Shelley Murdock was always a person to give something that piqued her interest a chance. Born to Caribbean parents, she knew that being an entrepreneur would have its challenges. She believes that you have to continuously put yourself in new situations and environments to foster your growth.

In the middle of her college career, she saw an ad for the US Military, looked at the perks, and evaluated its pros and cons. She decided to join the Air Force.

Things moved pretty fast, and when her time in the military came to an end; she became an exotic dancer to help pay to finish her degree. After Shelly graduated, she realized her love for the art of pole dancing and wanted to try and have a physical location where she and other women could train and focus on it as a sport. It awakened a passion in her.

Episode transcription:

[00:00:00] Shelly Murdock: I started the page. I think it was about six or seven months before I was going to launch Fit2Flaunt. I do have other social media pages. So I was able to promote the Fit2Flaunt by Shelly page. The thing is that what I noticed with my other pages, I was always so corporate, if I could say that, you know, I was always worried about, you know, it has to be extremely professional and with“by Shelly” I really just wanted you to know me.

This is me, you know. I do a lot of volunteer work. I'm always trying to help other entrepreneurs. Like, I'm more than just a business owner. And I honestly think that was the difference in what made that page grow so quickly being relatable versus trying to be so corporate and make everything look picture.

[00:01:16] Shelly Murdock: Hi, I'm Shelby Murdock and I'm the founder of Fit2Flaunt and Exotic workouts. I help women to have fun, be sexy and get fit.

[00:01:25] Jahn Karsybaev: That's so lit, and what an introduction. I love it. Thanks for finding time to join us on the Ivy Podcast today. What a great way to start 2021. I have heard great things from our mutual friend, Paula. I appreciate the introduction.

Tell us a little bit about your backgrounds or, you know, your story. And then I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about what you're currently working on.

[00:01:47] Shelly Murdock: Okay. Awesome. Well, believe it or not, I was in the military stationed in Germany. I loved it. I got out of the military and I'm like, okay, I really want to focus on school and finishing my degree.

And I'm like, man, it's gotta be hard to be taking all these extra credit hours and working like a regular job, a full-time job. And I remember I was in the car with my little sister and she's like, You don't want to work well, you better be a stripper and you know, but we were both laughing and then I'm like, actually, you know what?

[00:02:18] That doesn't sound like a bad idea, you know? And I'm like, I'm going to try it out. And I had never been to a club or anything like that, I'd be bored. So I tried it out and I fell in love with the art of pole dancing. Let me tell you, I just thought it was so beautiful. I loved the way it made me feel and, you know, fast forward I did graduate.

I was doing my internship when I decided that I think I really want to pursue this passion of mine, this pole dancing passion of mine. So actually I had to quit my internship and I opened my first Exotic Workout studio and now I own three locations. I've been in business for 10 years and I just launched the brand new startup Fit2Flint.

[00:03:02] Jahn Karsybaev: Wow, what an exciting story. I appreciate kind of the background so as far as where you're currently working on, you mentioned you have your training studios for quite some time and you just recently launched something else. Tell us a little bit more about it. How was the idea born? What's the vision there?

[00:03:21] Shelly Murdock: Okay. Well, I took a program for million dollar women, right. It was just a random ad that popped up on my phone Facebook. And I said, well, let me see what this is about. And i