We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kirsten Whitehouse. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kirsten below.

Alright, Kirsten thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

I was made redundant from my job as an Exhibition Director in 2019, so initially set up my own events company, which was doing really well. I had decided to use the time and financial settlement though to follow my passion and qualify as a fitness professional alongside my event work.

It was really hard, especially for those first two years where I would fulfil events contracts during the day and study at night, all whilst being a single parent and suffering from long Covid, too. My top advice would be to make sure you look after your own wellbeing during tough times, so that you have the mental and physical capacity to realise your dreams.

After 2 exhausting years, I had been able to pass all exams with flying colours and build up my fitness business, whilst still working events. At that point I knew that I could only give my all to one career, although I enjoyed both. Ultimately, I followed my heart and closed shop on the events, built a home studio and set about helping people feel healthier, happier, fitter and more confident.

Events would have made me rich, but the job satisfaction I get from improving people’s life is worth so much more. Make sure to take the time to work out a realistic budget and financial plan – if you can afford to, I would always suggest you go with the job that least feels like work and most like what you were born to do.

Over the years, as well as the usual fitness improvements and fat loss successes, I was able to help clients move again confidently and pain free, avoid planned surgery and – one of my highlights! – carry their grandchild safely up the stairs, when before the client themselves could only crawl up the stairs due to hip issues.

I have now become the local go-to for all sorts of health issues and am excited every time I can help. Every client and their personal challenges makes me a better coach, as I make sure to educate myself on how to best support them for long term improvements. The best advice I was ever given was to ‘get your first 2,000 hours’ of coaching under your belt asap’ – and I pass this on to this day. No one expects you to have all the answers, but if you are willing to admit to that and then go to learn more, you will only get better and better at your job from day to day.

Don’t be afraid to take the leap! Going to a job you love doing is the best feeling in the world – and since you’ll spend so many hours there, you may as well enjoy it!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

What you should know about me is that – in October 2018 – I suffered a massive mental health breakdown, caused by a perfect storm of having to be strong for an ill child, going through divorce, and a destressing issue arising at work.

The first sign was that my left leg randomly stopped working and I would collapse without warning as it gave way beneath me. After multiple tests for brain cancer, spinal tumours and MS, I was diagnosed with a complete mental breakdown and my body shutting down as a result.

My fabulous doctor prescribed talking therapy along with the gym! And she was right, offloading my worries whilst training to regain strength was the perfect combination. Being able to spend time again with friends whilst running, lifting heavy and laughing, got me back onto my feet within 3 months.

It was at that precise moment that I decided I wanted to help other women through their personal struggles and help them get stronger physically and mentally, as the combination works!

I focus on strength training that is right for my clients (working progressively from a safe baseline upwards) and help them rediscover confidence in and love for their own body and its amazing abilities. The majority of my clients are peri- or post-menopausal, so this is genuinely life-changing for them at a pretty challenging time.

I wanted to make this available to as many women as possible, so I decided to not only offer 1-2-1 and group sessions locally (I am based in St Albans, England) but also wrote a complete ‘reset’ programme that can be done anytime anywhere to fit around my clients’ life. I run these ‘transformations’ 3-4 times a year, they are based entirely online and are my most affordable product. I help clients focus on one small change at a time and they all report amazing successes around their mindset, health and strength and fat loss by the end of the 6 weeks and sustainably beyond.

As helping others gives me the most amazing feeling, I have just signed up to do a mental health practitioner qualification – this is a 3-year course, which I cannot wait to start. A lot of my clients already leave my PT sessions saying they feel like they had therapy, too, so I believe this will really help me to help them further. And because I find it hard to sit still, alongside my usual work and this new qualification, I have also just started writing my online course into a guided self-help book – watch this space, maybe I can help you feel the best you soon, too :)

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

As a fitness and wellbeing professional especially, you will find that there is a lot of ‘competition’ out there. In my case, I am actually a fair bit more expensive than other local providers but in a way this is my USP – as well as overheads (I built a fully equipped studio gym as a lot of my target audience don’t want to train outdoors or in a commercial gym), I specialise in really helping my clients with their individual issues (a lot is mindset along with specific physical problems like chronic pain or old injury).

My advice is – know your worth. There are more than enough clients for you and all your colleagues. The clients who will work with you and get the results they want, will see you are worth every penny you charge. If you start doing deals, not only will it devalue what you offer, you may also feel less inclined to put in the hard work that will result in results for your clients!

Also: never underestimate word of mouth recommendations – there is no marketing in the world that will outperform a genuine review, so don’t be afraid to ask your clients for one and to share them, too.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Most importantly: don’t be disheartened, don’t give up and be consistent!

It takes time to grow a successful business, especially if you are starting from nothing. As long as you are genuine and consistent, your clientele will grow organically, and as I said, word of mouth recommendation will definitely help with that.

Define your ideal client, your niche and then target your content towards them, and them only.

Post regularly on the social media platforms your target audience hangs out on, and offer value – free advice, tips, something fun, etc. Mention you can help as a ‘by-line’ as opposed to the main reason for posting. This way people build a relationship with you and your brand, they learn to trust you and will become more open to working with you. Every time your content gets shared you end up in front of a new potential audience, so don’t be afraid to repost successful stuff occasionally.

Don’t give up too soon – most small businesses fail because their owners lost faith when success wasn’t instant. ‘Build it and they will come!’ ;-)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wolfapproachfitness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wolfapproachfitness
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolfapproachfitness

Image Credits

All images are my own (Kirsten Whitehouse, Wolf Approach Fitness) and I have permission of all subjects to share them.