Meet Your Coach A New Beginning

Written by Brenda Edson

 

O’Malley’s family and friends rallied behind him, and after a rough couple of months, he began to start over. Giving up on his dream would have been easier. But for O’Malley, giving up has never been a part of his personality.

“My life's passion is helping people – particularly, people who want to live their lives with more energy,” O’Malley said. “I couldn’t just quit.”

With the help of his family, he created Cardio Coach, another attempt to make his dream come alive. Volume One was finished in January of 2002. But it didn’t sell.

“The hardest part of all of this has been the rejection,” he said. “You have a great idea and you know it’s going to be great, but you can’t get other people to see it.

“I know I wouldn’t be happy working a regular job or living a normal life,” he said. “This is worth it to me. You choose it, and you have to endure it. You just have to pray that you have the right people to support you.”

He moved to Virginia Beach to live with Monty Spencer, a college friend.

“It’s constantly been a journey of overcoming the obstacles for O’Malley,” said Spencer, who owns a real estate and development company. “But it’s a journey he’s put himself on. He’s had multiple setbacks, but he believes in the product. And it’s not something he does for money or attention or fame or anything like that. He does it because he believes it will help. That’s something is deep rooted inside him.”

While in Virginia Beach, O’Malley received a job as a graphic design artist for an upcoming boxing event.

“I didn’t even know how to supply files to the printer, and what would take someone two hours would take me 10 hours to do,” he said. But he designed the logo and ended up in charge of design for the entire event.

Meanwhile, he released Volume Two and again ran into frustrations. The workout sold better on amazon.com, but was not selling well in storefronts.

“I still wasn’t all that proud of the workouts,” he said. “They weren’t where I wanted them to be. And it started to get a little frustrating. I didn’t think it was going to make it.”

Then things started to come together. O’Malley received investment money from a popular fitness center and found a musician who seemed to understand the Cardio Coach concept. He started working on Volume Three with Todd Washburn, a musician out of Norfolk, Va. He also redesigned the first two volumes.

After hiring a company to create his website, he wasn’t satisfied and designed it himself. The website was launched in late 2004, and sales began increasing. Today, more and more companies are following his lead and releasing MP3 workouts. Yet O’Malley and Cardio Coach, who still don’t have the support of big investors, remain steadfast.

“To be able to create a market which had not been tapped into or even existed prior to his creation speaks to his creativity speaks to his passion of personal health and fitness,” Spencer said. “He’s focused on the overall big scheme goal and vision, not necessarily what Cardio Coach is now, but what he sees it becoming eventually.”

The company has been featured in major national and international publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post and on ABC & FOX News. They receive rave reviews on blogs, message boards and fitness sites online, and he’s recently signed on with a distribution company to market the workouts internationally.

But more importantly to him, his in-box is swamped daily with e-mails from customers who rave about the experience, and who share how much Cardio Coach has changed their lives. On thousands of threads across the Internet on fitness forums, Cardio Coach receives high marks from its dedicated and loyal fans.

“I consistently receive comments from customers who have found themselves reaching past their physical and mental barriers to achieve the fitness and life goals they once thought were unattainable,” O’Malley said. It’s expected that customers get into better shape from using a fitness product. But customers who use Cardio Coach write to me about how they use my workouts to overcome cancer or depression. I don’t know if I have the words to describe how that makes me feel.”

O’Malley’s idea of success is not centered on money or fame, Cantu said.

“He has this passion and this drive to continue to push this forward,” he said. “Success to Sean isn’t how much money he has, or how he’s viewed by other people or the business community. To Sean, success is what’s in his heart and how many people he can help. This is something he lives and breathes in his soul.

Sean is definitely a ‘Cardio Coach’,” he added. “But I truly believe that he has it in himself to be a life coach for people. When you really listen to these workouts, when you really hear what he is saying, you realize that he’s not just talking about a workout. He’s talking about life.”

Despite the long hours and hard work, O’Malley remains positive, and he remains committed to his dream, to his passion.

“My life seems to be a series of life defining moments,” he said. “A phone call or an e-mail will come in that leads me on a new path. So on some days, I wake up and wonder if today is the day.

“All the things I’ve done – flying off to Oprah’s studios to deliver a workout, all the people I’ve written and sent packages to, all the attempts I’ve made – I know that there will be that day. I try to live with the confidence that this is a great product, and it’s being recognized as a great product, and that its time will come.”

Melton credits O’Malley for never selling out his dream or losing sight of his vision.

“As gifted as he is, as creative as he is, if he was just looking for money, he would have already made it doing something else,” Melton said. “He’s never sold out, and I don’t think he will. “He knows in his mind, that if he can get through to people, whether it’s through e-mail or by listening to Cardio Coach, that he can really help them,” he added. “His goal isn’t for everyone to look like him. He cares about how people feel. He wants people to have a better life.”

Waiting may not be easy, but with a solid product under belt and a steady base of new and repeat customers, O’Malley knows he’s heading in the right direction. There’s no question his dreams will become a reality. In fact, many of them have already come true.

“I love what I do,” O’Malley said. “That’s what keeps me going. Seeing people get excited about something I do is like no other feeling in the world.”

For years, O’Malley’s motto has been, “Start with the heart, and everything else will follow.”

“I don’t know what else I would do that my heart would be 100 percent into,” he said. “This is what I am supposed to be doing.”

End