Today we’d like to introduce you to Gianna Contillo.
Gianna, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My coaching career started at age 18 as a personal trainer and health coach. I turned my father’s home office into my own and immediately began taking clients. My own body image is what drew me into the health & fitness industry. For most of my young life, I struggled with my body image, and I knew I wasn’t alone.
My personal struggle was my inspiration to empower women like me to love their bodies. I thought being a personal trainer would provide me the platform to do that, but I got sucked into the world fitness competitions, which brought me face to face with my own inner demons around body image. I competed in 3 fitness competitions in the bikini division, and each time, my obsession with my body grew, and my self-confidence continued to diminish.
Meanwhile, my passion for my work as a trainer slowly dwindled. Each week, I watched my female clients lose weight and get stronger but continue to feel dissatisfied with their bodies. They couldn’t see their own progress because it wasn’t their body that needed to change, it was their mindset about their body that needed to change. I spent many years in denial of just how bad my own obsession was, but listening to my clients opened my eyes and made me realize that this was an inner issue that no amount of weight loss could ever fully heal.
But, the fear of what would happen to my body if I let go of my strict and disciplined lifestyle kept me training for more shows, until I had a breakthrough. I remember it all clear as day – I was training a client and caught myself critically staring at my legs in the mirror. It definitely wasn’t the first time this happened but this time was different. This time it was almost as if I woke up from the fog I was in and remembered why I started training.
At that moment I realized, the work wasn’t fulfilling my mission. I wanted to make a change in the lives of women on a BIG scale, and I knew this work was much bigger than workouts and nutrition. So I quit. I left the comfort and fun of my role at the fitness studio that I was working in and went off into the unknown.
I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing, all I knew was that I needed to move on and focus on my own healing so I could figure out HOW I could do the work I knew I was born to do, empower women to be their best selves. I went back to school to finish my degree, and I chose to major in politics because at the time I thought I could make a change on the biggest level possible using the political process.
Meanwhile, I was kind of a mess. This time of transition was a time of healing for me, a time to step into my power, and map out how I would fulfill my life’s purpose, I was guided to a yoga mat to search for the answers, and I fell in love with yoga. I immediately enrolled myself in my first yoga teacher training, and that was just the beginning.
My studies of Yoga brought me all over the world and led me to study under one of the fiercest women in the yoga world, Ana Forrest. I enrolled in her training for my second teacher training & spent 30 days straight with her in Texas. It was like yoga/life boot camp. She broke me down and built me back up; it was the hardest 30 days of my life. I then went off to deepen my studies abroad in places like India, Cambodia, Thailand, and Tibet to study Buddhism, Yoga, and Eastern Spirituality, all while completing my undergraduate degree.
Soon after graduating, I moved to Boston to study women’s leadership as a professional discipline in a graduate program. I was accepted into the Gender, Leadership, and Public Policy Program at UMASS Boston with the Center For Women in Leadership and Public Policy. Throughout the program I worked on elections and within the State House but by the end of the program, I decided to move away from politics and focus on women’s leadership in a different capacity; going all in on my women’s life coaching business, which I had only been able to focus on part-time at the time.
My time working alongside prominent women leaders in business and politics in Boston opened my eyes to a major issue affecting women in leadership positions. I began to realize that women with big goals often lacked the confidence, time, and structure to prioritize self-care. For years I struggled to try to figure out HOW I could bring my passion for health, healing, and women’s leadership together. I didn’t want to choose between the two, so I could never put my all into one or the other.
But this revelation was the ah-ha moment I needed to show me that there was no need to choose because unlocking women’s full potential with health & self-care for personal & professional success was my calling. It felt RIGHT, and I knew I had the skills, knowledge, and expertise to fill that gap because I lived it myself and I already had a system to facilitate this specific transformation as well. Which is how my 90-day signature system for women, Success Foundations, finally came to life.
The goal of Success Foundations has guided women through the process of laying a strong foundation within themselves and using self-care to skyrocket their personal and professional success. It’s a culmination of everything I learned on my own journey to help women unlock their full potential and reach their personal and professional goals without burning out, even if their busy and only have limited time.
And here I am, coaching women in Boston and all over the country virtually and helping them hit their personal and professional goals. I love it, and I am confident this is exactly where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what I was born to do. The journey was well worth it because it brought me here.
Has it been a smooth road?
Far from smooth, but worth the ride. 🙂
It’s been a LONG journey for me. I’ve had my live workshops and online courses for years, but I struggled with finding a marketing strategy that worked for me. Which was extremely frustrating because I was so eager to reach the women who I felt called to serve with my work. It’s also hard when your first start out in business on your own.
Your resources are limited, and you have to learn how to be everything in one for yourself because you simply just don’t have the resources to hire someone to help you (scheduling, copywriting, web design, marketing, advertising, sales… the list goes on). I had to get really resourceful and resilient. I spent MANY MANY all-nighters in front of my laptop screen watching youtube videos and reading articles to teach me how to do all of this stuff.
I would be lying if I said it was easy because it was far from easy, but something about my knowing I built ALL of this on my own, empowers me more than anything else in the world. This business is my reminder that no matter what gets thrown at me, even if I have no clue what to do if I stay calm and grounded, I’m more than capable of figuring it out on my own. It’s a great life skill to have. I mean I was able to build my own WordPress website, it looks pretty dam good if you ask me!
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Gianna Contillo Lifestyle – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
I am my business. I’m a Success Strategist, Holistic Health Coach, Yoga Instructor, Fitness Trainer, and Group Exercise Teacher. My home base is here in Boston, and I work from my laptop. You can also find me around the city giving live seminars, leading self-care for professional development workshops in corporate companies and teaching yoga in various yoga studios (YogaWorks Back Bay & Boston Sports Clubs) and organizations around the city.
What do I do? I work primarily with women – to build a strong inner foundation to maximize their personal and professional success. My signature program is a 90-day system called Success Foundations which implements clean eating, detoxification, self-care, productivity, time management, habit tracking, self-study, structure, organization, yoga, meditation, exercise, and writing, etc. to step into the best version of yourself.
It’s 3-phase personal development incubator that’s customized towards the client’s specific lifestyle/personal or professional goals. It’s a hybrid course that blends 1:1 coaching with me and along with a powerful 12-week online course. I also teach a live workshop, and online webinar called “It All Starts With You” – I teach corporate and private groups how to bring more success by investing in their health and self-care, even if you have limited time.
It teaches people the power they have over their quality of life; the name says it all… It All Starts With You. This workshop is based on the philosophy of my signature program Success Foundations. I absolutely love teaching this workshop to groups around the city! It’s a great way for employers to break up the day and gift their employees something valuable that will not only positively impact their work but also their overall quality of life.
Clients that book me in their corporate offices see this as an investment, but also a gift to their employees for their hard work. What sets the work I do at GiannaContillo.com apart from the rest? Within this program, we are focusing on investing in success in a whole new way. Here we live by the philosophy that…… Self-Care = Success.
Basically, the better you feel, the better you are going to show up in your work, relationships, and life. So if someone has big goals and they feel stuck or don’t know how to get out of their own way and get to their goals…. my method teaches people you have to start within FIRST. It’s for those multi-passionate women (and men) who are struggling trying to do it all while leaving their own self-care on the back burner.
We focus on “prioritizing self-care” as a tool for personal and professional growth not just a luxury that you take part in when you have time. We are all about strategizing how to prioritize the time we already have (even if it’s only a little) to fit self-care in. And the self-care I talk about in my work isn’t a spa day or getting a manicure (although great forms of self-care), the self-care we talk about here in this program is taking the time know yourself on a deep level, the deepest level possible, I call it connecting your “core self” and living from that place of authentic truth.
So often we blast through our days on autopilot, and that’s when things start to get crazy, or we feel crazy…Why? Because if you’re rushing through life on autopilot, you’re showing up in your life totally disconnected from your core self. You’re not grounded, so you’re not living from your truth, which is when problems arise. This is when we start forgetting things, running late, having anxiety, and losing our tempers or reacting before thinking it through. All may seem like small things, but they add up over time and cause major issues for us. Which affects our work, relationships, and overall quality of life.
I’m proud that my business and services have its own unique way of delivering the tools women need feel healthy & incredible inside and out, while still being superwoman and excelling at their goals at the same time. I take pride in the fact we don’t just offer programs and services to anyone.
We take the time to make sure my programs and workshops will really work for people before offering any programs or services. You can’t just sign up online; I do 60-minute complimentary discovery calls with all potential clients so we can discover if my program is a good solution for them. Potential clients can book calls with me here >>> www.giannacontillo.com/book.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
The city of Boston has always energized me. I love that Boston is pulsating with life. The energy inspires a specific kind of drive and hustle that’s unique to this city. I also love the drive in the hearts of the people here and that it’s a fit city! Boston is a very active and health conscious city, which is awesome for people like me who are committed to leading a healthy lifestyle.
I just love it all – something about living here motivates me on a different level to be my best self, personally and professionally.
What do I like least about Boston? TRAFFIC. Lol.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.giannacontillo.com
- Phone: 4016260398
- Email: gianna@giannacontillo.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/giannacontillo
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/gicontillo
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/giannacontillo
- Other: www.giannacontillo.com/book
Image Credit:
Bethany O’Connor
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
