How Fifteen Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life with Samantha Bilby

Jillian

Welcome back to The Mindset of Podcasting. So what if I told you that just 15 minutes a day could improve your life? Well, in this episode, that's exactly what we're talking about. My guest is Samantha Bilby. She is a Body Positive personal trainer who helps busy women get fit and feel good without restriction or spending hours in the gym. She's the owner of Bloom Flourish Fitness an online fitness community, where she provides daily 15 minutes workouts for busy women. Samantha is a self-proclaimed diet dropout who has given up the chains of yoyo dieting and embraces the life of food, freedom, and self-love. Her mission in life is to help women love and appreciate their one strong and beautiful body. So let's dive in. Hi, Sam. How are you today? Good, how are you? I am good. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm excited to chat today.

Samantha

Me too. Thank you for having me. Yes. So to begin with, why don't you let the listeners know who you are and what you do? So I'm Samantha. I am a body-positive personal trainer. So that is what I've coined myself. I am a personal trainer. I do online coaching. I have a membership called Bloom Flourish Fitness BFF for short, and we do at home 15 minutes workouts because we're busy women. And not only are we busy women, but I believe that we should enjoy our life and not, like, live in the gym like I used to do before I found the body positivity world. So I really just love to preach to women that small steps every day is how we get to results. We don't have to kill ourselves to see a result. And that it's more than just trying to reach a number on the scale. It's about feeling our best and loving our body no matter what size because a lot of women in our community, too, are new moms and our bodies change and are always changing.

So trying to hold on to this one image of maybe how we looked like in high school is not very realistic. So I just really love to preach that in our community. 

Jillian

Yes, I love that. 

Samantha

Yes. I think that's one of the hardest things as women, too, because we see all the models and all the things on TV and everything and we think we need to look a certain way but everybody's body is different. 

Jillian

Exactly. Yeah. So I love what you are doing and I love that you created the space for women to feel confident in their bodies and also build community. Because I feel like accountability definitely helps when you are on a journey to bettering your health and your mind and the whole journey of life, I guess.

Samantha

Exactly, yes. And just having a community that you can lean on. So why was building this community so important to you? So, like you said, accountability is everything because especially as women who I mostly serve, we serve, serve, serve everyone else. And then the first person to be taken off of our to do list is ourselves. And I always say to the group, don't stand yourself up. Like you wouldn't just skip out on a coffee date with a friend or a doctor's appointment, but you're like, oh, I don't have 15 minutes for myself, so I'm going to take myself off of my Todo list. So the community I wanted to create was for the accountability. But also growing up, I moved a lot, so I had a lot of struggles, like creating friends, especially women. I think we can tend to see each other's competition and we can gossip a lot, like connect over gossip and hating our bodies and connecting over, like, oh, well, I'm not eating that because I'm trying to be good today. So I really wanted to create a community where women can connect by being themselves and also having a goal together of, like, bettering ourselves. But we are our only competition, we're not competing against each other. 

Jillian

It's so easy to compare yourself to other women and yeah, we do it all the time, but just having that place where you're accepted for who you are is so important. Yes. And I know you say 15 minutes a day can change your life. Can you tell us how? Yeah, so I get a lot of feedback sometimes of like, well, how can 15 minutes make a difference?

Smaantha

And what I say always is consistency over intensity. So 15 minutes is something that you can fit into your schedule. And what I've seen in the past three years of having BFF in my own life, this is the most consistent I've been exercising ever. I've worked out five to six days a week, every week for the past three years. And it's because there's no excuses. We work out from home, so it's not like you got to go to the gym. Gas prices aren't an excuse. The gym membership, even during when everything shut down, we were like, cool, we're working out from home. So women found themselves even more consistent. But when you have to have an hour of working out, you're like, well, I don't really have an hour, so I'm just going to skip it. So it's the 15 minutes is the sweet spot because there's no excuses. It's even hard to find a half hour sometimes. And it's what we do every day. It's what we do most days that make a difference. Not every single day.

So missing a workout here and there is fine, but it's easy to get back into it when you know it's just 15 minutes. Yes, we can all find 15 minutes in a day. And like you said yeah. Then we don't have to take the time out to drive to a gym and to get in there and practice and all the things that takes upsets the weather. Sometimes we have no excuse. We're at home just hit play. 15 minutes done. Exactly. And another thing, too, is like, maybe finding child care. And the women in BFF find that their kids love to do the workouts with them. And one of the women in the group, the BFF babes, we call ourselves, her daughter, was like, what you got for me today, Sam? And she's like, ready to do the workout. And I'm like, that's my biggest thing that I love. The kids are now involved, and you don't have to find child care. And it's a bonding time together. And as trying to show the younger generation that it's okay for Mommy to take time for herself. And working out is something that's fun. And I don't do it because I hate my body. I do it because we're celebrating our body and they get to see their moms doing that, and then they will grow up totally different than they could otherwise. Yes.

Jillian

That's a beautiful thing to bring to the next generation, because I heard my mom a lot say, I need to diet, I'm fat. And those things stick with you as you grow up because you start thinking those things. Yeah. And even if you tell them, like, you're beautiful, but at the same time, you're saying, I don't like how I look. It's like they're watching, they're listening, and they want to be like you.

Samantha

And I'm not a mom yet, but I have a bunch of nieces and I see a lot of my friends who have kids and they want to be just like their parents. Yes, exactly. They're going to copy what you do. 

Jillian

Most of my listeners are entrepreneurs and women. How do we even find these 15 minutes a day? I know some people are thinking, oh, my gosh, I don't even have that. 

Samantha

Yes. So my number one recommendation is look at your phone usage. Now I have an iPhone. Now I switched. I went over to the dark side of iPhones, and I get a reminder every week of my phone usage. And so just look at your social media usage. And what I really love with, like, iPhones is it says, like, different categories of, like, you were doing productive things or like, it puts different categories. And I guarantee you, you scroll on your phone at least 15 minutes a day. Mindlessly so that's the number one thing, I think, that eats up our time. But also there's this quote I always used to hear it's like, if you can't find five minutes to meditate, you should meditate for an hour because basically that means you have way too much on your plate. Practical ways is like waking up 15 minutes earlier. I mean, that's really not going to make a huge difference. Rather than waking up 2 hours earlier, just waking up 15 minutes earlier or finding time during your lunch break to do a little workout right before you eat. Yeah, just finding those little spots and spaces in between your day and it actually will give you more energy throughout your day, I find. And the women in BFF find that, too. Like, wow, I was really struggling. So during my lunch break, I got my workout in and now I was able to push through the rest of the work day.

Jillian

Yes, exactly. Yes. There is 15 minutes somewhere in your day that you're probably not seeing. Yes, we can all find that.  So I know when people think about working out, I know sometimes I'll be like, oh, my gosh, that sounds horrible. I don't want to do it. It sounds like it's going to hurt and be a lot of work. So how do we even get started with working out and changing our mindset around how we view working out? 

Samantha

Yeah, the mindset, I think, is everything because I think that especially with social media, we have this idea that working out has to be, like, so intense and you got to do like, 10 million burpees, and if you're not, like, sweating to death, you're not doing it right. But I preach two things that I always preach, is move your body, period. It doesn't matter what it is, even if it's just a walk. Walking, I think, is one of the best workouts in the world. And then the best workout is the one you enjoy. So if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to do it. So it's like, how did you like to move your body as a kid? That's one way you can figure it out. Like, did you love to dance? Did you love to bike ride, rollerblade, play basketball? Those are workouts not everything has to look like an organized, circuit based, reps and sets workout. So that's one option. And the other option is to just do five minutes. Start with five minutes, maybe do some jumping jacks and push ups, let your body lead the way and say, I'm going to commit to five minutes, and then maybe you find that you want to do ten minutes and then do it again the next day and then the next day, and then start working up to those 15 minutes. 

JillianYes, I hate, like, leg day, squats and lunges, but I love to dance. And dancing is a leg workout. 

Samantha

It is. You know what's funny is recently I was telling the BFF that I was like, leg day is my least favorite day. They traditionally say as like, women stereotypically love leg day. I do not. My favorite is shoulders and back. I could do that all the time, but eventually I do it because you can't skip leg day. That is the truth. But also, you're right. Dancing is a great workout. Walking up a hill, that's an intense, like, day workout. Yes, you got to find and make it fun. Make it fun. I'm like, you give me some weights and I'll live all day, but give me some squats and lunges. I'm like, yeah, they're taxing, but I do it once a week and I'm good. Yes, once a week. See, you're not doing it every day. So that's another way to get out of that mindset. Like, hey, this is 15 minutes of your whole week. Like, how many hours are in a week? 15 minutes. You could do this. We do 15 minutes Monday through Friday. Every hump day is like day for us, like legs and glutes. So we know that we're working the legs and booty every Wednesday. The rest of the week we do upper body. And then Friday, which would be something like, you say you like dancing, we do flashback Friday every single week. And what it is, is like kind of think of old school aerobic style, like Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons esque. We have really fun music and we move our bodies. Some days it's silly. Some days we do, like, fun dances. And those are the most fun workouts that we love. And it's not like burpees, push ups, squats, but we're moving our body in a fun way. And while most people are skipping Fridays because we have this mentality of like, I'll just start again on Monday, we and BFF are like, living for Fridays. 

Jillian

Oh, I love that. That's awesome. Yes, most people are like, ready for the weekend, so, like, we can just start again Monday. I love that. This has been a really great talk. I think lots of women are going to be able to find their 15 minutes. And if they want to get started with you, which I know some will, how can they connect with you.

Samantha

You can find me at Bloomflourishfitness, on Instagram, on Facebook. Our website is boomflourishfitness.com. And yeah, you could join. We have a monthly membership or a yearly subscription, which right now I'm running a great deal for that for summer. But it's no commitment. And it's an amazing community. You get a brand new workout every single day that's recorded, so you can just press play. And the community is everything. The women in there are top notch. There's great women who are entrepreneurs. So it's great networking. It's not exactly like the community where we network about our businesses, but you can't help but connect when you're connecting authentically. 

Jillian

Yes. And all the videos are, like, recorded and come out that morning, so you can do it whenever you want. Or is that how it works?

Samantha

I post them the night before because who knows if someone is traveling and has to wake up at 02:00 A.m. To work out, it's posted the day before, and then there's hundreds of workouts to choose from. So if one day you find my shoulders bothering me, I don't really want to do shoulder day. You have like 500 workouts that you can choose from in the group and choose whatever one you want. 

Jillian

That is awesome. Thank you again for being on, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much for having me. This was great. Thanks. 

Wow, that was a great episode.So much of what we do comes down to mindset, which is really why I started this podcast, because even podcasting comes down to mindset, and just changing the way we think about working out and finding those 15 minutes a day in our schedule can really change our lives, really. So I do work out every morning for 15 to 20 minutes. I do this at 07:30 A.m. Every single morning. And I do have to say, it's giving me more energy.It makes me feel more awake in the morning. It has just changed my life. And yeah, working out, doing what makes you feel good will give you more energy and help you be a better mom, woman, entrepreneur, everything in your life. So definitely go check out Sam's program, especially if you've been wanting to work out at home and have a community to support you, because she's amazing as you heard in this episode.

The podcast Tip of the week is you need to go check out Descript. So I started using this about two weeks ago. I had a client mentioned it to me, and I've heard about it before, but I like the systems I have. I'm always busy about trying something new. There's a learning curve. But I tried it out and oh, my gosh, amazing. So this client wanted to start doing video podcasts along with the regular podcast. So what I do now is she sends me the video. I upload the video into the script and it transcribes it. It puts the audio there and the video. And then you can edit the video and the audio at the same exact time through the transcript. It makes it so much easier. Now, I don't do fine tune editing in there, like the really in depth editing. I don't like Descript for that, for taking out breath sounds and things like that. But it's really great for taking out filler words. What you do is you highlight a filler word, like or A, and you right click and hit remove filler words.And it will remove all the filler words in that audio and video. Now, once in a while, you can hear the skip, the audio skip. So I just listen through in Descript. And if I don't like the audio script, I'll either fine tune it in Audacity or I will put the back in because sometimes you just need an um in there to make it sound good. So if you have been doing podcasting and you want to add video podcasting in because that is becoming very popular now, I highly recommend Descript. You can try it out. I think you get three free hours to try it out with. That's what I did. And now I pay I think it's $15 a month for 10 hours. And I love it. I use it for transcription now. I got rid of otter. That was what I was using for transcription. So I use it for transcription. Now I use it to video edit and I do some editing in there. Like I said, it's not my favorite for like, editing. I do go back to Audacity if I am editing, but I love it if you're not into super detailed editing. This will be so easy for you to use for your podcast. I will make sure that the link for Descript is in the show notes. So go check it out.

An update for you. I'm recording this the end of August. This comes out near the end of September. And I'm hoping what I'm saying is true, but we should have moved by now. We are moving from a 2500 square foot, five bedroom, three full bath house to a 1200 square foot, two bedroom apartment. And I know you're probably saying why? Why would you do that? Well, we are moving because my husband, he owns a local coffee shop and the building that it is in is up for sale. So basically we're kind of forced to buy it because one, whoever does buy it could kick us out or raise the rent astronomically. And we couldn't afford it. So, kind of in risk of losing our business if we didn't buy it. So we decided to buy the building which has an apartment above it, the two bedroom apartment I'm talking about. And it also has a one bedroom apartment behind it. So we will get some extra run from that tenant. They've been there over a year and they're really good tenants. They come in the coffee shop every day, so that's going to help them. So we are moving upstairs to that apartment, selling our house, and downgrading like crazy and trying to downgrade. When you have a husband who likes to hold on to everything and two kids who also like to hold on to everything, I think I'm the only one who doesn't like hold on to things. So I have been trying to get them to downgrade. It's been so much fun. I think it's going to be easier. Once we're in the apartment, they realize, oh, my gosh, I have no space for anything. I think then they'll be like, okay, I got to get rid of stuff. I have been helping them get rid of stuff, but yeah. So I'm excited about it because, one, is going to help us declutter this house, which we need to do. And two, it's going to be so much easier to clean. Like, so much easier to clean. There's only one bathroom that's really small, obviously so much easier. I'm very excited about that. There are only two bedrooms. So what we are doing is half of the living room is going to be my son's bedroom. We are going to put up some temporary walls, and then the dining room is going to be our living room. And so we're not really going to have a table to eat at. We are going to create, like, a bar area in the kitchen. There is one whole wall that is blank. So we're going to put like a little bar table with stools so that we have a place to eat. But yes, that is the plan. It's going to be fun. I am going to document everything on Insta stories. So if you aren't following me over there, go follow me at Jillian Grover Podcast Solutions. I am going to be talking about my life journey and trying to do that with kids. So this should be fun. So I'm excited though. I have gotten really creative with some storage options in the new apartment and how we can do that. I'm excited for this new move and new opportunity. My husband will be very close to work. You can just run downstairs. So that will be great. And yeah, I'm very excited. So thank you so much for listening today. Please, if you could go leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, it will help the podcast get up higher in search results. I would really appreciate it, and I'll talk to you next week.