The Mavericks Way
I’ve been involved with Mavericks Life Co and its subsidiary, The Mavericks Way for the last six years, in different roles. I’ve worked with the founder and CEO to help it to grow as a company and communicate clearly with its users.
For the past three years I’ve worked as the editorial lead on projects including transcripts for videos, editing books ready for publication, commissioning content and identifying and implementing user needs across the websites and other digital offerings..
What is Mavericks?
Mavericks is a fitness company that opened its headquarters in the Swiss Alps four years ago but has been running as an accredited sports coaching provider for 20 years.
The Swiss centre features a members-only co-working space and gym inspired by natural movement techniques and the natural environment. It has expanded to include two internationally-recognised programmes for training sports coaches and one online course on the basics of natural movement.
The courses target different levels of expertise and all come with a package of accompanying content including videos, blogs, a book and a newsletter.
The websites are also designed to filter users in different directions according to their expertise and needs.
I’ve been the content designer and editorial lead on each of these areas as they have developed and we have grown them alongside the communities of users.
As the company has grown and its mission has evolved, so has the way it communicates with its members and audiences. I’ve worked closely with the founder and core team to make sure internal strategy and direction is communicated effectively externally and that the various strands of users can access what they need from Mavericks.
My work - the websites
The Mavericks Life Co website was initially designed without my oversight and as it grew organically, pages became muddled with dense or over-technical language, were duplicated or no longer shared the message that Mavericks wanted to convey.
I conducted workshops with the founder and core team to explore the Mavericks story, investigated key audiences and outlined the purpose and desired outcomes/actions of Mavericks’ distinct audiences / users..
After speaking to the founder and core team about what they wanted to get across, I conducted competitor language analysis and drew up several new versions of the site content.
I showed them to both the founder and core team, who offered constructive feedback and sometimes conflicting opinions. This allowed us to explore and hone down clearer messaging.
The team concluded they wanted to create a separate but linked site for the general public - The Mavericks Way, to encourage better health and more nature-based activity in local communities, led by fiteness professionals. The mission would be aligned with the United Nation’s goals for sustainable development.
My work - The Mavericks Way
The Mavericks Way was created as a resource primarily for people interested in becoming more active, who also have an interest in nature. When creating the site we compared it with others in a similar space such as outsideandactive.com and nutritiousmovement.com.
There were some key terms, often a word or phrase that the core team were dead-locked over, at which point we A/B tested them with our different course members.
We also tested terms using Facebook Ads, Instagram and YouTube, putting out the same video or post with alternate hashtags or keywords to identify which connected most with audiences. I then implemented the most popular terms throughout the site and also added them to our style guide.
For example, through an iterative process, we moved the key terms from holistic movement, to holistic science, to outdoor training to nature-based training and Nature & Active Lifestyle Education and nature reconnection. These terms evolved over time as audiences became more aware of the benefits of outdoor exercise and we learnt that ‘holistic’ had connotations which were misleading users about our brand. This was contributing to churn.
My work - The book
The Founder wanted to further consolidate her position as a leading voice in the natural movement phenomenon. A book about how to achieve life-long fitness acheived from lifestyle, habits, nature and science would help to do this, but we didn’t want to give away too much information from the paid-for courses. After years of working on the tone-of-voice of both the founder and Mavericks as a brand, I was able to coach the founder on writing the book, then edit it to make it appealing to her target audience. We have secured a publisher and the book is out in 2028.
“Emily is a guiding light in helping us refine our voice, and finding the right words that resonate with people. Taking on a complex task of translating dense technical jargon into breezy, inspiring texts, was not an easy feat! Thank you Emily for helping The Mavericks Way... find its own way with words!”
Jessica Christensen, Founder and CEO of Mavericks Life Co