My Business Was Here Before The Internet
Before email.
Before websites.
When cell phones were the size of real land line phones.
I cold called gyms selling myself and selling a Pilates mat class when no one knew what it was and it was illegal to say the word.
I collected articles, seven of them.
Printed them out and mailed them to people after I called them to introduce myself and educate them about Pilates.
I worked out of my apartment. My living room was the studio.
I added one small piece of equipment at a time. Not what people needed, just what fit.
I taught classes at gyms to market to private students. I wasn’t taking anyone away. The gyms didn’t offer Pilates equipment training.
There were no classes to take.
No mentors to study from.
No algorithm.
No likes.
No followers.
Just me and my clients.
Just results I could see with my own eyes.
Pretty soon someone would come to me in pain and I helped them.
Then they sent people.
Then their chiropractors and masseuses started referring.
It just grew organically.
I built my business on integrity.
On results.
On faith and perseverance…
and a second job, sometimes a third.
I had no shame even though my presentation was always humble.
I knew the work worked.
Many clients never wanted to leave training in my living room, but back then you couldn’t really do that.
I always believed.
Everything I added into the training, I believed in.
Now they’d call it guerrilla marketing.
Back then it was just person to person communication.
And here’s what I know after 40 years:
You can buy Google ads.
You can pay your way to the top of a search page.
But you can’t buy the moment when you ask a client if they believe they can ever be pain free
they say no
and then months later you remind them they never believed it.
But always you did.
And now they’re out of pain.
That kind of trust travels mouth to mouth.
It always has.
Algorithms change.
Rankings shift.
Someone who got their life back will never stop talking about it.
That’s not social proof.
That’s just proof.