Healing My Business. Or Healing Me?

How I Went From Engineer To Energised

In 2009, I was working my first job in engineering – which is what I went to university for. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was just catching up to our industry. Orders were down. And then slowly at first, then almost weekly, people were made redundant.

I moved desks every few weeks to fill the gaps left by those made redundant. I started the year at one end of our sprawling office… and ended it sitting just outside my manager’s door.

It was… depressing. And I was depressed.

I watched the stress levels of my older coworkers who were now doing the jobs of 2 people each. It’s funny to think of them as so old when they were probably around the age I am now.

I thought to myself: I don’t want this.

My mum, who saw I was struggling, encouraged me to learn something new (makes total sense she’s a Projector also) so I decided to learn more about a passion of mine: fitness.

I asked a personal trainer from my old gym who he had studied with and a few weeks later enrolled in a course to become a certified Personal Trainer. On Mondays and Wednesdays I’d come into work early and then leave early (they where very good with things like that) to battle my way through traffic into the city in my little Subaru Forester.

There I’d spend 4 hours learning about human anatomy and different energy centers before heading home and falling asleep to The Office.

At the time I didn’t think too much of it. It was more about finding some sort of purpose or meaning, I didn’t realise that it would be the start of a massive career shift.

Teaching Everything I Know

By mid-2010 I’d finished my engineering work placement and put my engineering studies on hold. I’d already started and failed at starting an outdoor fitness bootcamp and was now running a successful second attempt.

I was truly loving discovering that I could motivate people without creating a high-pressure environment, but instead by just being my warm and encouraging self. As an engineer I felt like I always had to be performing, but as a trainer, I could just be my creative self.

By the end of 2010 the bootcamp was well established and that’s when the next thing happened.

One of the other things I’d put my depressed mind to learning in 2009 was creating website (I may have been doing this when I should have been working). Specifically, I learned how to make SEO-friendly niche blogs.

So I created a website about bootcamps, because lots of people – I assumed other fitness trainers – were searching for ‘bootcamp ideas’. I used this new platform to share the kinds of fun, team-based workouts I was running at my bootcamp. I didn’t really know any other trainers doing what I was doing and I hoped that creating a blog about bootcamps would attract like-minded professionals.

I was so embarrassed about being an ‘online authority’ though that I initially wrote under a pseudonym and didn’t even ‘like’ the Bootcamp Ideas Facebook Page because I was worried friends and family would find it.

But despite my shyness, the blog started attracting other trainers who were also feeling isolated and like they had no one to exchange ideas with.

My first affiliate relationship followed soon after. Then a community competition (that became an annual thing), then my first ebook, then another, then I quit working as trainer in 2014 and my first membership site, BootCraft, arrived in 2015.

The momentum was strong and I was excited to see what I could do with it.

Then Time Stood Still & Went Extremely Fast At The Same Time

Somehow, after all of that change in 5 years (2010-2015), not much changed in my business over the following 10 years (2015-2025).

I mean, a pandemic decimated the fitness industry including my business and just refused to pay attention to my brave face.

After 10 years I sell the same membership, courses and books that I sold back in 2015. I’ve tried out a bunch of different marketing things and product ideas in that time but nothing has gotten the traction like they did in those early days. It’s like time is standing still.

But, in my personal life it feels like that time has just flown by.

I went through several patches of deep depression. We moved out of Melbourne to an area we really love living. I became a volunteer firefighter as I had lots of time on my hands. Our first daughter arrived. We had a really rough start to parenthood. I took 4 months off. Zoe took up surfing. Our second daughter arrived (this time we had some idea what we were doing).

Every year passed in a moment. And every year the business didn’t grow. It felt like I was endlessly repeating myself online while things changed rapidly offline.

Recently, I wondered that maybe this is some weird kind of burnout? A burnout where you have enough energy to keep showing up, but no energy to try new things and experiment.

Why I Didn’t Realise It Was Burnout

Over the years, especially since having kids, I’ve had moments of inspiration and motivation in my business. During those times I’ve been able to test out a new marketing strategy or to launch a new product, but I’d always finish feeling exhausted.

There is a part of my human design which speaks to needing to have my heart in things to really find success.

This makes sense when I look back:

• I no longer had my heart in engineering, but I love training people and grew my bootcamp quickly.

• I also found I loved sharing what I was doing with other trainers and connecting and exchanging ideas with them online.

There is another part of my human design that speaks to the need for rest.

Since having kids more of my energy goes towards them. I no longer had oodles of time to rest, contemplate and muck around with ideas. I feel guilty taking time for myself unless it’s to work and if I was ‘working’ I had to be productive.

It’s taken years to realise that I can no longer run a business the way that I used to before I had kids.

And I’m not sure my heart is in Bootcamp Ideas anymore. At least not in the same way.

I’m no longer running fitness bootcamps myself. I haven’t for years.

I absolutely adore the trainers I work with, but I’m not really a trainer myself anymore. I kept telling myself for years that it’s enough to just be the connector. The person who facilitates the conversation – but it’s burning me out.

And I’ve realised that instead of creating a business where I get to pursue my interests and help others, I’ve pretty much just made myself a job.

Trying New Things

Don’t get me wrong, my boss is awesome and the work is pretty good, but it doesn’t light me up the way it excited me in the early days or the way running bootcamps did.

Since 2015 I’ve been trying to work out what’s next for me. I’ve had some niggles:

• I started a podcast sharing how men can have better relationships with other men.

• I began working on a fitness certification around team-based training.

• I tried out being a business coach for a while.

• I undertook a course in Human Design. I even started a podcast about using Human Design in business too.

But every time the ‘sure thing’ of Bootcamp Ideas and the steady income it provided lured me back.

Plus, like I’ve written, I don’t mind running my business. There are moments that enjoy it. My heart just isn’t in it and I think I’ve spent enough years trying to work out a way to feel excited about it again. I feel like I’m sounding wishy-washy but I wanted to put this down here because I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way.

It wasn’t until I sat with this and the discomfort of the uncertainty of this that I was able to start seeing a different way.

Finding The Energy Again

I once worked with a coach () who said something along the lines of,

‘I’ve never worked with someone who spends so much time thinking about optimising energy and his schedule.’

For years I’ve been trying to create the ‘perfect work day’. Because if I could work that out then surely I could turn staring at a screen all day into something energising and nourishing.

As a personal trainer I never tried to design the perfect day. And as an engineer I spent as much time away from my computer as possible.

Now, I’ve realised I was doing that to try to fix the wrong thing. It wasn’t that I needed every moment or task in my life optimised, it was that I need different moments all together.

It’s like I’ve been trying to fix the missing window in my house by tinkering with the dishwasher.

I’m a different person to who I was 10 years ago. So, of course, what’s energising to me has changed and I haven’t truly taken the time to explore that.

And I know why too. Because it feels scary AF.

• What if I find something I like so much that I don’t have as much time for my family?

• What if I find something that requires me to be braver than I feel?

• What if I find something that means I have to give up something else that I like?

• What if I find something and it upsets someone else?

• What if I find something and it doesn’t work out?

So I’ve been sitting with it (hat tip to my coaching group for the support) and continuing to sit with it even though it’s incredibly uncomfortable at times.

Some things are starting to come to the surface and as you’re now on this journey with me I’d like to share some of the things I want to explore:

1. I want to train people again. Face-to-face. Particularly men. I don’t want to just teach people how to be good coaches anymore, I want to actually coach people and be a good coach myself once more.

2. I want to coach others, particularly creators and knowledge workers. In how to work with their own energy. It might be as simple as getting better sleep or it might be helping them during their own change. I’ve been helping Zoe (my wife) with this in her business and it’s been very cool to see how things as she’s trusted this more and more serendipitous moments are showing up.

3. I want to learn how to dance. This one is new and obviously not business related. At first I was going to dismiss it. I mean, dancing? But because I’ve been working hard to listen to my inner voice I was able to realise that actually this is something that feels meaningful to pursue.

Where To From Here?

I wrote most of this post in a couple of hours and then it’s taken me several weeks to edit it and finally hit publish.

The writing was more or less done, but I held off because I wanted this to be perfect. I wanted you to be like ‘Wow, this is amazing, subscribe!’ but, of course, perfections kills connection. This needs to be somewhat messy.

So I hope you’ll bear with my unusual grammar, mixing up of tense and sometimes strange tangents as I work this out.

I’d love to have you here if you’re going through or have been through something similar.

Thanks for being here.

-Kyle