Dr. Ryan Gleeson

The Chloe Condition: How She Built her Fitness Empire from Zero

Episode Summary

Chloe is from Myanmar. In 2013 she graduated, got a corporate job, and felt completely unfulfilled despite doing everything right. She found fitness that year, started sharing free health and wellness content online for women like her, and people began asking her to coach them. She never intended to build a business. Then COVID hit, and 3,000 to 4,000 people signed up to her first fitness challenge overnight. She called her mum the next morning not knowing what had just happened. The community she has built since — tens of thousands of women, going seven years strong — is what she calls her greatest achievement. This conversation covers the real timeline, the free work you have to do before anyone pays you, why feeling unfulfilled despite a good job is not a you problem, and what it actually looks like to build something people never want to leave.

Episode Notes

Chloe is from Myanmar. In 2013 she graduated, got a corporate job, and felt completely unfulfilled despite doing everything right. She found fitness that year, started sharing free health and wellness content online for women like her, and people began asking her to coach them. She never intended to build a business. Then COVID hit, and 3,000 to 4,000 people signed up to her first fitness challenge overnight. She called her mum the next morning not knowing what had just happened. The community she has built since — tens of thousands of women, going seven years strong — is what she calls her greatest achievement.

This conversation covers the real timeline, the free work you have to do before anyone pays you, why feeling unfulfilled despite a good job is not a you problem, and what it actually looks like to build something people never want to leave.
 

Topics covered:

 

00:00 Introduction

00:43 What actually broke in 2013

04:00 Was fitness the missing thing or just the start

04:59 Were you depressed or just out of alignment

05:46 How do you explain that feeling to someone who doesn't have the words for it

07:54 What part of old Chloe still shows up

09:36 The shadow self and not killing off who you were

10:59 How fitness coaching became a career

12:33 Entrepreneurial DNA: selling stickers in Myanmar at grade five

14:08 Are entrepreneurs born or made

14:53 What were you like at school

17:22 High tolerance for uncertainty and Ryan's bankruptcy story

20:09 Instagram is lying about what entrepreneurship looks like

22:11 Why it actually takes ten years

25:03 What surprised you most about working with real clients

27:17 Why the mindset work is where transformation actually happens

29:12 What coaching thousands of Asian women revealed

31:40 People pleasing, resentment, and looking after others before yourself

33:01 Finding out at 22 or 23 it's okay to say no

34:35 How one hour of fitness gave Chloe ownership of her own life

37:23 What started to break as the business scaled

38:17 COVID and the morning thousands of people signed up overnight

40:36 Why it was never overnight: two years of building came first

41:38 When does life actually start to crack as you scale

44:06 Is the community your greatest achievement

46:07 Are you building the community you once needed for yourself

47:47 Did you start with free or low ticket

50:28 What men don't understand about women

53:14 The pressure on modern men

58:09 When clients come for fitness and stay for everything else

01:01:42 Would you ever work with men

01:03:19 Why expand into activewear in a saturated market

01:05:47 How do you manage multiple businesses at once

01:07:41 What is the highest leverage use of your time

01:11:11 What were you naive about when you first started hiring

01:15:28 Why competition doesn't scare her

01:18:49 Zero fear of failure

01:19:08 What are you building in the next ten years

01:23:56 What does success look like with no money, status, or approval
 

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