Christie Buie | 2014 National Success Story Winner

I was recently asked this question: What are you most passionate about?

My initial thought was how do I sum this up????
So I asked my husband to help me summarize... In short this is what we came up with as a response.

The thing that I am most passionate about (aside from my family) is helping others overcome adversity in their life.

About seven years ago my husband and I learned that our unborn son would be born with a heart defect called HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrom).

To keep it short, this meant that he was going to be born with half of a heart and would require three major open heart surgeries within his first four years of life in order to get blood and oxygen to all the places in his body that require it. This was obviously a devastating blow as my husband and I were so excited to start a family and have our first child. Through a lot of prayer, support from friends and family, and an amazing medical resource at Children's Hospital in Seattle we are so happy that our son, Mason, is doing well and just started Kindergarten!

During our time in the hospital we quickly realized that there was a whole other world out there. This is not seen unless your are looking at it. So many people have to go through the same thing we did and we wanted to give back and show support for those people.

At first this passion lead us to giveback to other heart families through support groups and social networking.

But, it has since turned into helping others overcome anything in their life.

For example, a member at one of our fitness centers won a national award for her success story. With over 2,000,000 members worldwide one of our member's was chosen because of the adversity and obstacles she overcame to change her life. This member would tell you how much my husband and I had to do with this, but we certainly did not see it this way. We simply provided support and a vessel for her to use as needed to meet her goals...... (It went on. But I am stopping)

This is the reason we risked it ALL to open a gym. This business wasn't handed to us. We risked our real money. Everything we had.

We wanted to be able to meet people where they are. We wanted to be able to play a SMALL part in people making the decision to change their lives.

We were spared the gift of Mason's life.

When we walked away from his first surgery and it didn't break us. We felt compelled do something major. It was during this time when we decided to open our first gym.

The road hasn't always been the smoothest. Owning a small business is hard but recently we were reminded that even though it doesn't always pay off financially it has paid off with greater rewards!

At this years Anytime Fitness Conference Christie Buie was named one of the National success stories of the year!