New Orleans Magazine

Top 10 Female Achievers

Leilani Heno – Owner, X-Trainers — Birthplace: New Orleans

At 7 years old, she started her first business selling crochet chickens. She made them herself and sold them to friends and neighbors. At 15, she discovered that people would pay good money to voice their opinions, so she produced a commercial on late-night television and asked viewers to call her 900 number to vote on an issue that she flashed across the screen. She made $3.99 per minute. Now in her early 30s, she is the owner of X-Trainers, a personal-training company designed to bring the mind/body/spirit connection to weight loss. Even though you can work out there, X-Trainers is not a gym. Think of it as more of a consulting company where clients pay for personal guidance and advice about losing weight and staying fit. The workout is one part of a holistic approach.

Asked why she chose to put her entrepreneurial spirit, along with her MBA from the University of New Orleans , into personal training, Heno replies, “I was so fat.” By age 18, she weighed 240 pounds and was having trouble keeping up with her friends. But she soon grew tired of sitting on the sidelines. “My personality just didn’t fit that person’s body,” and so she set out to lose weight. She tried every diet on the market. They all worked, but only short term, so the weight didn’t stay off for long. She attributes her fleeting success to a lack of proper thinking. “I didn’t believe that I was a skinny person; it’s a mind, body and spirit process,” she says. For a diet to work, it has to address more than just the physical. A person has to visualize themselves as a thinner person. Once she made this connection, she lost 85 pounds and kept it off.

Heno’s clients are people much like herself. They are successful entrepreneurs who are used to running things. However, she says, “They make money and they’re great at that, but they never connect that drive to themselves. We need to get them out of that and find something that’s going to make them work on them.” Heno calls those issues in our lives that make us eat “triggers.” A trigger can be anything from a visit from the in-laws to stress at work. By getting to know the individual, her eating habits, motivation, triggers, and beliefs about herself and weight loss, Heno and her staff train the entire person. Heno says that X-Trainers has a 91 percent success rate.

Heno started with a location at the American Can Co. on Bayou St. John in May 2003, then followed up with the Saulet in the Warehouse District in 2004 and a Northshore location to open this year. In addition, she is selling franchises to other entrepreneurs who have the right mind, body and spirit approach to health and weight loss.

Anyone who has an opportunity to be in the same room with Heno for five minutes will notice two things right away: She’s charming, and she means business. She has an interesting mix of spiritual wisdom and business acumen, which she has been able to balance. In her book (yes, she has written a book, too) called Smothering the Soul, Heno lays out the spiritual principles that underpin her weight-loss plan. If you are familiar with the theory that your thoughts create your reality, Heno’s book will be a wonderful reminder that you are what you think: Think happy, be happy. Think rich, be rich. Think thin, be thin. But you’ve got to put your thoughts into action, too, which means putting down that cupcake and using your exercise bike as more than just a coat rack. A holistic approach requires participation from all the parts but starts from the head down. As John Milton says, “the mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of hell.” If you want living proof, pay Heno a visit. It may not be mere coincidence that her first name means “heavenly flower” in Polynesian. –Kim Belchere

Mentors: “My mother’s spirit and my father’s drive.”

Turning point in career: “When I finally lost 85 pounds and realized that the only thing stopping me was myself.”

Advice for young women entering the field: “If someone tells you that you can’t do something, that is a definite sign that you can!”