By: Javacia Harris Bowser
Sponsor Spotlight: Inspire Fitness
Looking at Kelly Creel you’d never think she has ever struggled with getting in shape or staying fit. Though she’s almost 40, she has a body most 20-somethings would covet. Creel teaches several classes a week at Inspire Fitness, a fitness studio she co-owns with her husband, Stephen Creel, and friend, Gabe Rios. Inspire Fitness is a Birminghma-based studio that focuses on Spinning, yoga, and strength training.
Creel recently started blogging on the Inspire Fitness website and was courageous enough to share her own fitness story. She writes:
I know what it’s like to feel a vague awareness about why I shouldn’t eat that brownie with ice cream and fudge sauce, but to somehow be unable to say no. To set my alarm clock for early in the morning, have my gym bag ready with new gym shoes begging to be worn, only to sleep through the alarm or be so dead-dog tired that I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. Or, equally frustrating, to get up early and lace up those brand-new shoes, only to attempt to jog around the block and be in such poor condition that I can barely walk to the stop sign at the end of my street before my lungs start to burn, heart pounding, and nose pouring snot. … To suffer sugar withdrawals so severe I sat in the stairwell eating a Snicker’s bar so that none of my co-workers would see. To hoard and hide “bad foods” or “treats” in my side drawer in the office, so my spouse wouldn’t know. … To pay a whole year’s membership at a gym and never use it once, except to get the discount so the kids can go swimming…
As I read Creel’s story, which has a happy ending with her falling in love with fitness and seeing it transform all parts of her life, I felt proud that Inspire Fitness is a See Jane Write sponsor this month. And as I read her story I thought about all my friends who refuse to go a Spinning class with me because they feel intimidated by the instructors or the regulars in the class who seem like they’ve been fit and firm all their lives.
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Creel’s blog post reminded me of why it’s so important that we share our stories – even our fitness stories. My hope is that someone would read Creel’s story and decide to give Spinning or yoga a try. Or maybe a woman would read one of my writings about my love for Jillian Michaels’ workouts and pick up a DVD of her own.
For those of you who are current or aspiring entrepreneurs, you should know also that storytelling is good for business, a lesson Creel and her crew learned the hard way.
“In our final days of preparation before we opened Inspire Fitness, the first stand-alone Spinning studio of its kind in Birmingham, our realtor, Southpace Properties, issued a press release on our behalf announcing our studio location, our products and philosophy, and discussing what makes Inspire Fitness different from other gyms and fitness centers in the area. I anticipated the phones would ring off the hook,” Creel says, especially since Alabama is a state plagued by obesity, diabetes, and the like.
“But instead of a big splash, the press release created barely a ripple,” she says. “It became apparent to us quickly that in order to rise above the fray and reach potential clients who may benefit from the services we provide that we had to figure out a cohesive way to tell our story, to tell it genuinely and earnestly, and to demonstrate to – in addition to telling – those potential clients how we are different.”
And Creel believes they’ve found a way to do just that through blogging and social media.
“Telling the Inspire Fitness owners’ fitness stories, beginning with mine, is telling the story of our business’ beginning, but that is only the first stone set in the path,” Creel says. “Our client’s stories will fill in the rest of the stones. That’s the exciting part, and the reason I plan to keep blogging – it’s a living history that will be written anew with each new client, each healthy choice, each small behavior change, and each success story!”
Birmingham-based readers, join us at 5:30 p.m., July 19 for our next See Jane Move event hosted by Inspire Fitness. Learn more here.