01:10
big fan of the team. And truth be told, I wish I was a designer, but I’m not. I don’t have those talents and skills, but you do. and I’m so glad I met you. Well, so am I. Let’s dig in. Let’s talk
01:22
about it. Tell people who you are, what you do, just a little bit of background. Sure. Sure. I’m an athlete and a personal trainer. So, I see clients uh each day, mainly women between midlife women between 40 and 60. And I see them
01:36
mostly through um Zoom or FaceTime. So, all of my work is online these days. And I see my clients downstairs in a we have a whole gym in the basement. But what I what we’re going to talk about today is is this room that you this is my
01:50
official office where I do my social media, my editing, my meetings like this, other things that are not gym related. So I’m an athlete, I’m a trainer, and I’m also finishing up the creation of my online course which is
02:04
called Hip Ease for people who are considering or going into hip replacement. And this is a step-by-step guide and how to deal with all of the scary elements and how to prepare and how to recover because I’ve been down that road twice. And um so that’s that’s the work I do.
02:23
Well, I really think you could brag a little bit more because you know when I work with clients, I don’t actually book myself. We have somebody who takes the calls, who gives me the client, then I go visit the client. And this is
02:34
probably remiss of me, but I almost never look them up. I almost never Google to see who they are or what they’re doing. I just kind of want to show up fresh. And so I’d worked with you several times. Yes. A little too many times before I finally looked you up. Yeah. To my sugar. Three times because
02:52
we moved more than I wanted to, but it was still a pleasure to work with you each time. Well, I love it. But finally, I was like, I’m going to look her up. I’m gonna see what she’s all about because she’s so dynamic. She’s so interesting. I love working with her. And you are not
03:07
bragging enough. You’re like world champion several times over in kettle bells. Yeah, I do kettle bell sport, which is a which is a a high endurance weightlifting sport. So, it’s not like Olympic lifting or powerlifting where
03:20
you put on tons of muscle. It’s actually um 10 minutes of lifting a weight. Swing. I do swing snatch. So, it’s 10 minutes changing hands on one one time. And I am the best in the world in the over 50 category. I just turned 60 and I’m still competing against the younger
03:37
the younger women who are like up to 30 years my junior. And I’ve been in the sport for about 18 years. No injuries. My hip replacements were due to osteoarthritis which I would have had to have had
03:50
addressed in any case whether I was you know lifting weights or not. So it’s an endurance sport. It’s very unique. It came from Russia about 30 years, 40 years ago and it’s still kind of underground like CrossFit used to be,
04:04
but then CrossFit got exploded with all this big sponsorships and I hope at some point my sport will too. So I travel internationally and compete and and I train in my basement and where I have a whole bunch of other tools for lifting
04:18
also. But you can see I have two Instagram pages which we can talk about later. One is dedicated to fitness for women in midlife and the other one is dedicated to my um accomplishments and training in kettlebell sport because I don’t necessarily train. Most of the people I train are not in the sport.
04:36
That’s like my thing. Well, and it’s so funny. I’m doing the math right now. Can you see the the wheels turning? I’m doing the math. You must have started this in your 40s. 42 I started. And now you’re like a world champion.
04:48
Yeah. Eight times over. Yeah. I started really late. Really late. I was just introduced to the sport. I was a gym class junkie. Literally two classes a day, seven days a week. All through my 30s, I was in the gym two hours a day
05:02
every single day. I was just addicted. Was it kettle bells? Is that what you were doing? It wasn’t kettle bells then. It was it was it was step classes, aerobics classes, boxing classes, and then somebody a trainer said to me, “What the
05:14
hell are you doing? Why are you wasting so much time on cardio? Why don’t you lift some weights?” And I was like, “Okay, show me.” And then he’s the one who so I learned to lift weights. I got better results without having to do so much cardio. And
05:27
then he’s the one who introduced me to the sport because at that point back in like 2005 or six, kettle bell sport had just come to the United States with a couple of Russian coaches and he heard about the sport. and he said, “Maybe
05:40
you’d be good at this because you know, you’re dedicated. You like the cardio aspect, you like the So, I looked into it and that’s how I got on the road to this sport 18 years ago.” And I started at 42. And I got to tell you, for women,
05:54
that’s a really peak age, like late 30s, all through your 40s. And the sport I do is really great because unlike running or tennis, you’re not you’re not running around. you’re standing in one place and using your legs and hips to move and follow the weight. So, it it’s not as
06:13
aggressive on the joints as many other sports. So, it’s it’s a really good sport for longevity. Yeah, that is so interesting. But I just think it’s so inspiring. You know, a lot of people that listen want to be designers and are in their second careers or Yeah. are intrigued by design or or
06:30
whatever. And so it’s so inspiring when somebody kind of turns the corner and not only starts something new in their 40s, but then masters it on a world level. Yeah. It’s very sat. It’s it’s very
06:41
satisfying. Personally, it’s very personally satisfying. Yeah. Well, I hope you went back to that guy at the gym who told you to get into kettle bells and he’s been my mentor for years. Oh, yeah. Watch the progression. Yeah.
06:52
Awesome. Well, now tell us how did you hear about our design firm? How did you hear? In 2020, my husband and I wanted to move out of the city because we had a nice one-bedroom apartment in Midtown, but
07:05
because of the pandemic, we were both working from home. So, I transitioned to seeing my clients online, and he’s an attorney, and he started working from home as well. And we had no space. So, we said, “All right, if we’re ever going to leave the city, now is the time.” So,
07:18
we went to Stamford, and we we started renting a beautiful apartment in Stamford. And I knew I wanted design help um because I I like things a certain way, but I I need input and I didn’t want to spend $30,000 for a living room and then another how much
07:35
money for each room. It I needed it to be affordable. So, guess what I found online? Affordable interior design. Love it. Love it. Betsy helmet. So, I’m like, “This is the person I’m going to call.” And I did. And you came. And I remember so you came
07:52
to our our apartment and you helped us make make it beautiful. And the first thing you said in the living room was well there’s a lot going on here and there was there were there were a lot of different themes and colors and this and
08:05
that and you helped us scale it down and make it make it you helped us with the paint colors throughout the apartment, the the furniture, the placement of the accessory. It just really perfect. Another thing we had in the apartment
08:18
were these vents along the wall, these air vents. And I was like, “Well, what can we do about that? Should we put a plant in front of it?” And you said, “Well, it’s like ears. Some people have
08:29
ears that are larger than others, and you know, just trying to h cover it up is going to make it more obvious.” And you made me laugh. So, it was, you know, you made me you made us laugh. You
08:40
helped us tremendously. I mean, I love the colors you chose throughout the apartment. And then when the more when the interest rates for housing went down, we were like, let’s let’s buy. So, we bought a house in Fairfield. Called