A Personal Trainer Relaunches Her Small Business Brand & Website in 2020
Listen to find out what SMF stands for! 😉
Small business owners, entrepreneurs and fitness coach's watch or listen in to our 2021 business check-in with Stephanie below to learn about her experience relaunching her small biz in 2020.
Stephanie Mitchell is a personal trainer specializing in women’s fitness in Arlington, Virginia. On January 1, 2020, Stephanie relaunched her Stephanie Mitchell Fitness (SMF) business, brand and new website!
Before starting the design and build, we did the Power Plan in late 2019 to understand why she had stopped her business for 18 months and what her business goals were for this new business.
We then helped her create her brand story by defining her target market, organizing her service offerings and building an engaging website that clearly communicates her qualifications and super fun vibe.
We thought it would be educational to find out how SMF has fared, especially in this unusual year. In our zoom call we ask her about:
Her business relaunch
Branding for small business
Using Squarespace for the website
Pivoting her productized services with Covid-19
New subscription services
Social media scheduling and posting
Email marketing campaigns
Adding an online merchandise store to her site
Her upcoming Strong, Mindful and Feisty program launching in 2021
and so many more takeaways from the year!
Need help with your small business brand and website? We'd love to help! Fill out our contact form to get in touch.
Interview transcription:
Evelyn Powers: Welcome, Stephanie Mitchell. Stephanie is a personal trainer who specializes in women's fitness, and you can tell us if that's still the case, I'm assuming it is. We worked with Stephanie last year and launched her website right on January 1st. We just wanted to check back, it's one year later, and just see how everything's going. How are you, Stephanie?
Stephanie Mitchell: I'm doing awesome.
Evelyn Powers: Yeah?
Stephanie Mitchell: I'm doing great. It's been a great year.
Evelyn Powers: Emily's going to start with the first question.
Emily Krause: My first question for you is where were you in your business this time last year?
Stephanie Mitchell: This time last year, I was, excuse me, had just reached out to you guys. I was in the process of coming back from an 18-month hiatus. I had had a business since 2012, took a little bit of a break and was preparing to relaunch in January. I had reached out to you all to help me with my website. We were smack dab in the middle of things, you guys were ready to launch me forward a whole lot faster than I thought I was prepared for. You had me up and running right before the new year, so that on January 1, we were ready to meet the needs of women 40 and over who wanted to get going on their health and wellness goals for 2020.
Evelyn Powers: What were some of the things that you really wanted the website to do for your business?
Stephanie Mitchell: I wanted it to get people excited. Excuse me, I'm about to sneeze. I wanted it to get people excited and inspired about exercise and not be intimidated by it. I wanted it to bring people together. I really just wanted to have some fun with it. I wanted to create a place where everyone felt welcomed and not scared to begin an exercise program. I work with women who might have young children and who haven't exercised in quite some time, they might be coming back after quite a long break. I also work with women who may be looking to elevate their workout game a little bit and who might be trying to run races or participate in their first triathlon. There's quite a diverse group that I target, but I just wanted everybody to feel welcome when they wanted to come on board with Stephanie Mitchell Fitness.
Evelyn Powers: Originally, you had the personal training, the one-on-one, but then you also had the group training. Then after you launched, you did figure a couple ... That was January 1 and so we really had like two months of normalcy before COVID hit, but in those two months, you figured out some stuff too.
Stephanie Mitchell: I really did, I really honed in on ... At one point in time, I had anticipated working with young female athletes, middle school, high school-aged females, and that didn't quite take off as I had hoped. But what I did learn was that the group of women that I really connected with and really became passionate about serving were those women 40 and older, women in our perimenopausal and menopausal years. It was working with them to help them hone in on their nutrition, hone in on their strength training program, so that they felt confident in the years during midlife.
Evelyn Powers: Then COVID hit the second week of March, what were your thoughts at that point? How did you-
Stephanie Mitchell: I was incredibly fortunate that one of my clients that I'd worked on and off with, even during my hiatus, traveled quite a bit. Every time she traveled, we would meet virtually over FaceTime. So I knew in my back pocket, starting in maybe late January, early February when COVID started to make the news a little bit and people were like, "God, what is life going to look like? What are we going to do? How will personal training work? What's going to happen?" What I told everybody from the beginning, and I feel so fortunate that I was prepared and ready to go, was, "I can do this over FaceTime. We can meet over FaceTime. It is not a thing, I have done it. It works. It looks a little bit different. The energy is a little bit different because we're not in person we're over a device, but it can be done."
Stephanie Mitchell: I tell you what, that Friday, March 13 hit, I left the area with the kids and went down South for a couple of weeks, and every one of my clients, we went FaceTime. That's what we did up until, I'd say, middle of the summer. I'd say half of my clients are still over Zoom or FaceTime and the other half are in-person and we meet outside.
Emily Krause: Yeah, I remember that time because we were having a couple meetings about how you were going to transition. I remember you started using Facebook Lives, you had a Facebook page or group up, and then transitioned from offering free online to making that your full-time, online classes, paid services like that.
Stephanie Mitchell: Right, right. Yeah, it was great.
Emily Krause: Do you feel the website really helped you with that transition?
Stephanie Mitchell: I will say, the website you guys created helped launch me and I am doing things now I never dreamt I'd be doing. The website that you guys created has helped me streamline several of my processes, things like having people sign up for personal training sessions, scheduling their initial consultation, filling out paperwork, to buying packages. You guys helped develop a site that was so user-friendly that it took a lot of the admin work away from me, so people are able to do things on their own.
Evelyn Powers: Good.
Stephanie Mitchell: It's incredible, it's really incredible. The website really helps launch ... It's a fun website, I think, to come visit. I think people can get their information, it's not super wordy, people learn what it is they are going to get from me when they land there. But it's been a tremendous year for growth, and I mean, I have you guys to thank for it.
Evelyn Powers: Well, and you're doing just an amazing job with your brand, your social media, and then also your blog. I wanted to talk a little bit about that, because I think this is just a huge struggle for all small business people, and because you're a personal trainer you can kind of understand. How did you build that muscle, if you will, or that habit to consistently be posting for social media and also for your blog?
Stephanie Mitchell: One of the things I did early in the pandemic, there were a ton of free classes that were launched for small businesses and I happened to take one that was about social media marketing.
Evelyn Powers: Do you remember what it was?
Stephanie Mitchell: I believe it was Meet Edgar.
Evelyn Powers: Okay.
Stephanie Mitchell: I would have to go back and look. But I took a class and basically they said when you do social media posts, your social media post is supposed to take people to your blog, which ultimately takes them to your website. I tried to do that and they were like, "You should post three times a day and you should blog frequently and everything should really link together." I worked on that and I tried to strategize that for a while. I will say, that is going to be more of my goal in 2021. I tried to do that for a number of months during 2020, I just think I had to pivot a little bit once the kids got home. I could spend all day writing, all day creating social media content, but there's a few other jobs I have to do as well.
Stephanie Mitchell: Anyway, when I do blog and post something on the blog, I try to have two or three social media posts that tie into that so it takes people to my website and then from the blog they can go and see what services I offer. There is an overarching plan, whether or not I actually execute that-
Evelyn Powers: Well, three times a day seems like a lot to me.
Stephanie Mitchell: A lot, but if you're trying to increase visibility, that is something. But I try to do two. You guys created a beautiful template for me and I do a quote every day. The quote is the one thing that I send out every morning by 6:00 AM, and then sometime during that day I post a fitness-related picture or something, whether it's mindfulness, fitness or nutrition. That's the goal.
Evelyn Powers: Are you using any kind of a social media scheduler?
Stephanie Mitchell: I'm not, no.
Evelyn Powers: No, so you're doing it on your own.
Stephanie Mitchell: I am doing it on my own. I have interviewed other companies, I have looked at many different platforms, and I think there's a benefit to using them. I had other goals that took priority and I have fun with the social media part, so that's just-
Evelyn Powers: Right, yeah. I mean, you can tell, because your Instagram is just off the chain fun.
Stephanie Mitchell: So sweet. Yeah, I just love it. It's funny, I would never in a million years consider myself a creative person, but that is somehow, with just finding a quote a day or posting some little picture, that to me is just a little bit of a creative outlet that I've come to grow to love. It's just so fun for me.
Evelyn Powers: When you first launched your site to now, how much have you grown your email list?
Stephanie Mitchell: My email list, it's probably grown 20%.
Evelyn Powers: Oh, that's good, yeah.
Stephanie Mitchell: Yeah, it is.
Evelyn Powers: You're posting a blog once, twice a month or?
Stephanie Mitchell: I aim for twice a month.
Evelyn Powers: Yeah, okay.
Stephanie Mitchell: My goal initially was weekly and then I had this-
Evelyn Powers: That's a lot though.
Stephanie Mitchell: It is a lot, it is a lot. Writing is not something that comes naturally or easy for me. If I could just write the way I talk and that was socially acceptable, that would be one thing. If I could just write and not have to worry about grammar and spelling and all that stuff and just write as if I'm having a conversation with a girlfriend over a cup of coffee, that's very different, but I like to put a lot of thought in it and I like for it to really be heartfelt. Then I have somebody that I work with that helps me with the grammar and the spelling because, let's face it, my gifts are not writing, I have other gifts. There are people who helped me edit, so I do that. I would say twice a month is awesome. My goal for next year is to do once a week and I have worked on a plan and, if you will, kind of like an editorial calendar as to what that schedule would look like.
Evelyn Powers: Yeah, Emily and I, we just did that last week too. It is, I mean, for us it's a struggle as well. We're shooting for once a month and even that can be just, "Can we hit it done?"
Stephanie Mitchell: Yeah, because it's time and it's-
Evelyn Powers: Yeah.
Stephanie Mitchell: I wrote a blog today. It took me two hours and it was something that was everything I'm passionate about. I mean, it's just a practice that I do. One of my practices at the end of every year is to write a, it's called Dear Stephanie, and it's thanking myself for what a great job I do the following year. Today, I wrote, "Dear, Stephanie. Thank you for achieving these goals in 2021." It's all my goals and intentions for next year.
Evelyn Powers: That's great.
Stephanie Mitchell: so hard, and you were patient with yourself and you were compassionate, and you worked on all these things and, wow, look how it turned out. Today's post, I was reflecting back on what a few goals were, I'd had a number of goals, but one of the goals was to slow down in 2020, one of the goals was to grow my business, one of them was to grow both personally and professionally, and all of those happened this year.
Stephanie Mitchell: When I look back and think of what we were thinking 2020 was going to be, I laughed at the memes thinking, "Oh, it's the year of perfect vision and it's all this," and it was going to be this like, "Ah, it's going to be this incredible year." Okay, well, you know what? It was an incredible year. I have to say, my business, things have gone incredibly well. I was able to pivot with the times. I was incredibly lucky that people could use personal training and were financially okay to do that, there's a lot of people who weren't. But I consider myself incredibly lucky and have an enormous amount of gratitude because what I offer is essentially a luxury and people chose to spend their hard-earned money on me.
Evelyn Powers: Well, yes and no. I would actually though say, really, what you offer is, gosh, it's such a necessity right now. It really is.
Stephanie Mitchell: It definitely is. It definitely is, but when you-
Stephanie Mitchell: There's so many great people out there who offer things. I mean, I don't mean to pivot here, but let's look at Peloton for a hot second. It's $12.99 a month and you get meditation, yoga, cycling, walking, running, weight training, HIIT classes. People could pay $12.99 a month, and bam, they've got their at-home gym. To pay for someone like me, to have that one-on-one experience, to choose to engage and take care of themselves in a little bit of a different way, I think, for myself, I know that I feel just incredibly grateful, but that people would choose the service that I offer.
Evelyn Powers: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Let's talk about just the Squarespace blogging. Have you been finding that that's been pretty easy to adapt to?
Stephanie Mitchell: I really do. I won't lie, I remember in the beginning-
Evelyn Powers: Don't lie.
Stephanie Mitchell: I remember trying to learn Squarespace and all the things that goes with it. I mean, Squarespace this year has been a learning opportunity throughout the entire year, to blogging, to making a password-protected page where I can host videos now for my senior adults who take a class with me once a week and then I have an online video library for them that they can go to and visit every week, to having a subscription. I mean, there's all these wonderful things that I've been able to learn. I mean, I have to say you guys have helped me and educate me, but I've also learned a lot on my own about how to use this Squarespace platform to really elevate what I offer.
Emily: And you just launched an online store.
Stephanie Mitchell: I know. Who would've thought?
Evelyn Powers: Let's talk tchotchkes. Man, you're rocking the tchotchkes too.
Stephanie Mitchell: I've got tchotchkes. It feels so funny to me that I have all this stuff. Quite honestly, it's not even about the Stephanie Mitchell Fitness anymore, it's about the Strong, Mindful, Feisty. I'm like, the SMF, the Strong, Mindful, Feisty. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'm going to, you can edit me out, but sexy motherfucker. It is all of that.
Evelyn Powers: I love it.
Stephanie Mitchell: Depending on what mood you're in, right?
Evelyn Powers: I've got to get that logo on my shirt.
Stephanie Mitchell: I know. I got sweatshirts, I got masks, we got hats, we got-
Evelyn Powers: Is that what you tell everybody, "You're buying the sexy motherfucker shirt."
Stephanie Mitchell: I do. I'm like, "You get to embody whatever you want to embody." It can be Strong, Mindful, Feisty.
Evelyn Powers: Oh my God, that is so awesome.
Stephanie Mitchell: I mean, that came up with a friend of mine around the fire pit one night. He was like, "It aint Strong, Mindful, Feisty, it is Sexy Motherfucker." I was like, "You bet it is."
Evelyn Powers: I hope you're hashtagging that.
Stephanie Mitchell: You know, I'm not, only because kids follow me. I want to be mindful. I want to be in the privacy of one-on-one clients or small group classes with my female clients.
Stephanie Mitchell: But just to go back to Squarespace though, Squarespace is an incredibly user-friendly platform. I find it intuitive, and I am someone, like what people need to hear is technology scares the pants off me. It intimidates me. I lose a password and I might have a meltdown. Technology, it is my friend, but I am very afraid of it. But I have to say that this particular platform has been incredibly easy to use. What I have loved about what you guys do is if I have a question, you help me. Your help might be, "Hey, have you thought about looking here?" Kudos to you guys for not only helping, but also facilitating the learning process to me, if that makes sense.
Evelyn Powers: Yeah. I mean, ultimately our goal is for the small business owner to be able to operate their own website. I mean, obviously if there's something that you're trying to do and you're not able to figure it out, we're right here to help you do it, but really, that's the empowerment piece, is that you know that you can go in there. That's why we chose this platform too. We just thought it was much, much easier for our clients, for sure.
Stephanie Mitchell: Yes. I have to say, it's incredibly user-friendly, and it's fun. It's not daunting. I mean, again, once I did the commerce store and then I had to go and figure out the taxes, there were reports that I could get from Squarespace that were helpful in me just doing my monthly sales tax for the items that I sell. I have to say, from blogging to accounting, which are two very different bits, right? I mean, blogging ... A, first and foremost, I'm a personal trainer. I tell people to squat and I count backwards from 10. That's my craft, right? But when you're a small business owner and you have to do a little bit of more of that, you do the blogging and you do your own accounting and you have to be able to put all these pieces together, what's beautiful is that Squarespace helps you easily navigate and manage all those pieces.
Evelyn Powers: Yeah, yeah.
Stephanie Mitchell: The gift that you guys brought to the table was that you designed the logo, you designed all the pages. You had questions for me during the process that I would have never thought about and you helped me see value in what I do.
Evelyn Powers: You had some rocking photography to start with, too.
Stephanie Mitchell: I did.
Evelyn Powers: We'll tell potential clients, brand photography, if you can get it, it's everything. We were lucky with you because you already had it. I think you had had actually two different shoots, but we were able to take what you had and use that. That really speaks loudly on your site.
Stephanie Mitchell: Thank you.
Evelyn Powers: Because, yeah, it's great photography. Then we were able to look at it and then design with that in mind. Not all the time do people have their own, and they're like, "Well, we could use stock," but that brand stuff just really, really elevates the site.
Stephanie Mitchell: Absolutely. I feel incredibly grateful for the work of Gertie Gebre Photography. She has knocked it out of the park on two different occasions. I would have had a photo shoot again this year. That's a goal of mine for 2021. I feel like, personally, the last photo shoot I had was 2017 and as I've aged, the body shifts a little bit. That's not a negative thing, that is there's a wisdom with this body, there are years of learning under my belt. It's just a different body and I want to be able to celebrate that and not seem like I am hiding behind what I was in 2017 or 2015. There's gray hair, there's wrinkles, there's a little more of a muffin top. It could be menopause, it could be chocolate-covered caramels from Whole Foods. I don't know.
Evelyn Powers: Or a combination.
Stephanie Mitchell: I want to highlight that and not hide it from 2017.
Evelyn Powers: Well, it's right though. Last year was tough, because we were going to do more brand photography too, but, I mean, it's hard to get it all scheduled right now.
Stephanie Mitchell: Absolutely.
Stephanie Mitchell: The other thing I did, I want to circle back to something about the website just for anybody who listens or something you might want to put in your blog, is I use the newsletter. There's the marketing campaign piece and the newsletters, you guys helped craft a template for me. I use it often, probably twice a month. That has been such a gift, so thank you for that as well. I really love that piece of the marketing.
Evelyn Powers: Excellent.
Stephanie Mitchell: With regards to getting information out there and promoting what we do, so that has been really liked.
Evelyn Powers: Well, are you going to add anything more to your store you think, this year?
Stephanie Mitchell: Not to the store.
Evelyn Powers: You got a T-shirt, you got sweatshirts, and you got hats.
Stephanie Mitchell: Beanies, I love my beanie. I'm pretty pumped about that. I would say, in terms of services that I'm offering, what I'm very much excited about and that I'm getting geared up for is I'm creating a Strong, Mindful, Feisty Over 40 program. That will be a 28-day program that I am launching for February. It will help women in the perimenopausal and menopausal stage of their life focus on their strengths training, focus on nutrition, focus on mindfulness. When we feel strong and we are in a place of mindfulness, it'll help us achieve our goals outside of strength training and fitness. Maybe there's that person who wants to open their small business, and if you feel strong and you feel confident, you're more likely to do it, go after your goals and be feisty, have the courage to go after something, if you're feeling good about yourself. That is what I am launching in February.
Stephanie Mitchell: We'll have this 28-day program that we do in February, and from there, my intention is to launch either a monthly subscription for this program or make it a three-month deep dive into strength training, meditation, and then a little bit of coaching. Lots of fun stuff ahead.
Emily: Nice.
Evelyn Powers: Sounds fantastic. Em, you got any more questions?
Emily: I was going to ask what are you planning for 2021, but you just answered it.
Stephanie Mitchell: Yeah, I'm still interested in growing. I've set some very, I don't like the term aggressive, but I've set some pretty big goals for myself next year. I met with a friend of mine, in fact, I posted online about her today. She sat down with me and we looked at numbers and what I want to hit next year. Someone said to me like, "Oh, well, this year you did this. Do you really think that's feasible, what you're trying to do?" I'm like, "Yeah, there's no reason to believe otherwise."
Stephanie Mitchell: I have a very lofty goal for next year. My goal is to continue to reach more women, to help them feel strong, mindful, and be their most feisty selves. I definitely want more personal training clients, but then I really do want to elevate Strong, Mindful, Feisty Over 40 program. I want to make that kind of like my signature program.
Evelyn Powers: Wow, that sounds awesome.
Stephanie Mitchell: Yeah, pretty excited.
Evelyn Powers: Yeah.
Stephanie Mitchell: Very excited.
Evelyn Powers: Well, I'm excited for you.
Stephanie Mitchell: Thank you.
Evelyn Powers: Let us know if we can help in any way.
Stephanie Mitchell: Well, it's so funny, just as an aside. I thought about, okay, I love my website, but now I'm like, "Okay, so I've been with this for a year." I know that I've already started to draft what changes we'll make to it next year. There's going to be this tab, instead of Train With Us, it's going to be Be Strong. Then there's going to be the Be Mindful, which talks about the meditation services I offer. Then there's going to be the Be Feisty, which will talk about coaching and it'll probably be this SMF Over 40 programs. We're just going to switch the wording around a little bit, so I'm starting to draft that and we'll probably be reaching out to you guys, I'd say midway through next year. I want to just sit with this a little bit more and craft some of the wording, but we'll be making a few changes.
Evelyn Powers: Well, it's good to run the program too, because then you get some good intel-
Stephanie Mitchell: Absolutely.
Evelyn Powers: ... and then you understand the messaging that you then can be using on the site. But yeah, no, I would definitely agree that we could switch some things around and change up the emphasis a little bit and-
Stephanie Mitchell: And I want new photography.
Evelyn Powers: Yeah, right. Well, right, and even some of the headlines and some of the keywords and those kinds of things, because yeah, now you're a year out and you figure a bunch of things out. Then after you run that program, you'll even know more.
Stephanie Mitchell: Absolutely. It's very exciting. The mantra for 2021 is time to fly. We're really just going to continue to elevate the game and elevate what we do, and see how this maybe takes off.
Evelyn Powers: Well, we're super excited for you.
