“What’s up everyone? Welcome back to “Girls with Goals” with your hosts, AnnCatherine and Caroline.”

That’s how health and fitness micro-influencers and twin sisters, AnnCatherine and Caroline Conneen, introduce themselves on their weekly podcast, “Girls with Goals.” 

The Conneen sisters, who are both second-year international business majors, built separate platforms on Instagram after graduating high school. AnnCatherine Conneen is a certified fitness instructor and created Daily Journal Prompt Planner, and Caroline Conneen is a certified personal trainer and has a workout program called “Change with Caroline.”

“We have our separate brands, but a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff is together,” the sisters said, bouncing off of each other. “We think pretty similarly, and we have long, deep conversations about everything.” 

These conversations between AnnCatherine and Caroline Conneen are largely about positive energy, goal-setting and chasing their ambitions. But Caroline Coneen said social media platforms like Instagram are less conducive to longform discourse, so they decided to make their own podcast to further discuss their thoughts and aspirations.

“We thought if we collaborated and went to a platform where it felt more authentic to have longer conversations, it would probably resonate with people really well, which inspired our idea to do the podcast together,” Caroline Conneen said.

AnnCatherine and Caroline Conneen made their first episodes, 0. “Trailer” and 01. “Let us introduce ourselves… and the new era,” on Aug. 18 and Aug. 29, 2021, and promoted them on their personal fitness and lifestyle Instagram accounts, which have 15.2k and 50.7k followers respectively. 

“We’ve both been thinking a lot about what we want to represent. It’s not just health and fitness,” AnnCatherine Conneen said in Episode 0. ‘Trailer.’ 

Caroline Coneen added that “it’s not just happiness and positivity” either.

Their Instagram feeds are bright and full of positive messaging, but the twins pride themselves on their honesty with their social media followers and podcast listeners who see into the ups and downs of AnnCatherine and Caroline Conneens’ real lives. 

“It’s inspiring you to live your best life in every single way, so we’re going to bring you into ours and show you how it’s done,” AnnCatherine Conneen said, about their podcast. 

The podcast explores the twins’ healthy living, fitness and positive lifestyle journeys and inspires listeners to do the same. The episodes are lighthearted and intimate, often including personal details of the twins’ goals and growth.

“For our title, we wanted something that told what our podcast was, but we didn’t want to be tied down to one specific thing, like fitness,” Caroline Conneen said. 

AnnCatherine Conneen said the title is also intended to highlight the “type of person who is going to be perceptive to [their] podcast.”

This type of person, the twins said, is someone who is willing to change, open to goal-setting and motivation. According to their podcast analytics, the average age of listeners is 18- to 26-year-old women. 

“Our listener is someone who wants to be the boss of their own life,” Caroline Conneen said. “It doesn’t matter where somebody is at in their journey, someone who’s like, ‘Oh s***, I want to change.’”

The sisters begin each episode by sharing updates and highs and lows of their week. They then take a deep dive into the theme of the week’s episode and offer personal insight and advice. Past episodes have covered growth and change, relationships and hookup culture, starting a fitness journey, goal setting and manifesting. 

The episodes end with an advice segment called “Double Take,” where the twins answer questions sent in by listeners. Listeners can send in questions through Instagram DMs, or the Girls w/ Goals Discord — an online group chat with more than 1,000 members. AnnCatherine Conneen called the Discord a “very tangible community” that the sisters have.

“There are some people who are consistently in there just sharing about their days and hyping each other up,” Caroline Conneen said. 

The discord has three text channels, #goals-gang, #food-freedom-and-growth and #questions-and-advice-submissions. 16-year-old Isabella Olohan is an active follower of the Conneens’ social pages and podcasts and a member of the “Girls with Goals” Discord. 

“Seeing other people’s comments goes to show that so many other people look up to them in the same way that I do,” Olohan said. “They could have been through similar journeys, or they could have been through completely different journeys, but either way, we all found them for similar reasons, and it’s just inspiring to see, whether I know them or not.”

Listeners often share the impact that the podcast has had on their lives in the Discord, AnnCatherine and Caroline Conneen said, but the encouraging feedback doesn’t stop there.

The podcast is met with positive ratings on all streaming platforms, with 4.9 stars and 161 reviews on Apple Podcasts and 4.8 stars and 538 ratings on Spotify. Apple Podcast Review headlines include, “HUGE source of positivity,” “Becoming THAT girl,” “Inspiring, motivating, and relatable” and “THIS is what we all NEEDED!” 

In five months, “Girls with Goals” has released 22 episodes, hosted four guests, was ranked 120 on the overall Spotify Podcast Charts and has been consistently ranked in the Spotify Health & Fitness Podcast Charts. 

The community of “Girls with Goals” listeners is evergrowing, and the twins are continuing to set goals and grow their podcast brand, AnnCatherine Conneen explained. This is in motion, as the twins worked with the Spotify Editorial Team to create a video podcast. 

“I’m looking forward to launching our video podcast and being some of the first to find our voice in this new form of content,” Caroline Conneen said. “Our vision is to bridge the intimacy of a sit down chat with the entertainment of vlog style footage. It feels like such an authentic way to bring our creativity and positive message to life, and I couldn’t be more excited.”

The Spotify video podcast was released March 14. New episodes of “Girls with Goals” come out every Monday, and can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.