We recently connected with Kelly Martinsen and have shared our conversation below.
Kelly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?
We opened our doors with a loan a mission statement and a dream. Our mission statement was to create a fitness studio for everyone, one that challenged the biggest athlete while at the very same time empowering the person who was new to exercise. We opened the door with a passion to serve clients first above everything. We had never worked for or owned a fitness studio. As such, we went in green and were unaware of certain failures that could happen. If we were starting over, we would have worked at a fitness studio first. We also would have reached out. and aligned with like-minded studios to learn from them. So often fitness studios view each other as competition. We NEVER do that, we believe every small boutique fitness studio has a niche and we all have the same goal, we are not a competition we are market openers.
Kelly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Kelly Martinsen was a manager in a biotech firm, and then a publisher of a wellness magazine on Long Island. Her passion was hot workouts, but the only heated workouts available were always yoga-based and she was trained in Barre and Pilates. Shannon Williams is her niece, a. nurse, and 25 years younger than her, yet they liked the same workout atmosphere. Together they would attend classes and talk about how they would make things different. After years of talking, we designed a very specific workout, in a 95-degree infrared heated studio, with music that makes your soul sore, a stretch that makes your muscles long, and a 3-minute gratitude-based meditation at the end. Our floor, heaters, lighting, and sequences make our studio unique. Our members make our studio the best in New York. They are inspiring, all levels come into that room and sweat work hard, and support each other with smiles it is a tribe like no other.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
With a bit of a crazy leap, we opened our doors in July 2019. We had 14 classes on the schedule. Some days we would teach one, maybe two people. But the word went out quickly and within six months our classes began to fill. In March 2019 after a huge turnout to our class, we made a video announcing that we would be closing “for 2 weeks while we wait for this Covid virus to pass us by.” We were closed for a full year. To keep our members in shape we would offer free Facebook workouts and Instagram workouts. When it got warmer we offered the same on the beach. FREE. It was never about the money, There has always been a bigger goal for us and that was the health and fitness, and mental stress relief for our members. Everyone told us group fitness was dead, it would not survive in a post-pandemic world. But we knew that what we offered was so much more than fitness. We had a loan, we had a rent payment, and we had no Core 95 money coming in. We discussed not reopening. We would have rebuilt in a new space that was compliant with the NY State Covid rules. On a hunch that if we built it they would come, we did. The return of members was slow at first.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I met my partner in the labor and delivery room when I was 25 years old and she was being born. She was my niece, my little “Shannon Peanut”. Over 25 years of time she became my workout partner and then my business partner. Our logo is a Yin Yang! That is our workout (Hot, Hard, Intense-Stretch, Meditate) but it also represents us as people. We are very different, when I am the gas she is the break.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.core95.com
- Instagram: core95lb