The Exchanges

Q And I don't know what to do, and do you remember what he said to you?

A You know, he made me start to think about, well, what do I do well? What can I start building off of? So I did get that little concession, spinning concession going, and that brought a nice supply. Not a lot, but at least, you know, some finances in. And then, um, I started doing Pilates cause I went and got a Pilates certification. I just kept certifying and everything. And I bought one machine. I put it in a spare room next to my son's bedroom. And I had, I solicited the women in my spinning classes to come and do private Pilates with me in my home. And that's how I started my entrepreneurial hanging of a shingle in a spare room next to my son's bedroom.

AI assessment note: “he made me start to think about, well, what do I do well?”

Q All right, let me step out for the story in a second, ask about the science of weight loss, because, of course, this is elusive, right? I mean, it's like the fountain of youth or the holy grail. Everybody's been searching for it. But my understanding is that weights and resistance training actually has a bigger impact on weight loss than cardio alone.

A It's a combination of both, but when you do cardio like we do it, which is interval training, you are asking the human heart, which is the most important muscle in your body, to exert itself over 80%, 80 to 85%, and you create what is called an oxygen debt. So you know when you're puffing air, when you're like really pushing hard? If you do at least 12 to 20 minutes of that in your workout, your body has to repay that debt. So over the next 12, 24 hours, the human cells, your body is working harder to bring it back to that homeostatic state. So that is what is changing your metabolism, hormonally, all of those good things. Lifting weights is absolutely a great compliment. You want that to it, but you would not not want to have a cardio component.

AI assessment note: “It's a combination of both, but when you do cardio like we do it”

Q 10 treadmills. And when you start it, Like, when you bring people in, you're like, okay, we've got the rowers, and the treadmills, and the BOSU balls, and just, like, listen, the weights, and just follow my instructions. Like, that must have been weird to, like, go into a room with, like, 10 treadmills, 10 rowers behind it, BOSU balls, and weights, and, like, what, how do people react initially?

A Oh, my gosh. Again, I wish I had, like, video of that in the early days, because It was literally a three-ring circus, and there was a lot of trial and error, let's face it, you know, and the fact of figuring out, like, I had people running into the bathroom throwing up because they overexerted, and I had to really figure out, like, how to bring them back with language, with, you know, the design of the template, so there was absolutely a learning curve. Thank goodness many of those early members are still working out, And that original studio doing this workout because they found such success with it, but they stuck with it even through the learning process.

AI assessment note: “I had people running into the bathroom throwing up because they overexerted”

Q you've got a growing, you know, even with 10 or 15 or 20 franchises, it grew very quickly. Your role changes. Now you are in a corporate setting. You're a part of the corporate executive team. Tell me how you guys divided up responsibilities. Did Dave and Jerome focus on the business and operations end, and you focused on the branding side and Being a sort of a brand ambassador?

A So the three of us each have these great strength in our lanes. So I consider myself like the artist. So the artist is the one I created, right? The art of the workout. Then we see like Dave Long as the manager. He manages the business. He's the CEO, and Jerome is without a doubt an entrepreneur a thousand percent. His concern is, how do we open up 10 more, 10 more, 10 more? But my intentions never changed from 50 years ago when I got in this business was I really had the desire to offer great fitness to people, and then the other half of that was to allow a fitness environment that a fitness professional who wanted to work in it could make a decent living. Those were two things that I often found lacked in the fitness industry, and that's why a lot of people got out of You know, getting into fitness. It was like a side job. It wasn't like a career. Yeah. So I love the fact there's more and more fitness professionals now I'm giving work to.

AI assessment note: “Dave Long as the manager. He manages the business. He's the CEO, and Jerome”

Q So you had a pretty good life. I mean, you, and I think you got married and eventually had a kid. Was your expectation to stay, you know, because you had a big family, mom and dad and siblings and aunts and uncles all there. Did you expect that you would make a life in Niagara Falls?

A So I married my high school sweetheart, my sister moved to Fort Lauderdale, and I would come here, and I would just want to go to all of the fitness studios and gyms and see what was going on here, and could not believe such the difference between the small town of Niagara Falls, and there was just, wow, a real desire to, you know, I was a big fish in a small pond in Niagara Falls as I kept pushing through, you know, managing the Y and all of this, but There was this great desire to come here, and I knew I had to start to be a small fish in a big pond, but my husband at that time, and I moved here to Florida. We did not have our son at that time, and then we had him here in Florida.

AI assessment note: “There was this great desire to come here... and I moved here to Florida.”

Q Okay. Tell me a little bit about, because Pilates is, um, a lot of core exercise, right? But there's not a lot of resistance or impact, right?

A So Pilates is about your stabilizer muscles. So you have muscles at your joints, at your spine, They stabilize your bones, muscle to muscle. They are your inside muscles. That's how I look at them. You have outside muscles, you work out in the gym. These are your inside muscles. So yeah, they're going to make you from the inside out strong. This is going to prevent injury. This is going to give you better posture. This is going to give you more flexibility. And many of the women saw differences in their trunk because the trunk is the main stabilizing, uh, you know, muscular for your arms and legs to work off of. So they all, they started seeing all this reshaping, and that's what they absolutely loved about it.

AI assessment note: “Pilates is about your stabilizer muscles. So you have muscles at your joints”