By Amanda Brown
It has often been said that out of adversity comes opportunity – similar to this is the story of one of Portales, N.M.’s local business owner, Dina Lopez-Killette. Except in her particular case, it was less that her adversity created opportunity, but rather that it inspired her to seek it out; and in doing so, she began a fitness company from the ground up that has been providing opportunities to countless individuals for 6 years now.
Lopez-Killette, a wife of almost 20 years and mother to 3, is the owner, creator and CEO of fitVIBEZ Revolution & Company, a physical fitness center located in Portales, N.M. Although Lopez-Killette has spent the majority of her adult years living in Texas, she has roots in New Mexico, and in Portales specifically. She was born and raised there until her teenage years when her family moved to Lubbock, Texas, where she graduated high school.
She returned to Portales briefly to attend Eastern New Mexico University for a semester before life landed her back in the Lone Star State. She would later make multiple returns to Portales, but it was in Texas that the origins of her fitness company began.
While Lopez-Killette is currently a fitness instructor and certified personal trainer, her background was not in athletics, as some might assume, but in dance. Her love for dance has been a constant throughout her life, even when she got away from it as a young mother.
“I had my kids really early on in my life and so I just concentrated on being mom,” she said.
But despite her attentiveness to raising her children, she often dreamed of one day owning her own dance studio; although she never knew exactly what that might look like.
“After my kids got about school age, I started thinking about what I wanted, what I wanted to do,” she said. It was around this time in 2005 when the family moved back to Portales and Lopez-Killette decided to return to school. She earned her degree in sociology and psychology from ENMU.
Not long after, she returned to Midland, Texas and began doing social work at a non-profit agency for a local high school. During this time, she also began doing CrossFit as a workout, while also attending some local dance classes. She discovered that not only did it make her feel physically strong and capable, it also reawakened her long-time dream of one day opening a dance studio of her own.
Then adversity hit.
In the fall of 2014, she sustained a major injury to her back that resulted in her having a spinal surgery. She had plates and screws put in near her spine and spent 6 weeks in a neck brace. She described this as being a very low point, mentally.
“It kind of put my life in perspective. Like, what am I doing? What’s my purpose? What am I supposed to do? You know when you’re going through something, you can be surrounded by so many people but just feel so alone.”
Despite the hardships of that period, Lopez-Killette was and still is a person of strong faith, which she said she relied on heavily to sustain her through the difficult time and the lack of clarity over her direction.
“I’m always asking, ‘Okay, God. What do I need to be doing?’ And this one day I just got like this vision from God and it was him showing me what he wanted me to do.”
Although she was only 3 months post-surgery, Lopez-Killette began taking steps toward this new vision in early 2015, when she began a fitness ministry out of a local church in Midland.
The fitness class was free to attend and welcomed people of all ages and backgrounds, or “anyone with a pulse,” as she lovingly put it.
Not only did she create the ministry, but she also created the cardio and dance fitness workout that she taught there. With past experience in both Zumba and CrossFit, Lopez-Killette developed what she described as a hybrid between the two and called this workout fitVIBEZ.
She worked almost 3 years in this ministry and described the experience as a period of personal growth and development that allowed her to gain a true sense of who she was as an instructor and exactly what she wanted to offer.
The family moved back to Portales once more in the summer of 2017 and fitVIBEZ came too –her newest baby. It was, after all, her own creation. She was excited about what she had to offer the community, but also had reservations about whether the classes would take off in the smaller town.
“You know, something like this does great in big cities, but you don’t really know what it’s going to be like in smaller communities,” said Lopez-Killette.
The Hydration Station, a local coffee and drink shop in Portales, invited her to set up classes inside their business and almost immediately, the small community of Portales pleasantly surprised her: she had a wonderful turn out and a great deal of interest within the first month of opening. Despite this, she was still somewhat apprehensive and chose to keep her expectations in check.
“I thought, ‘Okay, well, this is new. People like new stuff. But after the month I want to see if people are still coming. I want to see if it still has the hype,’” said Lopez-Killette. “And then here we are 3 years later, still going.” And also, still growing to this day.
Since first offering her fitVIBEZ class to the Portales community, she has not stopped even though the location of her classes has moved multiple times over the years. During a period when the Hydration Station in Portales changed ownership, Lopez-Killette said her classes were held wherever she could find a place – even outdoors when the weather permitted. Eventually she returned to the Hydration Station after being invited back by the new owners, but soon thereafter, COVID-19 struck.
As businesses began being shut down, Lopez-Killette made the decision to make her own home’s backyard deck the temporary quarantine home of fitVIBEZ. Here, she offered classes for free via Facebook so that she could still provide people with a workout during the initial quarantine period.
“That was a pretty hard time. You work so hard to build something and then something so catastrophic hits. I said, ‘Please Lord, don’t let this change the dynamics of what we do.’ Because we are pretty involved in the community as far as benefits and raising money and awareness for causes,” she said. “We try to stay plugged in – just doing whatever we can do to help. So I wanted to make sure that we didn’t lose the momentum of that and have to start over.”
Around the middle June, Lopez-Killette said she realized that the quarantine period wasn’t going away anytime soon and might indeed have just been getting started. She knew she needed to make a change from the backyard deck and the free Facebook videos to something more sustainable. It was around this time that a friend came to her and shared that they had seen a building for rent down on the town square. With much apprehension, Lopez-Killette began investigating and eventually met with the realtor. A few weeks later, after much deliberation, prayer and counsel from her husband and close friends, Lopez-Killette decided to begin the work to make it the new home of fitVIBEZ.
“Starting a business in a pandemic was the furthest thing from my mind,” she said, speaking to the hesitations that she felt over the tumultuous summer of 2020. But through her doubts and indecision, she relied on her faith in God to guide her, as well as the circle of people around her.
“When fitVIBEZ began in Portales, I recruited some really amazing people to kind of be my right hands, my instructors, my assistants. People I could confide in and seek business advice from,” she said.
Two of those people are her assistant, Amanda Pena, and Lopez-Killette’s sister, Anna Lopez. Lopez-Killette shared that these people along with her husband and other trusted friends became confidants and encouragers during the start up period who kept her going, along with her faith in God’s purpose for her life.
“Everybody was trying to talk me out of it. [Saying things like] ‘Are you sure? We don’t know the future of anything right now.’ And I’m just like, ‘I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure. I have a peace about it.’”
After securing the building, she began the process of filing through the state to get the appropriate permits and forms needed to meet all the regulations that come with starting a legitimate business out of pocket.
“It was such a headache,” she shared. “I just thought I could come in here and lease the studio. No. There are so many details. Had I seen that at the beginning, like had somebody laid that out for me and showed me all the bullet points of what would need to be done to start a business, I would’ve probably ran…and never looked back. So it’s really better I kind of went in blind.”
It’s scary as heck to start a business in a pandemic. You start thinking, ‘What if my business doesn’t survive? What if all of this money is just gonna go down the drain and I’m gonna fail?’ And I had someone local tell me that small businesses without a big backing don’t make it in this town. And I took those words and I let them kind of fuel me. If there’s anything that you know about me, it’s that I’m always up for a challenge. So I took those words and I thought, okay. Challenge accepted.” said Lopez-Killette.
And fuel her they did. From making the decision to relocate fitVIBEZ to a studio of her own in mid July, she, with the help of her circle, debuted a soft opening as soon as September. Although she admits that it was not always the smoothest sailing getting things up and running, eventually it began to take off. Lopez-Killette shared that she has already run out of space at the new location and has begun holding multiples of the same class to accommodate the amount of people coming.
One thing she credits the success of the business to is her and her staff’s holistic approach to the human body.
“Yes, we are a workout class. Fitness services is what we do. But just making people know their worth is something we really try to preach in this class, also,” she said. “When you walk in, before you even workout, I want to know your name. I want every person that walks through that door to know that they are absolutely, one hundred percent welcome here, regardless of if they’ve ever worked out a day in their life.”
She shared that it’s this environment that makes her studio special and what keeps people motivated to stay vigilant in making time for their personal health.
“I always look at us as more than a workout. People walk out of here feeling confident. There’s so many messages that we get of people telling us ‘Thank you for showing me how to love me. How to invest in me.’ And that is the most rewarding,” she said.
As an instructor, she approaches this from a personal place and leads by example.
“I don’t want to just look good. I want to feel good from the inside out. I want everything to match, from my emotional and mental place, from a spiritual place, to a physical place – I want it all to align.”
The dynamic and inclusive environment and example provided at fitVIBEZ is what makes it the success that it is, shared Lopez-Killette.
“That’s what keeps people coming. You can workout anywhere. You can pull something up on YouTube right now of someone doing the same thing I do,” she said. “But I can guarantee that you won’t have that same feeling of confidence when you walk out.”
Another thing that keeps people coming is that fitVIBEZ Revolution & Company has something for everyone. They currently offer 9 different classes that range from a ballet fitness option to a kidsVIBEZ class for children ages 4-12, (taught and created by Lopez-Killette’s 16-year-old daughter) and much more in between.
The studio, located at 119 South Main Ave in Portales is easy to try out for anyone curious, charging students only $3 for a drop-in rate and $5 for everyone else. There is no application process or sign up needed; anyone can drop by and join a class. Lopez-Killette assures that anyone who does will leave feeling loved and like a member of the family.
Both Lopez-Killette and her husband, Art Killette, are ENMU alumni. Their two oldest children also currently attend the university. As such, Lopez-Killette is passionate about helping Eastern students have an affordable option in a fun environment to come workout and feel at home. Because of this, she offers ENMU students a discounted rate, charging only $15 each month.
This year marks the sixth since Lopez-Killette began teaching her classes. She looks back on them with gratitude.
“I didn’t do it by myself. I had all of God’s favor and mercy with me. And then he just sent all the right people that I needed to make this vision come to pass and to make my dream come true,” she said. “fitVIBEZ came from a very broken place that I was in. I had a lot going on mentally. I just needed to find my place apart from being a mom and a wife and so when God gave me the vision I was in a very vulnerable state and so when it started to grow and I started entrusting people with teaching or talking about my business, there was some hurt along the way…but at the end of it all it has been worth every bit.”
She looks to the future with expectancy and her ever present drive and ambition.
“For my next goal, what I see for us is having a bigger space where we can have everybody and we don’t ever have to turn people away,” she said. “There’s so much more that I want to do. This is just the beginning of it. I never put a cap on what I think I can do. I feel like if I can dream it and see it, and I feel like if it’s what God wants for me, it can happen.”
For now, Lopez-Killette shared that she lives with a sense of fulfillment knowing that she is on the path God intended, and this keeps her inspired even on the hard days.
“We don’t just come here to smile and shake our booties, we want you to feel the love,” she said. “In a way, it is still like a ministry. We may not be in a church, but we still get to reach out to people and love them where they’re at, regardless of their background, regardless of who they are or where they’ve been. I just love them where they’re at.”
To find out more about fitVIBEZ Revolution & Company, find them on Facebook under the same name, or on Instagram @fitvibez_fitness.
Picture courtesy of Ashley Ramirez
