Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Poppe.
Rachel, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I played soccer in high school (’09-’12), college (’12-’15), and a year professionally in Iceland (’16). I started training as a client with Dynamic Sports Training (DST) my sophomore year of high school and trained through my college and professional career. I graduated with a BA in Strategic Communications from Stephen F. Austin State University with an emphasis in advertising and PR. When I decided to look for jobs in Houston after soccer, I applied to do marketing for DST and got brought on as a part-time apprentice in January of 2017, then got hired full-time in August of 2017. Since then, I have been managing all digital content for our website, blog, and social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been a fairly smooth road. We are a small business rapidly exploding and expanding. When I was hired, we had 12 people in our company including me and another apprentice and two Houston-area locations (Spring Branch and Tomball). We now have 16 employees, 3 Houston locations (Webster) and a location in North Phoenix, Arizona (Glendale).
I started working at the Spring Branch location, and when we opened up our third Houston location in April 2018, I got transferred up to the Tomball location. Managing content coming out of two locations ~30 minutes from each other wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t very difficult to shoot content from both alternating days of the week. When we opened our Webster location, which is more than an hour from our Tomball location, it became impractical for me to physically shoot content from our new location. Now with a place in Glendale, AZ it is impossible for me to shoot content up there, so I have to communicate and rely on other people to shoot content for me.
Also being in a small business, everyone wears many hats. I am one of three staff members on our “business-side” (the other side is our training staff), with one being a sales associate and the other being the Director of Business operations. We don’t have a photographer on staff, nor a videographer, nor a copywriter, nor a graphic designer. Currently, I wear those hats and I’ve had to learn how to do all of those things during my time here, in conjunction with my digital marketing.
If I want to post an informational graphic to our social media, I can’t ask a graphic designer on staff so I’m the one who creates it. I come up with copy for captions and the website. I learn SEO strategies for our blog. We’ve had some great photography and videography interns, but majority of the time I or another one of our business staff members shoot the photo and video content we post to our social media channels. It’s been a lot of learning on the go, but it’s been a lot of fun to develop these hard skills and become better and better at them each year.
Dynamic Sports Training – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Dynamic Sports Training is a sports performance training facility. We train athletes as young as 6, and athletes in middle school, high school, college and at the professional level. We specialize in athletic training and we’re known for creating individualized training programs for each athlete who trains with us. We go through an internal assessment process which allows us to completely customize workout plans for our athletes, help improve any imbalances or dysfunctions we find in their body, and help them improve their in-sport performance. Included in that is an individualized nutrition plan as well.
We are most proud of our underlying motivation for working with athletes. As a company, we love that we can help athletes of all ages perform better in their sport, leading to college offers and ultimately professional contracts. But, we know that the typical career of an athlete is usually only a fraction of their entire lives, so if the only thing we do is help an athlete be better at their sport, we believe we didn’t do enough. Our mission is to help our athletes not only improve in their sport but also improve as human beings and as people in the real world. We want to help them develop skills and qualities in our weight room that they can carry over into their sport as well as their job once they’re done playing.
Our assessment process and our company’s training philosophies set us apart from others in our industry. We are constantly learning and implementing new training tactics and strategies and have patented processes that deliver incredible results for our clients.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I’ve been in this position for a little under three years now. I don’t think I have one proudest moment of my career yet. One shift in my career that made (and makes) me proud is when I was transferred to the Tomball location I transitioned into making my own set schedule, to-do list, and came up with my own projects. My direct boss works at a different location and we communicate sometimes weekly, but he allows me to manage myself, my workload, my projects, and my time. I’m proud of the way I’m able to manage myself and my time.
Other proud moments are teaching myself (and continuing to learn) graphic design and video editing.
Probably the most proud I’ve been was when we decided to create a sub-brand in our company to attract adult fitness and non-athlete clients to train with us in summer of 2018. We’ve always offered adult training but we are best known for sports training. Along with my co-worker Chelsea Bellinger, Director of Business Operations Josh Graber and minority owner of DST (and my husband) Kevin Poppe, we were able to brainstorm and create a brand called E3: Equip Encourage Empower and launch it within a month. I created the website and spearheaded the marketing strategy and efforts, and through the work of Chelsea and the rest of the DST staff, we’ve been able to grow our adult fitness offerings and successfully connect with a new demographic. That side of our company is still growing, but it’s been fun to be an integral part of launching a “new” brand and growing it through social media.
E3’s Instagram handle is @equip.encourage.empower.
Contact Info:
- Address: Tomball: 20230 Cypress Rosehill Rd, Tomball, TX 77377
Spring Branch: 2700 N Sam Houston Pkwy, Houston, TX 77043
Webster: 830 Bay Star Blvd, Webster, TX 77598 - Website: www.dynamicsportstraining.com
- Phone: 7138892114
- Email: rachel@dynamicsportstraining.com
- Instagram: dst_houston
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/dynamicsportstraining
- Twitter: dst_houston
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCntMyb1rDu5NfCxsLh4lKsQ
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