Today I’m talking to Flik Swan and Victoria Marr. They are classically-trained ballerinas, professional dancers and the co-founders of Sleek Ballet Fitness, which combines fitness training with the steely strength of classical ballet technique. We talk about what its like starting a business with your best friend, taking risks, the identity crisis that can often come with career shift, motherhood and more.
If you are curious to try out Sleek Technique for yourself (I’m a big fan), head to sleekballetfitness.com where you can take advantage of a 7-day free trial.
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1:02: Starting a biz with your best friend
3:10: Balance and compromise
4:52: Dividing business and personal time
6:53: Coping with a career shift
8:05: Redefining yourself
11:11: Taking risks and starting a new business
16:03: Developing an authentic ballet fitness technique
20:07: Getting product to market
22:54: Getting comfortable in front of a camera
23:50: Becoming moms together
26:13: Deepening knowlege of where clients are at
27:57: Coping with Lockdowns
31:15: Vision for the future
Tiffy (00:04):
Welcome to Women In Fitness Business. Today, I’m talking to Flik Swan and Victoria Marr. They are classically trained ballerinas, professional dancers, and the co-founders of Sleek Ballet Fitness, which combines fitness training with the steely strength of classical ballet technique. We talk about what it’s like going into business with your best friend, the identity crisis that can often come with a career shift, motherhood and more. I hope you enjoy it.
Tiffy (00:38):
Flik and Victoria, welcome to the show.
Victoria (00:40):
Thank very much, Tiffy.
Flik (00:43):
Hello.
Tiffy (00:44):
So you two have known each other for a long time. You met in performing arts school and then you both went on to become professional dancers. When did you realize that you wanted to start a business together?
Victoria (00:59):
Oh, honestly Flik is the person I’ve kept in touch with most since school and actually, my relationship with her has been constant through decades and so many changes in our life. I can honestly say, you know, through teenage breakups, births, marriages, the whole thing, we’ve at each other’s side. So, you know, looking for somebody to go into business with, it wasn’t just that layer of friendship and support that was there. It was our kind of, our shared passion for dance. The fact that we both came to the same point around the same time, thinking about the what next we’ve been performing for 20 odd years professionally. And we got to that point, yeah, pretty much the same time and being planners as we are. We didn’t wanna get there and not have an idea of what the next step was gonna be. So we chatted it through and we weren’t quite sure what it was yet, but we decided we wanted to do something together.
Flik (01:59):
I was just gonna say, it’s funny because we were both at points in our careers where we weren’t, the what next was definitely there, but, you know, Victoria was still dancing, lead principal roles at the height of her career, receiving great reviews, you know, had the director of the company that she was dancing with a daughter. I think I was at the old Vic at the time that we actually first really sat down. And I think I was saying to you, I was, you know, working with a very high profile director at that point. So it wasn’t like we were going, oh my gosh, you know, we need to think about the what next, because our careers are on the decline. You know, as Victoria said, we’re both quite forward thinking people, we’re planners. We both probably from our training in dance like to have a certain element of control about where our lives can go.
Flik (02:43):
And as much as we can put into that and mak those journeys happen, we will. So coming together for me, there was never anybody else that I would’ve embarked on a business with, apart from Victoria, because we are very different people, but we are also very the same in lots of ways, in terms of things like drive and passion. We are always on the same page with stuff. And if we aren’t on the occasional time, we aren’t, we always manage to find a balance between each other and a compromise. So, it’s not difficult. And sometimes I think it can be difficult going into business with a friend, especially as Victoria said, we have been best friends since we were 11 years old. Basically. My daughter said to me, who’s only just turned five years old.
Flik (03:29):
The other day we were talking about best friends at her primary school. And she said to me, Mimi, who’s your best friend. And before I could even answer, she went, it’s auntie Vixy. Which is what they call her. And I said, yes, auntie Vixy is definitely my best friend. And, you know, that’s just my children just aware of that, bearing in mind since the lockdown Victoria and I haven’t been in a room together as much as we, you know, previously would’ve been, but they still feel that. So, yeah, it was an absolute no brainer us two coming together. The rest of it was, you know, was not simple. We had to do a lot of blood, sweat and tears, which we’ll come to, but, you know, working together was just, it was a no brainer.
Victoria (04:06):
Yeah. It was funny. Actually the only one thing I would say, actually, exactly the same thing that drew us together and made us want to work together was the one thing that did cross my mind, of us not to work together was we, wow, we have this wonderful friendship, will being in business together change that or put that in jeopardy. And, and that was the one concern I had. But it wasn’t a big enough concern. I thought we, you know, had the minerals to power through any decisions that, you know, got in the way that we disagreed on. Or I really felt that it was the right thing to do, even though that was one thing I’d say that potentially losing what we had, that was great already.
Flik (04:45):
Time to time, Tiffy, how we combat that. But it’s not conscious sometimes we’ll ring each other. And the first thing we’ll say is it’s not a Sleek call, just wanted to see how you are or I’m just phoning. So we, you know it’s not a lot. It’s not like we will regularly consciously do that. If I know something’s been going on that Victoria’s had a bit of stress with, I will call her. And before she even says, hello, I’ll say this, isn’t a Sleek call. How are you doing? And vice versa. We try to have, you know, still a portion of just Flik and Victoria, Fliky and Vicky, but we try to keep that. And, you know, we always still have our laughs in abundance.
Tiffy (05:25):
I interviewed a woman who was in business with her husband and she talked about having like sacred time and having business time. And the sacred time was the time where they would just talk about their stuff. And the business time was, it was clearly delineated and she swore by that. So, Vicky, I wanna talk a little bit about the transition from being a professional ballerina to going into business. Flik was saying she was a bit more at the ready for that transition because she was a freelance dancer and there was a bit more of that verve, but can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like going through retirement and kind of that identity shift that happened for you? Yeah.
Victoria (06:15):
Flik navigated it beautifully and, you know, I think she made a really seamless transition and she’s very good at grasping the here and now, I think because maybe that freelance, you know, lifestyle is maybe a little bit more transient with the groups of people. You tend to work with great groups of people for a short time and then move on. I’d kind of worked with a core group of people for 17 years. People have come and gone, but, you know, there was a real sense of family the ballet, some of us had come all the way up from school together. And we, you know, we toured together. We lived together, lots of times we worked unsocial hours. So we always socialized together. It was as much that element as it was the performance, the people, I really mourned that family environment, that social environment as well as actually being on stage, it was very much a two prong thing.
Victoria (07:10):
I did miss performing. I did want that sensation still of finishing and taking a curtain call. That was, it’s a bit of a drug, that, you never want to lose that. But equally I found it quite heartbreaking at the time that most of my friends, their life carried on as normal as a group. And they went off on tour together for six weeks and I was kind of left behind waving going see you. And I felt a little bit, I felt a little bit flawed for a while and couldn’t quite find my place. I said, probably for a good year I didn’t feel myself because I’d always identified myself as you know, oh, I’m Victoria Marr, I’m a ballet dancer with Ballet Royal ballet. This is, you know, what I do, it’s such a big part of who I am.
Victoria (07:49):
And I lost that element of identity a little bit. And now with a bit of time and age on my side, I don’t define myself in those same parameters anymore. And I very quickly spread my wings and made lots of friends outside of the ballet world, had great support from Flik and my family, to actually just, you know, keep me up the butt and say, there’s still so much live to be had great people to meet other business opportunities, other career opportunities. That’s gone. It was great, but move on to the next thing. And I did, I probably wasted not wasted cause we were always acting and doing stuff to push Sleek. But I think from my, enjoying things to its full potential point of view, I didn’t for the first year and then something switched and I was like, this is where we are now.
Victoria (08:35):
Yes, that was wonderful. But this can be great too. And I’m not enjoying all the benefits of it. I think when Flik and I both had children and again, we had kids within a few weeks apart of each other, which was amazing and totally unplanned. But we, as again, we just got to that stage about the same time. And we understood each other’s journey because of that. And that equally gave me another perspective of now I have this work where before I was at the beck and call of my rehearsal instructor, you have to be at this theater at this time. We’re touring for five weeks here. Then later in the season, we’re going into the states and this, then I had this little person in my life and I had a business that we were in charge of. We could decide what time table we did things on.
Victoria (09:24):
We could do it predominantly from home. And all of a sudden I was like, wow, I’ve got this amazing thing that fits into my life beautifully. And it couldn’t have been, it couldn’t work better. And that’s when I really, really started to appreciate, you know, all the other things around Sleek that made it great for us. I was still getting to dance. I was still getting to be creative, but I didn’t have to go away for weeks at a time to strange countries and foreign theaters that I, you know, and be away from my baby. So that gave me a level of appreciation for it.
Tiffy (09:58):
When you were building your business, coming from a ballet or a dance background, what area of building that platform had the steepest learning curve for you both?
Victoria (10:11):
Oh, I think Flik both and I would say we weren’t massively techy.
Flik (10:18):
No, no, we weren’t. We weren’t. So when we were going in and bearing in mind, you know, eight, nine years ago online, certainly here maybe slightly more ahead over in the states, but certainly here in the UK and Europe, people weren’t working online, you know, here in Europe, you go into an office. If that’s, if you know where you are basing your job, you are in an office, you’re working on a computer, but you are literally in there in a brick building face to face with people, obviously that’s completely different now. So when we thought about creating the business, which I’m sure we’ll come back to how it started at some point. We really, we took quite a big leap, but not perhaps quite as consciously as we realized by thinking, well, whatever it is that we come up with that will come up together, you know, when we had the lightbulb moment to go, well, let’s do it online.
Flik (11:06):
Really, that was a really big risk. Yeah. Which paid off in the way that we, you know, formulated the business, which like I say, we can go back to, but you know, nowadays setting up an online business, nobody’s gonna blink. Back then people were saying what you do online classes, what? And you’d say, yeah, think of it like Skype. And most people would go Skype who, you know, Skype, people still just picked up the phone and called people. People just sent a text. So the world has rapidly changed in nine years and never more so than the last two and a half years. Two years. So yeah, it was kind of a big thing to navigate because even the developers that we were going to to say, this is the business we’ve got, were going.
Flik (11:50):
Okay. So you want, okay, so you kind of wanna stream a bit like Netflix. Okay. And you wanna host live. So even the techy people were getting their heads around what we wanted. And then when they came back with how they were doing, that was tough for us. But there were many times we’d be sat under the table, giving each other a nudge because they’d be speaking to us. And I could tell Vic was the same as me. Wasn’t quite up to speed, but we were doing the nod. The second we walked out, what did they mean by that? And you were like, I dunno, either. So we had quite a few laughy moments. So we had to navigate that. Obviously we’re up to speed a lot more so now.
Tiffy (12:30):
When it comes to working together in a partnership, what would you say is the other’s superpower?
Flik (12:37):
Oh, Vicky’s full of superpowers even saying, you know, talking about her transition, then you know what she, of course would miss out because she is who she is, is she was at the top of her game when she transitioned into Sleek. This wasn’t, you know, we taking this one out now she’s trying, it’s like for you to move on Victoria Marr give you a clap. She was at the top of her game, dancing these incredible roles, could have carried on. But what Victoria sees is she sees the here and now, but she sees the future and the future where she wanted to go out, you know, in her best fabulous shape and still with her body and soul brimming with ideas for a future. Yes. It was very difficult for her to transition. But what Vicky does way more so than I, as she sees always a solution or a positive thing in something.
Flik (13:29):
So I will, you know, tend to, I don’t know, let’s say I’ve had a bad day. Might not even be a Sleek thing and I’ll say to Victoria, oh, I don’t know. Oh, I dunno. For example, you know, something’s going on at my child’s school and I’m just thinking, oh, I dunno what I’m gonna do there, Victoria always comes back with something which is right. Well, you can think of it like this. So she, it’s not that she’s this chippy chirpy smiley, you know, everything’s great. She is very good at weighing things up. And because of that, when it comes to business, what she does is she, she sees a big picture. So in terms of jumping into things and being a little bit more risk focused, I’m probably happy to take a bigger risk. Victoria isn’t risk aversive at all, but she will step back and she is a level player. And most of the time, that’s great. Occasionally we need my skill to go. We just gotta yeah make that decision and we’ll make decision. But, but she’s full of, I mean, yeah. I could give you another 10 more if you want.
Victoria (14:31):
I think that kind of level headness maybe stands me in good stead, but as I say that, nice, the flip side of that is that Flik is ballsy beyond belief. I love her and she is brave. She’s fearless. And she’s navigated several transitions, you know, in her career. She’s never been satisfied to be just okay in anything she’s always wanted to be the best at everything. So when she’s achieved that in one thing, she’s generally moved on to another and she’s achieved it there too. Yeah. So she doesn’t stop. She’s relentless. She is relentless. And so whereas I, sometimes I stop and I go, right. I have to, sometimes I have to reign her in and sometimes she has to kick my butt, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas I say, right, have we thought about from this level, this angle, you know, there’s that balance. And then when we thought all that through, she says, right, can we do it now? I’m like, okay, now we can do it.
Tiffy (15:27):
Yeah. So when you’re adapting ballet techniques into the fitness space, what factors come into play specifically? Cause it’s a very different thing. It’s not like a typical like aerobics video. Like it’s very much a ballet class, but there are modifications. How do you approach that?
Flik (15:50):
When we set up the business, we were very, very conscious of making a method that was authentic to us. So what our experience and knowledge and expertise was in, which was essentially both of us started in classical ballet and obviously Victoria’s career excelled in that. So therefore being authentic to that meant we needed to do a lot of research. So Victoria went over to the States, researched a lot of methods. At the time, barre was really exploding onto the scene. Yeah. So Victoria went to several studios over in New York and around the states, I did the same thing here in London. What we discovered was fantastic classes. Absolutely not putting barre down on any stretch, but they weren’t actually rooted in classical ballet. They had movements or certainly terminology that was similar to, but it was not in a way that a dancer would ever train, to get that very long lean, supple, but strong body, get a different kind of body and a very fit one. Absolutely. No doubt. So, in terms of that, we had to make sure that our research was absolutely on point and then come back to the table and then take all the bits that we liked, the bits that worked, the bits that didn’t work, mix it with our expertise and at the time, and I’ll let Victoria tell you, Victoria also had just finished doing her fitness qualification. And then we found a way to blend that. And I won’t say anymore because I’ll let Victoria speak on that.
Victoria (17:10):
We spent a lot of time together as well. Flik came up to the studios at BRB and, you know, we actually got in the studio together and we are very, very lucky or maybe it’s, genetics, or maybe it’s the way we train. We both uniquely not had any injuries in our career, any big injuries. And I’ve worked with people who’ve had two years out. My own partner Tom has had several hip operations, ankles and has had in total of two years out of his career, and Flik and I very, fortunately never had anything that took us off more than a day or two. So that I think gave us some confidence that we were on the right track with our training, what we were doing and we wanted to keep it really authentic to ballet technique, which is tried and tested, which has been remarkably unchanged for hundreds of years.
Victoria (18:05):
But there not say there aren’t things that have been improved in that. So bringing that fresh fitness feel into it and going away to step away from ballet to do that was really important to me as well, to bring that back in. But I think it was getting in the studio. It was seeing what felt good to us. We trained the same way we trained at the same school. We were on the same lines with everything and bringing that fitness knowledge in added this extra layer, which made it more accessible to more people because not everybody loves ballet, and not everybody’s gonna love Sleek, but more people find it accessible because of the fitness element as well, that we bring into it.
Flik (18:45):
And incorporating that in, that fitness element, you would be amazed actually how much fitness training, certainly dancers of today do anyway. So, maybe not so much when Victoria and I were training a couple of decades ago, we did do obviously, certain amounts of fitness and Pilates, but now it’s very important part of a dancers training, whether even be a classical or a modern or a contemporary dancer. So actually blending the two, if you know what you are doing, and if you know the results that you’re expecting from that, if you are able to just find a way to do that, it’s actually, it’s not as complicated with our experiences you would think. Right. But it, you know, we only came up with a core handful of workouts. You know, and as we got into the studio and we refined it, we went in and we went back and I think we started with seven.
Victoria (19:33):
I remember it’s 10, maybe
Flik (19:38):
Seven or 10. Certainly. No more than that. That’s all we started with, you know, so we, and we made sure they were absolutely a hundred percent what we would do day in, day out in order for us to develop a dancer-like body. And, and that’s when we were happy when we go, okay, we’ve got those. Now we’re off.
Tiffy (19:57):
So when you get this product and you, and this platform established and you know it works. What was the process then to get it out to market? And what were the sort of hiccups you faced along the way in that process?
Victoria (20:12):
I think the similar thing to what we spoke about earlier, our strengths always lay in creating the method, putting it together, you know, the choreography, the effectiveness of the workouts, we had, all that knowledge. What we didn’t have is how to take it to market, how to build a website. So we got some of that help in obviously, but that has been the biggest challenge for us. And the biggest learning curve for us probably is then once you’ve got great content, how do you get it out to people? And how do you get it in front of the right people? We’ve had some help with that along the way. We’ve had some really great people give us advice, but being confident in the product we had, we’ve used socials a lot. We’ve not had to, as a company, do a lot of paid marketing because we’ve grown a lot on word of mouth.
Victoria (20:59):
It’s lovely. We’ve done some great campaigns of people like sweaty Betty, and, one recently with B Royal ballet where people who like fitness, who like dance of, you know, a lot of people have found us through one collaboration. And those collaborations are, you know, things that we do because we want to work with that company.Tthey’re not, you know, massive money on us for us. It is literally it’s because they’re people we wanna work with. And we know we’ve got a crossover of clientele, hopefully that then brings people to us as subscribers. But if it doesn’t, it’s brand awareness. And that’s really the thing that we go after every day and we try to make this great content that we have visible to the right people. To date the things that have worked best for us. And I’m quite proud to say that is recommendation, word of mouth and utilizing all the free stuff out there that I’d give that advice to anybody starting a business while it is still free. You know, your Facebook, your Instagram, your YouTube, you know, we work hard to get stuff out there. So people are aware of who we are and if they love what we do, you know, hopefully they’ll come and pay for it at some point.
Tiffy (22:06):
I think a big part of it for you two, I’m a Sleeker, I am attracted to your personalities. Like they really shine and it’s, you’re not these, like, I don’t know, cliche fitness, you know, coaches. Like you really get a sense of your personality and your banter back and forth and your rapport with each other. So I think that is also a pull for people because you see you’re real people, you know.
Victoria (22:35):
That’s nice to hear. Cause I certainly initially , Flik was far better. Like she was like a duck to water when we started filming workouts, you know, she’d had a lot of theatre background, she’d done acting she’d, you know, she’d done singing as well as dancing. And so in front of a camera, she was just a natural. It took me a long time to feel really comfortable in front of a camera. And now hearing you say that, I think probably you should see the behind the scene bits. We’re far more naughty.
Tiffy (23:01):
I wanna talk a little bit about, how becoming moms, played into your development as entrepreneurs and also your development as people. Like how did that change things?
Flik (23:20):
Well it did change it. when Victoria and I both found out we were pregnant, honestly, people think we planned it. We didn’t. And as Victoria said before, but we couldn’t have planned that better. Because again, as Victoria said, our journey was literally hand in hand. I mean, we both had sons to start and they were born four weeks apart. They would’ve actually been born probably closer together, that’s why they were four weeks spot. They would’ve probably been like within a week of each other. If pregnancy went by a calendar, like everyone expects it to, and it never does. So we always, you know, I’m not gonna lie. When we both said, oh, I’m pregnant, oh, I’m pregnant. Me too. We both like, how are we gonna do this, but actually, again,
Flik (24:05):
And I put it back to our similarity in personalities in terms of our drive and our belief about, you know, you can do anything providing you’ve got the right support around you. And if you’ve got some self-belief and you know what you’re doing, you can do anything. We navigated it. In fact, we actually even did a retreat at that point. I think we were about six months pregnant at that time, maybe a bit more. and we were setting up obviously to have a little bit of time off, which in the end, we didn’t really have postpartum.
Victoria (24:36):
We took it down a level. We were still there and active, but we have some lovely and amazing instructors that, that teach for us. And, you know, Sophie in particular, at that time who’s been with us almost since the start was fantastic at stepping up and running a few things and taking control of a few bits that Flik and I had to step off a little bit for a while. But gosh, I’ve gotta say I would never have got where Flik was in if she’d had her little one and I’d done it later down the line, I wouldn’t have understood what she was talking about when she said, I just can’t focus on this. My brain is mush or today this happened. And I love him, but I just wanna scream.
Victoria (25:17):
I’d be like going, come on, Flik, get a grip. It’s just, you know, I would not have understood where she was at. Had I not been at the same point myself. And it gave us this enormous support, you know, cuz we were in the same place of it the same time through that, the whole thing. And we could laugh about it. We could cry about it. We could, you know, pick each other up when we said, right, well we need to rally for today. We’ve gotta, you know, film with sweaty Betty, which we did, you know, weeks after three months after giving birth, we had a massive campaign with sweaty Betty and we got ourselves up to do that and we support each other. The camera stopped rolling we were off breastfeeding.
Victoria (25:55):
Just pushing on through, but we had each other there to laugh about it and you know, just keep on, keep on keeping on really.
Flik (26:02):
And that understanding that we had then of each other also filtered down to our community to us. Cause obviously we had a lot of women that already had children or had young children or who were pregnant. So it gave us even more of an understanding of those Sleekers that were also mothers or mothers to be just as much as it did our Sleekers that weren’t and weren’t going to be, or didn’t want to be, doesn’t really matter. It meant that when we created our pre and postnatal babies Sleek series, we had a real understanding cuz we did that while we were pregnant so much like we got into the studio to create the original method. We did the same thing. We got into the studio. We were both pregnant and went, what do our bodies want? What do our bodies need?
Flik (26:40):
What do our Sleekers’ bodies who are in the same predicament, it’s the wrong word, same situation, but it could be a predicament I suppose. What will their bodies want? And so it was great. So we could create that whilst looking after our bodies through pregnancy and then, and after, and that’s the program we followed after and lots of our Sleekers have gone on to follow that program as well. So again, it’s still, it enriched our lives, but it didn’t stop our business and you, we probably couldn’t have predicted that. And again, still at this point, not many people were online. So we were still at that 0.6 years ago where the online classes and live classes and interaction was still not aa popular thing.
Tiffy (27:22):
When it came to the pandemic in this last couple of years, your platform seemed to be ideally situated to deal with that. But it was also a hard time, like you’re also in lockdown, got little kids around, like how did you cope during that time? And what lessons did you learn?
Victoria (27:48):
I think we were very fortunate that we reinvested in Sleek just before the pandemic hit about a year before. So our app was up and running, ready to go. We just refreshed our site. We organized our contents. It was really accessible on every platform. And so we were really, you know, iwe were right up there from a technical point of view without knowing what was about to come. As soon as lockdown hit, we must have taken half a dozen calls a day from friends, colleagues, people in the fitness industry asking how do we get online, my studios closing, what platform do you use? How do you run your own classes? You know, we must have spent the first month probably taking calls from people, and just telling them how we got started or what platforms we were using and helping them, you know, find their way through this tricky time.
Victoria (28:38):
Cuz a lot of people’s businesses were in jeopardy. It was very, the only thing that was hard for us, I think cuz we had a bit of a lift, in obviously in clientele over lockdown and you never wanna profit out of a horrible situation. That’s going on with the rest of the world, but people needed to keep moving and exercising and also keep a connection. And a lot of people found Sleek helped with that over that period. What was tough from a personal point of view is exactly like everybody else. We were at home with both the kids and our other halves in the house at the same time. Trying to catch minutes to run out to our home studios, to film some content. We couldn’t get together, which was the hardest thing. Flik and I bounce off each other so much in person and we on a film day, whenever we work with people, I’m gonna blow our own trumpet here because my partner now also works in the kind of filming industry.
Victoria (29:28):
He’s like, nobody works the way you two work, you come into room and you power through. We film 12 workouts in a day back to back and we don’t stop. And he’s just like the amount of content as I, we walk in and say, don’t worry, we’ll do it in one take. And you say we’ve left four hours, we’ll need two max. And we’re done because we know each other, not cuz we’re, you know, mega brilliant cause we know each other so well. So although we don’t need a lot of time together to create content, we didn’t have any and that was painful. Because it was you know, a totally virtual relationship for a year and a bit nearly and all the lovely content that people enjoy with us together. And like you say, a bit of banter and this and that we weren’t able to deliver. So we had to just give as much as we could in, you know, in the situation we had and we still got some great workouts out there, but God, I can’t tell you how nice it is to be back filming to together now about to change.
Tiffy (30:24):
I won’t keep you too much longer. I’m just wondering what you see the future of Sleek being now that now that you’ve come this far together, it’s been what, 10 years? Since almost 10 years.
Flik (30:37):
10 years since the idea, but I think, yeah, I think we’re coming up to year nine of actual business this summer. Aren’t we there?
Tiffy (30:44):
So where do you see Sleek going from here? What’s your vision for it?
Flik (30:49):
We would love to have a wider Sleek community. We are so lucky we have a really good proportion of European and UK Sleekers with our American Sleelers actually being the slightly bigger chunk of our community. So we’ve got a more of a Sleeker presence over in the states even than we do in the UK Europe, which is wonderful. And when we partner with other brands or businesses, they’re always like, wow, that’s amazing. I dunno, maybe it’s our accents. Maybe you like our accents, but maybe it’s as simple as that. So for us, it’s about maybe broadening that a little bit more because there are so many benefits to ballet and ballet fitness. Certainly the method that we’ve created, we’re very much about working smart and not hard and making, fitness or the regime that you take on to improve your fitness.
Flik (31:40):
Also improving your mental health, your self-confidence, empowering you to go I’ve done my workout. I’m ready for the rest of my day. Sleek isn’t about flashing around, you know, our original Sleek technique. The reason technique was in the title was because as Victoria said, we never got injured. So very rarely. And if it was, it was a couple of days here and there, a twinge here and there. So it is about making the method something that everybody could do excessively and really feel the improvements, not just in, you know, so many fitness methods, like talk about weight loss. And of course all these things are important, but actually about loving and empowering your body to be strong, like a dancer and to be feeling like you leave your workout, you shut your computer down and you can get on with your day, feel good. And you know, so spreading that out, getting that to a wider audience, of course any business wants that, but we really, really do want that. We’d love to have a bigger community. That’s what we’ll be concentrating on in the short term. Certainly.
Tiffy (32:40):
Thanks a lot for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it.
Flik (32:43):
It’s been a pleasure today. It’s been really great. Thanks for having us.
Tiffy (32:49):
That’s it for Women In Fitness Business. Thanks for listening.
