Citizen Pilates

If you’ve taken class with me recently, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been unusually visible over the past few months.

Between instructor development, candidate evaluations, community classes, and the continued refinement of The Citizen Signal, I’ve spent far more time on the studio floor than I normally do. While teaching remains one of my favorite parts of this business and likely always will, the reality is that teaching represents only a small portion of what I do each week.

Today, I’m heading to New York City for the Athletech News Innovation Summit, where some of the fitness industry’s leading operators, technologists, founders, and investors gather to discuss where our industry is heading next. As I was preparing for the trip, it occurred to me that many of our clients know me as the person standing next to a reformer, but very few know what occupies my time when I’m not teaching.

The Brain Child Behind Citizen

Someone once referred to me as the brain child behind Citizen.

At the time, I laughed because it felt a little over the top. The longer I sat with it, though, the more I realized there was some truth in the statement.

Every studio we’ve opened, every reformer we’ve purchased, every website redesign, every hiring system, every marketing campaign, every operational process, and every strategic decision that has shaped Citizen over the past eleven years has ultimately started with a conversation, a question, or a problem that landed on my desk.

That’s not because I refuse to delegate. It’s because Citizen has never had equity investors.

There has never been a venture capital firm funding growth, a private equity group pushing strategy, or a corporate office handing down directives from another state. Every dollar invested into this company has come from the business itself, which means I’ve spent the better part of eleven years learning how to make decisions with an ownership mindset because there was never another option.

The Numbers Behind the Name

As we enter our eleventh summer in Houston, I find myself enjoying that responsibility more than ever.

What surprises people is that running a business at this stage has become far less about intuition and far more about understanding information. Every month, I spend time with my marketing team reviewing everything from website traffic and search behavior to advertising performance, conversion data, content engagement, and the increasingly important question of how people discover businesses in an AI-driven world.

Many people assume that business owners spend most of their time looking at profit and loss statements. Of course I review those, but knowing whether the company made money last month is only one piece of the puzzle. What interests me far more is understanding where our marketing dollars are being managed, which efforts are creating awareness, which efforts are generating actual clients, and whether the decisions we’re making today will continue producing results six months from now.

For most people, those numbers are easy to skim past. For me, they’re fascinating.

Behind every click is a person who was searching for something. Maybe they’re looking for a fitness routine they’ll finally stick with. Maybe they’re recovering from an injury, returning to exercise after years away, or simply trying to find a place where they feel comfortable. Whatever brought them there, they made a decision to engage with Citizen before ever stepping foot inside one of our studios.

When I look at those numbers, I don’t see advertising metrics. I see human behavior, thousands of small decisions happening every day, and a very clear reminder that the client experience begins long before class starts.

Assumptions Are Expensive

The deeper we dig into the data, the more interesting the story becomes.

Despite the common assumption that Instagram dominates everything in fitness, Facebook delivered more than 86,000 impressions and over 1,400 clicks during that reporting period, significantly outperforming Instagram in overall traffic volume.

That matters because assumptions can become expensive when they go unchallenged. If I simply followed the noise and assumed Instagram was the stronger channel because it feels more visible, I would be ignoring the platform that was delivering more traffic at a lower cost.

This is the part of business ownership I love more than most people would expect. The numbers do not hurt my feelings. They clarify the work.

What People Search Before They Trust You

The same principle applies to search.

During that same reporting period, Citizen appeared in more than 103,000 Google ad impressions, while generating traffic from searches such as “pilates near me,” “pilates reformer,” “pilates classes,” and “pilates houston.”

Those aren’t just keywords. They’re signals.

They’re evidence of what people are actually looking for when they decide they want to improve their health, build strength, establish a routine, or find a studio they trust.

Trust Is Becoming the Real Product

I’ve come to believe that trust is becoming one of the most valuable assets any business can possess.

The fitness industry has spent years focusing on visibility, reach, and attention. While those things certainly matter, the next chapter appears to be moving in a different direction. Search engines are evolving. Artificial intelligence is changing how information is surfaced. Recommendation systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and businesses that consistently demonstrate expertise, transparency, accuracy, and operational excellence are likely to have an advantage over businesses that simply spend more money shouting into the void.

That shift fascinates me because it aligns so closely with the way Citizen has always operated.

Long before AI entered the conversation, we built our company around consistency: show up when you say you’re going to show up, deliver what you promised, create clear policies, invest in great people, maintain high standards, and solve problems before they become bigger problems.

None of those things sound particularly flashy, yet they have become increasingly important in a world where both humans and technology are trying to determine which businesses deserve their trust.

Why New York Matters

Perhaps that’s why I’m looking forward to New York.

Not because I expect to return home with some revolutionary idea that changes everything overnight. The truth is that the best ideas rarely arrive that way.

More often, progress comes from collecting dozens of small insights, testing them thoughtfully, learning what works, and gradually improving the systems that support the client experience.

After eleven years, that’s still my favorite part of entrepreneurship. I enjoy solving problems, studying patterns, building systems, and finding ways to make a company stronger today than it was yesterday.

Most of all, I enjoy knowing that every improvement eventually reaches the people who trust us with their time, their health, and their hard-earned money.

The Side of Citizen You Feel Before You See It

The classes you take each week are only one expression of Citizen.

Behind every class is an operating system that has been refined for more than a decade, and behind that operating system is a founder who still finds genuine joy in studying the details.

As we enter our eleventh Houston summer, I feel incredibly grateful for the opportunity to continue building something that started as a single studio and has grown into a company that now serves thousands of clients across our city.

The instructor you see on the studio floor will always be part of who I am, but the builder, the operator, the strategist, and yes, perhaps even the brain behind the brand, has been there all along.