Fitness Entrepreneur

Up and Comers

by Lucy Soto

May 2, 2008

Amber O'Neal took a leap of faith in 2008. She cut the ties that moored her to the 9-to-5 corporate world of marketing, a world in which she had seen success, to live out her passion: being a "healthy lifestyle consultant." Her family wondered why the woman with the MBA – who had been the girl who did everything and anything to avoid recess – was now teaching people to exercise. Her father was worried she had
chunked her safe corporate job to teach aerobics.

"I think he was worried I was going to move back home," O'Neal laughs. But what the 30-year-old entrepreneur has done is created a niche for herself in the world of big-box fitness gyms. She launched a kind of boutique for health, which offers personalized services, everything from overhauling your pantry and group "boot camp" style exercises to nutrition counseling and in-home, individually tailored yoga training.

Nearly two years after moving to Atlanta for her marketing job at Georgia-Pacific, O'Neal has 26 trainers, nutritionists, and Pilates and yoga instructors in a comprehensive fitness business she calls Café Physique. She operated the business for a year while also working at her fulltime marketing job. "I didn't sleep," she quips. She left Georgia-Pacific at the end of December.

"I've always lived this double life since I got out of grad school," O'Neal says. "I worked part time in a gym at night and worked in corporate America [in marketing for the Sara Lee Corp.] during the day." For women who want to try to strike out on their own in the world of entrepreneurs, O'Neal advises trying to keep your "day job" for as long as possible. "There will be a point where you can no longer do both, and you have to make a choice," she says. She funded her entire business without loans.

"You will blow through your savings faster than you can imagine, and I had a budget that was immaculate. But until you start your business, you can't imagine how many expenses come your way." She also warns of spreading a business too thin. "Decide what you do, and do those things really well," she says. "Every day people come to me with ideas to expand ... And that means I have to say ‘no' a lot. Stay true to your mission."

For O'Neal, that mission, weight and fitness, has always had a personal side. She grew up outside Chicago, the youngest of three children, eating healthy foods yet knowing that the majority of her family was overweight or clinically obese. She recalls being overweight until college.

"Genetically, we were predisposed to being overweight. There was a time in my life where I just said I was going to change this." A few months ago, she renovated a house at the edge of Virginia- Highland and Inman Park to create a small, trendy fitness haven for workouts by appointment.

"For me, it's about creating healthy lifestyle plans for ordinary people," she says. "In order to do that in Atlanta, because of traffic, by the time you make up your mind to go to the gym, get home, change clothes, get there, work out, get home and shower, you've taken two hours. People are time-starved."

She says she wants to cater to regular people who experience the everyday stress and struggle to stay healthy, not just the super athletes. She understands that sometimes people fight a genetic predisposition. She's been there. "You probably are eating better than your five skinny friends next door," she says. "But guess what. You're going to have to work out more than them and push yourself physically harder than them. It's not fair, and I know it's not, but just like anything else in life, it's the lot you're dealt. Now, that doesn't apply to everyone. But that's my specialty."

In addition to offering up Pilates, yoga, boot camps, nutrition counseling and personalized in-home training, she writes a newsletter and keeps a blog. Last month, one of the entries focused
on the healthiest things to order from fast-food restaurants when you just have to get something to eat and don't think you have any other choice.

She's even created a motto that blends into the idea that everyone can achieve their fitness goals, the More or Less Philosophy. She says it's about doing a little more of the good things and a bit less of the "not-so-good things."

That philosophy worked for Mindy Shafer, 39, who had never worked out with a personal trainer and had only done an occasional fitness class. "I'm not a real go-to-the-gym kind of gal," the mother
of two says. "I like my privacy, and I like one-on-one." She's been working out with Café Physique since early June, hoping to lose 30 pounds from pregnancy.

"She had so much knowledge I needed," Shafer says. "I was coming off my second baby. I needed the motivation." So she continued working with O'Neal, who made an inventory
of her pantry and set her up with nutritional guidelines. "We work out once a week, and she put together a whole week long plan for me," Shafer says. She's already met her fitness goals.
Even so, she plans to continue.

"Just having a touchstone once a week, it makes you stay on track. I have to meet with Amber on Thursday, and I don't want to have to tell her that I haven't put a foot in that gym."

"She pushes me hard enough to where I say, ‘It's not good for your business if I die,'" Shafer recalls, giggling. "I like being pushed like that."