725 Kaisa Keranen:

Do you love to move your body … just for the joy of it? The great feeling that comes as you relieve the stress of entrepreneurship? Or like many women is getting to the gym, going for a run, or that yoga or Pilates class, only about losing weight and looking good? My guest today – Kaisa Keranen – is a personal trainer turned entrepreneur who believes health is a feeling not a look, and today she shares how challenging it can be to get that message across.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is known for her fun and innovative ways to get people moving.

Kaisa Keranen is a personal trainer, fitness entrepreneur, and influencer known for her fun and innovative ways to get people moving. As the owner of KaisaFit, she built a 7-figure business and online platform around her motto that health is a feeling not a look!

Have you ever got so stuck into meeting an important deadline at your business that by the end of the day you realize you barely left your laptop? We’ve all done it, juggling a seemingly endless calendar of zoom meetings with everything else on your plate, and realizing you never made time for yourself – just to move. Stretch. Take a walk. Get to the gym or class. Or just breathe. Entrepreneurship is stressful, and its vital for our health – physical, mental and emotional – to take time to move.

Kaisa Keranen first got into movement in high school as a way to combat deep depression. She says soccer and track were her “life preservers” until an injury took away the one thing she felt had saved her.  Kaisa went on to get a Masters in Exercise Science, Sports Performance and Injury Prevention, and quickly started to make a name for herself by pushing back against some of the most deeply held conventions in the fitness industry.

As the owner of KaisaFit, Kaisa has developed her own method of movement which she shares daily with her clients and social media followers worldwide. She lives and teaches by the motto that health is a feeling not a look and believes whole-heartedly in her mission to get people around the world up and moving!

Kaisa has been featured in such magazines as Vogue, Shape, SELF, Harpers Bazaar, Oxygen, and ESPNW. She was featured on the Greatist as one of the most influential people in health and fitness and most notably was asked by Michelle Obama to be one of the go-to trainers for her “Let’s Move” digital campaign.

Today we talk about the importance of movement just for the joy of it, why Kaisa resists selling her programs as a way to lose weight or change your appearance, what it took to get her message working on social media, and how she’s grown her business into the 7-figures.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Kaisa Keranen and be sure to download the interactive podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstocck:      Kaisa, welcome to Wings.

Kaisa Keranen:                Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstocck:      Well, I want to start at the beginning of your story because you first found fitness in high school, struggling with depression. How did all of that manifest for you? What was that like at the time and how did it make a big difference in your life?

Kaisa Keranen:                For me, actually, movement has always been a part of my life. I think if you go all the way back, my mom had me in any sport possible, and so, I’ve always been a mover. But when I went into high school, it was my freshman year, so I was about 13, 14. I started to deal with depression and in order to work through my mental health, I kind of dove into movement and we can head into that story and go deeper if you’d like, but movement really saved my life at that time.

And for me, it was diving into track and soccer and to the outside world, I became a star athlete and I went on to college to do track and field at University of Washington. But for me, that’s where my love and deep appreciation for movement and for my body started to develop. And it’s really been the fire that’s carried me through for the rest of my life and been kind of the fire that’s helped me start the business and keep running the business that I’m currently running today.

Melinda Wittstocck:      It’s interesting how movement helps us overcome depression. Do you think that’s true for everybody? Is it really literally a matter of that if we are fit and strong and healthy on the outside, it helps us on the inside?

Kaisa Keranen:                I think it helps everybody. I definitely think that mental health is different for everybody. And I know that it’s not just movement that helps me work through my dark times because I obviously still deal with it today, but it is one of the key ways in which I can connect to myself. And so when I’m connected to myself, I have a better ability to know what I need in any given moment. I have a better ability now to know that I might be heading into some dark times, I need to switch some things up. And so movement becomes my safe space. And I think that every human being benefits from movement, but I definitely don’t want to blanket and say that if you move, you won’t have to deal with mental depression or mental health.

Melinda Wittstocck:      It’s part of a puzzle, and of course, you learned that too, because you had an injury. And so suddenly what was working for you, wasn’t, and you had to figure out another way, so tell me about that.

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah. Basically my college career was an epic failure. I was injured the entire time, but what it taught me was that I really wanted to learn about my body. And so in college is where I developed my love for my body and understanding how my body worked and that’s actually what propelled me to become a trainer. And so throughout the course of those injuries and learning about my body, I fell in love with what it meant to help other people learn about their body and become educated in taking care of their body and find joy in movement.

Melinda Wittstocck:      A lot of us, at different times in our life, we have some sort of hurdle that we have to overcome and a lot of people find themselves at different points of their lives in pain, for some reason, a physical pain, it could be an injury, or it could be something to do with repetitive stress, or actual just stress. And the medical establishment tends to want to prescribe pills for things like that. What was your process in, because it obviously set you on this whole journey of investigation and ultimately entrepreneurship, around all the things you learn, and now you’ve grown this multimillion business, in the fitness space with KaisaFit. What were some of your early discoveries and what do you know now about really the root cause of pain?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah. This is an amazing question. I want to go backwards and first just say, I think when I started to realize that I was in pain and my body was breaking down and I was 22 years old, I realized that the rules and kind of the standards that everyone was setting for me, especially in the training world, but it kind of applies to life, weren’t working for me. At that moment, I decided I’m going to go on my own investigation. One, clearly what people are telling me is not working for me, so I’m not just going to say that I’m not the norm, but I’m saying there’s other people that are probably feeling what I’m feeling. And two, I don’t want to be in pain for the rest of my life at 22 years old.

And so it led me down a route of really learning about my body and practicing and discovering what it would take to help me feel better in my body. And that led me to mobility. And so I think a lot of my career started by developing really fun and creative ways for people to take care of their body. It wasn’t just working out, but it was almost in some sense, rehab or we call it rehab before injuries happen. And so that’s kind of where that journey began. And it was within mobility that I really healed myself. And so there’s such a love and deep appreciation for that form of movement, that I now get to share with the masses.

Melinda Wittstocck:      Kaisa, so many women that I’ve interviewed on this podcast and I’ve just mentored over the years, start businesses that are very deeply personal to them. Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur or was it just an organic part of your journey to get there with everything you’d learned?

Kaisa Keranen:                Well, I’m going to be very honest, Melinda. I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I didn’t do well with bosses. I’m just going to be totally honest. When I was growing up, my mom considered sports to be my job. And so when I went into college and I graduated, I essentially had two jobs. And within those two jobs, I realized, I don’t do well with people telling me what to do. And so this kind of flame of like, I’m going to have to figure this out. Of course, I have to play the game, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do at that moment, but I always knew, I want to be my own boss. That was pretty intense inside of me. But my career, I had a flame of wanting to be my own boss and then being really passionate about wanting to change the fitness industry, but I never knew the twists and turns that were going to take place to lead me to where I am today.

Because essentially I formed my first business, when I was a personal trainer in Seattle. I was working at a gym and I developed this really cool group fitness, personal training kind of type of way of movement, and I called it Smart Training and they wouldn’t let me develop it further on my own. And so I was kind of forced into like, “Okay, I guess I’m going to have to leave,” and that was the start of me forming my LLC, moving on and renting my own space and starting my own business at 25. That’s not the same business I run now, but it’s taken over the course of 11 years, it’s taken a bunch of twists and turns to lead me to where I am today.

Melinda Wittstocck:      It always does. I don’t think there’s any entrepreneurial journey that’s in a straight line. One of the best metaphors is sailing, and you’re sailing towards a destination, but it is a zigzag because the winds are changing. The currents are changing. I guess in an entrepreneurial context, there’s continual learning, there’s all kinds of external forces. There’s so many things also beyond our control. Did you always know clearly where you wanted to be, that you wanted to be doing a business, like what you have right now, or was that just something that just sort of evolved over time?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah, absolutely evolved over time because when I first started, social media wasn’t even around and social media has been the thing that’s kind of propelled my career. I will say one of the important things is that I always had a north star. As soon as I started training and I became a personal trainer, I was really passionate about bringing movement to the masses and really changing the idea that we don’t move to change the way that our body looks. I didn’t want movement to be about losing weight. I wanted movement to be about a way in which you take care of yourself, you connect with your body and you develop a healthy relationship with yourself. And so for me, I always knew that I wanted to bring that message to the masses, but I didn’t know how. I would say I’ve always had a north star, but I didn’t exactly know how the business was going to work.

Melinda Wittstocck:      I think it’s so intriguing that you’ve built a seven-figure business without selling weight loss or body transformation, because almost everything you see on Instagram or any kind of movement, personal training thing, there’s always usually a questionnaire these days. Do you want to just fit into your clothes again or do you want to be strong or do you want to lose weight? There’s always some sort of end result that’s being sold. Tell me the difference in terms of how you position to avoid that kind of weight loss thing? Work with me and you’ll lose 20 pounds or you’ll whatever. How do you do that?

Kaisa Keranen:                Well, let me just start, by being honest, it’s very, very difficult. But for me, because I grew up and I have always had such a respect level for movement and how it saved my life and how it’s always helped me connect to my body and work through my most difficult days and create my most happiest times, I have a passion to help other people understand that and have that same experience. I also, being in the industry, understand that weight loss and the images that we sell, those are not real. It’s a hook essentially, to bring people in and to get paid.

But most of the time, we’re not setting people up for a sustainable journey of movement for the rest of their life. And so from the very, very beginning, I did not want to have anything to do with clients coming in and changing the way that they looked. And it’s been a very long windy road of me having to learn, to meet people where they’re at, but our entire platform, my entire company now, which is called, just move is all about helping people understand that movement can be fun. It can be creative, and it’s all about helping you feel good in your body and not changing the way that your body looks.

Melinda Wittstocck:      I love that, so it’s just really doing it because it’s enjoyable. And by the way, you feel better after you’ve gone on a bicycle ride or I don’t know, gone dancing or whatever kind of movement it is.

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah. And I do want to say, I know not everybody finds it enjoyable, but I think that’s because we think about movement as something that happens in a box, which we now call the gym and we confine movement to this certain way, but the truth is human bodies are meant to move. And so I really like to help people explore what it means to move. And just like you were saying, maybe you enjoy walking, maybe you enjoy dancing, maybe you enjoy bike riding. There’s a million different ways to move your body. And my goal is not to have you love it, but my goal is to have you love feeling good in your body. And so I always say, health is a feeling, it is not a look. And I really want people to become the healthiest versions of themselves, and I think that adding movement is a key component to that.

Melinda Wittstocck:      Yeah, 100%. Kaisa, with a very different message compared to most folks that are selling personal training or fitness or health in any way, how did you find and connect with your perfect customers? You mentioned social media was a big part of this, but how did you do it?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah. For me at the time, when I was first in the industry, the only way in which I saw that I might have a chance to speak to the masses, speak to more people than I could train within one day, was TV. And it was Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser. And so I didn’t want to be on The Biggest Loser because that was anti my message. But I always, at that moment realized there might be something bigger. There might be a way in which at some point in time, I can speak to more people than I can see in a day. I will say I had this little kind of spark inside my head and then social media came along and Instagram was really, it was an obvious thing for me that I could use it as a tool, to give out some movement tips and tricks, and to encourage people to add just a little bit of movement into their day and to make it fun.

And so I was on one of the first waves of Instagram, so that definitely helped me. There was not a lot of competition. But I will say that I was very clear about my message and what I was doing from day one. I think it’s probably about seven years ago. If you were to look all the way back, I’ve been doing the same thing. And so right from the very beginning, I think, I was refreshing to people. I think there’s so many people that don’t want to be told that they need to look a certain way, they just want to be told that movement can be fun and want to find some joy in that, and I think that’s what I offered.

Melinda Wittstocck:      That’s really, really beautiful. Did you have any kind of assumptions… I’m just going to ask this a different way. A lot of us have an assumption of who our target market or markets are and it’s a hypothesis, I guess, until not. Did you have any assumptions that you proved to be not true in the course of finding, I guess, what would be called in the tech space, which I’m in, product market fit? How many times did you have to kind of iterate to find that exact target market?

Kaisa Keranen:                Well, I think for me, I was on social media at first without realizing that it was a business. And so I was out putting creative movement and I was thinking, I was really going to resonate with people that weren’t moving or maybe had just started their movement journey and I was going to help encourage them to do that. And then eventually, obviously I started creating product for that. But what I realized was, I had the ability to sell to all types of movers. And so there became the people that were just starting their movement journey that we would sell products to. There were people that wanted to recover, which is where a lot of our mobility was sold to. There were people who were advanced movers, so we sold programs to them. I think I learned that there wasn’t just one type of person that wanted to move with the freedom that they just wanted to feel good in their body, and not change the way that they looked.

Melinda Wittstocck:      And so iteration is a really big part of the entrepreneurial experience. Presumably, you had to experiment a lot with your offers and figure out which ones worked and land on something that works. And so, mobility ended up being the thing. And so where is the company going now? You’ve learned a lot along the way. Where are you taking it? How is it growing?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah, and I think we are officially a year and a half old. We have developed a platform now called, Just Move. And so I always knew that one, I wanted to bring movement to the masses, but in order for me to get more people to move, I needed more like-minded trainers. I wasn’t going to be the person that resonated with every single person. And so I’ve always had goals and dreams of being able to create a platform in which other trainers came on to teach their forms of movement.

And so that is what Just Move is all about and really offering movement to everybody and everybody. We have Start, which is our level for those that are just beginning their movement journey, just starting their movement journey. We have beginner level, we have intermediate, advanced and we have everything from mobility to dance, to yoga, to strength training. And so that is really where we’re headed and building that out and making that obviously as big as possible is my goal.

Melinda Wittstocck:      Tell me how it works. How is it priced? Is it entirely online? Is it an app? How does it work?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah, so we have not built out an app yet, it’s all web based. And for us, we have a $20 a month subscription or 99… Well, it’s 199, but on sale currently right now for $99 a year, if you want to do the year package, and you have access to everything. Currently right now, we have over 300 plus workouts on there. We add more every single week. We have programs, so anything that you could possibly want, we have and we’re going to continue to grow. I think one of the keys to our success is really listening to people and really developing movement in the way in which people need it. And so we’re constantly listening and we’re constantly growing.

Melinda Wittstocck:      Yeah. That’s fantastic. Do you have plans to do an app?

Kaisa Keranen:                Absolutely. That is definitely the ultimate goal. I think we’ve built out such a machine on the web platform right now, that it is, to be totally honest, it’s quite an expensive leap to go into an app. And so that is of course the goal. And I think we’re hoping that we’ll be there within the next year, year and a half.

Melinda Wittstocck:      Yeah. The minute you start building technology, and I know this as being a serial tech entrepreneur, there’s a lot more cost involved. But it really helps to have it all kind of nailed down and already working before you do that. It’s easier to get investment for it, for instance, and all of those things. And so what have been the biggest challenges for you along the way, either personally or professionally in terms of growing your business, because we all have them?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah. I have gone through so many challenges and still, I know there’s more to face. I think the biggest and what probably seems like an obvious challenge is the fact that I’m trying to sell movement in a completely different way than the rest of the world, and then especially media says. I am trying to sell movement without the carrot of weight loss. And I think every single day, that brings on a new challenge. And every single day we’re fighting a very intense beast. It’s more than just movement. There’s so many, like the beauty standards and so much of what social media has done, people really believe that they need to change the way that they look. And so it’s harder and harder to stay away from that and to be doing something almost in some sense, the exact opposite of that.

Melinda Wittstocck:      I wanted to ask because almost every entrepreneur, female entrepreneur, that’s been on this podcast, has at one time or another struggled with perfectionism. I think perfectionism is something that we confuse sometimes with mastery and perfectionism can keep us in constant planning mode, rather than in action or can prevent us from hiring people soon enough or really investing in our business. What’s your experience with perfectionism? Was that something that you had to kind of overcome to get where you are?

Kaisa Keranen:                Oh yes. I am a perfectionist by trait, absolutely. And I will be honest. I have not overcome it. I have learned to acknowledge that one, I am a perfectionist and two, that it’s not my secret weapon, because I think for so many years, I use it almost in some sense as the excuse of why I was making everything happen and it’s actually not the truth at all. And so, coming to an understanding of my perfectionism is there, it exists, but I have to acknowledge how it’s holding me back, has been a huge key. And I think being able to push through, really for me, what it means is, being able to push through and be uncomfortable in the unknown in which my perfectionism trait, completely panics and freaks out because everything has to be done right and perfect, and you’ll never have that moment in business-

Melinda Wittstocck:      You’ll never be there, that’s the thing, the funny thing about the entrepreneurial journey is because you realize after a point, that it’s futile even trying and that imperfect action is better than no action at all. I think of the time too, where opportunities are lost because of too long to market and perfecting something that you really don’t know is perfect until you had gone through the process you’ve done with your customers and co-created with them and being willing to hear that, “No, actually that’s not quite right.” And it requires being willing to live with being imperfect most of the time, so there’s a big, big mindset shift. Have there been other kind of big mindset shifts for you along the way?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah, I think along with that, I’ve had such a deep fear of failure and I think that in my athletic career, that is what really held me back. And I think that there’s a definite relationship between athletics and then entrepreneurship. And for me, taking all the ways in which I’ve learned that I’ve failed in my athletics and applying them to business and doing them completely differently, have been one of the keys to my success. Now, I am totally afraid of failure. I would not sit here and lie to you, but I see it as a challenge. And I see it as something that I refuse to allow to hold me back. And so I think that kind of hunger for failure now, helps me to continue to learn and to push through and to work through my perfectionism and so many other things.

Melinda Wittstocck:      I love that. Kaisa, I want to make sure people know how to find you and work with you, everybody that needs to get moving. Everybody was stuck, kind of kept grinding it out behind a computer, it’s like most of the world, so what’s the best way?

Kaisa Keranen:                Yeah. You can come find us at justmove.com. You can find us on the web, on social media and we want to, for any audience that is listening, we want to offer you a free month at Just Move. You just have to use the code WINGS at justmove.com and we’d love to get you moving. And of course, like you we’re just mentioning, we have workouts where you’re even sitting, so you don’t even have to leave your desk. You can sit there, you can stretch. I just want you to start your movement journey.

Melinda Wittstocck:      That’s amazing. Well, I love what you’re doing. Thank you so much, very generous offer to everybody listening, so encourage everyone to take Kaisa up on that and thanks for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Kaisa Keranen:                Thank you so much for having me.