It's Scorpio season! With my birthday coming up this week I sat and reflected on everything that has happened to me this past year, personally and business wise. It's been a year!
I don't usually make a big deal out of my birthday but, you can bet, with my birthday being on a Wednesday, I will take advantage of the weekend before! We are going to Vegas on Sunday, going to my favorite restaurant, Javiers and staying the night at Aria. I also have Van der Pumps in Paris on the list. Since moving from the East Coast, I haven't been to Trader Joe's so that is on the list too!
instead of being reactive I'm more proactive and less, I should say susceptible to the ups and downs, which you're always going to have in a business, right? There's going to be great months and then there's going to be not so great months and it just evens out at the end. And again, I equate it to a weight loss journey as well. There's going to be good days and there's going to be bad days. And so all you can do is just keep pushing forward. So that has definitely been one of my strengths. I recognize that for myself is that I, I don't give up, I, I just don't. And just keep pushing forward. And, some of my strengths I've recognized, and I also have some weaknesses. This is Mastering Menopause. By using fitness, nutrition, lifestyle, and mindset, you can master your hormones and get your body back. I'm Cathy Coté with Catalyst Fitness and Nutrition. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Mastering Menopause. And guess what? It is my birthday week and it's also Scorpio season. I am turning 56 November 8th. I just wanted to give a rundown of my last year and how I've learned from Scorpio. from my experiences and how I've grown over the past year. So last year, I should say in 2022, I basically tripled my business from the year before. And in 2022, we had a huge year, and I honestly just expected it to keep growing year after year, and I didn't much, and it didn't much to my surprise. So it did grow, but it wasn't as fast paced as it had been before. And honestly, that is completely okay. I am happy to just maintain after having that growth spurt that we had the year before. And now I'm looking forward to growing my team even further. And so basically this past year, I've been tightening up my systems, have implemented, some new programs, just polishing up my deliverables. But my clients are my number one priority. So making sure that they are getting the service that they absolutely deserve. And I've had some talented part time coaches help me get from point A to point B. But at this point, I'm going to need someone committed to just catalyst fitness full time. to go from point B to point C. So to take this team even further. And so on that note, I might as well plug that we are looking for a, an assistant coach. So be sure to check my social media for details about that. I'm not going to go full on into that. But catalyst is growing. And so my needs for my business have changed. And, recognizing that has been a huge part of my growth this year and really stepping fully in to a CEO role rather than when I had started, I was just a one woman show. And then we went to a team of six. And with that, my business has changed. It's it's really exciting to, see what I have grown so far and really getting more dialed in on tracking metrics and, running staff meetings and just leaning. into that CEO role. So it's been exciting. I've definitely have made mistakes this year and the year before that in building the business and so have had to redo some things. But I think that's all part of the learning process as well. It's very much like my transformation when I lost like the initial 20 pounds and then another five pounds to get ready for a photo shoot. It feels like there's always, a different stage and something different. to work on. And, you're, you're pushing for this thing and then you're good. So it's like right now I'm basically in a maintenance phase, would be how you would equate that to a weight loss journey. But it's very exciting to have those changes coming forward. I never used to like looking at like the numbers. I really hated that part of the business and tracking metrics and I honestly just sucked at it. And so getting really dialed in on those numbers and understanding what certain numbers mean, it used to be very reactive to Oh no, he. only gotten a certain amount of clients and realizing like, Hey, that's okay because of these other systems that are in place and other things that are happening. So again, instead of being reactive I'm more proactive and less, I should say susceptible to the ups and downs, which you're always going to have in a business, right? There's going to be great months and then there's going to be not so great months and it just evens out at the end. And again, I equate it to a weight loss journey as well. There's going to be good days and there's going to be bad days. And so all you can do is just keep pushing forward. So that has definitely been one of my strengths. I recognize that for myself is that I, I don't give up, I, I just don't. And just keep pushing forward. And, some of my strengths I've recognized, and I also have some weaknesses. And so the weaknesses from myself. Would be not having systems in place that I needed to have. For my personal life, I've had some really significant life changes. And so we sold our house in Massachusetts this, like almost to this day last year. So we were on Cape Cod we'd lived in this one house for 22 years and so it was really bittersweet. We had bought a house in St. George. The spring before, and then it was time to move out. So this week, last year, I was driving in a U Haul with my brother in law from Cape Cod to St. George. And so we moved all of our stuff, but we couldn't move here to St. George yet because my husband, he's a chef and he had to finish out a season at the restaurant that he was at. So what we had to do was we had to downsize into a townhome. So we had some stuff. So it was really hard trying to figure out like what stuff to keep. And then everything else got shipped out. And so that was hard. I had a beautiful office in my, in that old house and then moved into basically my office was the dining room table and I could touch the refrigerator from my desk. So it was, definitely a challenge. Downsizing. Again, it was like a little bit of an adventure, but it got old. I'm not going to lie. Going from, I think we had I don't know how many square feet, maybe 18, 1800 or something like that to a basically an apartment. A little bit of a challenge. But again, going through those challenges. It wasn't a coincidence that my stress levels just skyrocketed and I ended up working my way into a full blown thyroid issue by the end of November and the beginning of December and I found I was just waking up exhausted. I didn't have any motivation to go to the gym, which is very unlike me. And several times I got up, I would get dressed for the gym and then I would go back to bed. And I'll talk more next week about how to tell if you're having a thyroid issue and what to get tested for and that you can't just rely on your doc saying that everything is normal. But to say that it affected my productivity is an understatement. It definitely did. And in the. process of addressing that I was taken off of HRT, which I had been on for just about a year. And so I was taken off of HRT for a few months and then went back again in the spring. And and just like the last time that happened, I gained right around seven pounds or so. I was super bloated and uncomfortable just like last time. But luckily I knew what to expect and just rode that out instead of, I was planning on going into a cut in the spring, but that was just put on hold as like my hormones balanced out. It takes a little bit, but it was definitely a time of very high stress, being in limbo and not having like a home, even though I had a home. Home is where your family is. My family was around us. But it was just a little bit of a challenging situation. Now, fast forward to spring of of this year, 2023, where I was finally able to move out to St. George in May, and I absolutely love it. The weather is fantastic definitely more active, than I was there in the winter in Cape Cod. But the only downfall was that my husband was still on the cape, right? He had to stay to finish out the job. He finally just got out here a few weeks ago. And so now I can finally say that my life is finally smoothed out and I feel settled. And, the stress level has definitely come down and it just goes to show that life is never perfect. There's always going to be challenges and it's all about how you rise to those challenges because you're just not going, some things you can foresee and some things you can't. I didn't think it was going to be that stressful. I was like, fine, I knew moving was going to be hard. I knew with my business and, having the changes in my business, yeah, those are going to be hard, but I didn't realize the stress of having a business and having staff and the moving situation, like I didn't realize what an impact that was going to have on my life. So that was basically my year. I am really looking forward. to I'm not looking forward to turning 56, but I'm looking forward to the upcoming year and having, putting more things into place. Who knows what's going to happen? We never know, right? Some things can happen that we don't plan for, but I think that's just life and having some resiliency. We, I talked last week about self compassion that has definitely helped me as well. So I hope that you found this. Helpful. Shout out to all my fellow Scorpios out there. I know there's there's a lot of us I will talk to you next week. Bye.