Entrepreneur Spotlight・Amanda Ford
“I believe that the most important thing for longevity as a business owner is to remember your humanity and the humanity of the people you are serving. As humans we long for connection with other humans and if we as entrepreneurs remember this, we will thrive no matter the circumstances, no matter the industry.”
I’ve known Amanda for many years and was initially drawn to her poetic musings, her creativity and deeply human outlook on life and business. In 2021 I also started doing remote strength training with her and it’s slowly but surely changing my life. Amanda is an amazing instructor, highly skilled and empathetic, enthusiastic and motivating. I never liked going to the gym but I am falling in love with strength training and that is all down to Amanda’s approach and humanity. I hope you enjoy this essay as much as I did, I was especially moved by her words in the last paragraph. Thank you, Amanda, for an awesome interview and for being such a bright light in this crazy world!
Amanda Ford is a strength coach with a penchant for philosophical pontification, a poet with a love of movement. She loves roller blading, long walks, dancing and drawing circles with her non-dominant hand. Her main motto is this: “Your body is your home, treat it well. Your life is your art, let it move you.”
1) Tell us about your business
I am a strength coach and movement instructor helping women develop meaningful and enjoyable exercise programs so that they can embrace all the challenges and adventures that life brings their way.
I am particularly passionate about helping women over 40 get stronger through basic strength training. Strength training is a simple and tremendously powerful tool to help women maintain bone and muscle mass, stabilize joints, reduce the risk of diabetes, heart disease and other metabolic diseases, regulate stress, improve sleep, increase libido and so much more. But there is much misinformation about strength training that keeps many women from participating. My goal is to help dispel these myths and help more women get stronger.
I offer individual coaching as well as group classes that I call The Strong Woman Society. There’s something really special that happens when women come together with the shared goal of building and maintaining strength.
2) Has Covid changed the way you run your business?
Literally overnight I went from training clients in person at a gym where we had access to every piece of strength training equipment you can imagine to training clients via Zoom where many of them had access to no strength equipment at all.
I had to set up a home studio that allowed my clients to easily see me move whether I was standing or on the floor. I had to figure out lighting and microphones and camera angles. I even had to consider my outfits, making sure that the colors I wear wouldn’t blend into the background or the shapes wouldn’t obscure my movement.
During lockdowns, I lost the in-person, flesh and bone connection. There’s so much I can tell about a person’s state within the first seconds of seeing them. A huge part of my process has always involved an energetic download of sorts – getting a read of my client’s physical and emotional state in general – simply by watching them walk through the door. It’s not possible to do that via the computer. For example, it’s really hard to discern through a screen how a person is breathing, if their pupils are dilated, if they are pale or flushed or if they have subtle tension anywhere in their body. I’ve had to learn new ways of gathering that sort of information, the type of things a person might not tell me or might not even be aware of themselves.
On the more positive side, however, I have opened up an entirely new clientele that wouldn’t have been available to me before. I now have clients all across the US, in Canada and several countries in Europe. This has been so much fun.
I have also seen that a lot of people who have historically been turned off by gym culture are now reaching out to me for training, because they feel safer knowing that they can do the work in their own homes, without anybody else around and with me distanced through the computer. This can feel very safe and do-able for somebody who, for whatever reason, has stress or shame associated with exercise. It is exciting to me that more women might be inclined to start strength training because the barrier to entry is lowered slightly now.
I imagine that I will always have a part of my business online, even when more traditional forms of training open back up.
3) Tell us about a business challenge you have overcome.
I think the biggest challenge for me has been to learn to truly embrace my unique and authentic point of view inside the fitness industry.
So much of what is emphasized in fitness culture has to do with athletic performance and/or physical appearance. I’m not particularly interested in either of these things. I’m not an athlete. I’m not interested in “perfecting” my own body let alone my clients’ bodies.
I have always been most interested in what it means to live a present, honest and authentic life. I’m interested in exploring how movement and strength training can help us to better serve our highest callings. I’m interested in how we can achieve our goals gently, with kindness toward ourselves, without pushing. This is definitely outside the mainstream perspective on fitness which is all about aggression and shame.
It took me many, many, many years to be able to see my style and perspective as not only legitimate, but as a much-needed alternative to what is typically offered. I have come to trust my intuition and believe my direct experiences. I know for certain now that there are many paths to being healthy and strong and that soft steadiness is often the best route to take.
4) What does your self-care look like these days?
As things begin to open up, I have been reminding myself that I don’t have to jump right back into the mix of how things used to be. As a business owner, I have always tried to be ahead of the curve, to anticipate my next step, be forward-looking and fast-acting.
These days I tell myself, “Let it be. Wait and see.” I’m encouraging myself to trust that I will know if and when I need to make a move. I don’t have to make a move now. I don’t have to know today how things will be for me next year.
This is my self-care: Reminding myself to simply be present, to slow down, to feel that down-shift in my body, to cruise at an easier speed. I call it “moving at a smiling pace.”
5) Do you have any tips for other entrepreneurs during these uncertain times?
I believe that the most important thing for longevity as a business owner is to remember your humanity and the humanity of the people you are serving. As humans we long for connection with other humans and if we as entrepreneurs remember this, we will thrive no matter the circumstances, no matter the industry.
Show up and connect to the people you are serving. Be present. Operate on a human-to-human level. This is the thing that has gotten my business through so many unexpected upheavals, including Covid. Humanity. Connection. Presence. This is the basis of anything meaningful and lasting. Everything else is just a detail to figure out.
