can't tell you the

answer but I can tell you this: This small company is going to work harder to get you on the air and with Guthy-Renker, if it fails the first time, you'll probably kinda disappear.” And I thought, okay, well I don't know if this gonna be a hit out of the gate, so I will—I'm gonna go with my gut and I'm gonna go with the company that I think will give me a shot and try. And so, we signed with Beach Body. And so, our first program was called Turbo Jam. It was a number one infomercial that year and it was insane. We had been successful in our own company selling apparel, doing certifications—we had become millionaires, and there was a period in our business where we were also half a million dollars in debt. So I'd been on both sides of that. But when we got that first infomercial, the very first time I went to the mailbox to get a check I literally got sick because I was like, “I don't understand why I'm being paid like this, because it's fun and I love what I'm doing.”

Kelsey: Oh man, don't we all hope for that day? That's amazing. That's awesome.

Chalene: I felt a lot of guilt.

Kelsey: You felt guilt?

Chalene: Yes, I felt guilt. And because of that, because of that guilt, I believed that I needed to work harder like almost to punish myself.

Kelsey: Oh, okay.

Chalene: And so, those, I suffered from chronic sleep deprivation. I literally would work like, or maybe sleep three hours a night.

Kelsey: Oh my.

Chalene: ‘Cause then we were still running our own company, and we were still doing the apparel line, and we were still holding certifications in every state, and then on top of that I was trying to answer/respond to all of the consumers, and do these consumer videos. And instructor videos. And I delegated nothing, and I took nothing off my plate, and I thought, “If I'm gonna make this kind of living, I need to be tortured.” I really believed that.

Kelsey: Wow.

Chalene: In order to like, to feel like I deserved it, I felt like I needed to almost like punish myself—

Kelsey: How did you—

Chalene: —and never rest.

Kelsey: —get past that?

Chalene: Just the realization from my husband really that it went past the point of punishing myself into a place of like addiction. You know, where I couldn't as much as I wanted to stop, I couldn't stop. I couldn't rest. I—because if I were to rest, I didn't feel valuable, I didn't feel

worthy, and it took my husband just, you know, I think we're all in most relationships—are you married?

Kelsey: Mmmhmm. Yes.

Chalene: So, is one of you the communicator?

Kelsey: Mmmhmm.

Chalene: Is it you?

Kelsey: Mmmhmm.

Chalene: So I think in most relationships there's one who's like, “We're not going to bed till we work this out. No really, tell me everything you know.” And there's like, that serious communicator, and the other person kinda sometimes is like, “Okay, I guess I don't need to talk as much 'cause you never shut up.”

Kelsey: Yeah.

Chalene: And that was my husband. He would always just kinda agree with most things that I said. He never disagreed. He never told me not to do something, and I would say, “You think we should do this?” And he'd be like, “Sure, if you want.” Like he never disagreed, and so when he finally did come out and say to me like, “I don't like this. And I don't feel like it's ever going to stop.” I was in shock. Like he didn't get mad, he didn't like say, “This has to end!” It was just like, him saying that I was like, “[gasp]. How long have you felt this way?” Because we were in this weird dance where he would be moody, and I always thought it was related to money, and I thought, “Okay, he's moody.” And then he would say something about like, finances or paying this or that. And then I could come up with something to sell or I could work harder and then—then I would notice his mood would change. I was like, “Oh, I get it!” So I can keep him happy if I'm working harder and I'm creating more income, and that's not what he was feeling—

Kelsey: Right.

Chalene: —and it's not what . . . and he thought, “Oh, she's happy when she's working hard.” Because I was happy if I noticed he was happy. And we just weren't really connecting there. And so, we had to realize that nothing—we really had to communicate, and that was what was most important was us. And nothing else.

Kelsey: Yeah. I love how important relationships are to you. I want to talk a little bit about having your husband—at what point did he join you in the business? When was that?

Chalene: I would say, let me think about this . . .

Kelsey: Was that before Turbo Jam or—

Chalene: Yes, it was before Turbo Jam, so he—I would say 1990—Kristin do you know? My assistant's here. '90 let's see: probably about three or four years into the business. Until then, there was this like, tension between us where it felt like it was my hobby, and it was kinda like an annoying pursuit for him you know, like, he was like, “You're doing what?” and he didn't see it, and it was really mine—I'd say my business—he was working full time at the time and he had played football, and it didn't work out to be a pro-football player. He came back here, was working for a friend, and he grew up with parents who were not entrepreneurs. So that was scary. To see me wanting us to put all our eggs in one basket. Every single conversation I would say, “I need your help. I want you to do this with me.” And he—that made him very nervous. He finally did it. He finally joined forces with me, but it was incredibly difficult at first because it was my business. So I had to learn new terminology, we had to learn that what's interesting and what he's good at—didn't matter whether he knew anything about fitness. He's good with numbers, he's good at negotiating contracts, he's good at strategizing, and all of those things benefitted the business, and so it was the two of us figuring out how to honor each other and just stay in our lanes but to really celebrate each other and say, “You do this beautifully and I do this beautifully,” and not to correct each other.

Kelsey: Yeah. Hmm. Now at what—I'd like to talk a little bit—you, I've found some good info about, you know, you talk a lot about your relationship with your husband, but I haven't found as much about you being a mom and your kids and juggling all that. And so is that intentional that you leave it out?

Chalene: Only because I'm superstitious.

Kelsey: Okay, please elaborate.

Chalene: Well, it's like. It's kinda like—and I know I'm gonna offend people right now who get tattoos of each other's names on their like, like I feel like that's a superstition thing like it'd be—if we were to do that we would end up divorced. Like it's just a superstition thing, and so I always have found that like, when people write a marriage book or like a parenting book then like, you wrote a parenting book and that's like the surefire way to make sure your kids are gonna end up on drugs.

Kelsey: (laughter) Yeah.

Chalene: Right? If you wrote a marriage book you're gonna end up divorced. Like so, it's just a superstition thing. I do talk about parenting, but I also don't feel like I have the right to tell other people how to parent. I can just say what's worked well for us and I don't know how they're gonna turn out in the long run. I mean, they seem like really cool people, they seem like good kids, but—

Kelsey: Well how did you, we can just talk about, how did you juggle it all? I mean, how did you do all that you built in the last you know, however long, how long—what, decade?

Chalene: More than that. So we, we've been, we started Powder Blue Productions probably fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years ago.

Kelsey: Well then they would have been tiny!

Chalene: Yeah they were babies. Yeah.

Kelsey: So how did you do all that with tiny kids?

Chalene: Yeah, without sleep. So we didn't do—again, these are just views that we had, I'm not projecting them on anyone else, 'cause I think everyone's situation is different—but my husband and I both have parents who are still married, and we both have moms who stayed home with us, and we both had parents who really—you know—made sure that their kids knew they were number one. And so we both agreed we wanted to do that too. So we didn't do childcare, we turned down every opportunity that might take one of us away. Brett turned down professional coaching positions, collegiate coaching positions—'cause he's a great football coach as well. I turned down television shows, appearances, speaking opportunities, lots and lots of work because it would mean being away from the family. So it meant things went slower.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Chalene: It also meant that I would be with the kids while they were awake, and that's why I didn't sleep for years, because I would work through the night. And when they were—this is when I do wanna say though—that to be honest, is that when they were little and we were doing all those things, and I was with them, even though I was playing with them, I wasn't present. Because I was like, “Oh my god.” The second they go down for a nap, I was like writing emails in my head and playing with train sets and just like not there you know and . . .

Kelsey: (laughter) I feel like so many people can relate to what you just said, so many working moms. And entrepreneurs.

Chalene: And I had guilt about that. You know? So that's maybe the other reason why I don't talk about parenting. I'm like, “Did I screw them up?” I don't know yet. I hope not. I mean, they're off of drugs and neither of them are pregnant or gotten anyone pregnant, so you know knock on wood, but I just worry about that sometimes like, “Did they know I wasn't present?” And then it was only after we were really able to like [whoosh sound] we started over, Brett and I started over like, once we had that very serious conversation, and decided that we couldn't go on like that, but how do we get out of this?

Kelsey: Right.

Chalene: That took a five-year process of creating a plan and then executing it over the course of five years to turn my—our—business into something where I wasn't the face of it. 'Cause you can't sell yourself.

Kelsey: Right.

Chalene: And so we had to take our business and remove me from it and put—lift other people up who were better and were great on camera and that people connected with. And we had to

put them front and center, and I had to outsource and we—but it took a plan, like we had to go, “Okay, if today we're doing everything, and I'm the face of everything, and I'm in every video, and I'm a control freak and I won't let go of anything, how do I go from this to a place where we could sell it to somebody?” And that—it took a lot of planning, it took a lot of—we had to stick to our guns to get to a place where we could sell the company and restructure our lives and just kind of start over—which, I always tell people our rock bottom was at the very top. You know?

Kelsey: Interesting. Which kinda brings me to a viewer question we had from Shonda, and she asked, “How, you know, what your advice would be and how you transitioned from fitness, you know, to business and leadership—and you kinda transitioned your whole personal brand. So what's your advice for people who want to do that as well?

Chalene: Yeah, I think part of it is a misconception.

Kelsey: Okay.

Chalene: Because I ended up in fitness by accident. Fitness has kinda helped people know me, but my fitness business was successful because of my entrepreneur skills, because of my leadership skills, because our company—Powder Blue Productions—was built on leadership principles. We had sixty area promotion directors and those are people who are reps of our programs in each of their individual states. So we had to build a team. We had to learn leadership. We had to learn how to lift people up and teach personal development to the people who were on our team, and find really great people. And you know the fitness part of it was almost accidental. I mean it could've been anything, you know what I mean? I didn't study fitness. My degree is in Justice, Morality, and Constitutional Democracy. So that I sound really important. And fitness was by accident. Fitness was just to solve a problem at that time. It has, since that time I realize how important it is and how much it relates to my clarity, my overall health, the balance, the success of most entrepreneurs. The most successful entrepreneurs, I'm sure you’ve spoke to many, they have these things in common, and one of them, for most of them, the ones who are like really balanced, they have it together pretty balanced in all areas, fitness is part of who they are. As is faith, as is relationships, as is rituals and things that do every single day. And you find that successful people have all those things in common. And so I think the fitness was just one of those things that happened to give me notoriety, but business and teaching and sharing and solving problems has been coursing through my veins, and will until the day I die. So I think the transition happened because I needed to remove myself a little bit from my fitness business, and in order to do that I wanted to focus on helping other people build their businesses.

Kelsey: Yeah. Let's go back because you're exactly right. All of these people that I get to sit down with have all those things. Let's go through yours: What are your daily rituals? What's an average day like for you, or an average week? ‘Cause I know days can be different, but . . .

Chalene: Yeah, it's very different now. It used to be filled morning, noon, and night with just “put out fires! Put out fires! Put out fires! Put out fires!” Like whatever was on fire I handled. And there never, fires are never done.

Kelsey: Right.

Chalene: And so I could never sleep, and I would never feel a sense of accomplishment or calm. And now the way my day is structured is, I typically just work between eleven and three. And because that's when I'm focused and that's when I can do my best works. It's when I feel creative. My morning starts very early. I exercise first. I pray. I'm learning to meditate. I've been meditating after my workouts. I'm not great at it, but I'm learning. And I used to feel like I didn't need to meditate, but I heard so many successful people saying, “You have to meditate.”

Kelsey: This is exactly where I am.

Chalene: And I'm like, “I don't need to meditate because I pray, doesn't that count?” I'm like, “I pray.”

Kelsey: Yeah.

Chalene: But I interviewed someone for my show who had like, how one statement sometimes sticks with you forever, and he said to me, “Well when you, when you’re praying, you're talking to God. You're not listening to Him.” I thought, “[gasp] you're right.” He said, “When you meditate you listen to God.” I thought, “Okay, alright, I'm sold, I'll try it.” And so I'm learning. And so that's, my day starts with this early wake up, then exercise, then meditation, then I create a daily to-do list that is small. It starts off big and then I edit it down, edit it down, edit it down, edit it down. And I say, “I know I wanna do these twenty things, but what three if I get them done, will everything be okay?” And then I just do the three. And then that way I've given myself permission to relax when my day is done. I'm like, “Well, I really only needed to get these three things done.”

Kelsey: It's interesting, because so many people that I sit down with—like you for example—back when you created all this stuff, that wasn't your day—

Chalene: Right.

Kelsey: Right?

Chalene: Right.

Kelsey: And so it's hard because, I mean, how would you—because I thought—I'm like, really you did work your tail off. Maybe I should be working eighteen hours a day, because that's kind of, you know, I mean I think you have an unparalleled work ethic, right? And so, even though it got detrimental at that point, is there something where . . . how can I foster, how can I make my work ethic better? As someone who's watching, needs to work more, work harder, is that something you were just born with?

Chalene: I think that, if I could give advice based on the things people will say like, “Well, but if you listen to most successful people, they killed themselves in the beginning, right?” And I know that was true for me too. However, I've since had the opportunity to work with thousands of entrepreneurs, and I can tell you that the ones who get there faster and don't

destroy relationships in the process, do one very scary thing that gets them there faster. And that is to outsource and to get help. And to not try to do it themselves. And the longer you try to do it yourself, thinking that you're saving yourself money, or that like, “I can't afford to have somebody else do this, because we're broke!” It's just, and it's a scary leap of faith that pays someone to do something when you're broke. But it frees you. And, like this is true, like I don't know if this is true for like the guys, but this is so true for women and that is: Laundry.

Kelsey: Really?

Chalene: Laundry was a game changer.

Kelsey: Well I will take that. I will tell my husband—

Chalene: —I can't get to my work because the laundry is up to my eyeballs. I can't do it—

Kelsey: And just the house in general. Like, you can't be creative when it's like a madhouse.

Chalene: And I don't know if that's like we're, it's in our DNA, but I just was like, it was my, I called it destination-procrastination. Like, no matter what we had to do, no matter what the deadline was pending, I was like, well then I'll have to do it at 2 a.m. Because I can't start it until the house is organized and socks have a match. (laughter) Or that never would happen.

Kelsey: Well that might be like a different level of crazy with the socks—everything else I'm right there with you. Okay, we have a couple more reader questions I want to get to. Oh yes, you have, so now you have both of your podcasts, and your speaking, your New York Times bestseller, you wrote your book, so you have all this content and all this stuff that you’re doing, and Bobby wanted to know how you choose what you publish and how you manage all that content. Because you, it's a vast, you cover a lot.

Chalene: Yeah. Yeah. With help. Number one, and like when you were reading my bio, I was like, “Oh my god that's a lot. She needs to calm down, that Chalene Johnson.” But I have to remind myself and people, that was, all those things were done at different times. Like, my book I wrote in 2010, it came out in 2011. So, I'm not busy writing a book now.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Chalene: You know, it's still—it adds to the resume, but I'm not doing it now. I do things in seasons.

Kelsey: Okay.

Chalene: So I think good advice for people is not to try to do everything, do a season of something, do it well, well enough that you know if you want to continue doing it or if you can outsource it, and then move on to the next season. But when you have a season you have to give another crop an opportunity to rest. And farmers know this, that when you are growing a crop, there's always a field that's resting. And you can't have all those crops growing at once. If you do, you get a below average produce, right?

Kelsey: Right, right.

Chalene: And so for me, I did a season of podcasting, and I also like to do things where I can create one piece of content that can go into a lot of different places.

Kelsey: Right.

Chalene: So like, I love Periscope right now because I've been recording my Periscopes and like, sending it out to the editor like, “Make this a podcast.”

Kelsey: Yeah, perfect.

Chalene: You know, and then that content then goes to YouTube and it goes to Facebook and then it gets transcribed and turned into a blog, and all of those blogs could be turned into a book if I should have another season for writing a book. I do things in seasons, and I would say my one wish for people who are parents, is that there is no more important season than the season where your children are young. You have the rest of your life to win awards and be known and be famous and to get a bajillion likes and to crush it in business. Take care of your family first. Make them your season, because that season goes by so fast and you won't have a chance to do that again. Make that your most important season.

Kelsey: I'm having some mommy guilt on this trip. Because my daughter is two. But that's why I pack a lot of interviews into a short trip. Then another question, this is kind of interesting because in the fitness space people can be, there can be a lot of shaming, and you know, and Amy Latta wrote in and she found it really refreshing how you talk about self-worth. You recently did a series about that and she wanted to know—and she is a fitness expert, you know, that's her personal platform as well. And she wanted to know how the industry responded, how your audience responded, and if it changed any of your strategy or anything.

Chalene: Yeah. It was interesting. I did a podcast on self-worth talking about how even fitness professionals struggle with body image—who doesn't? Like who doesn't? And people were like shocked like, how could you be shocked that humans are human? Especially in an industry that is so conscious of your body. And I did a show where we—the thing that was interesting to me is how people were to be honest, the part that was upsetting was that people were angry that women who've been teased for being overly thin or skinny. There were people who were like, “That's not a valid complaint, and how dare you be offended that someone teased you?” That upset me. I want those people out of my car. Like I don't, if you don't have compassion in your heart for someone who just wants to fit in and who felt pain, you are not one of my lifers, go away. I don't want you in my car, because I really want people who have the ability to have empathy and love and can just understand that pain is pain and everybody wants to fit in. And so, because one person was teased because they were overweight, and another person was teased because they were too thin or too tall, it's still just pain and people want to fit in. So that was eye-opening to me. That, especially people who had been teased or shamed or felt out of place, could find little to no empathy for someone who felt the same thing, but for a different reason. And then I did an episode on cellulite that was like wildly popular, and I think it was

such a relief for women to hear like, it's a skin thing it's not a body fat necessarily, and to shed some real light on cellulite and how it just is what it is. Do you watch Naked and Afraid?

Kelsey: I don't but I knew you were a fan.

Chalene: I'm such a fan. But like, that's a good example because those people, there are women on that show, have you seen that show like where, there will be women on that show and I'm like, “Yes! Thank you for showing her butt.” Because they'll get down to like 102 pounds, they've starved, starved for twenty-one days. Like eating one almond. And they're real thin. And as they're walking away, there's some cellulite on their butt. I'm like, you see? You see this has nothing to do with her diet, like, it's a genetic thing you can thank your mother. Or whoever. But I just think there's too much pressure on women to like, “No! You can get rid of it!” Well some people can't. You can—everyone can minimize it, but you know, we just have to be more accepting of the fact that we're humans. We're not perfect.

Kelsey: Yeah, I love that. And I think that's why you have your lifers, so many of them. I think that's why people love you, because you're so relatable. So let's just, before we wrap up, tell people what are some of your favorite podcasts, tools, resources, and so on?

Chalene: I just love people who are on fire to share. My favorite podcast episodes are the Art of Charm—which is in the business category with Jordan Harbinger, he's also from Michigan and also thought he wanted to be an attorney. So the, School of Greatness with Lewis Howes—

Kelsey: He was on the show. Love him so much. He was great.

Chalene: He's a sweetheart. Yeah. And I love Amy Porterfield's—what's her, it's called a, Online Marketing Made Easy—that's another great podcast. And then I love listening to faith-based podcasts. I listen to Joel—Joel Osteen. I listen to Andy Stanley, Your Move Next. I listen to, gosh there's a bunch of them, but I feel like you can go to church every day and you can find a message and you're like, “Ah! That's what I need today, I'm gonna listen to that.”

Kelsey: That's good.

Chalene: And, you know, even for people who aren't necessarily Christian, but you just need a motivational message of how to do right and how to make sense of things, it's such a fantastic resource. I will a lot of times look for a faith-based podcast for my personal development, over a business-based podcast.

Kelsey: Awesome. And lastly, if someone were struggling, or if they were at the very beginning of their fitness or online brand, personal brand, and they got to sit and have coffee with you, what is the number one piece of advice that you would give them in their pursuit?

Chalene: My number one piece of advice to anyone, especially if you have no budget to build your business, is to share and to give away your best answers. Whatever it is you've figured out. Whatever it is you've gone through, which you might think, “Well, can't—I have to learn this from someone else, why would I share this when I learned it from so-and-so?” Share it in your own way, and in that process, build your email list. There's nothing more powerful, more

rewarding, more freeing, than having people who you connect with, and you own that platform. I don't own Periscope. Facebook can shut me down. Somebody can hack me on Instagram. Make me all go away, you know? And so, when you have an email list of people who get you, and they connect with you, and you serve them, it's like having dear, close, loyal friends who will always be in your corner.

Kelsey: Awesome. Well thank you so much. My mind is spinning, you gave away such great knowledge. So thank you so much, and we will be right back with a quick game after this.

Chalene: Ooh, fun.

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