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EPISODE 005 · AUTOMOTIVE → FITNESS
Alexandria Stylianou on fleet sales, auto repair, and coaching moms over 35
Alexandria Stylianou sold commercial fleet trucks to construction companies across Phoenix as one of the only women in her department. Today she co-owns We Fix It Auto Repair with her husband and coaches mothers over 35 through Fierce Mom Fitness. This episode is about running two businesses at once, and about why the unglamorous parts of both jobs are the parts that actually work.
What you will learn
- Nobody asked her if she wanted to sell. Inside a year of joining commercial fleet, her managers moved her into sales because she was a woman and the department had none.
- Business to business sales is a doorstep job. Five to ten cold stops a day, buckets of licorice with her business card blown up as the label, and gatekeepers who were not always kind.
- The human part is the moat. Her argument is that as AI makes everything cheaper and faster, the remote control car you buy a customer's kid at Christmas becomes more valuable, not less.
- She brought a book of business with her. When she joined the shop she visited her old fleet customers and told them she was not selling trucks anymore, but she could service them.
- One habit at a time. Her whole coaching method, and her explanation for why most people quit by February.
Who is Alexandria Stylianou?
Alexandria Stylianou is an Arizona business owner and certified FASTer Way coach with more than fifteen years in the fitness industry, including a stretch as a competitor, and more than a decade in automotive. She co-owns We Fix It Auto Repair in Tempe with her husband, runs Fierce Mom Fitness for mothers over 35, and has a three year old and a five year old.
Her first job in the car business was at a Dodge dealership in Oklahoma City, in the business development center, aged about twenty. Her first assignment was to call customers and wish them happy birthday. As she puts it, it was simple, but it got her comfortable on the phone, and she worked at dealerships on and off for the next ten years. Fitness arrived shortly afterwards, by way of Beachbody and P90X.
How does a woman end up in commercial fleet sales?
She did not set out to. She joined the commercial fleet department in a sales support and business development role, helping her manager with government sales and follow up work, because she was good on the phone. Less than a year in, the department decided she should be selling.
“They didn't really give me a choice, even though I liked my job as it was. They thought, you're a woman, we have no women in this department, you'll do great.”
Alexandria Stylianou, Women IN episode 5
It is a small moment and an easy one to miss, and it is worth sitting with. The decision was made for her, on the basis of her gender, and it happened to be right. She was comfortable on the phone already. What she had not done was go out.
What does business to business sales actually look like?
Tuesday to Thursday were the days to be out of the office, and her manager wanted the team gone all day rather than sitting at desks. The routine was to build a list of five to ten businesses clustered in one part of town, because Phoenix is too big to criss cross, and then knock on doors. Where possible they went in pairs.
The prop was licorice. They bought buckets of it, printed their business cards at poster size, and stuck them on the front of each bucket. It gave her a reason to walk in that was not a pitch: here are some goodies, and here is a brochure with our details.
She is clear that it was not always a warm reception, and equally clear about what it taught her. Sometimes the gatekeeper was another woman who looked at her and wondered what this girl was doing there. Sometimes they were delighted to see her. Either way she learned to have tough skin, and she learned to ask business owners how they started, which is how the relationships actually got built.
Why does the human part matter more as AI gets better?
This is the argument she makes most forcefully in the episode, and it is a useful one for anyone in a client facing job right now. Her view is that as AI makes sales cheaper and faster, companies will reasonably ask why they should go through a human being at all, and the answer has to be something a system cannot do.
Her example is a customer whose young son loved cars. At Christmas she bought the boy a remote control car. The father loved it as much as the son did. On a purchase the size of a commercial vehicle, she argues, people still want to buy from people.
What did she bring to We Fix It Auto Repair?
Her husband is from Cyprus. He came to the United States at twenty to learn English, studied at ASU, went to community college for mechanic school, and started fixing cars in a friend's garage. The first version of the business was called You Fix It: a space where customers could come and work on their own cars using his tools. It is a lovely idea and, once you account for insurance and liability, an unworkable one. After a year or two he turned it into We Fix It, a full service shop with hired mechanics.
Alexandria joined after she became pregnant with their son, having been commuting close to an hour each way to a fully commission based job. Two things came with her. The first was social media that was actually fun to read, because she had noticed other repair shops using humour and thought it made a business feel like something you could talk to. The second was a list of names.
She went back to every fleet customer she had sold trucks to who was within reach, and told them she was not selling vehicles anymore but the shop could service them. She brought cupcakes with the logo on them, because the licorice trick still works. Many of those customers came across. Fleet servicing is now a focus of the business, which this year added a mobile van that goes out to the vehicles. The shop has one location, a couple in the works, and a stated goal of twelve.
Why did she build a fitness business for mothers over 35?
Because after her son was born she could not find a straight answer about her own body. She knew fitness. She had competed. And she still found the available information on what is safe during and after pregnancy contradictory enough to be useless.
So she took a pre and postnatal fitness certification and built a twelve week postpartum program, then ran her own program after her daughter was born a year later. She exercised up to the day she gave birth with both children and eased back into training at five or six weeks, which is precisely the kind of specific, timed detail the internet does not reliably give you.
The coaching came later, through the Powerhouse Women's event, a coach named Rel, and the FASTer Way program. What she liked about it is that it is unfashionable: whole food nutrition, strength training, stress, sleep.
“It's easy for a lot of us women to chase those trends and those fads you see, or the influencers you see online, with the latest tea or detox trend. That might be a quick fix, but you have to build those foundations.”
Alexandria Stylianou, Women IN episode 5
The niche picked itself. She had her son at 34 and her daughter at 36, so mothers over 35 are simply the people whose situation she is living in: hormonal change arriving at the same time as small children.
What is the one thing she wants women to do this week?
Slow down and pick one habit. Her diagnosis of why fitness plans fail is that women are capable multitaskers, so they attempt everything at once: track macros, hit the water target, twelve thousand steps, strength train, eat clean. That is sustainable for a week or two and then it collapses.
Her alternative is deliberately unambitious. Choose one thing, seven thousand steps a day or the water, and hold it for two or three weeks. Then add strength training three times a week. She points at the New Year statistics on how many people have quit by February and puts it down to people implementing ten new habits simultaneously. And she is explicit that falling short is not a reason to be hard on yourself.
What would she tell her 20 year old self?
To believe in herself fully. She is candid that at the surface level she did tell herself that, but underneath there was fear of judgement, and she thinks it held her back. It is the thing she now wants to build into her own children early, because she believes it is set young.
“Go for it. Go big or go home, in a sense.”
Alexandria Stylianou, Women IN episode 5
Which is where the name comes from. Fierce was the word that resonated: be fierce as a mother, be fierce in building a business, and, as she says, be fierce about the piano or the crochet if that is the thing. Going all in has been the theme of her year, for her and for her husband both.
Where to find Alexandria Stylianou
- We Fix It Auto Repair — Tempe, Arizona, south of Old Town off Scottsdale Road between McKellips and McDowell. All makes and models, oil changes through full engine repair. wefixitautorepair.com
- Fierce Mom Fitness — Instagram @fiercemomfitness822, or fiercemomfit@gmail.com
Where to listen
Listen to Women IN episode 5 with Alexandria Stylianou wherever you get your podcasts.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Alexandria Stylianou?
Alexandria Stylianou is an Arizona business owner and certified FASTer Way fitness coach. She spent more than a decade in the automotive industry in business development, marketing, management and commercial fleet sales, and more than fifteen years in fitness, including competing. She co-owns We Fix It Auto Repair in Tempe, Arizona with her husband and runs Fierce Mom Fitness, coaching mothers over 35.
What is Fierce Mom Fitness?
Fierce Mom Fitness is Alexandria Stylianou's coaching practice for mothers over 35. It is built on the FASTer Way framework: whole food nutrition, strength training, stress management and sleep, introduced one habit at a time rather than all at once.
Why does she coach women over 35 specifically?
She had her son at 34 and her daughter at 36, so it is her own demographic. She argues that hormonal change in this stage makes generic fitness advice less useful, and that mothers in their late thirties and forties are managing young children at the same time.
What is her advice for building a sustainable fitness habit?
Start with one habit and hold it for two or three weeks before adding another. She points to New Year statistics showing how many people quit by February, and attributes it to trying to implement ten new habits at once rather than one.
Where can I find Alexandria Stylianou?
We Fix It Auto Repair is in Tempe, Arizona, south of Old Town off Scottsdale Road between McKellips and McDowell, online at wefixitautorepair.com. For coaching she is on Instagram at @fiercemomfitness822 or by email at fiercemomfit@gmail.com.