Who She Is
A full room in small-town Missouri, and women in three states she could not teach
Mackenzie Wells played volleyball and ran track in high school, went to college for both, had two children young, and got certified as a personal trainer after a college strength coach watched her lift in a friend’s garage and told her she was coachable. For seven years she taught in a converted Pizza Hut on the town square in small-town Missouri, with the grime still on the walls where the tables had been.
Everything she has run, she built herself out of parts she found. That habit matters. She asked the camera operator at her church which camera to buy. It is why women in Texas, California and New York were already messaging her, and why the next part took as long as it did.
“I don’t know that I can have my own app. Are you kidding me? Like that sounds like that’s some fancy people stuff.”
Mackenzie Wells @mackenziewells.fit • 810K followers
The Before
A website, a video host, and a members group, held together by hand for three years
She launched online on 1 March 2020, hoping for 50 sign-ups by the end of the month. Eighty came in the first week and another 50 the week after.
The setup was hers: her own website, a private Facebook group, and YouTube for the videos. It worked. She says so herself. It carried a real subscriber base for three years. What it could not do was behave like one thing. YouTube’s copyright rules left her with uncopyrighted background music under every workout, the same loop over and over. Every subscriber who left had to be removed by hand, in more than one place, and she was the one who had to remember.
The bigger it got, the more of her week went to holding it together instead of coaching. By the summer of 2023 the admin had become the job.
“Stuff was all over the place and I needed a streamlined process.”
Mackenzie Wells @mackenziewells.fit • 810K followers
Why Playbook
Playbook sent her a message. She had already sat through a lot of other calls.
Playbook sent her a message in 2023. She looked into it, and she looked into a lot of other apps at the same time. “I was on zoom call after zoom call here and know, promises after promises,” she says. She did not move on the strength of a pitch.
Two things separated it. The app did in one place what the three tools had been doing in three. The second reason was the people on the calls, and she has her own test for that.
She went live on Playbook on 7 August 2023. Her goal after joining was 2,000 members.
“your guys’s app is… probably the best and also you guys are the best… I can sniff out a good person I feel like. And when I was on calls with you guys, I’m like, these are my people.”
Mackenzie Wells @mackenziewells.fit • 810K followers
How She Does It
Three posts a day for six weeks, then four, and a message before anyone cancels
Once everything ran in one place, she started testing the cadence. Three a day for six weeks, then four.
What she got good at was chosen by the feedback. The messages were never about how to do a shoulder press. They were about starting well for two weeks and then stopping. She closes every workout with a mindset segment, and on Sundays she films Mindset Moments on her phone, doing laundry. Her subscription is $19.99 a month or $199 a year, with a 7-day free trial on both plans.
Anyone thinking about leaving is asked to message her first. “if you’re thinking about giving up, fine, it’s fine that you’re allowed to give up. We all have free will, but I need you to message me first,” she says. More than 70% of the subscribers who first paid in the first half of 2025 were still there three months later.
The Results
29,000+ paid subscribers, and 200%+ growth in twelve months
Paid Subscribers 29,000+
up from 9,000+ last year Subscriber Growth 200%+
twelve months to August 2026 Trial-to-Paid 90%+
On an Annual Plan 65%+
Annual Price $199
or $19.99 monthly When she joined she told herself she wanted 2,000 members. She passed it. Then she set a new number, which is what she does. The figure that matters for anyone weighing a move is the growth. She has added more paid subscribers in the last twelve months than she had altogether before them.
What’s Building Next
Six vacations a year, a mastermind, and messages she still answers herself
She vacations six to eight times a year. Growing up her family never owned a house, and back-to-school shopping was knocking on her sister’s door for clothes that no longer fit. She runs a Mindset Mastermind now, because the women who write to her want more than a workout.
The room in the Pizza Hut was hers. The audience was hers. What Playbook gave her was the infrastructure to stop maintaining three tools and put those hours back into the women who message her.
“I don’t care how big this thing gets. I’m going to keep showing up as much as I possibly can.”
Mackenzie Wells @mackenziewells.fit • 810K followers
