EP74 Kari and Paul - Change & Risk

This is episode 74 of the Empowered Athlete Podcast.

Welcome to the Empowered Athlete Podcast. Created to support athletes in their pursuit of excellence and inspire others toward their best lives. Hosted by Kari Schneider, coach to top performers in sport and life. And Paul Durden, former national and professional volleyball player.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to the Empowered Athlete Podcast. It is March, it's madness. And if you hear chewing in the background, it's Kari because she is trying to stuff down an apple. Before we get into the show, it's been a long afternoon. She's recertified her CPR today and squeezed in a snack. Before we join you, thank you for joining us. We're so excited to have you back. And before we get into today's topic, when I quickly bring up that later in the month is the exercise nutrition seminar being hosted at the University of Western Ontario by the Dr. Peter Lemon. And incredible guests will be speaking, including Kari, but John Berardi, Graham Thomas and other speakers. Kari, tell us all about it in the event, why people should go.

Well, thank you. This symposium is pretty cool because it's almost like this gem, this hidden gem that happens every year. And Dr. Peter Lemon, he puts it on as a fundraiser for the Western women's softball team that he's coached for a very long time. And so he puts this symposium on. But what people get to hear is the latest research, some really up to date topics, some incredible speakers, people that are very passionate about exercise and nutrition. And so this symposium ends up being pretty.

It's kind of. It's not a huge event.

Pretty small, inexpensive and massive, massive value. So, yeah, if you can make it out, if you're local in the London or surrounding areas, it'll be really cheap.

It'Ll go to a good cause and.

You will get information that'll be so cutting edge that people won't even know about this current research yet. You'll be right there. Plus, it'll be high quality stuff that'll help you in whatever field you're in. That's, that's health and nutrition related.

Yeah, I remember hearing about intermittent fasting for the first time at that event. I feel like it was a decade ago.

Yeah, years ago. Before anybody knew that that was a thing. And then lo and behold, that was.

The first time I learned a bit about it. And yeah, so that just gives you a real quick taste of something, no pun intended. Talking about food of what. Yeah, you can glean from that event. And again, so. March 28th.

Yeah, March 28th.

University of Western Ontario.

Dr. Peter Lemon and I Think if you look on, there's a website link for it. We'll try and put it in the show notes. When I say we, I'm referring to you, because I won't be doing that part of it, but.

Got it.

Thanks, honey.

All right, well, let's get into today's topic. And before we went live here, we were just saying how much has changed for us in one month.

Holy.

That sparked us to want to talk about change and for you to potentially share, if you will, a story that a lot of listeners might not know about. How Empower Conditioning originally came about the gym. And we want to talk about change and risk and risk and reward and those types of things. And we figured that that story is a great way to do it. It's a. It's got all the elements required. Yeah. And so why don't you take us back in time or go ahead, Gosh.

Seems like so long ago. And. And pipe in with your perspective of things because you. You have different perspectives along the way for this particular topic, because when the gym started, we weren't together. And then, you know, you've seen all kinds of evolution through. Through this path.

So.

Back in, Gosh, this would have.

Been around 2005, we, when I say we, the women's. Well, the men's national volleyball team, the women's national volleyball team, and among other athletes were preparing for qualifications for the 2008 Olympics. And so around that time, within that quad between 2004 and 2008, we were in Winnipeg, and that's where the Canadian Sport Institute Manitoba was. And all these athletes who were centered there were prepping for upcoming qualifiers. But what had happened was we were training out of this high performance kind of room.

Infamous, infamous Grotto. Right.

It was called the Gritty Grotto. And if people know anything about University of Manitoba, back at this time, in this early 2000s and prior, it was a, like, literally dirt on the side. And this, this gym was in the basement. There's this big track around the. The main fitness area. And then.

Was it a parking garage, an underground parking garage?

I think probably. I think it was actually. And then we had built. We had infrastructure money from the Sport Institute and University, but mostly the Sport Institute and Sport Canada, to build a high performance center.

Well, that was built in the very.

Middle of this Gritty Grotto gym, and it had a code lock on it.

So this is where the High Performance Center.

I'm doing air quotes right now, was in. In the center of the Gritty Grotto.

So it.

It. When you went in there, it had a little bit of a feel of a higher performance area. You know, we had our platforms, we had some nice equipment, but it was a room and it was. And the only people who had access to it were the Manitoba Weightlifting association, so any of the Olympic lifters, the Bison athletes, so any of the University of Manitoba Bison athletes, and then the Canadian Sport Institute. And we had to have a schedule to make sure that we weren't overlapping when one of those entities had a specific team booking and that kind of thing. Because it was. It was literally a room. It was probably about 44,000 square feet, that room. And you had to have the right code to get in and had to have the right booking and all that stuff. And that's where we were training. Except what happened was, you know, we're on a floodplain in Manitoba. It's very flat, and there was underground. There was a basement with dirt. There's no actually poured concrete or anything. And a major flood had happened. And so all the Canadian Sport Institute athletes, we were out of a place to train. Nobody could go down there. Like, it smelled like mold in the whole building, let alone the basement. Nobody was even allowed. It was condemned. And so your team. So you guys, and the women's team. And so we were trying to move everybody around and we ended up training out of Lipset hall, which was a closed down. And it was probably condemned as well. It was a closed down military base. Military hall. And there was a little gym in there. Well, there was a. Like a gymnasium so you guys could practice there. But then there was this also this old fitness facility with the crappiest old, you know, universal machines, like your leg press and stuff like that. Like, we didn't even have. We didn't have Olympic lifting platforms. We didn't even have. It was horrible.

So what did you do about it anyway?

I know I'm kind of dramatizing it, but it's true. Like, it was bad.

It sucked everywhere. It was either moldy and wet and dirty, or we were in a old decrepit building.

So working. I was salaried at the Sport Institute. And I knew that. I knew there was money designated for infrastructure. What that meant is that this government money that was given to the Sport Institute, it couldn't go for service of athletes. It could only go toward local infrastructure to build something that served the community and the athletes. So I knew that. I knew there was money designated for that. And so I had this bright idea that I would open my own gym. And I would see if the Sport Institute would partner with me or Sport Manitoba would partner with me or any of those entities. And, and so, and you got to think, at this time, I'm a single mom. My daughter was five at the time, four or five at the time. And, and I went and asked them and I had a whole proposal, I made a business plan, I did all the things and, and they just said no. Like they just, I think they thought I was crazy. And at the same time, the Sport Institute was looking around for viable places to train because we had an Olympic qualifier coming up and we, the athletes didn't have anywhere good to train. And it was driving me crazy because it was so, it was so low end. Wherever we were piecemealing our training together, whether it was Lipsit hall or waiting for fixing to be done in the Grotto or whatever, it was still, no matter where we looked, it was still going to be a really poor option. So I kept trying to partner with people. Everybody said no. And so I went and started looking at what I would have to do if I were to open my own gym. And I started looking at business loans and looking at different spaces and looking back now, like I think of the insanity of this. Like, I think I was crazy at the time, but I was.

Well, let's stop for a second. So you, you see the need for change. Obviously infrastructure sucks and it's directly affecting you, the work you can do and the people that you care about. So you've got your motivation there. But you also mentioned that you're a single mom with a four year old. And so how did you reconcile the conflict of risk here so, of going after this? How do you, what do you say to yourself to even explore it? To say I've got to do I, the single mom, have to do this even though he's been allocated for it by the government. No one's taking action, but I have to take this risk.

You know what? There wasn't that kind of thinking. Like I was so passionate about the work that these athletes were putting in and getting these athletes to a qualifier and qualifying for the Olympics. Like this is what we did. It was eating, breathing, living, sleeping, dreaming about this 24 7. This was my life. And so when I was thinking about the risk, I didn't, I didn't think about the risk. I didn't think about the risk for like, the way I thought about it was that, okay, whatever I choose to do, I need to make it work. That, that was the way I thought. Whatever I choose to Do I need to make it work? And you, knowing me, that's one of.

My favorite lines from Apollo 13 is when Ed Harris is talking to the team and they've got. They've extrapolated how far the. The pod can get back towards Earth, and it's short by, like, a day, and they're gonna run out of oxygen. He's like, I need this line to go from here all the way around here. And he's going around Earth.

Yeah.

By the end of the day today, failure is not an option. He literally said, I just love that scene. And the way you're talking right now, you got the same attitude.

That's exactly what it was. And now that we've been together for over a decade, you've seen me in this mode many a time where it's just like, nothing. Nothing will stop me. Like, I will. I will fall apart before I let this thing fail. Like, it's like I just can't stand that option or even entertain it. And so I wasn't thinking that way about risk at all. But what ended up happening was I started looking at business loans and looking at spaces, and I'd spend, you know, all my. Any spare moment, I would spend either reading business books because I didn't have training in reading or not reading, but business.

I hope I knew how to read by that point. And I literally was entertained. Like, what happened at first is I was thinking about going to medical school or starting my own business. And I was so passionate about these athletes. And I thought that if I did my own business, I had this naive thought that. That I could.

That would be a better option for.

Time with my daughter and being able.

To care for my daughter.

Somehow I thought that I rationalized that pathway. So I chose business instead of going to applying for medical school. And I started looking at business loans.

And the interest rates were astronomical.

And I owned my own home at the time. And I'm looking at this just going.

Like, I don't want to be in debt forever and trying to make a living and run a business and all these things. And I'm making like I was going step by step making my business plan. I had a friend of mine who was a banker who basically said, you have to apply for a small business loan and do this and do that and, you know, maybe even apply for a grant because you're female. And anyway, I didn't even get a. I didn't get a grant. I ended up using a line of credit through my home. So I put my home on the line and I took out as much money as I could from my mortgage and my home line of credit and I started and I, you know, I'd already had these relationships with gym equipment people because I had built the, that high performance room in the university. So I already had all these equipment relationships and these guys helped me out and just said, okay, you know, we'll give you a good rate and, and lease to own. So I leased to own all my equipment. And I went through this process of several months of getting the space and doing the business plan and getting the home line and getting the space and getting a lot of other strength coaches in the city who, you know, I'd worked together with or contracted for the Sport Institute and stuff. And they helped me out with various things and getting things like the flooring in or, or the wall. And there were some key people who were working with me at the time. Blake Wood and you know, Richard Burr.

Was a different strength coach who had his own gym.

And these guys were helping me out because we all kind of came together as a community. They saw what my vision was and I had this almost 6,000 square foot warehouse space that was wide open. And I built a custom office with a window so my daughter could be there with me when I was there. And I built a treatment area and another office space and a front desk area and this massive, wide open with four platforms and all the free space for movement work we needed and dumbbells and pulleys and you name it. And it was scary. Like crazy. Yeah.

So now you're finally. It's the first time that you've mentioned something of fear or real recognition of the risk and that what you're in for there was it the. Did the confidence to sign on the dotted line to get that lease for the gym space and go ahead and make the move. Was that the scariest moment or was it having. Was it not that bad knowing that you'd worked through the numbers that you'd forecast and estimated different potential revenue streams and what needed to happen for a break even or for to get slightly ahead. How did you deal with those emotions and the stress of it?

You know what it was? I just want to back up for just a second on the fear part because in order to start this business, I was leaving my salaried position at the Canadian Sport Institute. And this is a position where I had, you know, I had benefits and I had, you know, money get set aside for retirement. Like it's salaried, it's, it's got Some security to it. And that felt good when I, you know, being a mom and being a single mom and my daughter's dad wasn't even in the city, so I was, I didn't have parents in the city, so it was all me, all the time. There was no other kind of support system that was family. So I didn't have people to hang with my daughter. And having a salaried position felt good because if she was sick or needed medication or things like that, like I had coverage. And I think one of the scariest things was leaving that salaried position because I was stepping away from that. But the worst part was that I was doing all of this for these athletes so that they would have a place to train. And I had to be able to open it up to the general public as well. And my mission was that if I was training this excellence in sport and this high performance athletes, that that would inspire activity and excellence in others. So I knew I would be drawing people who wanted to train like a high performance athlete. That's what I thought. But the assumption was that I would still be able to train these high performance athletes. But how was that going to happen? If I'm leaving the Sport Institute, I'm leaving the job of strength and conditioning manager at the Sport Institute and the manager there. At the time, I was the only one of the original staff left because everyone else had left when this new manager came on, they just weren't happy with his style of leading and the performance. And so everybody had left like the main athletic therapist, the marketing person. The turnover was full and complete with all the key staff there. I was the last one. And the reason I was the last one and I hadn't left because I was the only one out of all those people who didn't have a second salary to back them up if they wanted to leave that job and go to another job. So it was my only, it was my bread and butter, my only income. So when I left that salary position. Stepping into the abyss of your own business and you don't have business coming in, but the reason I did it was for all these athletes. What happened was this, like, it was the thing that was almost. It was amazing. It was the demonstration of belief. And all of us have this huge belief in going toward the Olympics and training for the Olympics. But what happened was each of the coaches I worked with when that manager at the Sport Institute was like, well, she's leaving. Let's find another strength coach, the swim coach, the triathlon coach, the men's national volleyball team coach, the women's national volleyball team coach. They all had my back hardcore. And they basically said to the manager, they said, no, we want her. She's the one that has been working with our athletes. She's the one that's consistent, she knows what's going on. And we want her to continue to train them like she has for the last many years, since like 2001. And. And so they, they subcontracted me and I left my salaried position. I didn't have the benefits or anything like that anymore, but I did have the contracts to, to work with those teams and they came to my space to work in my gym. And then I also had some other clients that would start to trickle in as well. But it was this massive learning curve of business that, you know, there were these times where, you know, I knew I needed to have business coming in because the contracts from the Sport Institute weren't enough for this big 6,000 square foot space. And I knew I needed other business as well. And plus I had other employee or people I was subcontracting and paying to work with me. And I'm like, I'd hear the crickets chirping, like, I'm wondering, okay, when is more business to come in? I had no idea how to market. I didn't have time to market because I was still training all these athletes and teams. Like, I had a full roster of teams and some private clients and it was insane. And I would bring my daughter there. And anyway, like, I just, I remember there was a moment where I had this vision. I had this vision of what it would look like when it was complete and what it would look like when the athletes were in there and they had a better training space than they'd had in the entire time that I'd been there anyway, and for years. And I had this vision of what it would look like when they were all in my training space and when it was all going well. And then I remember the day, clear as day, what it looked like when they were all there. And there was this, you know, fluid training day happening and this high performance environment. And it was unbelievable because I was looking around going, oh my gosh, it's like deja vu. This is what I. This is what I envisioned. This is the thing. This is it right here. And it was incredible. It was incredible. Just, I remember that day, I was looking around going, like, I had this thought from this is that movie Field of Dreams. Like, if you build it, they will come. And it's like, it's like it had happened and it was, it was pretty cool. It was pretty wild.

It's literally from the grotto into the abyss, to use your words. And from the abyss and power conditioning was born. And it's, it's amazing to have witnessed and be now in the position we are today, looking back on everything that's happened with it and incredible to hear where it really came from that I don't think anyone who ever walked into your gym would realize that you put it all together by yourself, it just wouldn't seem quite possible because it was so much better than anywhere else we were training. It was, you know, if you picture the CrossFit boxes of today and the wide open gym style, lots of room for functional training and for dynamic work and things like that, that just didn't exist then. But you were, you know, a decade ahead of that, that trend in this style of this facility. And, and it was just, it was awesome. And you've got big guys in there. I mean, I'm either in the team. There's be 16 of us at least. And there's all kinds of room. There's four Olympic lifting platforms. I mean, you're yelling across the gym. There's a great stereo system. It was just, it was awesome. And then one cool thing that people should envision when they're picking this space, it's, it's wide open, super high ceilings. You had a climbing wall on one wall that was about 20ft high and two massive warehouse garage doors at the end that could be opened up and when the weather was good, those were open. You could roll out into the parking area at the back of the building, which was always dead quiet. So it was just this free, enormous space. It was just really amazing. And that those doors were west facing so that you get the sun on the back half of the day. And it was just, it was really incredible what you put together now. Yeah, now when, when was the, the toughest time? When was. Was there a point early on where you thought, holy shit, I'm over my head here, this isn't going to work? Or was there a moment like that?

There wasn't a lot of that. It was more logistics because so much always had to be done. And I was exhausted a lot of the time, but just so driven in what needed to happen for the people I was working with. So we opened just at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006, and worked really hard.

And yeah, it was a bizarre story.

But it ended up so that, that.

Person that manager at the Sport Institute.

Ended up having to put a bid in to keep the volleyball teams in Winnipeg and because the volleyball teams other, other cities in the country were putting bids in so that they would centralize in a different place instead of Winnipeg. And Winnipeg had the bid for so long. And, and what happens with that is that to prove that you're worthy of a bid and for a team to stay, for a national level team to stay in your city, you have to show what facilities you have and your infrastructure and all this stuff. And that very manager was like going, taking photos and touring people through my facility without asking me as though it was theirs for, for this bid. And it was unreal. But anyway, the bid ended up going to Gatineau, so the men's team ended up leaving and then after, and then you. And I ended up moving. I ended up moving to Turkey because you had a contract there. So I had one of my managers run, run the gym remotely, which is very hard. And then I ended up subcontracting the facility for a while. But one of the scariest things I think from that aspect was once I wasn't there and I had someone else running the gym and I had some of the people I employed working with my clients and I had cameras in the gym and all this stuff, it was just really hard to be away when you're running a business. And I didn't have the skill set or the understanding of how to be a business owner versus an operator. And so I just like. And then at the same time trying to the, the, the lease. My goal was always to lease for the first five years and then be able to buy and buy a facility instead of leasing. And what happened with my lease space is that a company bought out the company that I leased from. And when that.

Yeah, the, the owners of the facility where you're leasing were bought out.

Yeah, when they got bought out, they they jacked up. They, they couldn't jack up the lease amount, but they jacked up every other fee that was involved. So I ended up paying almost double from what I originally paid. So it was just so hard to even break even and make money and that kind of thing. But I was really, really proud that despite some, some things not going well, that I, I did break even and I never went into debt and I, I owned my equipment, I paid off all my equipment and I paid my lease. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't even ever borrow any money from anyone else. Not another soul other than myself did I borrow money from. For that whole lease term, like, and I, in looking back on that, it's. It's like I said earlier, it's like I just. In my mind, I didn't see any other option. Like, I couldn't even have imagined borrowing money from someone other than creating it myself. And, you know, at the end of that lease, I own my equipment. When we came back from Turkey, we were moving the gym to London, Ontario, and we pooled some of your savings. The sale of my house, some of my savings, and we pooled all that together in order to reopen, actually buy a building in London and reopen the gym here in London. And the crazy thing you had said earlier that what does it feel like to do all that by yourself? And I guess from a financial standpoint, I did. But from a community standpoint, what I didn't realize until we went to London is that, like I said, those coaches had my back, all those other strength coaches, the people who worked for me. And then there were the people in the community who knew my work and believed in me. So I always had people coming to me for what I could offer. My expertise, my training, my exercise physiology, biomechanics, all of those things.

So, yeah, you had a real community.

Real community from being in Winnipeg for so long. And then when we came here, we were excited to buy a building and have this great space, which was smaller, but the feeling of being able to own a building was huge. And when we bought that, it was like, okay, you know, now we're not leasing with someone else, we're actually owning. And that feels really good as a long term investment. But again, scary, because that first year of us opening the reopening in power here in London, we didn't have other income. We didn't. We basically put all our eggs in that basket. The first year we made $10,000 because so much was going into just getting it up and running and. And then we had all the kids together. Like, it was. So that was. That was scarier to me than any of the time. I did it on my own.

With.

Just me and Raina because. But it was scary to me because the bills were higher. And then I realized that I knew nobody in London. So even if there wasn't that feeling of, okay, business is gonna come, it was like, holy cow, how are we gonna make this happen? And then. And then for us, the stress on our relationship, it was like we were turning into people. We didn't quite know each other as well because. And we just had a baby like the baby and all the kids and not knowing anybody in London, like that was greater stress and greater. I guess that was harder on me than it was when I was a single mom opening the business by myself because it was like I didn't have these other factors. And so the factors of more kids, of stress on our relationship, a new baby, a city that I didn't know anybody. It's like I. That was, that was hard. That was really, really hard.

Yeah. From a reputation standpoint, you were at ground zero, starting over, rebuilding a name that nobody knows yet, and having to. The education process that we continually went through for the first few years of just trying to explain to people one at a time why what you're doing is different and why it matters. It was.

And you know what else is hard?

You know what else is hard?

From an ego standpoint, there's two things that were so tough from an ego standpoint.

I know what one is.

Well, one of them was that there's not a lot of national level athletes. And in London, like I was working with some of the national development rowers and I'd get the handful of pro hockey players and I get, you know, some national rugby or diving or women's hockey. I worked a lot of women's hockey as well, but. But it was really hard because I. That's what my reputation was, was high performance, international level athletes. And now the majority of the athletes in the gym were club athletes and. And there was only a small handful of the high performance athletes. So I had to. That was tough on my ego. And then the other thing that was so hard on my ego was that whenever we were, like you said, explaining to people how we were different or what we were doing and stuff like that, people automatically assumed that you were the expert, automatically assumed that you started the gym, automatically assumed that it was you. And I just had to sit there and bite my tongue and I was like. And it would just happen all the time, like every single interaction. If it was you and I together, it would be you they'd be turning to. And I'd just be like, holy crap. Like I'm only one of, you know, very few people in the world who can do the things that I do. And it just.

You're fighting the built in biases that people have and the assumptions that are being made.

Exactly.

And so, you know, all that's good.

Now I look back on that and I just see how imperative it was for my own growth and humility and just understanding that because my identity and ego are so tied to me being a strength coach and me being a high performance strength coach, that really being able to let all that go in some capacity allows me to be more grounded in me just as a human, not. Not as my identity as a strength coach, just like yours as an athlete. So. But. But anyway, we. We've had an amazing, amazing gym facility in. In London. We eventually wanted to grow more with some key staff that we had. And when I say we, by after the first couple years, you kind of transitioned out. It was mostly me.

Yeah, it was definitely your show. When you say we, you're just talking about empower. But I definitely stepped back into the background. I was doing my own thing.

We kind of thought it would light you up and you'd step into it. And once you kind of got into it, it wasn't your jam. So you. You kind of stepped back from it. So it was. When I say we. Yeah, you're right. It was me. And, you know, there's so many amazing people. Steph Reed, Jeff Watson, Lindsay Desjardins, just Andrew, Seb. Like, just incredible.

Craig.

Craig, yeah. Incredible human beings who worked there. But what I wasn't accustomed to, like Winnipeg, and this was a really hard thing from a business standpoint, is in Winnipeg, when you're in Manitoba, there's no better place to go than Winnipeg. So I didn't have a single person leave at any time. You know, in the Sport Institute or the gym, like, it's not like people were going somewhere else. So there was no turnover. Whereas here people would be moving to another little city nearby or they'd be, you know, going to do like, Craig went to do his medical degree and.

Steph went across the world to go.

And do her PhD, and, you know, Jeff wanted to move closer to back home, which is a city a few hours away. And same thing with Andrew. So it's like there's so many places to go other than London around here.

There was.

There was more turnover than I ever had. And it was one of those things where you just go how it's so hard from a human resources standpoint to keep a business going. And I was feeling like I was a manager so much of the time when what I love to do is coach. Like, just love to coach. And I. I wasn't spending as much of my time coaching, and then I was burnt out when I was trying to coach more because I couldn't do all of the things. And what I needed was a business manager. But I couldn't see that at the time. Because I was so overwhelmed with family and business and working and all of that.

But anyway, long story short, when a couple of key people were moving on to a master's degree and moving back.

To a hometown, they were so important.

To me and I really believed in them so much and could see the.

Future of the gym moving with them.

That I chose to start to.

Really scale down on the in the gym portion of Empower Conditioning. And that's when we began to kind of partner with and help, just help launch a new business, which wasn't ours. It was another entity with three amazing guys with movement, strength. And so they started, started their business. I referred some of our clients over to them and they began a really robust community business, leasing out of, out of our gym, while I still worked with some of my clients and teams and athletes and scaled down, though a lot on the in the gym portion of the business.

And that solicitors know, is motivated by your desire to reach more people in a broader medium in different channels. And that you knew that seeing people one on one on the gym floor in small groups couldn't do it. You're capped. And that you just can't grow exponentially to have a larger impact. And so that was driving a lot of these decisions as well. Getting back to the kind of topic of the show of change and risk, those are the influences now that we're calling play that you talked about. The turnover of staff, the lack of somebody stepping up into that position of being a business partner to help you really drive gym growth. You started to have that desire for change and to alter how you're going to be reaching more people faster. And so that is the catalyst to where you're going now.

Yeah. And you know that feeling I described about the need to help more athletes.

Get to the Olympics back when I.

First opened the gym, that's the exact same feeling I have right now where I love, love, love, love being in person coaching athletes or clients like that just lights me up like crazy. But I love it so much that I can't be satisfied with seeing the same, say, 30 people in a week with, with very little change in. Maybe seasonally it changes some of who those 30 people are. But I want to be able to help more people and on a de. Just a workout, training session. And that's why I've worked so hard to expand my coaching abilities. And so now this is the crazy stuff that over the past several months we've gone through a lot of changes and we have, we've actually. And it's just becoming official. We've actually sold the building and we'll still be in there from a gym capacity for several more months, but after that it's way more and we'll have our own little, we'll have our own spot to either work with clients or some athletes out of our, out of our garage because we're moving and building a gym, a garage gym. But, but it's expanding the Empower Conditioning brand into not only the podcast, but we've been doing. We this will on Monday. It'll be, I think, our third corporate workshop where we're working on vitality and mindset. So not the blah of mental health, but the actual high performance side of mindset and expanding into not only peak performance coaching that's more around business and life coaching as well as the physical, but also retreats like destination retreats. So there's just, it's this expansion in a more to come scary new realm, but crazy to think like about selling the gym space which I honestly, when I, when we began the gym here in London, I anticipated our kids taking it over in the long run. And you just, you know, you can't predict who your kids are going to become and what they want in life. And it just, it's interesting to see how everything has evolved and this feels scary but like so, like the right thing and so freaking excited because we're expanding in so many great, amazing areas and not only continuing to help athletes and corporate clients, but going deeper and going broader and being able to do it in ways that are much more impactful than only coming from a workout in the gym. So we've got online training, we've got so many things that's awesome.

And it's really, you've replicated the key components of the decision to start Empower in the first place where you've, number one, you've got the vision and you've got just a picture of how the world could be different if you change your path and what impact you can have. So that's the fuel and the motivator. And then you've done the research and you looked at the numbers and figured out different ways you can reach people, assess and what that change that impact would have on all the different aspects of your life too. That's something that needs to be considered of if you make this change that you're talking about with the business. How does that impact our relationship, our time together? How does it impact finances? How does it impact you and your time and all those different things that need to be considered to make the right decision. You want to know so much there.

One of the scariest things right now is that a dream I've had for 20 years.

I saw.

I opened a journal the other day and I read what was in it, and it was from 1999. And what my vision was in 1999 was taking my dad's fishing camp and renovating it and rehabbing it and making it a space for really incredible retreats or training or exercise work or corporate retreats. And now the scary thing is that, okay, we can now reinvest in doing that perhaps. And it's scary because I don't know where my dad's readiness is for that, even though he's asked for it for years. And then all of a sudden, when it comes time to do it, it's like, I don't think so or. Or no, only if it's like this or so now it's like, I have this dream, I'm ready to act on it. And it may or may not happen. But that's the other area where we really want to expand to is this gorgeous, remote, isolated fishing camp in northwestern Ontario and turning it into this just incredible retreat site. And it's got a lodge and log cabins and yeah, there's a huge dream there, but scary. The biggest fear, I think, for me is just not being able to realize it and having the patience to have it go through the way it needs to go through and prioritize with the relationships involved, meaning you and I and my dad and making sure it works well so that we can really have the impact on a broader level and give back, too. There's so many exciting things coming up that we're working on.

Super cool. Super cool.

Superfly.

So that's amazing. That is the birth and continual evolution of empower conditioning in 40 minutes. You have it right there. Is there any last things you want to add about the journey before I ask you a question from the book of questions to wrap things up today?

No, I like, thank you for guiding me through that a little bit. It feels so, so reminiscent, just sharing a lot of that and it's exciting to share it. So. And for those of you out there who are in sport or in business.

Or all of this, all that I.

Described is about is about seeing what you really want. And even though it's scary going for it, taking the risk and going for it, and there's some times where we just fell flat on our face and it wasn't working very well, but we went for it. And it was awesome. And that's. I think that's the message in the story of what I've created with a gym in that, yeah, it is an evolution. But if you see something, you see the vision, like, it's been so freaking worth it. This whole journey of empower, conditioning, the inception of it, the building, the. You know, we've just kind of come to the sale of this building. But the evolution of it, it's so worth it. It's so worth it.

Yeah. The timing is absolutely spot on to be talking about this as we close the deal officially this week. And, Kari, I'm gonna stop here for a second. And on behalf of all of the athletes who have ever walked through the doors of empowered conditioning, many of whom. Many of whom do not know the story that you just told and where it came from, and that was all you, all by yourself as a single mom. There's been thousands of them. You've had thousands of clients. And on behalf of all of them, I want to say thank you for making change, taking the risk, and putting in the work. You mentioned 20 minutes ago about the exhaustion and you ran yourself into the ground, keeping that building open, keeping the lights on, and doing all the things for everybody to give them the best chance for them to reach their goals. And again, a lot of people don't know the sacrifice you made for them to have. So on behalf of those who know and those who don't, again, thank you. And power conditioning is something special and always will be.

Thank you, honey. Thank you for putting up with me along the way.

Well, there you go. So now you have to pick a number. We're going to shift gears here. It's the book of Questions to wrap up.

Yeah.

Let'S have a number. Is there an empower conditioning number that's significant that perhaps we could choose?

Let's try 92.

Is that significant?

Kind of.

This is great.

Oh, gosh.

Is there something you've dreamed of doing for a long time since, say, 1999?

Oh, my gosh.

Why haven't you done it? Okay, you've already answered the question.

Okay. No, I'll tell you. Well, yeah, I'll tell you why.

I.

Cause I've wanted to act on it a long time prior. Originally, I didn't act on it because I didn't have money. I didn't have enough money to actually start to renovate the camp. And then this light bulb moment came on to me, and I was like, oh, I gotta get investors. That will be awesome. I'll get going and then as soon as I proposed that to my dad, he was like, no, no outside people, no outside money, no. And so that literally kiboshed it for another many years.

And.

And then. So that's why I haven't. And now what's holding me back in terms of. For us having. Act. Having like we, we just to give people perspective. When. When I said exhaustion and working in, you said working so hard. I was paying down the mortgage on the gym almost double what I needed to pay. And we paid that mortgage down really fast and we were remortgaging it and we could have put it towards. We could have put the money towards renovating the camp, and we didn't because at that point we thought we were ready, but my dad wasn't ready. And so then we ended up buying a house in Mexico and remortgaged and started paying down the gym again, aggressively. So now we're ready again and it's a matter of him being ready. So when it comes to why haven't I. I think that those who know me closely know that I am a ridiculous action taker. Like, I have to rein myself in to not take too much massive action. And so I would have acted on.

This a long time ago.

And the thing that holds me back is, I think, a good thing and I think it teaches me a lot. And it's the thing called the relationship with my dad and respecting his wishes and going at a pace that honors the future of our relationship. And so that's, I think when massive action can be. Can be just slowed a little bit. So that's the answer there.

It's bouncing the priorities there.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for everything you shared today and to our listeners. Thank you for tuning in again to join us for the podcast. We have a great month coming up for you here. We've got some excellent Mindset Mondays to get your brain in gear and tuned up through the month of March and some very unique stories coming up with some guests that we've had that you may not have heard of, but you're not going to forget after you've heard their story. So stay tuned for more. You can always reach us@info powerconditioning.com you can hit up kari@instagram powerconditioning. Find us there, Find us on email, look up the website, give us a call, give us your feedback. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening and.

Freaking go for it, people.

Go big. You got this.

Make change. Take risk. Love it. Bye, everyone.