
Steph Claire Smith & Laura Henshaw – Kicking Goals
Laura Henshaw and Steph Claire Smith are movers and shakers in more ways than one. The wholesome living advocates and exercise gurus behind the Kic app, are two of the most successful wellness personalities in Australia with some heavyweight ‘stats’ to back this up.
Consider the size of their community of devotees, which is around 2.5 million in 121 countries around the world, while their KICPOD podcast, which is part of Southern Cross Stereo’s Listnr platform, has achieved 14 million downloads. And while their turnover is a taboo subject, they are raking it in.
Steph Claire Smith debuted on the Young Rich List in 2021 with an estimated wealth of $36 million. They’re wellness superstars.
The pair is also proof that the backing of big business isn’t necessary to make a go of it, even in a flourishing industry where ‘pro’ fitness & lifestyle trainers seem to abound on nearly every street corner and wellness speak is part of the universal language. They’ve bootstrapped their way in.
Henshaw and Claire-Smith met at Melbourne Fashion Week, as young, disillusioned models, who had been trying to make it in New York and Milan, but returned home with some serious self-esteem issues.
“I had disordered eating, which started a little bit before going overseas,” Laura Henshaw tells Australian Life. “I was in my late teens or early 20s and I was following these people who weren’t experts, but they were promoting diets. I thought `wow, losing weight can be easy’. So, my disordered eating was fuelled by social media and my modelling career.”
The two beautiful women hit it off as they have similar personalities and strict no bullshit attitudes, which is rare in a society, guided by glossy images of seemingly perfect lives.
Their rise has been meteoric when you consider that they only started out in 2015 with an e-book, which became an online fitness and food business on a hosted platform. (The original brand was Keep It Cleaner but Kic is more user friendly and well, active).
“We were quite honest about what we were going through and this really connected with people out there,” explains Claire-Smith. She believes that’s a sign of the times.

“Social media is now moving into a place where everyone wants to see more reality and not glossy aesthetic lifestyle shots. They’re wanting to follow real people, which is awesome. It’s also more fun for us to be truly ourselves with a brand that is based on our personal values,” she explains.
Once they had established their mission, they were focused on being real about health, nutrition and positive body image rather than confirming to ideals on how one is ‘supposed’ to look and feel.
“Every business decision that we have made is easy, because we lean into our values and our communities. Authenticity is everything to us in our company,” says Claire-Smith.
However, after just one year on the hosted platform, they decided that it was time to own their space with an app. After being informed that this could take up to one million dollars to get off the ground, they decided to try and do it themselves. Unfortunately, they had to leave their followers behind and all they had left were their Instagram accounts.
“We had to start from scratch,” confirms Henshaw. “We had to redo all the content and build the app. This was important to us because we wanted to make eating healthily and exercising as accessible as possible.’
They turned to a friend in game development, who came up with a revenue share model to get their app built. Meanwhile, Henshaw, who has a double degree in Commerce and Law, was able to bring some of her knowledge to the table.
“That degree took me nine years because I was just doing one subject at a time, but I’m glad that I did that,” she remarks. “I use my Law degree in my role at Kic in lots of ways, especially when it comes to the number of contracts that arrive on our desks, although of course, we also have our own team of lawyers as well. It has given me a lot of confidence though in my daily life. I’m a big believer in that if you can sit through a two-and-a-half-hour Law exam, you can do anything,” she says.
They structured their business plan on something that Henshaw had learnt: When starting something new, you need five months of financial coverage to be secure.
While they’d had to leave their following on the original site, Claire-Smith and Henshaw estimated that perhaps they could win a quarter of them back. This turned out to be a vast underestimate.
“We had more subscribers on the launch day for our app, than we had in our history,” she says.
“We had to do this without a marketing budget. But we just used the resources we already had.”
As their business grew they also added value to the app with top of the line trainers in pilates, strength, yoga, HIIT and running, offering a choice of 1,000 workouts. Their consumer promise is that Kic “has a movement for every body”.


There are also 800 healthy recipes to try and a chakra-load of meditative practices including soothing meditations, affirmations, soundscapes & mindful movements.
Just as important to the App’s resources is their engagements with their community in real time.
In a brilliant promotion, Kic took over Bondi Beach last May with a gigantic mirror on the sand emblazoned with the words ‘Every Body Is a Beach Body’. This was an antidote to the usual body conscious lines including that “Summer Bodies Are Made In Winter’’ and The Only Body For The Beach Is A Bikini Body.
They also had a live custom print stand which enabled visitors to print empowering messages in reverse on free `merch’. The words were printed backwards as a timely reminder to make your own rules every time you look in the mirror.
It’s just one of their initiatives with Kic on the cusp of offering their followers other ways to interact with the site with an announcement due to be made early next year.
When the pair look back at the business they’ve created with a whole team behind them now, they’re a little shocked at how it has all unfolded. But their advice to others considering starting something new is just to do it and when it comes to a new brand, show images of the people behind it to make it relatable.
“We always talk about the beauty of just jumping in when it comes to a start up,” says Henshaw. “They’re crazy days. In the beginning you’re fearless because you don’t know what’s ahead, so you just charge in.”
Of course, when it comes to Kic, there wasn’t so much at stake in those early months.
“The risks were down to the two of us,” Claire-Smith agrees.
“Obviously we had a community around us but no big company, so the decisions were always ours to make.”
The Kic industry might be all consuming now, but for these best mates, the demands are easy to deal with, as they’re doing something they believe in and they’re remaining true to themselves. No other competitor can replicate their unique style and their learnt experiences. They wouldn’t have it any other way. They are more than just KICking goals.