When Melissa Wood-Tepperberg decided reinvent your careerShe felt like she had hit rock bottom: “I was at a point in my life where I wasn’t happy with who I was. I didn’t love myself,” she says. Instead of looking for her next job as a waitress, she “looked within” and decided study yogaPilates and nutrition, she says.
In 2015, Wood-Tepperberg began sharing her personal training method, called The Health Melissa Wood Method, with others. “The more I healed and started connecting with all these things that were slowly getting better for me, I started connecting the dots and sharing those little things Step by Step so that the people who were watching could really feel that this was something they could do too.”
Melissa Wood Health now has thousands of subscribers who pay $9.99 a month for workouts. The first-time entrepreneur has accumulated almost 1 million followers on Instagram. In 2021, Harvard Business School even published a study on their success titled “Melissa Wood Health: How to Earn the Maker Economy.”
“I started in my living room over six years ago,” says Wood-Tepperberg. “I had a $24 tripod from Amazon. I used my phone.” First of all, “my office was my living room.” Now he has a spacious, white-and-beige studio and office in Manhattan’s posh Noho area.
“To be able to have a space like this that I envisioned and literally loved for so many years and have it come to life is an amazing feeling,” he says.
‘Give yourself that space to take care of yourself’
The notion that you need dedicate an hour to self-care it’s not practical, says Wood-Tepperberg. “He had a history of thinking if you don’t have an hour to spend on a workout, then 20 minutes of workout? What can you do in 20 minutes? That was the mindset he had.”
Your understanding has evolved. Now, one of the pillars of the Melissa Wood Health method is that it’s key to prioritize your well-being through mindfulness and exercise, Wood-Tepperberg says, even if it’s only for five minutes at a time. “Give yourself that space to take care of yourself, whether it’s a walk, a 10-minute flow, a meditation while you bathe.”
As a mother, you know that it is not always easy. But it’s important, as she’s learned through experience: “I’m really good at taking care of myself now, because I know what life feels like when you don’t,” she says.
When Melissa’s son was born, she would take “micro-moments when he was napping or when he was in his bouncy chair” to move her body. “I’ve never felt better in my life. I felt this level of peace and tranquility in my mind,” she says.
Once Wood-Tepperberg started incorporating meditation, mindfulness, and movement into her routine, “I became a very different person,” she says.
“I focused on the impact I was having”
changing your mindset it’s a great place for anyone looking for a change to start, says Wood-Tepperberg. “I truly believe that when you believe so strongly that anything in your life is possible, there is limitless power that lives within each and every one of us.”
However, when Wood-Tepperberg started filming his workouts and sharing them online, it didn’t feel like that. “When I started, I was still in the process of really learning to accept and acknowledge who I was,” she says. “So there was definitely this element of self-awarenessBut I was really able to get past that fear because I focused on the impact I was having and on other people’s lives.”
On his first day filming his workouts, “the tripod was wrong, it was dark, sometimes I wasn’t even setting up my mat where you could see the moves perfectly. I had no microphone, you couldn’t really hear me, but I didn’t care. I really let it slide.” all those things,” he says.
Getting out of her own way and focusing on how she can help others has helped Wood-Tepperberg find purpose and meaning in her life and career, she says.
To succeed as an entrepreneur, ‘trust your gut’
“The most important thing I have learned as an entrepreneur is to always trust your instinctWood-Tepperberg says. “There will always be people in the room who happen to be smarter than you, maybe more knowledgeable than you in a particular space, but at the end of the day, the decisions I make are really based on this knowledge.” interior of a deep intuition”.
The most important thing is that you have to believe in what you’re doing, she says. “I know what this way of life has done to me and how it has transformed me from the inside out. I show up with a different state of being. And I believe so strongly in the work I share that it will do the same for anyone who has the will to give it all and really prioritize themselves.“
Instead of using money or metrics like followers, “I would define success by your level of happiness in your life. I think that’s the most important thing,” says Wood-Tepperberg. “At the end of the day, it’s about how satisfied and happy you feel doing the smallest things.”
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