Welcome to The Manifestation Q&A Series.
I am Jennifer Pastiloff and this series is designed to introduce the world to someone I find incredible. Someone who is manifesting their dreams on a daily basis.
Someone like Cheryl Kellond.
Today’s guest is Cheryl Kellond, one of my students, who I’ve gotten to know really well over the past year. Cheryl is a mother of four, an entrepreneur, and a triathlete. And somehow she balances it all ….while being able to chew gum at the same time. Grrr. She has a really big goal to hit by July 13th and it is forcing her to manifest in a whole new way and reach WAY beyond her comfort zone.
Jennifer Pastiloff: What is the biggest lessons you’ve learned from triathlon
Cheryl Kellond: The three most important things I’ve learned through tri are:
- Unleashing your inner athlete creates awesome power in every aspect of your life that goes WAY beyond sport. <= This fires me up so much I want every woman to experience it.
- If you push outside of your comfort zone long enough and hard enough, you’ll establish a new threshold. The ability to own and control this growth is very powerful.
- The biggest – and only – real competition is me vs. me. I don’t beat myself up if others do better. But I am also accountable to push myself to my own best performance. Merely doing better than others is not enough.
…that said, even when competing against yourself, it’s always fun to “chick” the boys!
Jennifer Pastiloff: Is triathlon the only thing you are passionate about.
Cheryl Kellond: No. I come from the business world so one of my favorite things is to support other women in business. I am constantly drumming up support for other female-founded businesses. Through my corporate career I’ve mentors dozens of up and coming women. I am one of a small group that can show the choice between career and family doesn’t have to be binary. I actually I feel I have an obligation to “give back” because of this.
Jennifer Pastiloff: What are you Manifesting right now. You know, what sh*t are you making happen?
Cheryl Kellond: I’ve combined my passion for endurance sports with a ballsy “Go Big or Go Home” business. I’ve started my own company – Bia — around women’s sports and fitness. And I am not talking about a services business, or a software business, but a business that also involves consumer electronics. [www.bia-sport.com]
We’ve spent the past 18 months bootstrapping, borrowing, begging and hustling to design and prototype the first GPS sports watch designed for women (although guys are scooping it up too.) Other products are big ugly wrist computers that just give you data on how fast or how far you’ve gone. Ours has an iconic look, fits beautifully on smaller wrists, and has this brilliant safety feature.
Bia isn’t just selling a product, we are enabling motivation, pride, and freedom for the 45M women making running, fitness, and endurance sports part of their lives.
Here is a fun video of Bia in action.
Jennifer Pastiloff: Can you share with us a bit about your journey, leaving the safety of a corporate paycheck to follow your passion?
Cheryl Kellond: My journey reads like an inspiration board from Pinterest.
It started like this:
This was easy. I have four kids, a career, and training – there is only so much time in the day – it was like the ultimate multitasking!
Then it went like this.
I’ve always been a risk taker and truly believe I can do anything. And I have. We built a killer team, developed prototypes of an amazing product and secured a large manufacturing partner. It sounds impossible, but I did it.
Despite all we did, we still need additional investment to get the product to market. Traditional venture capital investors believe in the business plan but the don’t think women care enough about fitness and sports to be a real market for us. They won’t invest until they see sales. But I can’t sell until the product is done. The classic Catch-22. Again, seemingly impossible. I was stuck.
And then someone reminded me of this. And I came full circle.
Business is like sports. I wasn’t going to create magic unless I was outside of my comfort zone. The emphasis on MY. The only way to achieve MY big magic was to push MY big limits.
Jennifer Pastiloff: So what is outside your comfort zone?
Cheryl Kellond: Asking for help. And that is what I am doing right now.
In order to prove to investors that we have a market – and to raise the money we need to finish up our product – we launched it on Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is a crowd-funding platform that lets people pledge money to products and projects they are passionate about to ensure they get to market. Based on the amount of the pledge, backers get different rewards. In the case of Bia, backing our project means you can be the first to rock your wrist with a Bia sports watch. It’s sort of like pre-buying a Bia, but at a discount! There are other rewards too. And pledge – even $1– makes a difference.
The trick with Kickstarter is that it’s an all or nothing funding model. We have until July 13th to reach a $400K fundraising goal. If we don’t reach that goal, none of our backers will have their credit cards charged, but we also don’t get any funding and we aren’t able to get this product to market. High stakes!!
So this means I need to ask hundreds of friends and strangers to help, both by backing my project and spreading the word to get their friends to back it too. This is WAY outside of my comfort zone.
I need to constantly remind myself that asking for help is actually offering someone the opportunity to share in my success. It proves them the satisfaction of helping create it. You actually do a great job of reminding me that and I’ve blogged about it before. You are my role model on this. To bring it back to a triathlon analogy, it’s like letting someone draft off of you on the bike.
It’s should be even easier with Bia, because asking someone to back us on Kickstarter means they can ensure this product they love becomes a reality and that they get it first.
Jennifer Pastiloff: Ok, so let’s manifest some MAGIC. 30 seconds outside your comfort zone. Go!
Cheryl Kellond: Bia’s most unique feature is that it’s the only sports watch with a safety alert. If you are ever in trouble out on a solo workout, just press a button, and your location is sent to loved ones and emergency services. Bia gives you the freedom and peace of mind to run whenever, wherever. That’s a pretty awesome gift to yourself or to a friend.
So if you are a runner, if you know a runner, or just want to be part of proving magic happens when you leave your comfort zone: check us out on Kickstarter and back our project so we can get this amazing product to market!
Jennifer Pastiloff: Nice work! And how about to wrap up. What are some words you live by?
Cheryl Kellond: That’s easy.
Pretty Form + Pretty Smile = Pretty Fast
It started as a running mantra but it applies to everyday life. Pretty Form is really just acting with intention and mindfulness and staying focused not just on the end goal, but the path you take to get there.
Pretty Smile. We all know that a smile begets another smile. It’s also the perfect way to “Act as if”…sort of wearing your vision board on your face, if that makes any sense. More interestingly, and I’ve done some reading on this, scientifically smiling also releases endorphins which give you more energy, more creative powers and more strength. It actually has hardcore physiological benefits….very similar to endurance sports.
And both together are the fastest way to achieve your dreams.
