I have some huge news–something I’ve been sitting on for a few months, but as things go, like my pops says, “Gradually, gradually, gradually, suddenly”—SUDDENLY Neghar Fonooni, Jen Sinkler and I are heading to Sydney, Australia this February for our annual Radiance Retreat event, and we have 11 spots open at the 30% OFF rate, available through this Sunday
only.
Thinking about bringing The Radiance Retreat international gets me a little teary, because it was not that long ago that I met, in person, the two women who have become a couple of my best friends and now business
partners.
Over the last 2.5 years, Jen and Neghar and I have each grown so much personally (they both got married!), emotionally and professionally, together and on our own. It makes me proud and warm inside to look back over that time. It’s been magical. Not always easy, and not without stress, but I could not be more grateful for all the outcomes--good, bad, ugly.
But I also wanted to let you know a few things because I think it's easy to
look at fitness pros online and think, well, must be nice, just hang out with your friends and travel!
And while the life we've each created is something we now love, it wasn't without conscious decision-making ongoing, plenty of risk and lots of old-fashioned hard work.
When Neg, Jen and I met in person, we were all just babies in our business. Neghar had been fully online for about 6 months, Jen had just quit her 9-year position as editor
at Experience Life magazine and JillFit was only a couple years old.
Thinking back on meeting these two, I now see that it was an important point in my life because two things happened, I mentally leveled up by investing in networking (with time and actual money) and I aligned myself with two women who had shared values, similar work ethic and a burning desire to make a huge impact. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, but these two, for me, got it, and
loved it all just as much as I did.
I want to tell you how we met and why it was such a turning point in my career trajectory.
In late 2012, there was a discussion ongoing on Twitter between myself, Neg, Jen and a bunch of other female fitness pros, none of which at that point I’d met in person. Someone mentioned a yoga retreat in Sedona and how cool would it be if we all went to it???
Well, I think you know me well
enough to know that … I don’t yoga. Not because I don’t think it’s an amazing fitness tool and a worthwhile practice—I wish I did it more!—but I have always been one of those people: “I know, I KNOW I need to do yoga more!! I am so tight!” All of which is still true, BTW, but for whatever reason I've never dedicated time to it.
So, anyway, I’m in this Twitter convo, and I’m all like, “Yeah, yeah, sounds great! Let me know the details! Email me!” the whole time
pretty much thinking in my head there’s no way in hell I’m going.
So time goes on and nothing really comes of it.
Until.
It’s a Friday in February 2013 and I get an email from Jen: “Hey Jill, so the deadline to sign up for the yoga retreat is this Sunday (two days) and everyone else dropped out, but Neghar and I are definitely going and we need a third roommate, you
in?”
Gulp.
Am I in?
I don’t know. I check out the registration page, it’s $1000.
I can’t afford—or … can I? Should I?
It was so out of my comfort zone at the time to commit to something like that. I wasn’t a big traveler and I certainly wasn’t in the practice of dropping a grand on something. Especially something that I had no interest in doing, like
yoga for 6 days! HAHAHA.
But I remember saying to Jade, “I’m going. I need to go. I’m doing it.”
Whipped out the AMEX and booked, never having met either Jen or Neghar in person. And now I was committed to spending 6 DAYS HOLED UP IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, eating vegetarian food, no wifi, no #snaxxx, no wine, stuck together in some crazy bunk straight out of Dirty Dancing!
Not kidding.
And that’s
exactly what happened. We did yoga 2-3 times a day (and I was sore as shit for the entire week), ate vegetarian meals, tried to sneak in chocolate, hiked, talked, laughed our assess off, and even went off-roading in a Prius when we tried to leave the yoga compound. And the “dirt” aka mud in Arizona was slick and sloshy because it was downpouring!
That particular episode was a bonding moment. Forty-five minutes of me driving at 8 MPH, laser-focused so as to NOT
DIE in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, with intermittent comments from Jen and Neg: “Good job, girl.” And “You got it.” This effing golf cart! HAHAHA.
Thankfully we didn’t die, but we did have to return our rental car looking like this (oops!):
