Meet Alex Ceban

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alex Ceban a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alex, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.

Optimism is an essential part of my life and I view it as a necessary state of mind to help me manifest positive outcomes.

Every day I deal with challenges related to my business that present uncertainties. Almost all of these obstacles turn out to be nothing more but an inconvenience and many of them actually lead to something good once resolved. So I always tell myself that everything is going to be great, then I figure out the best course of action and go after it.

The opposite spectrum of such thinking is of course pessimism. This term hides something that we can all relate to and that is fear. It’s that time when you have a problem and instead of saying to yourself “everything will be okay” you start thinking of a worst case scenario and I learned for myself that it is not a good way to live. Playing worst case scenarios in your head leads to even more stress and anxiety – these two things do not help with anything but aging faster.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

At this time, all of my efforts are directed towards getting as many people in the US to have access to high quality calisthenics coaching. Big part of my time goes towards finding trainers who are passionate about calisthenics and then developing them by teaching everything I know about best coaching practices, program design, customer service and more. Ideally, I like to hire people who know more than me about calisthenics so I can learn something from them too, plus our clients get the best of both worlds.

Finding the right coach is challenging, but once you find one, you know that clients will love their training experience with us and that is ultimately the goal. It’s such a gratifying feeling to get positive feedback from people and see them reach their sometimes very lofty goals!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Being open minded is an important quality to have when running your own business. It’s very easy to isolate yourself from the world and rely only on yourself when making decisions and that’s hard. No matter how much knowledge you have, having a different perspective is very valuable, so anytime I have to make a choice I always try to ask trainers, clients or my friends about their opinion. I think constant decision making is one of the hardest parts of my job so I’m always open to ideas from other people who may know something I don’t.

2. Being genuine about helping our clients has been essential. I truly care that our clients have the best possible experience training with us, so once in a while I get on the phone and call every single one of them to get their feedback. I always get good ideas from this practice, plus clients seem to appreciate that.

3. Respecting people I work with. I truly care about our coaches and I always check with them to see if they are happy working at the studio, if they need any help from me, and I always do my best to show my appreciation for their hard work. They are the backbone of our business and I want them to know it.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

Ever since I got into fitness and began learning from others I realized that I would always retain a small portion of information after for example attending workshops or taking a certification. It’s the same with books for me – I can read an entire book and retain only a few key points, so my knowledge is based on a collection of takeaways from many books, people, experiences and my own thoughts.

Any of the titles listed below will offer a wealth of knowledge, but besides that I’m always grateful for the inspiration I get from reading such brilliant books. They are about people of all backgrounds rising in this world despite all odds – I find their stories to be so powerful!

Here is the list of great books I’d recommend to any person of any profession:

Pour your Heart into it by Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang – about entrepreneurship at it’s best
The Having by Sun Yoon Lee & Jooyun Hong – great for learning to access your intuition
Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger – an autobiography of a man who smashed all boundaries in front of him
Shark Tales by Barbara Corcoran – a success story of a woman who made it big in NYC real estate business
Focus by Al Ries – for incredibly valuable marketing advise
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers – for inspiration and self growth
Manifest by Roxy Nafousi – to learn to manifest
Good to Great by Jim Collins – a total masterpiece and a blueprint for any business
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh – an incredible story of perseverance and your A-to-Z on customer service

I think the most valuable piece of advice I’ve learned from these and many other books is to always take the path less traveled, be your most authentic self and listen to your heart for guidance. Because becoming successful for yourself and becoming successful for others are two very different things.

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