When Melissa Wood-Tyberberg decided to reinvent her career, it felt like rock bottom: “I was in a place in my life where I wasn’t happy with who I am. I wasn’t in love with myself,” she says. Instead of looking for her next gig as a waitress, she “looked inside” and decided to study yoga, Pilates, and nutrition, she says.
In 2015, Wood-Tepperberg began sharing her personal exercise method, called The Melissa Wood Health Method, with others. “As I healed myself and started connecting to all these things that were making me better slowly, I started connecting the dots and sharing those little things step by step so that the people who were watching felt like this was something they could do too.”
Now, Melissa Wood Health has thousands of subscribers who pay $9.99 per month for workouts. The entrepreneur for the first time gathered almost a million followers on Instagram. In 2021, Harvard Business School published a study of its success titled “Melissa Wood Health: How to Win the Creator’s Economy.”
“I started working in my living room over six years ago,” says Wood-Tepperberg. “I had a $24 tripod from Amazon. I used my phone.” At first, “My office was my living room.” She now has a spacious beige and white training studio and office in the posh Noho district of Manhattan.
“Being able to have a space like this that I imagined and loved literally manifested itself for so many years and made it come alive, is an incredible feeling,” she says.
“Give yourself that space to take care of yourself.”
Wood-Tepperberg says the idea that you need to devote an hour to taking care of yourself isn’t practical. “I had a backstory of thinking that if you don’t have an hour to dedicate to working out, then 20 minutes of exercise? Like what can you get in 20 minutes? That was the mindset I had.”
her understanding evolved. Now, a pillar of the Melissa Wood Health Method is that it’s key to prioritizing your well-being through mindfulness and exercise, says Wood Tipperberg, even if it’s only for five minutes. “Give yourself that space to take care of yourself, whether it’s a walk, a 10-minute stream, or a shower meditation.”
As a mother, she knows this isn’t always easy. But it’s important, as I’ve learned through experience: “I’m really good at taking care of myself now, because I know what life is like when it’s not,” she says.
When Melissa’s son was born, she would take “the minute moments when he’s absent, or when he’s in his rocking chair” to move her body. “I’ve never felt better in my life,” she says. “I felt this level of peace and comfort in my mind.”
Once Wood-Tepperberg began incorporating meditation, mindfulness, and movement into her routine, “I became a completely different person,” she says.
“I focused on the effect it had.”
Wood-Tepperberg says changing the way you think is a great place for anyone looking for a change to start. “I truly believe that when you firmly believe that anything in your life is possible, there is only an unlimited power that lives within each and every one of us.”
When Wood-Tepperberg started filming her workouts and sharing them online, she didn’t feel this way. “When I started, I was still really learning to embrace and own who I am,” she says. “So there was definitely this element of self-awareness, but I was really able to get past that fear because I focused on the impact it’s having and the lives of others.”
On her first day filming her workout, “The tripod was tilted wrongly, it was dark, and sometimes I wouldn’t lay my rug so you could see the movements perfectly. I didn’t have a microphone, and you couldn’t really hear my voice, but I didn’t care. I left all These things go,” she says.
Moving out of your own way and focusing on how to help others has helped Wood-Tepperberg find purpose and meaning in her life and career, she says.
To succeed as an entrepreneur, “Trust your intuition”
“The most important thing I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is to always trust your intuition,” says Wood-Tepperberg. “There will always be people in the room who are smarter than you might have more knowledge than you in a given space, but at the end of the day, the decisions I make are really based on this inner knowledge and deep intuition.”
Most importantly, you have to believe in what you’re doing, she says. “I know what this way of life has done to me, and how it has changed me from the inside out. It came out in a different state of being. I believe so strongly in the work I do that he would do the same to anyone who is willing to give their all, to really prioritize themselves.”
Rather than using money or metrics like followers, “I will define success by your level of happiness in your life. I think that’s the most important thing,” says Wood-Tepperberg. “At the end of the day, it comes down to how satisfied and happy you feel about doing the smallest things.”
More from Grow:
