We were lucky to catch up with Sophia Briegleb recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sophia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

I’ve always wanted Kinesis Pilates to be a wonderful place to work for other teachers and attend for clients. So I prioritize making our teachers and clients feel special.

For clients, we keep a document with notes on their history, goals, and lessons. This helps us customize our instruction to each person’s specific body and needs. Since our class sizes are small, teachers can really help each client feel important even in group classes. We also celebrate clients with parties, gifts around the holidays, and prizes. For example, this past holiday season, we gave the clients who attend the most regularly a gift that was under our own holiday tree.

I want our teachers to feel valued as well because people who feel valued are better at helping others feel special. We do this by celebrating their anniversary of their start date in the studio, gifts around the holidays, and creating avenues for clients to show their appreciation for teachers. For example, we’ve hung stockings for each teacher around the holidays or left Valentines boxes with blank cards so clients could write notes to their teachers. Clients are often full of praise for their teachers and if you just give them a way to share it, they will.

Sophia, 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?

I started practicing Pilates regularly in 2014 and found it extremely powerful for healing pain and changing my body. My experience was so profound that I decided to train to become a Pilates teacher and open a studio. In 2017, I moved my studio into The Stanley Marketplace and expanded to offer group classes and private lessons seven days a week. We use classical Pilates to help people heal their pain, align their bones and joints, strengthen neglected muscles, lengthen tight ones, breathe intentionally, and connect to themselves through whole body, mindful movement. We are one of the only classical Pilates studios in the area, teaching the method on the equipment that Joseph Pilates created himself and honoring his century-old approach to moving the body.

In 2020, we added on programs to help you exercise and massage your face and neck and now offer an online Intro Face Pilates course as well as live, virtual classes. We have been voted Best Pilates Studio by 5280 Magazine Readers three years in a row, but I am most proud of the difference we make in people’s lives. We help them reduce pain, feel better, gain confidence, move better in the studio as well as in their everyday lives and other activities, prevent injuries, be healthier, and feel younger.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The pandemic was a very challenging time for fitness businesses, especially ones that involve a lot of personal attention and special equipment like Pilates. In March of 2020 when we had to quarantine, I wasn’t sure Pilates could compete with all the free and low-cost online fitness options. We shifted gears quickly, trying to encourage private clients to switch to virtual privates. We re-engaged with clients who had moved out of state and started teaching them again online. We filmed classes that we offered not for profit but to compete with other offerings and keep clients engaged until we could finally open again. It was extremely challenging to keep shifting to pandemic guidelines–reduced class sizes, social distancing, face masks, spacing out lessons. We lost regular clients and failed to attract new ones because so many people were afraid to exercise in a studio around others or disliked doing it in a face mask. It was hard to build team morale since teachers never taught in the studio at the same time and we didn’t get together anymore in person for meetings, continuing education, or parties.

In order to keep the business going, I had to offer additional programming that would help me pay the bills, work well in our new Zoom world, and provide something people needed. This was partly how Face Pilates was born. It also came from my increased awareness of my own face discomfort (like jaw tension) and facial patterns from wearing a mask regularly. Since Face Pilates is best done watching yourself and touching your own face, it’s very conducive to doing at home via an online platform. This also allowed me to attract clients from around the country. We taught 10-week Intro and Advanced courses for a year. Then I filmed the Intro Course and made it available to anyone at any time, and now teach one class live each week. I absolutely love what Face Pilates has done for myself and clients love the difference it’s made for them too.

Pilates teaches us to be flexible in our bodies, but being flexible as a business owner was one of the reasons my studio survived the pandemic.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Kinesis Pilates built its reputation via word of mouth. I worked hard in the beginning to offer a stellar experience and those clients shared that with their friends and family. Once the studio began to grow, I formalized processes for clients to share their experience. I ask regulars to leave Google reviews or send me testimonials that I post on our website. And then we have to continue to work hard to maintain the standards and expectations these reviews have created.

Contact Info:

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