About Fit Frog Adventures

Donations, Partnerships, Team Building

Lori believes in giving back and is happy to donate 1000’s of Calgary’s Best Bike Rides and Calgary’s Best Walks guidebooks as well as her time to lead walks and rides to local charities. She also works with organizations as a presenter, program consultant, and creator of walking initiatives and guide of custom walks.

Whether you are a charity that sees a fit for partnership, a company that would like a guided conference walk or an individual who would like to arrange a birthday trek for friends/family, connect with Lori to discuss your idea. Here are some of her ongoing and past partnerships.

• Two Wheel View: Ongoing since 2022: Calgary’s Best Bike Rides guidebook donation for all youth in the Earn-a-Bike program: Read about the Earn-a-Bike program and my part in it in this CTV news story
• Cerebral Palsy Kids & Families: 2023: Calgary’s Best Bike Rides guidebook donation for all the kids and families in the Adapted Bike program.
• The Calgary Public Library: 2017- 2024: Lori guides free walks from libraries around Calgary.
• Youth En Route: 2023: Calgary’s Best Bike Rides guidebook donation for youth who are empowered by Youth En Route programs to use active and independent ways to get where they are going.
• The Calgary Counseling Centre: Custom fundraising walk for the United Way
• The Calgary Food Bank: Presented Calgary’s Best Walks and Bike Rides multiple times for staff wellness day
• The Alex Community Food Centre: Developed and guided a FoodFit Alumni walk
• Mount Royal University: Presented on Walk 150 at the We. Are. Nature symposium
• WALK 150: The Calgary Public Library & Centre for Newcomers: In celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017 Lori created WALK 150. Building communities through walking, she donated 1500 Calgary’s Best Walks guidebooks and guided over 1000 people on free multilingual urban walks.
• Federation of Calgary Communities: Presenter and walk leader at Shifting Attitudes Conference
• The Alberta Wilderness Association: Partner in the Climb for Wilderness fundraiser
• Fish Creek Provincial Park and Alberta Parks: Consulted on walk leadership for the program Good Grief: Walking through grief and loss
• City of Calgary: Lunch and learn presenter* For Charities with a charitable number please connect with Lori to discuss having a portion of fees donated back to the charity.

Public Speaking

SELF PROPELLED EXPLORATION

• Connect, discover and explore Calgary by bike and on foot: Become a tourist in your own city! Connect and discover the city by bike and on foot in this presentation that packs a visual punch as Lori highlights urban walks and bike rides for all ages and for all types of cyclists, from kids and new cyclists to road bikers to Ebikers. Lori features routes from her books as she leads the audience along river pathways and neighbourhood side streets, through parks, to viewpoints, and to destinations like farmers’ markets, craft breweries, and ice cream shops. Lori’s presentation surprises audiences with the diversity of beautiful, quirky, unexpected, and inspiring things to see and do when exploring Calgary on foot and by bike.
• Calgary’s Best Walks: Lori takes the audience on a visual tour of the best walks of Calgary. She highlights all the reasons to take a walk, from the great café stops to the urban wilderness, hidden pathways, stairways, and quirky neighbourhoods.
• Explore Calgary by Bike! Connect and discover the city by bike in this presentation that highlights routes and rides for all types of cyclists from kids to road bikers to Ebikers. Lori features routes from her book Calgary’s Best Bike Rides as she leads the audience along river pathways and neighbourhood sidestreets, through parks, to viewpoints, and destinations like farmers’ markets, craft breweries, and ice cream shops.
• Calgary and the Rockies, Best Hikes and Walks: A visual tour of the best walking, hiking, snowshoeing and ice walks in Calgary, the foothills, and the Southern Rockies.
• Building Communities through Walking: Intrepid urban walker and veteran guide, Lori talks about walking as a way to connect people to their city and to each other. Such a simple, pedestrian activity, walking in gives us a chance to slow the pace, recharge, reflect and observe all while soaking up the fresh air and taking in the sights and sounds of the city.

LIVING A CREATIVE LIFE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Listen on Spotify or watch on Youtube as Lori discusses her approach to business and her creative life on The Calgary Sessions podcast.

• Be Creative, Make things up, Don’t follow the rules: Lori will share her experiences creating Fit Frog, writing and publishing guidebooks, and her walking initiatives that build community through walking.
• Guidebook Publishing 101: From writing, layout, and design to map-making; from barcodes to printing and distribution, to media, and marketing! Learn self-publishing tips from the best-selling author of Calgary’s Best Walks and Calgary’s Best Bike Rides.

Publishing – The Business of Writing Consulting

Writing is hard work. Publishing is complex. And getting anyone to care about what you published is next-level difficult.

Connect with Lori for an initial chat about publishing and all that it entails. If you are keen to learn more, then Lori can help you along the way to success!

• Creating a book that is of superior quality and design is key whether using a traditional publisher or self-publishing. If your book looks self-published then you will not get placement, interviews, or have success.
• Self Publishing with a company that controls your product (i.e Friesens self-publishing) versus managing all aspects of the publishing process yourself.
• Choosing a printer, from offset printing to laser to POD (Print on Demand)
• Managing the publishing process: Creating your content and building your team to create a professional product that gets bookstore placement. All the details of book creations from barcodes to ISBN’s to the pricing of your book.
• Printing your books, getting quotes, deciding on quantity, storage, and shipping, and all the details from paperweight to book size.
• Design, illustration, and layout. From maps and illustrations to stunning layout and design, take your book to the next level.
• Distributing your book as a self-published author and what it takes to get a self-published book into the stores, from small shops to Indigo.
• Storage and fulfillment
• Marketing: From Instagram partnerships to creating content for TV, how to tell people your book exists.
• Website design: How to build your own site or how to choose a web designer to tell your story.

“I was not sure how to begin the process of self publishing my first book. What to do? Who to talk to? Lori Beattie was the logical person to seek advice from, having several highly successful, self-published books to her credit. Lori shared her experience, her contacts, and provided interesting, practical suggestions. Lori knows who to talk to about book distribution, who to do the design and lay out, and who can do copy editing. She was a fountain of ideas for marketing. I listened and followed all of her recommendations. After that, she went from enthusiastic mentor to being a friend.”

 

– Dale Leckie, author of Rocks, Ridges, and Rivers: Geological Wonders of Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks and The Scenic Geology of Alberta: A Roadside Touring and Hiking Guide.

Initial meeting fee

After learning a bit about your book project, Lori will send you some questions and based on your answers, she will prepare for an initial meeting. This meeting will be about an hour and it will be in person. The goal of this meeting is to answer your questions but also, to provide direction for you. At the meeting Lori will provide options, ideas, and insights (people’s names and contact info). If there are things you need to consider (that you didn’t know to ask) but that are critical, she will let you. The initial meeting is meant to cover the basics and give you names of people to contact in the areas covered in the questionnaire. You may not need any more help after this but if you do then you can discuss next steps. Initial meeting fee: $150

TV Segment Host and Content Creator

Lori has been a CTV Morning Live segment host and content creator since 2015. She has also worked with CBC Radio many times to create a series of segments about walking and biking. She is keen to partner to create video content for on-line and traditional media.

See examples of Lori’s CTV segments.

Lori’s CBC Radio series on Calgary’s Best Bikes Rides runs on The Homestretch throughout the summer of 2022

Social Media Collaborations

From giveaways, to takeovers, to sponsored posts, Lori is keen to discuss your idea.