Encouragement from Another Women Business Owner

I asked another impressive woman business owner to share her story. Christina Burnham owns cBEfit, LLC a personal training practice in Wheaton, a Chicago suburb.

Christina grew up in Massachusetts, attended Northeastern University, where she began spending a good bit of spare time in the gym and felt really good about getting herself fit and being with others doing the same. After college, she joined a great company in Tampa, Florida, working as a chemical engineer. After work, she was able to continue working out and teaching aerobics (now Group Fitness) at a local gym, which she loved doing.

Christina transferred to an oil and gas engineering company in Houston, Texas, and then to an environmental engineering company in the western suburbs of Houston. In time, she became somewhat discouraged, as while she liked the work, she is a “people person” and much of the time she was working on her own with little social interaction. So, she and her husband moved to the Boston area and Christina got a graduate degree in Education from Harvard, fully intending to teach high school chemistry.

It turned out that another engineering company out of Boston offered her a position, with a much higher salary than a high school teacher, and she accepted. To her great fortune, the company had recently moved into the suburbs, occupying a building that had a fitness center, though at the time it was being used for storage. Christina went to the senior manager suggesting that she could convert the space back to a fitness center and could offer to conduct fitness programs during lunch hours and after work. The manager loved the idea, as it would be welcomed by their office of 900 employees.

The fitness center was a grand success, peaking at a schedule of 8 classes per week and four instructors.  Her program offered classes in cardio, strength, yoga, and a special core conditioning workshop. Employees loved it, and even employees of an insurance company in the same building used it. Christina was happy with her work and her group fitness instruction. However, a few years down the road the financial crisis hit, and being a publicly owned company, significant expense reduction occurred, and the fitness offerings were considerably cut back.

Coincidently, about this time, Christina’s husband, Steve, accepted a new position in the Chicago area and they moved to Wheaton. Christina continued in her engineer role at a company in the Chicago suburbs, and while she did enjoy the work, she was unhappy with her work/life balance. They had a young daughter and Christina wanted to be able to spend more time with her, especially at this stage of her daughter’s life, so she resigned to be more available to her daughter, and this also enabled her to paint and do other needed work on the house they had purchased.

It so happened that Wheaton Park District has a fine sports center. Christina asked if they needed a Personal Trainor, which they did and she pursued Personal Training Certification and began instructing one-on-one and group sessions. This was perfect as it enabled her to pursue her passion for fitness and teaching while having the flexibility to control her hours, thus enabling the work/life balance she desired.

Well, a year ago, COVID hit and the sports center shut down, so Christina, who by this time had a following as she is a very able instructor, took the initiative, created cBEfit LLC, and began offering virtual and outdoor training and group fitness classes, which people welcomed.

I asked Christina about messages to pass along to other women. She immediately encouraged that women have the “self-confidence” to take initiative and follow their dreams. She had the foresight and discipline to always put away a portion of her earnings, and this gave her “financial confidence” when making a career change as she had a reasonable amount that she had saved.

Of course, having one’s own business can be daunting, as there is little security and no company health care insurance package, yet it is exciting and a welcomed challenge.

Christina has the benefit of a supportive husband and admiration for the increasing number of happy women who now have their own businesses.

Her advice – go down the road that leads to your dream. If it does not work, or if you gain a new dream, you can always go down a new road. Don’t be afraid to take risks, to make a mistake. There will be new roads to take, new doors to open.

Christina frequently took initiative to do what she loves and she now has a balanced, happy life.