Carol Scott, A lifetime of Fitness ( reprint from Seniorfitnessdirectory.com)
POSTED ONJULY 15, 2019 BY GRACEN HANSEN
Carol Scott, a Lifetime of Fitness
Carol Scott has had a life long passion for fitness as a holistic lifestyle. Throughout the years she has been a CEO of her own company, a spokesperson for well-known labels, and is soon be embarking on a new business endeavor that could change the lifestyle of the average fitness instructor.
GH: How did you go about founding the ECA World Fitness Alliance?
CS: I noticed that all of the continuing education and voice of fitness was coming out of California and the east coast was kind of underrepresented. So initially when I started at first I did one convention just to highlight talent on the east coast to show people what we were doing and then at the end of it someone came up to me and said, “when is next year?” and that’s when I said ‘okay this is gonna be something.’
I took my life’s savings, which was about 50,000 dollars and bet it all on black and ran that first event because it was a passion of mine and I felt like there was something missing in the industry.
GH: How do you be a successful spokesperson?
CS: I think you have to align with the brands you’re representing. I always did, I never chose something that I didn’t personally believe in or use. I think that brands have an identity of their own, and I just think you find brands that are synergistic or represent something to you and hopefully they find you as well.
GH: What sparked your interest in health and fitness?
CS: I was always a child athlete, I grew up in the 60s so women weren’t that prevalent in sports, especially on the playground. I guess I was a tomboy, I started playing sports, and I went to college for phys ed. When I student taught my last year I didn’t have a pleasant experience I found that at the time nobody wanted to go to gym, and there was a lot of rigidity in the program and in the curriculum. You weren’t able to change it at all, so I was seeing my life flash before me like I was destined to roll out the balls and be miserable every day. So instead I went into adult fitness when I graduated college and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do I wandered into what was then called an aerobics studio, and they were dancing and working out to music. I love music and I was a child actor and in school plays and I sang in the chorus and I played the piano, and I was a DJ, I just loved music. So I just thought ‘wow this is kinda the best of both worlds.’ I started going as a member, and one day an instructor didn’t show up so I said ‘I think I could do that’ because I had majored in phys ed, I knew I had the knowledge, so I gave my first class, and from then on I was hooked.
GH: What is Conscious Body Consulting?
CS: Conscious Body Consulting is a consulting firm that mostly represents fitness, but can really cross borders, we’re basically soup to nuts. Through my many years on the planet, and experience I have come across a ton of multiple jobs, in multiple areas, and because I own ECA as the CEO I was in charge of everything. My familiarity, my experience was in branding, marketing, and programming, and hiring, and recruiting. I went from there and people would ask me for my advice on things, and I never really say ‘no’ to a project, even if it’s above my head or if I have no experience in it, and that branched out into exterior design and interior design, and retail, and building a facility from the ground up.
GH: What is your day to day life like as a fitness influencer?
CS: I broke all the rules and I break all the molds. I really believe that your life is a holistic journey, and you should not focus your entire life on just work. So I wanted to integrate work with my life. I usually don’t have to set an alarm, I get up and my days so very, sometimes I train people one on one, sometimes I’m doing a consulting job, sometimes I’m looking for work, sometimes I’m writing blogs, it’s such a varying experience day to day, which I love! It’s never boring and I work proudly all the time.
GH: How do balance and wellness play into your own very busy work schedule?
CS: If I’m busy, I am passionately involved so I’m not really ‘busy’. I believe that your life should be one big passion and if you’re following your passions, then you’re never really ‘busy’, you’re just doing what you love to do. So I want to do what I love to do with my life, so I have a lot of balance. I don’t get stressed at work, because work is a pleasure, and work is passion. It’s like if a painter were painting, are they busy? They are at their craft, and that’s how I look at balance. I think a lot of people break up the body and the mind, they think ‘I’ll go get a massage and exercise and that’ll be my wellness’ and then 75% of the time they’re stressed out, so that’s not wellness or balance. Wellness is a holistic approach to life and it has to be all-encompassing. You have to look at your life and say ‘where are my tolerations, what do I love to do, and what am I doing the most of, and how can I fulfill my life in a full meaningful way?’ It’s not just an individual thing, we can’t just shut the world out. Things don’t always go well and it’s about how you deal when things don’t go well. It has to be you, and your outside environment. Help someone else, the feeling we get when we actually help others brings happiness to ourselves.
And of course, there’s what you’re eating, if you’re exercising, how you’re sleeping, do you have support and positive people around you?
GH: What has been your best marketing tool?
CS: Word of mouth. I think if you’re authentic, and you do your thing with integrity, and you pay it forward and you help everyone else along the way, the universe brings you what you need as well. If you give positive experiences and you stay authentic to your craft then those people that you work with will refer you.
GH: What are your career goals for the rest of this year?
CS: I’m launching a new organization. There’s no support for individual instructors, so I’m launching a guild called FIG which is Fitness Instructors Guild. I modeled it after SAG. Most instructors are independent contractors, so here’s a way to come together under one roof and one voice and they will be louder together. We will provide services for them, benefits, and products for them at a discount and try and do everything we can to help the fitness instructor. FIG will help them plan for the future, and as they get older transfer into different career opportunities.