Fitness, health growing business for Mackenzie Country mum

Kate Ivey works out against the backdrop of the Mackenzie Country landscape.

Life just keeps getting busier for Kate Ivey.

Yet the mother of three says she is still not where she wants to be with her business, Kate Ivey - Fitness, Health and Inspiration.

"I think if you went back to before I started, I'm way ahead of where I dreamed of being. Now it's become part of what I'm doing and I'm sinking so much time into it, I have huge aspirations for it,'' she said.

Mrs Ivey, who lives on a high country property in the Mackenzie Country, launched her business in 2016. It aimed to help women lead positive, healthy, fitness-filled lives.

In June, she launched DediKate, an online health and fitness community for busy women, and since then, she had been gradually making that product "better and better''.

Hundreds of women had signed up for the programme which included live workouts with Mrs Ivey and video replays.

There were also low-intensity workouts for women after giving birth or following injury to ease back in to exercise, and workouts to do with a friend.

A 12-week challenge started last week for women looking for extra motivation. That included fitness testing and taking of measurements and photographs.

She was also working with brands such as AngusPure, Skins and local business High Country Salmon.

Kate Cameron, a former contestant on The Bachelor reality television series, was doing well on her programme.

There were so many other things happening all the time, including writing magazine columns, she said.

It was "amazing'' the growth she had as a person and what she could handle and do in a day, compared with a year ago, she said.

It was a very rewarding field to be working in. Not everyone wanted to share their stories publicly but it was heartwarming to receive messages from women feeling so much better about themselves.

Living in a remote area - Mrs Ivey, her husband Mark and their children live on Glentanner Station's run-off block at the eastern end of Lake Pukaki - and juggling work with family life was challenging.

But she had a PA who helped with cleaning, childcare and aspects of her work. That also meant that she did have some time for herself.

Mrs Ivey was an ambassador for both the Queenstown and Hawke's Bay marathons; she was running the 10km race in Hawke's Bay in May and hoping to beat the goal of completing it in 45 minutes that she set herself in Queenstown last November.

She missed then by 21 seconds, despite having to deal with stitch all the way.

In June, she was introducing an initiative in which she would donate $1 to a charity for every centimetre that her followers lost around their waist or hips.

Still thinking about the possibility of eventually going global with the business, Mrs Ivey said part of the next step involved breaking into the city market.

That was a challenge, given her location, but she would "definitely get there''. She was already well-known in rural communities.