Fitness influencers Laura Henshaw and Steph Claire Smith have opened up about an ugly feud that almost ruined their friendship.
The Keep It Cleaner (KIC) co-founders were enjoying a getaway with their respective husbands Dalton Graham and Josh Miller when the pair of besties got into a heated quarrel.
Their respective husbands had to intervene at one point during the stoush to calm things down.
And now Laura, 30 and Steph, 30 have dished up some behind the scenes details about the incident.
Opening up on their Kicpod podcast, the pair of best mates said they never came close to getting physical during their argument.
However, the business partners and friends short-changed fans on the details of the fight and what caused it.
Reviewing Laura and Steph’s discussion on their Outspoken podcast sisters Amy, Sophie and Kate Taeuber tried to get to the bottom of the partners’ feud.
‘It just went around in circles I just felt like I was this friend listening into this conversation that I was out of the loop because they never once addressed what this fight was about,’ they said.
At one point they discussed how Lauren and Steph had discovered that their husbands had been discussing the women’s friendship in private.
And when the men realised that the business partners had been disclosing things to their respective husbands behind each other’s backs, they grew alarmed.Â
‘This fight must have been pretty bad though because Steph said she felt like the worst friend… she felt like she had to walk on egg shells around Laura.’
Amy then said she felt sympathy for the two best friends.
‘I feel for them,’ and continued:Â ‘You say things to your family members that you wouldn’t that you never say to anybody else.
‘You forgive a family member where you may not forgive a friend.’
In May Laura recalled the brutal exchange during the Share My Mood podcast.
‘We were away for a couple of nights, and it was the second night, and [Steph and Josh] actually stayed in the room the whole time,’ Laura told hosts Will McMahon and Woody Whitelaw.
The podcaster kept mum about exactly what triggered the verbal exchange between her and Steph, 30, but said it was Dalton and Josh who convinced them to sit down and ‘be open with each other’.
She ensured the pair are still very much best friends and business partners after ‘really open, fantastic conversations’.
‘It was actually a really uncomfortable conversation [between Steph and I]. And we speak about it every now and then. We’ve actually just more recently had another really open, fantastic conversation,’ she explained.
‘We actually worked with a coach on that conversation, which was really helpful because I think when there is two of you, you don’t have anyone who’s objective because you’re in it all the time.’
Laura and Steph first met in the early 2010s when they were both modelling at Melbourne Spring Fashion Week not long after finishing high school.Â
The duo became fast friends as they worked in many of the same shows and spent much of their time backstage getting to know each other.
In 2015, the pair made a name for themselves as a dream team in fitness when they founded the health and wellness brand Keep It Cleaner, releasing an app, merch, a book and the KICPOD podcast.
Laura took on the role of the company’s CEO while Steph took the COO chair, launching their brand into phenomenal success over the course of nine years.
The friends have made a multimillion-dollar empire out of their KIC brand and podcast, on which they regularly talk about body positivity and health.
They recently took an exciting step in their fitness and wellness business as they celebrated a new brand deal in January.
Laura and Steph posed in pink activewear for a photoshoot in Bondi to confirm their brand deal with popular activewear label STAX.
It is not the first mega brand deal the longtime friends have landed, with Laura having teamed up with brands such as Jaggad and Bumble in the past.
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