Erica Christ, a Pilates instructor and registered dietitian, hit a growth ceiling until an orthopedic surgeon asked her to create an anti-inflammatory diet app for post-surgery patients. She joined a program to learn app development and business scaling, calling it "business school for entrepreneurs" with 900 people in her cohort. The mentoring taught her problem-solving skills that protected and grew her business.
Chapters
My name is Erica Christ and I am both a Pilates instructor and a registered dietitian and also a certified diabetes educator. I have been in the wellness industry for almost 20 years. I was doing really well. I've been in business for almost 10 years and I had really hit a cap. And as a small business owner, you think you're doing pretty great. Unfortunately, when you're a small business owner and you're on your own, hitting a cap isn't always the greatest thing because it's really hard to grow and it's hard to figure out what to do next. How to scale your business. An orthopedic surgeon had come to me and asked if I would create an anti inflammatory diet for his patients in order for them to heal faster and get out of pain faster after their surgeries. So I came up with an idea that in order to reach the masses, his patients, faster and more efficiently, that we would do this through an app. Neither one of us knew how to create an app. When I found the program, I went back to the surgeon and I said, you know, I want to revisit this idea. And I think this is a perfect opportunity to figure out how to learn how to create an app. I don't know how to do this and I need to learn, and this would be the greatest opportunity. Not only did I learn how to create an app, but again, I learned how to scale my business as well as protect it in case of further disasters in the future. The mentoring guided me or continues to guide me to seek out answers for myself rather than giving me answers. As the program winds down or finishes, I'm walking away with a skill set that no matter how old I am, no matter how many years I've been in business, I will be able to continue to grow my business, protect my business, and take care of it, and problem solve in a way that I've never learned before. The simplest way I describe this program to everyone who has asked me about is going to business school for entrepreneurs. Basically teaches you how to take your idea and bring it to fruition. No matter what your idea is, you will be sitting next to 900 other people. You will all follow the same program and it teaches you how to make your idea work. It's brilliant.
