“If your mind isn’t in the right place, you’re not going to get the results” - Ryan Henry
The right entrepreneurial mindset definitely shapes business success. Mindset can be shaped through various methods, but it often starts with your approach to wellness, whether it be physical, emotional, or financial.
A success-focused and intentional mindset will help you identify obstacles and perceive them as growth opportunities or as pathways to new possibilities. It affects your view of mistakes, and your view influences the actions you take. The way you think has a lasting effect on your business.
Join us in Episode 309, with Ryan Henry, my fitness trainer, who is the CEO of Ryfitness. Ryan brings us along his journey from being an aspiring basketball player to the owner of a wellness business. We talk about different components of the Wellness Wheel that he focuses on for each of his clients.
An entrepreneurial mindset sees the potential in every moment. Listen in as Ryan shares the different aspects of wellness that are important to be better entrepreneurs, as well as his five daily habits that you can add to your routine to start your day on a progressive path.
Other resources mentioned:
Thriving Points:
Get to Know the Guest:
Ryan Henry is an Occupational Therapist, a Fitness and Wellness trainer, and the CEO of Ryfitness. He is a former collegiate basketball player which he leverages to develop championship strength and conditioning programs and to motivate his fitness clients. s. His dream is to see others become excited about embracing fitness, which will lead to a healthy lifestyle and community.
Connect with Ryan:
A Team Dklutr Production
“If your mind isn’t in the right place, you’re not going to get the results” - Ryan Henry
The right entrepreneurial mindset definitely shapes business success. Mindset can be shaped through various methods, but it often starts with your approach to wellness, whether it be physical, emotional, or financial.
A success-focused and intentional mindset will help you identify obstacles and perceive them as growth opportunities or as pathways to new possibilities. It affects your view of mistakes, and your view influences the actions you take. The way you think has a lasting effect on your business.
Join us in Episode 309, with Ryan Henry, my fitness trainer, who is the CEO of Ryfitness. Ryan brings us along his journey from being an aspiring basketball player to the owner of a wellness business. We talk about different components of the Wellness Wheel that he focuses on for each of his clients.
An entrepreneurial mindset sees the potential in every moment. Listen in as Ryan shares the different aspects of wellness that are important to be better entrepreneurs, as well as his five daily habits that you can add to your routine to start your day on a progressive path.
Other resources mentioned:
Thriving Points:
Get to Know the Guest:
Ryan Henry is an Occupational Therapist, a Fitness and Wellness trainer, and the CEO of Ryfitness. He is a former collegiate basketball player which he leverages to develop championship strength and conditioning programs and to motivate his fitness clients. s. His dream is to see others become excited about embracing fitness, which will lead to a healthy lifestyle and community.
Connect with Ryan:
A Team Dklutr Production
Nikki Rogers: Your business is an asset that can support a thriving life. I believe this, and I'm committed to making this a reality for every entrepreneur and business owner who listens to this podcast. The Women Thriving in Business Podcast was created with you in mind, whether you were thinking about entrepreneurship or you're a business veteran, this podcast has inspiration, information, and advice you can use to thrive in business.
Women Thriving in Business features candid, unscripted conversations with entrepreneurs, business experts, authors, and academics who will contribute to your business success. I seek out and talk with business leaders who have built, grown, and thrive in business. My name is Nikki Rogers, transformation coach, author, and the host of the Women Thriving in Business Podcast. I work with women entrepreneurs to develop the mindset, strategies, and connections necessary to thrive in business. Join me and your fellow Thrivers each week on this journey of discovery and success.
Welcome Thrivers to this week's episode of Women Thriving in Business Podcast. My guest today is my personal fitness trainer, Ryan Henry, who is the CEO and founder of Ryfitness. I'm excited to share this conversation with you as we talk about wellness and its importance for business success. Ryan shares his latest fitness endeavor. But before we get started, I'll share Ryan's bio.
Ryan Henry is the owner and operator of Ryfitness. Hope, fitness, commitment, and community are ingrained into everything that Ryan does. From playing outside with friends to being an active participant in sports, he has always been passionate about supporting others to reach their peak. Ryan believes everyone deserves the right to not only look their best but feel their best. His motivation comes from seeing clients improve physically, mentally, and emotionally. Ryan earned a degree in Exercise Science from the University of West Florida and began his career as a personal trainer shortly after graduation. His ongoing dream is to see others of every age and condition become excited about embracing fitness which will lead to a healthy lifestyle and a healthy community.
So listen in to this week's episode. Let's go.
Welcome Thrivers to this week's episode of Women Thriving in Business Podcast. I am so excited to have with me, my trainer and a fellow relentless member, Ryan Henry, who is the CEO of Ryfitness. Welcome, Ryan.
Ryan Henry: Thank you for having me.
Nikki Rogers: So let's just get right into it, Ryan. Tell us about your business and what sparked your entrepreneurial pursuits?
Ryan Henry: First of all, I just want to congratulate you on your hard work. Pushing yourself, getting better. I've seen you get mentally stronger, physically stronger, and you're killing it. But my business is, like you said, it's Ryfitness. It's based out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We do private sessions, group sessions. We also do boot camps and online training. What got me started was, I got my Exercise Science Degree from the University of West Florida. I was playing basketball and I wanted to make it to the NBA. I was playing ball. Once that didn't happen, I transformed into, or just really, I wanted people to feel the way I felt while I was playing ball. I felt good, I was looking good. And I know that staying active would help you live a longer life. So that's how Ryfitness started.
I started with my mom and her friends, and they changed my life. Just to see them get their results, it impacted me. My mom started taking pictures, taking trips, and then this lady got married. So that showed me that I can impact a lot more people in the world. So that's how Ryfitness started.
Nikki Rogers: So thank you, Ryan, for sharing that. And thank you for noticing the work. I really believe that the progress I've made is as a result of the way you train. I think you, being an athlete, has a lot to do with how you motivate people who you're training, who are working with you. So can you talk a bit about the importance of mindset as you're working to get physically fit?
Ryan Henry: Yes. You can work out every day. You can try different fasts. But if your mind isn't in the right place, you're not going to get the results. You're not going to see the improvement. So you got people who jump on all types of diets, all types of programs, and then they get mad at the trainer or mad at the program. But it's not that, it's you. It's the person. In my basketball background, from the beginning of the season, we are always setting goals that we all want to be champions. So we work for that, and we know that we got to go in day-in and day-out and push ourselves. So I just bring that into my fitness program. I've seen that it's been working a lot.
Nikki Rogers: And we're going to come back to that and explore that a little bit more in our discussion. But before we get to that, Ryan, as you were transitioning from being an athlete and a student into transitioning directly into being a business owner, what were some of the challenges that you faced as you made that transition and as you've grown your business?
Ryan Henry: I remember when I first started, I was at 24-hour fitness. I was getting so many clients and then I was seeing my check and I'm like, why am I paying these people rent? I felt like they were using me. So I was like, I can do this on my own. So that's when I pushed myself and I opened up my mom's garage. I hooked that place up. It looked like a real gym. And some of the challenges were my first set of clients, they weren't paying the amount of 24-hour fitness, so I just had to figure out different systems and different ways to grow it. But after a while, you figured it out. I gained more experience within the training and within running a business, and I've just seen it grow. What then, even, is you got to learn. So I just gained different certificates. I also went back to school and became an Occupational Therapist. And all of that helped the business, helped me and the business at the same time.
Nikki Rogers: So as you think about that you've been in business now for how long?
Ryan Henry: Probably 10 years now.
Nikki Rogers: You've made it past a lot of other small businesses. And when you think about transitioning from being an employee or renting space at a gym, opening your own gym, figuring out how to get clients that we're paying what you wanted them to pay. What were some of the lessons that you've learned along the way that really helped sustain your business as well as move your business in the direction that you wanted it to go?
Ryan Henry: My thing was just always good service. Just always try to make sure I'm treating people right. And once they pay their money, it doesn't matter how much it is, but just give them a good experience when they come to Ryfitness. My biggest lead generator was word of mouth. So that's what just helped me grow. I'll go out and pass out my flyers door-to-door and go to different events and speak. But my main thing was just treating people right, and just getting my business from word of mouth. That was my plan.
Nikki Rogers: And as you were growing, did you take on a team? Did you build a team? Did you build staff members? And if so, who were some of the first people you brought onto your team?
Ryan Henry: Yes. For a long time, I was doing everything by myself. But I was just so young so it was just so fun to just be learning or whatever. But as time went on, my first people were my family members. My mom was a smoothie lady. One of my good friends cleans the place for me. And my little brother was my assistant trainer. So I started off with family and I'm just so grateful to have that because I know a lot of people don't have that access. And I'm just so grateful.
Nikki Rogers: As you brought on family members because that is always an interesting prospect, so work with family. As you brought on family members, how did you figure out what roles they were going to play within your business?
Ryan Henry: It was just so funny that my mom, for instance, loves being in the kitchen. She loves trying new recipes. She loves trying new things. And she just always thought that, even when I was making my first smoothie, she always had an idea of how to make the smoothies. So I said, you know what, I'm just going to just make her do it, and just pay her to do that. As far as cleaning, the guy's name is Ludi. Ludi is always doing some type of handiwork or yard work, so that had to be his position. And then my little brother, he always followed behind me. He's always doing what I want to do. He always wanted to be around. So I just trained him to be more of a people person, and it worked out to have him as an employee.
Nikki Rogers: Great. Now, as you think about your passing years in business, you talked about working with your mother and her friends to help them on their wellness journey. What are some of the other accomplishments that you're most proud of over your time in business?
Ryan Henry: While I was running the business, I still wanted to play basketball so I started coaching. I got a job at American Heritage, which was one of the top schools down here. It's a private school. And in my first year, I was able to make it to the State Championship as their Strengthening and Conditioning Coach and Assistant Coach. By the third year, we were able to win the State Championship. And then after that, I took a year off, and then I got the opportunity to be the Strengthening and Conditioning Coach for Piper High School in Sunrise, Florida with the girl’s team. We won three back-to-back District Championships and I'm like, I must be doing something right. So that was one of my biggest accomplishments. It’s just jumping right in and then giving them the tools and the skills that I had growing up. And it was able to make them become champions in their own right. So I'm pretty proud of that.
Nikki Rogers: I love it. I love it. So earlier, when you're talking about your experience in basketball and always focusing on being the champion. Can you talk about how that applies to business as it relates to getting up every day and start? Not necessarily starting over, but when I think of a basketball game, whether you win or lose the next day, you got to come to watch the film. You got to get back in the gym. You can't spend a lot of time focusing on that loss. So can you talk about how that mentality from being a basketball player translates into being a business owner?
Ryan Henry: One thing that I always remember that my coaches used to tell me was to forget the last play. There are still three more quarters that you got to perform so that we have a chance to win the game. So I just apply that to my business. You may have bad days, bad weeks, but you just got to get up and keep doing it. And when you love what you're doing, it's easy to get up and strive to search for clients or make new flyers or come up with new events or programs. So I just use that mentality of, man, forget the last play, and let's go get it. And that's what pushes me every day to get up now at 4:00 AM in the morning.
Nikki Rogers: I love that. Forget the last play. Even a smaller chunk of time or even the whole game, forget the last play. Let's move on to the next thing. I will say that you're the only person who is getting me up at the crack of dawn every morning to work out. What I've found is, it started out about the workout and it's morphed into so much more. So the fact that I am getting up at 6:00 AM and sometimes 5:00 AM, depending on where I might be in the country or on vacation. It's about discipline. It's about the commitment to doing that that is translating into how I run my business, how I approach my business.
One of the things that you focus on, or you focus on several things? You're not just about physical fitness. Can you talk about some of the other pillars that you are working with people on as you do the physical training?
Ryan Henry: Well, it's all about the whole wellness wheel. We're focusing on, of course, the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, and intellectual, and just to go into one of them. Intellectual, we got to read. A lot of people don't read. How are you supposed to gain more or know more if you're not reading? They say if you want to hide something from somebody, put it in a book. Also spiritual, you got to have faith. You got to have faith in something.
As far as your fitness journey, your wellness journey, you have to know that it can happen. You can get better. With my Occupational Therapy background, I'm not only working with athletes or adolescents, but I'm also working with injured people or people with different diagnoses. You got to have faith that if you broke an arm or you had a stroke, that you can get better. Because you can, I've seen it happen. Research shows that it happened. I don't want to say to push that on people. But I hope people understand that emotionally, you got to be balanced. You got to know that things were okay, are okay, and will always be okay, and so on and so forth. Within my program, we follow the whole wellness wheel. And once you tap into all of those, you're a superhero and you got superpowers.
Nikki Rogers: Yes. You feel like you can fly, even if you can't just yet. So I love that, Ryan. As you think about Women Thriving in Business, which is the title of our podcast. Are there any particular or specific aspects of fitness that women should be thinking about, or are there specific benefits that women get from diving into physical fitness?
Ryan Henry: I like to tell my clients that you can make more money if you invest in your health. And investing in your health, it would help you conquer three things. Stress for one. Being able to emotionally handle any type of workload or any type of issues that you have throughout the day. If you get up, start today with a workout. You will release those healthy endorphins, and you will push through and be strong and be ready for the day.
Also, it'll help you with your clarity. It will help you with your focus. And last, but not least, the way you look. The way you look will show how you feel. It will build your confidence. And you already know, once you look a certain way, it'll help you with your sales. People want to buy from people who they feel like they look like or who they want to look like. So adding fitness into your daily structure, weekly structure, it'll help you get more money.
Nikki Rogers: And that's what we want, more money. Ryan, so I'd love for you to share with us your daily routine. I know you're up very early training folks. You're training folks in the evening. So what are the things that are on your daily to-do list to help you fill out your wellness wheel?
Ryan Henry: For me, I know that I have my five daily habits that I have to do every day. I'm working with people every day, helping everybody. But the way that I help myself, that I know that helped me stay progressive and that I stay consistent with is these five things. I structure my day. I have to schedule my day. If I don't schedule my day, then it's going to be a disaster
I also have to count my money. For a long time, I wasn't dealing with my income and expenses. I didn't even know what I was making, and it wasn't good. Well, it was good but I didn't know what I was making. So that's not good.
Number three, I have to work out. I got to work out. If I don't work out then I'm not going to look the part and I can't have you guys doing something that I don't do myself. Also, I have to read. I read 10 pages a day. Sometimes that's all I could squeeze in, but it helps me. It helps the brain to get larger. It helps me to be more creative. And last but not least, I have to lead generate. I have to post something on social media. I have to send out some emails. I have to contact clients and make sure everybody's alright. And once I do those five things, I'm good to go.
Nikki Rogers: Great. Thank you for sharing with us your five must-do’s for daily success. So, Ryan, there are a couple of questions I ask all my guests. So the first one is, what are two songs that are on your power playlist and why?
Ryan Henry: So I'm going to put you guys on. So I'm a Jamaican. My background, I love reggae music. I love dance hall music. So there's an artist named Vybz Kartel. His song is called Unstoppable. It's one of the most motivational songs. I love his intro, so you got to get that one. And then, I like to turn up to this new guy. What's his name? It's Lil Baby featuring 42 Dugg. I think it's We Paid and it's just, this has my shoulders going up. It has me go on for the day, and I'm just ready. So those two songs, 42 Dugg, We Paid and Vybz Kartel, Unstoppable.
Nikki Rogers: I like it. I'm going to add those to my playlist. And last question. What is one book that you've read lately that has influenced how you do business?
Ryan Henry: One of the books that I read recently was 50 Cent's Hustle Smarter. And he talks about how he came up in the music industry from his street life, and how he was just able to translate from street life to the music industry. Being able to be ahead of the game. I won't tell you guys too much, but it was so good. Get that book: 50 Cent, Hustle Smarter.
Nikki Rogers: Thanks, Ryan. So we got two-song recommendations and a book recommendation. Ryan, if folks want to know more about you or about Ryfitness, where can they find you?
Ryan Henry: You can find me on all the social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. You can find me at Ryfitness, R-Y-F-I-T-N-E-S-S.
Nikki Rogers: Great. And I know you have a new exciting venture happening. So can you tell folks a little bit about that before we sign off?
Ryan Henry: Yes. Yes. For this new fall season is going down y'all. I am at Chicago State University as the Director of Sports Performance for the basketball team. So come check out my girls and my boys because we're going to kick some butt this fall and winter.
Nikki Rogers: Great. Congratulations on that new venture. Are there any events or programs coming up that you'd like our listeners to know about?
Ryan Henry: Listen, 2022 is coming up and we got to stay healthy. On September 13th, our new six-week shape-up is starting. So tie your laces, put on your fitness gear. We are online, knocking out the six-week shape-up. So be ready. You can go to ryfitness.com. You can sign up because it's going right.
Nikki Rogers: Great. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for being here today. It has been great talking to you. I'm looking forward to our next six weeks adventure together. But in the meanwhile, have a good one.
Ryan Henry: You as well. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. I love, love, love, love your show. And I can't wait to be on more with you.
Nikki Rogers: Great, thanks. Have a good one.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Women Thriving in Business Podcasts. If you like this episode, share it with a friend. You can also join us on social media to share your feedback and comments. We'd love to hear from you. Be sure to like, review and subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode. Until next week, keep thriving.