Sonya Looney, Champion Athlete | How to Build a Following with Your Authenticity.

The Unbreakable Success Podcast

There's nothing better than the idea of living a life that feels aligned with what you simply LOVE to do. It's just one of the many things I admire about my friend Sonya Looney. She's a World Champion athlete who has managed to build a dedicated following, a thought-leadership platform, a podcast and personal brand simply by sharing what she learns, loves, and believes. There are so many lessons to learn from Sonya, but the first one is to make sure you're finding a way to do more of what excites you. Sonya has built (and is still building) her following with chasing like and follows, but by being herself and sharing her perspectives with the world. Click to Subscribe on >> iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Tunein. Unbreakable Success Podcast, Episode 50 World Champion Athlete, Sonya Looney - How to Build a Following with Authenticity. TRANSCRIPT: Aaron: 00:00 Alright you guys welcome back to another episode of Unbreakable Success. We have a pretty amazing guest today as we always do, but this one's really special. Her name is Sonya Looney. She's a world champion. I'm a mountain biker. She's a motivational speaker, professional athlete, adventure, author. Sonia is up to so many things. She just opened her a shop called Moxie and grit. Is that right? Sonya? That's right. I will talk about that in a few minutes. Um, but Sonya, you do some amazing things and I, I got a lead into this by saying seven day races, like you gotta, like give me a short segment of how that happened. Sonya: 00:39 Yeah, 70 races. It's funny, it sounds really long, but when you're doing it, it doesn't seem like it's that long. But basically what happened was when I first started mountain biking, I was doing shorter courses like in it's called cross country racing and those are typically about an hour and a half long. So most people are familiar with running. They're familiar with 5k , 10k marathon, ultra marathon. So basically I started doing the ultra marathon style of racing in mountain biking and then from there there was these races called stage races where every day there's a set start and finish, but a different course and sometimes it's point to point or sometimes it's a loop from a central location, but you get to race on seven, seven different courses in a country or region and accumulative time at the end of the seven days is the final results of the race. So it rewards consistency over being crazy one day and then being tired the next. Aaron: 01:36 Well there's got to be some great business lessons in there. I'm sure we'll share it. We'll definitely segue into that to talk about the consistency, but for anybody that doesn't know you or you got so much going on, but what is. What's the. What would be your definition of, of what you do? You know, Sonya Looney writing or speaking her own bio. How would you describe yourself? Right now? Sonya: 02:02 I would describe myself as somebody who is trying to use what I'm passionate about, which is mountain biking and adventures, to use it as a vehicle to talk about things that I've learned to help me live the life I'm living, like I'm living my dream. It's incredible. Like never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be where I am today. So my why, my why when I wake up in the morning, I want to help make the world a better place without sounding cliche. I want to give people the tools and the confidence to take steps in their life to go after that thing that they want to do. It doesn't have to be a mountain biking, but just that thing that they want to do. Everybody has something in the back of their mind that they wished that they would do. And I want to help break down the barriers so people can go after that. Aaron: 02:46 That's pretty awesome. That's amazing. I love that you're, um, you know, how, how you parlayed your, almost your, uh, your athleticism in and you're biking and turning into a much larger mission. I'd love to know because there's so much like when people go to yo...