The history at our club...
Hi Everyone! I thought I would fill you in on a little history as to why things are this way.
It is actually a few things:
1) Why some may not know me at all....Our club, Four Seasons, has moved to three different locations over the last 20 years in order to expand and each time it brings new member sign ups with it. The most recent move has brought in some new members which is why some may not know of me yet. Also, many people who workout at a gym are not usually dedicated home exercisers and may not even be familiar with the home exercise workouts out there.
2) Why some only know of me as their local instructor....I have been with Four Seasons since my college days in 82 to 86. At that time I was simply running the fitness program at the club and teaching many classes too. Step was not even discovered yet. Many members just got to know me as one of their regular instructors at the club. It wasn't until many years later that I started my whole launch with step and making videos. I was very quiet about what I did. I would travel on the weekends and present step workshops at IDEA conferences, Sara City, CIA, and many others. When I got back to the club I would share this with a handful of members/friends but never made public announcements. I have always been kind of quiet about my on goings, its just the way I am. Another reason I was quiet about it is because I run the fitness program and I had to be careful about promoting myself as to not overshadow the other instructors at the gym. It would be detrimental to keeping a team spirit atmosphere.
3) The first signs of members noticing a change....Little by little the video business grew and got more popular. We started getting more press coverage and the press would come to the club to do interviews. Later a few people would ask if that was me they just read about...."I had no idea you made vidoes" etc. But the gym business was always separate from the video business so word never fully got out unless you would catch these stories in the paper or were a die hard regular of mine and would witness visitors coming to class and taking pictures. They would ask "why are they taking pictures?". Word got out a little more when we started using our some of our action video pictures to do promotional flyers/ads for the gym. People would say "is that Cathe on that flyer? Where was that picture taken?". In which we would respond "our video set"....
4) Why people are now going to really begin to figure it out....We have merged our new health club with Cathe.com and put the filming studio right in the gym. People are seeing it and two weeks ago witnessed the ongoings of a cast and production on the premises while the Target series was being filmed (although some still are not noticing because it is so tucked away in the back behind glass doors). We also now have Direct TV which carries Fit TV at our club (Fit Tv was never available on local cable in our area). So now all of the cardio equipment has separate TV's and people are discovering Fit TV while they are working out and saying "is that Cathe on that show?"
5) Why you may have noticed a bit of snubbing (which by the way I am sorry for).....Well I know that sometimes members have their favorite instructors and it is hard for them to see another instructor get the attention...human nature I guess. Another thing is possibly because they have never seen all of this activity and they were shocked to witness it and felt a little jilted that they were being moved to another fitness room while we had our fun in the main large room.
6) From now into the future....Times are quickly changing in our new club and we will be holding many more public events as both the health club and Cathe.com continue to expand into new areas of growth. So I think it is fair to say that it won't be much longer before the members are fully in on the "secret".
I hope this gives you a clearer picture of the whole thing