Fiona Brown is an entrepreneur, a fitness education specialist, a Pilates instructor, a personal trainer and now an enterprise mentor too. We caught up with the dynamic 58-year-old, to talk about The EnergyWise Academy she runs in Edinburgh, and her latest venture, mentoredbyfiona.com.

Some people can’t stop moving; they’re always eager to give life a go, try something new and share their enthusiasm with those around them. Fiona Brown is one such person. Self-employed for 30 years, she’s established herself everywhere from Falkirk to Wigan to Dundee and Edinburgh, fitting into new communities as her family moved about following the route of her husband’s career in retail.

Wherever she’s found herself, Fiona has quickly established her own bijou fitness businesses, all of which have blossomed, and two of which were sold as going concerns. In fact, this regular upheaval is what has equipped Fiona with the skills she now shares with other aspiring small business people, as she explains:

“Moving so much meant I got very good at setting up small businesses. It’s one of the reasons I can mentor people now. I’ve been through the process so many times. Each time we moved, as well as looking for the right schools and a doctor, I’d be looking for a hall where I could teach my fitness class.”

In 1993 the family finally settled in Edinburgh, Fiona’s home town. In 1998 she opened her Personal Training Studio, in 2000 her Pilates studio followed, and 2005 saw the launch of Fiona’s Active IQ accredited EnergyWise Academy. As well as delivering quality classes to the general public through her company Realistic Pilates, via her second business, The EnergyWise Academy, Fiona delivers accredited qualifications to fitness professionals. That’s because when she was looking about for qualified people to staff her new business, Fiona discovered that there was a gap in the market for Pilates instructor training north of the border, as she recalls:

“When I was looking for Pilates instructors, the only place they could train was London. So, I went about researching how to become an accredited training academy, a process that took two years. Now, teachers no longer have to travel south in order to get the training they want. It’s about spotting something nobody else is doing and going for it.”

At The EnergyWise Academy, those hoping to become brilliant personal trainers, Pilates instructors and fitness instructors can learn from Fiona and her team and gain industry accredited qualifications. She says:

“I’ve trained in excess of 250 Pilates instructors and almost all of them have gone out to set up their own mini businesses. Some have even opened their own studios.”

However, Fiona does more than instruct her students on how to be better Pilates teachers. She’s also preparing them to run their own businesses, something that initially came about naturally without any real planning on Fiona’s part; she was simply sharing the benefit of her experience. She says:

“It never occurred to me I was doing this until a student on my Pilates training course pointed out that there was a thread throughout the whole course about how to make it in the real world, what to do, how to prepare the groundwork for a solid business.”

Having realised how important this element of her teaching was to her students, Fiona decided to build a workshop into the course that dealt with the practicalities of running a fitness business, aside from the demands of teaching itself. This is an incredibly useful part of what people learn at The EnergyWise Academy, taking them beyond being brilliant instructors to become brilliant business owners with an insight into everything from which equipment to buy and the insurance and licences they need, to how best to get the word out about your services. Focussing on and formalising this part of her EnergyWise operation inspired Fiona to re-evaluate her future plans.

“It dawned on me that I don’t want to keep ‘jumping around’ forever. I’m going to be a granny soon and my son and daughter-in-law live in France. I’ve taken my mentoring business online so that I can help people from a distance. I’ve no intention of retiring but I want to be free to work wherever I am.”

Using the enterprise element of the EnergyWise training she delivers as a starting point, Fiona developed a month long boost-your-business programme, which can be applied to any service-based business. This is the foundation on which Fiona has built her new project - mentoredbyfiona.com. Via the internet, the engaging entrepreneur shares her wisdom and advice with people (mainly women) from all walks of life. Rather than focussing solely on those in the fitness industry, Fiona has made her expertise available to anyone with a passion they’re hoping to transform into a business. Talking about mentoredbyfiona.com, she says:

“I have been a volunteer mentor in the past and now I’ve made that pursuit more formal; I want to help people even more and at the same time build a business for myself around it. My ideal mentoring client would be someone who’s 40/50-ish, has a demanding job that they now want to leave, and has a passion they want to follow. These people don’t want to spend the rest of their working lives doing that big corporate job – they want to turn the thing they love into a business.”

For Fiona, a significant part of her new full-time enterprise mentor role is about helping clients define their own perimeters of what success looks like. Rather than following the ideals of the world at large, Fiona insists that all entrepreneurs need to be clear on their own, personal motivation if they’re to enjoy any success. She explains:

“It’s about getting folk to answer why they’re setting out to start a business. When they’ve no longer got that £50,000 salary, what’s going to get them out of bed in the morning to do that new job of running their business? It’s a big question and it takes people a long time to answer it. But answering that is key – it’s what will drive them when they have doubts. The vision has got to be enough to sustain you through what you’re doing.”

It certainly seems that when it comes to vision, like energy and drive, Fiona Brown is someone who has it in spades.