We recently connected with Alivia Kirby and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alivia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I’ve been running since I was 13 years old. At first running was a way for me to lose weight but it shortly turned into more of a passion and it’s still a passion today. I do online running coaching for people who may not know how to create their own running plans to prepare for a race. A lot of people are unaware of how to create a running program that will slowly help them progress and get faster and that’s why I started online coaching.

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?

I’ve been passionate about running since I was 13 years old. I started running as a way to lose weight but shortly it turned into something I ended up loving. I ran cross country and track my senior year in high school after I was able to build up enough confidence to run on the team. I was running up until I had my 1st son and shortly after also ran my first half marathon. I mainly learned how to create my own training program based on what I was seeing/learning on instagram from other coaches. After running my first half marathon in November of 2022, I was immediately in love with the distance difficulty and decided to start studying to become a running coach. I want to be able to help people reach goals and run races they never thought they could achieve, because that’s what I thought at first.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to learn, specifically about running, not about running a business, was that more mileage isn’t always the best. All growing up, to run long distance, I was always taught to run more miles each week when eventually it started to work against me. I was burning out a lot, I was getting injured and constantly dragging my feet. Once I started decreasing my mileage and incorporating some strength training, I started seeing positive results. I can also apply this as I’ve been trying to grow my business on social media. Everyone always says that the more I post, the more followers/viewers I’ll get. The real trick is the quality of the content. The better the content, the more drawn in people will be. So that’s something I’ve learned both in running and as trying to grow my business. I still have a very long ways to go with building my business, but I’m getting there.

How did you build your audience on social media?

This personally for me, I am still working on. I sometimes have a very hard time on social media. Specifically, I feel like I constantly need to be on my phone or recording something I’m always doing. When really I just need to focus on the quality of what I post and share. The higher the quality, the more viewers/followers I might have. It’s also important for me as a running coach to specifically post about running and tips and tricks that will draw people in and hopefully ask questions and want to learn more. But like I said, I’m still learning and I have a long ways to go.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @livsmart.trainsmart
• Facebook: Alivia Kirby
• Other: Email: [email protected] TikTok: [email protected]

Image Credits
Valerie Bybee Photography (1 high school image)