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

Kellye, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My mission is to help people become the best they can be and create a life that is more than they imagined. Through my gym and my training I’m not only able to help my clients physically, but I am also able to coach and guide them on creating a life that they love and not settling for, a life that is less than what they feel they deserve and what they want for themselves! My mission is to start in my gym with helping them overcome physical issues, reverse health issues, and be the healthiest that they possibly can be through exercise and diet. With my life coaching skills, I help them to carry over the determination they have in the gym into their lives in general. I am able to coach them, encourage them, and motivate them to make changes in their lives for the better. This is my mission..

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am the owner and CEO of Kellye Personal Fitness (KPF) and a master personal trainer and certified life coach. I am very much invested in my community and strive to give back to the community. In 2013 I opened Kellye Personal Fitness in Covington GA after working 2 years as a personal trainer at FitBodies, another personal training gym. The first KPF facility was only 1300 sq feet and was located in a small strip mall in Covington. Sitting next to a car wash, clients could be seen running around the car wash to get some of their cardio in. Within the first year of opening, KPF quickly outgrew the strip mall and I moved KPF to its current 4,000 sq foot facility. Over the first few years, I focused on group exercise with clients in small groups but took on many clients with special needs, Tichelle Florence with Friedreich’s Ataxia; Michael Mills – paralyzed and in a wheelchair, Talena Stowe – a woman shot in the head by her husband in a domestic abuse situation, Lisa Duren – a client with cerebral palsy, Jason Joyner – suffered a massive stroke, Stephen Mattews – a current client who suffered a massive stroke to name a few. These are in addition to the thousands of clients whom have walked through KPF’s doors and have changed their lives around as a result.It is my experiences with these clients that I learned how to train and more importantly, how to modify to meet client needs yet still attain goals and progress.

I root my business in my faith and consider my business as my ministry to serve and to help others. In 2022, I donated over $34,000 in training to clients in need with similar donations over the past 5 years. I don’t want finances to stop people from getting the help they need to become better and create a healthy life!

After owning a gym for several years and taking notice of the common underlying themes from clients, I and my daughter who is KPF’s nutritionist, developed KPF’s most successful program called “The Beginner Course”. Initially, I was seeking 20 clients to test the 6 week program, but was quickly overwhelmed by 50+ clients wanting to try the program. From there, the program exploded and in 2019, KPF had its best year ever as a business, thanks in large part to the beginner program which has boasted close to 200 clients every 6 weeks. The beginner program has become a staple for the KPF business and is a feeder program to all of its other offerings. KPF continues to grow and expand its reach! We are a “women driven” business, with 7 female personal trainers other than myself, a female running coach and nutritionist.

We are currently forming a building project that will allow us 10,000 square feet, a smoothie bar, senior citizen training, sports training, yoga classes, kettlebell classes, a running clinic, just to name a few….all in addition to our current beginner classes and current advanced bootcamp classes.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I believe what helped build my reputation within my market was the large number of testimonies of life transformations with my clients. I believe my heart towards my clients and my passion and dedication to them also helped to build my reputation within my market.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

During 2020 when the world was facing Covid, I was forced to shut down. The gym was closed for two months. Reopening was hard. I honestly didn’t know how we would make it through the pandemic. The gym was the last place people wanted to go during that time for obvious reasons! We reopened, after two months, and by the grace of God, were able to pull through that time. Fortunately, I had resources to fall back on to help through that time as well. But the resources were running out quickly. The next year after Covid began was a struggle. It was very slow getting people back into the gym and feeling safe. But we were able to manage to do that and now we are back at full steam. It took faith in God, perseverance, and a lot of creativity to keep the gym up and running!

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: Kellyepersonalfitness_cov
• Facebook: Kellye Personal Fitness

Image Credits
Carlie Freeman Photography