SIX years!! It’s truly hard to believe that Refine is 6 years old. Honestly, I didn’t know if the business would survive more than a year, so it is truly unbelievable that it’s been six years now of this specialized practice surviving in little Orange City, IA.
A few years ago, I did a three-part series on everything I had learned after starting and owning the practice for three years. I now grimace a little at what I wrote b/c there was so little I really knew, 😆, and yet that was where God had me at the time. There was a level of trust He needed to establish in me to prepare me for what was to come. I’m sure in another 6 years I’ll read this post and think, “Wow, I knew so very little. That girl had no idea what she was talking about!”
If there’s ONE thing I’ve learned on this journey, it’s this:
I am not in control. In fact, there is honestly nothing I can control. I can’t control how many patients will enter my clinic this month. I can’t control how many people I’ll reach with the message God has given me. I can’t control how much money I make. I can’t control whether people get better or not. I can’t control whether the business will grow in the next 5 years or whether it will die.
I am not in control.
It was a massive leap of faith to start Refine. It was a huge step out of my comfort zone. I had to die to whatever people would think of me. I had to work through how it would look and the boundaries I would set as a mom and wife. I had to get comfortable with showing my face on social media, potentially embarrassing myself, and putting myself out there for anyone to view or form an opinion of without even knowing me personally.
I had to be ok with failure – not just the little daily failures (b/c there are lots of them!), but the business potentially failing b/c that was a real possibility when you open up a niche practice in rural Iowa without the backing of anyone else or a great referral source for patients. In all honesty, I didn’t want to do it. And yet God kept closing doors until this was the only one left open, and He made it so very clear that this was what I was supposed to do.
He guided me through starting out in an old house while sharing an office space inside Guiding Star, a local non-profit. Without their support and encouragement (along with my husband and a couple of close friends), my business would have never even started.
Then Covid hit, and Guiding Star was forced to close its doors, which left me scrambling for an office space to continue to see patients. After much prayer and deliberation, I decided to lease my own space in my current location. It had a literal dirt floor and no walls – there were very few businesses even in the building at the time. But the landlord was willing to work with me, building out just part of my space at first so I could save some $$ and then later finishing it when I was ready to afford the full lease payment. It felt SO risky at the time, but I’ve gotten to enjoy this beautiful space now for almost 5 years and have welcomed in hundreds of patients not only to my clinic but also to Orange City, as many travel from out of town (some 2-3 hours away!).
During that time, He also gave me an idea to try teaching a class online to help more women who either didn’t have access to a pelvic PT locally or simply didn’t have the time to make an appointment. I had no idea online courses were becoming popular, but I was just winging it – filming teachings week by week out of my basement to a small trial group for $75. This course has now been refined and improved and has helped hundreds of women around the globe with any amount of leaking, prolapse, pelvic floor tightness, low back pain, urgency, and ab separation. It’s helped women from their early 20s to their 70s, and it’s been a JOY to serve women in this way!
After seeing how Pelvic Core helped women, I decided to create another course, Diastasis 101. While Pelvic Core was helpful for women with diastasis, for those with much more significant separations, or for those who specifically wanted to JUST focus on healing diastasis, it seemed there was a need for more, which is how Diastasis 101 began. I again started with a cohort of women to trial it out, and they had some great success stories! D101 has been a really fun addition to the services Refine offers, and I’ve loved seeing the results from clients as they work through the material on their own timeline.
When Refine began, I always thought I would develop some sort of online fitness membership. It was constantly pressed on my heart, but I was held back by my doubts. There are TONS of fitness memberships out there. There are numerous prenatal/postpartum fitness memberships available. How do I compete with the big box names that can offer a wide range of resources at extremely low prices? So I ignored the prompting for a long time, but I couldn’t fully shake it because I KNEW that I had something unique to offer – not necessarily something new to the fitness world, but a way to teach fitness a better way for women specifically. I am passionate about helping women move well, and this starts with things like:
- Proper form (which involves a lot of teaching)
- Multiple modification options for ANY fitness level – not just 1 modifier that’s still too hard for most beginners/PP moms
- Teaching on how to breathe correctly and how to engage the pelvic floor and inner core with every single move.
- Shorter workouts than average for the busy mom who often feels like she simply doesn’t have enough time.
And that’s where Refine Fitness began. It was originally called Level Up, and after a couple years, we changed the name to fit in with our branding and be clear on the purpose of the membership. The membership has been hard in some ways. It’s a totally different product to market. Memberships act differently from courses, and women use them differently. It’s actually been much more challenging than I anticipated…and yet…it is SLOWLY growing. 🙂 It’s actually formed a reliable backbone of the business and has been the one consistent thing I can count on, even when patient numbers and course sales are low. It’s allowed me to work with women in a different way and given me a fun outlet for all things fitness, which I LOVE! And I never would have gotten to experience any of it if I had listened to the voices telling me it wasn’t worth it – that the market is too saturated and doesn’t need another fitness membership.
All of these things can look and sound like success. Especially in the first few years, I had a lot of success and reach on social media, which I attributed to growth – both in patients and in course sales. It was really fun to see all the ways Refine was growing, and to some extent, I probably attributed it to myself, my hard work, my willingness to take risks and put myself out there, and my customer service. And while it could be argued that some of these things helped, ultimately, it is the Lord. He provided in all of those ways. He gave ideas. He put my message in front of the right people. He brought the patients, the course sales, and the interest. It wasn’t me at all.
When you’re rolling in the right direction, it can feel like you’re doing everything right. It can feel like it’s YOU creating success. But what happens when you continue to do all the right things – when you do all the things the experts tell you to do – and it stops working? This is what has happened over the past couple of years. The Instagram algorithm changed and continued to change again and again, to the point where we no longer were anywhere close to seeing the numbers and results that we had previously.
We went from selling lots of courses every month to selling half or fewer. My numbers dipped a bit in the patients entering my doors. Nothing had changed. In fact, we were probably doing a better job with our messaging and content on all platforms, and we still saw declining numbers. My personal and business account on Facebook was also hacked during that time. I’ve never been able to regain access to my personal account, and I don’t even manage the business account anymore. We haven’t been able to see success from running FB or Instagram ads after this happened. That might not mean a whole lot to the average reader, but if you can’t get your message out in front of new people – organically or paid, then it’s very hard to generate new business.
If I’m completely honest, it’s often been a discouraging couple of years. Jennie and I have about pulled out our hair as we try new things, only to see them flop. I’ve taken several breaks from social media altogether because it didn’t feel like a worthwhile investment of my time.
And yet…God has been faithful! The business is still standing. I’ve never been in the red. I’ve never had to borrow money. I’ve always been able to pay my bills. I attended every single one of my kids’ games this school year and throughout the summer. I’ve not missed one single thing. I’m able to take care of my household and home. I’m able to stay on top of laundry (for the most part! 😂) and welcome people into my home on a regular basis. I’ve continued to see women heal. In fact, almost everyone gets better! The success rates are astounding! But here’s the difference:
I know it’s God.
He’s the Healer. He will give, and He can take away. But He’s been faithful through it all. He’s faithful to every single person that I see. And He’s been faithful to me, too. I think if my business had started out this way, I would have given up. Those first few years of great success and growth were so helpful in giving me energy for the work, growth into new offerings, and those exact same offerings have sustained my business when it got slow. The same faithfulness I saw in the growth period gives me the ability to trust Him during slow and hard times. And serving the one is still far more joyful than serving the masses. Getting to hear each individual testimony of healing is why I continue to open up my doors, even when at times it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense on paper.
This fall, Refine will start a new endeavor with local in-person fitness classes. You can read about that here if you missed it and want to learn more! If you had told me six years ago that I’d have my own clinic space, 2 online courses, an online fitness membership, and I’d be opening up my own gym for local classes, I would have absolutely thought you were nuts. NONE of this was a part of my dream. I honestly thought I’d be working out of that little old house forever. 🙂 But following God in obedience is far more fun (yes, even on the days life isn’t fun). I know I’ll experience more highs and lows. That’s just a part of business ownership. You need to be able to roll with the punches, and you need resilience to get through those low times. But here’s what I know to be TRUE:
God is faithful through it all.
I can’t predict what the next 6 years will hold. Maybe nothing will change. Maybe everything will change. But God will not. He has been faithful. He is faithful. He will continue to be faithful. And even if my business stays this little secret of NW Iowa, it is worth it to serve the one.
