We were lucky to catch up with Stefanie Rance recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Stefanie 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?

Owning my own business as an online coach was something that was born out of the necessity of my circumstances. I have worked inside CrossFit gyms for the last ten years, and before a little over a year ago, did not have any aspirations to move away from in-person coaching to online.

When I began coaching CrossFit, I coached two to three classes a week in addition to being an elementary teacher full time. When I had my daughter four years ago, I did not want to return to the classroom full time, and instead leaned into coaching. I started a CrossFit Kids program at the gym I was at, coached at least ten classes a week, and then became the gym manager. It was a perfect way to mesh working in a field that I loved with being a full-time mom.

Our gym received some inquiries about personal training in gymnastics and the gym owner diverted them to me. Within CrossFit there are elements of gymnastics such as pull ups, toes to bar, muscle ups, handstand push ups, and handstand walking. I grew up doing gymnastics, and even coached it for a time in my teens, so it was a natural fit for me to work with clients that wanted to improve those skills.

I started personal training two clients regularly and they made a lot of progress, achieving the most coveted skill in CrossFit, the bar muscle up. Once other gym members saw their transformation, I got more personal training inquiries, and eventually maxed out my in-person client roster. I then started holding workshops at my gym for gymnastics skills, and those were well-received and well-attended.

Everything was great – I got to create my own schedule, set my own training rates, and was helping a lot of people get better and build more confidence in the gym.

Then my husband informed me that we would need to move in a few months due to his job. I was devastated because after putting in a lot of work, building rapport, and getting results, my personal training work was really thriving. Furthermore, I was overwhelmed by the thought of doing that all over again in a new place.

That was when I decided to start my online coaching business. I was vaguely aware that online coaching existed, but it never appealed to me because I had always loved building relationships and interacting with people in person. From the beginning, I knew that for this to work for me, I had to create systems in my coaching that would put the coach-client relationship at the center. I would need to develop methods that went way beyond just creating workouts for people.

Before my family moved, I was able to convert most of my in-person personal training clients to online coaching clients, and this helped me get started. I am so grateful to those early adopters because they helped me develop my skills as an online coach and create pillars for my practice such as monthly check-ins and individualized video feedback.

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

I work with functional fitness athletes to improve gymnastics skills through individualized online coaching & online group programs, as well as in-person workshops and personal training. I help clients achieve and improve skills like pull ups, chest to bar, toes to bar, muscle ups, handstand push ups, and handstand walking. My mission is to help my clients feel more confident and capable in their body and to set and achieve goals they once thought themselves incapable of.

Having worked in gyms for a decade, I know that body weight gymnastics skills are the hardest for people to learn. If you don’t have a background in gymnastics, getting skills like muscle ups and handstand walking are monumental tasks, and are also necessary to progressing in the sport of fitness. With my background competing in, and coaching, gymnastics I knew that I was uniquely positioned to help athletes fill this hole in their training.

What makes me especially adept at coaching gymnastics is that I understand acutely how difficult it is to get these skills. While I competed in gymnastics in high school, I never participated in or really trained bars, so getting my first pull up, toes to bar, and bar muscle up were a herculean task for me. By struggling to achieve these skills, and coaching many athletes to do the same, I have developed a training methodology that is really effective for beginner and intermediate CrossFitters.

What sets me apart as a coach, in addition to my background in gymnastics, is my experience as a classroom teacher. I have a Masters of Education in Teaching and was an elementary educator for eight years, which has helped my coaching immensely. I am adept at taking a complex concept or movement, breaking it down into digestible pieces, and creating a progression to master the skill. Teaching has also helped me know how to tailor my coaching to the individual needs of my different athletes and has helped me to be responsive to the unique needs of each client. Being a classroom teacher has also helped with a skill necessary to online coaching, talking to the camera. I really enjoy creating coaching videos for my athletes that instruct them on different aspects of movement, or talk through a problem they are having and instructs them in how to make progress.

Additionally, I pride myself on the connection I have with my athletes and with being approachable to them. They know that they can always reach out to me, that their programming is specifically tailored to where they are and what they need, and ultimately that I care about their success just as much as they do.

How did you build your audience on social media?

While I have a relatively small social media, compared to other fitness influencers, I have had consistent growth over the last year and a half since starting my business and I think it is due to two factors: consistency and simplicity.

When I decided to start my business, I created a social media schedule for myself, and most importantly, I followed it. I committed to posting three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I felt like this was doable and that I would be able to maintain it over time, and I have. I think consistency helps so much because your followers learn that they can trust you, which makes them more likely to invest with you, whether that is with their time or money. By providing educational content three times a week, every week, my followers know that they can expect to get content that has direct utility for the struggles they face in the gym.

I also think the simplicity and relevancy of my posts has helped me to gain followers. I generally create solutions posts where I present a gymnastics problem, which I typically derive from my clientele, and one or two solutions to this problem. I think there are a lot of creators out there giving ten different ways to fix your toes to bar, and this really overwhelms people and they aren’t able to incorporate the information. I like to present one problem with your toes to bar, then give one or two solutions so that my followers can actually put the information into practice without feeling overwhelmed.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Something I had to unlearn was taking everything personally. Last spring I had a robust client roster and my income each month kept going up. I wrongly assumed that I was on a trajectory for eternal growth. Then the summer rolled around and I had several clients cancel all at once. One was traveling, one was buying a house and didn’t have time to train, and one was starting graduate school. I agonized over losing these clients and was freaking out, wondering what I did to make them want to stop training with me. Then I learned about the summer slump in fitness – a time when people cancel fitness memberships because kids are out of school, travel happens, and people just want more free time in their schedule. Once I realized that this was a pattern in the fitness industry, and wasn’t necessarily a personal attack on my efficacy as a coach, I was able to learn that clients will cancel their subscription and it isn’t always about me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coachstefrae.com
• Instagram: @steff_rae

Image Credits
Lauren Byrum, Amanda Beard