I had to sit down with Annie Norris after her incredible 2018. She won business and instructor awards, travelled the world competing, ran her successful studio, looked after her 3 sausage pups and even managed to squeeze in getting married amongst other things!

I also asked her some questions from the members of the Off The Pole Community Group

 

Sarah:                      Welcome, Annie Norris to my podcast! Thank you so much for giving some of your morning. We’ve been planning this for about a year, and keep missing each other. I finally got you, and who’s your little friend who’s joining you?

Annie:                      This is Frank, he’s my manager, he looks after me.

Sarah:                      He looks very business today.

Annie:                      Frank, I named him after a sausage.

Sarah:                      Obviously. Your sausage dog is so cute. Mine’s snoring behind so hopefully the microphone won’t pick that up. He doesn’t really like being famous unless I’m training then it’s all about him. Other than that, so thank you for giving me some of your time because you’ve had an insanely busy year. You’ve been pretty much all over the world. You’ve gotten married, you’ve been doing competitions, you’ve won awards, what are some of your highlights? I’ve kind of listed off a few things you’ve done in the intro, but what have been some of your highlights this year?

Annie:                      So I always forget to mention this one, so I’m going to start with this one, getting married.

Sarah:                      That’s number one, so number one not a pole thing.

Annie:                      It was great because Kieran’s my best friend, so that was the best day. Sharing it with your bestie and just having fun. Eating loads of food, people helping me pull my wedding dress up when it kept slipping down, things like that. It was just the best day ever and it was just so warm, as well. The dogs were there and they wore little things around their necks and stuff. So that was number one.

Annie:                      Then I think the second best thing was getting through to IPC. I was in the elite females, my one pole idol, as well. Then won instructor of the year, so that was just amazing. It was like a dream come true. I remember seeing my name on social media and I was like no, no. I didn’t tell anyone for two days because I was like I’m obviously going to pull out, there’s no point in doing that is there? Going to Australia, the comp was ten days before the wedding as well in Australia.

Sarah:                      I like it, it’ll be fine.

Annie:                      It’ll be fine, and it was.

Sarah:                      Fly around the other side of the world, yeah.

Annie:                      Yeah. That was that. It was just crazy, but it was great. It was just amazing. So good.

Sarah:                      I must say you’ve done a million things this year. How do you find because you have a full-time studio as well, which seems hugely popular? We did the Off the Pole Awards in April, and your students were on it. We’re going to nominate everybody, we’re going to do spreading it around. Whenever there’s anything about awards, or getting involved, or doing showcases you always seem to have … your students are very involved. They seem to follow you around the world and have a huge support system. Are you good at time management, do you just kind of wing it, is there any kind of thing that you think, that has to be put on the back burner, or this is gonna be a priority? How do you manage studio time, competing, performing, planning weddings? Like, how have you managed it?