We were lucky to catch up with Micki Havard recently and have shared our conversation below.

Micki, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Is your team able to work remotely? If so, how have you made it work? What, if any, have been the pitfalls? What have been the non-obvious benefits?

A large part of my instruction was done online prior to the pandemic , so I was able to easily pivot and have a bigger online presence.

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?

Pilates

I’m a Pilates instructor with over 20 years in the fitness industry. I began taking Pilates in my mid 20s and really fell in love with it leading up to my wedding. I took more classes during my engagement in preparation for my “wedding dress body ” , and absolutely fell in love with the practice. Fast forward a couple years, I was taking class and one of my instructors suggested that I get certified. I was certified through power Pilates and began teaching in a small Atlanta studio run by an African-American woman. Two years after practicing under her she decided to close her studio and move to California so I parked around different studios for the next few years trying to find a good fit. I always found it challenging finding a studio that promoted inclusion with its students. . In most studio settings, I was not only ,the only Black student but also the only Black instructor in most cases. The lack of inclusion was not just a lack of racial diversity, it was also a lack of diversity in the type of students they were teaching. Most of the students were carbon copies of one another, thin white women who had a fair amount of pilates experience. I never quite understood how one could become a better teacher by teaching a non-diverse group of students. Every teacher is stretched by teaching a wide variety of students.

I began to teach two classes at the YMCA in search of more diversity. My students were not only diverse in their levels of fitness, but also their ages, backgrounds, and race. I taught at the YMCA for 10 years and that experience taught me more than any other studio or any other teacher training that ever received in my over 20 years of experience. It taught me how to meet people where they are, and to provide variations of movement in order to include a wide variety of students.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I started to post my Pilates and Wellness stuff on IG, I was SUPER consistent . I would post 2X per day, every day for about 2 years (this is prior to all of the weird algorithm stuff). My biggest piece of advice : be consistent, authentic and social- on social media.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Being authentic and creating valuable and interesting content

Contact Info:

• Website: mickiphit.com
• Instagram: mickiphit
• Facebook: mickiphit
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-E2LtjzyEbrlKDI6iZm_5A
• Other: Pinterest : https://www.pinterest.com/MickiPhit/

Image Credits
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