Healthy, sane, and feeling good is the new rich.

Beautiful Readers,

Recently I have had the privilege of interviewing tons and tons and superb Personal Trainers, Meditation instructors, Boxers, and Massage Therapists. Next week it’s more boxers, and later in the week, Tai Chi instructors. Sounds awful, right?!? Hardly. It’s awesome. Amazing.

I seriously can’t imagine an industry I’d rather be working in than fitness and wellness.It’s literally almost embarrassing sometimes how personally gratifying it is. When I interview I get to talk all day long to one after another person I learn from and admire–and, for the most part, even the people who for one reason or another I think it is unlikely we will work with,  they all impress me with their selflessness and sincerity.   

The caliber of folks showing up at these interviews, held in a little studio space on the Upper West Side, sometimes requiring a long-ish wait in a small waiting area, is shockingly high. Perhaps  it’s our higher-than-average pay scale, our famously demanding requirements (onlythe best need apply and we mean it), or the weirder-than-ever economy, but the wellness industry is full of pretty much everyone I would ever want to hang out with right now. They’re smart. They’re sincere. They’re super professional.

They’re also not making a lot of money.  And without knowing much about them personally, despite their “material poverty” as one particularly engaging meditation instructor referred to her financial situation, I gathered they feel more grateful and gratified in their lives than most people do. But then of course they do.

The talented people I have been meeting with are doing what they do because they feel that they were either  ”chosen” to help and heal people, or just because they love the thing they do so much, they couldn’t bring themselves to do something else. And they are no fools. Every one of them knows that overall white collar jobs pay more and offer a lot more security (well, they used to–and likely will again). Nearly every one of them has considered throwing in the towel  and going back to dental school or prettying up their resume. Some of them have held huge jobs in the professional world and left them voluntarily to help people in these ways  instead.

So what’s not to like? The people who make up the professional world of fitness and the “healing arts” are  just as you would hope they would be. The people I meet are remarkably sincere, non-competitive with each other (you have no idea how many staffers  have brought me their better-qualified friends to meet with me after they have interviewed.), secure in themselves, bright, eager to improve our client’s lives with thier knowledge and experience, and feeling on the whole pretty good about life as it is. Could we all be so fortunate?

Fondly,

Alix Florio

President; Beautiful Fitness