Main Street Mavericks Business Spotlight: All Bodies Strong

When William Lay first met with a small business coach to discuss his idea for a size-inclusive gym in Portland, Oregon, the coach laughed at him. But Lay was dead serious. He wanted to own a gym that felt comfortable for people of all body types, and All Bodies Strong — Portland’s first gym for larger-bodies — is going strong. As Lay advised, “Ignore the naysayers.”

Partners Lay and Christina Malone are on a mission to not only grow their own gym but also see All Bodies Strong go national.

We sat down with them on Day One of our Main Street Mavericks road trip around Oregon. (And we did some some deadlifting, too!) Meet Christina and Will!

You can find All Bodies Strong here in Portland, on their website, and on Instagram.

Q&A With All Bodies Strong

Tell us about your small business!

We are mostly a group fitness class-based gym.

We offer everything from yoga, which is more focused on relaxation, to higher-intensity classes such as boxing and power-up, which is a mixture of conditioning with some Olympic and powerlifting concepts thrown in.

We’re located in Northeast Portland, just off MLK and Failing, which is just up from Fremont Street.

What’s one challenge you’re facing, and how can the community help?

Christina: One thing we’ve talked about quite a bit is that when you’re running a small business, you often get to be very close with the community around you. And sometimes, when we’re trying to do all the events we can possibly do, sometimes we can’t do everything for all the people all the time. And I think just understanding and supporting that — especially in the first year or two years when a small business is growing — we are doing the absolute best that we can to meet the needs of the most number of people.

But there are limitations, whether financial, time, or otherwise, and we really just are always trying to do the most that we can while keeping the business open.

Will: One thing that I found was that you get like 80 percent of people who love what you’re doing. They’re really supportive of what you’re doing. And you get 10-15 percent who are very vocal about what you’re not doing; I think that’s the one thing for the community to understand. Don’t try to get your business that you love so much to do everything.

Because if you try to be everything to everyone, you’re going to become nothing to no one. You’re going to eventually fail. And that’s the thing. A lot of businesses fail in the first one to two years. So if you push your business that you love so much to do discounts or drop free [things], what you’re going to end up doing is making that business dry out its cash flow and then close.

And that doesn’t help anyone.

What is your top piece of advice for small business owners just starting out?

Picture from All Bodies Strong

Christina: A top piece of advice for business owners just starting out would be to understand your cash flow needs. And be really honest about what you need to keep your own personal life afloat.

And does that do what you need with respect to how much the business needs to generate? So, being really clear in terms of what you need, what does the business need? Do you want to run events? Do you want to have social media managers? What do you need to make your business successful? Not just the nuts and bolts of what you need to open the doors.

So, be cognizant of all of those factors. The obvious ones are easier to hit, but really take the time to think through all that and make sure that your cash flow matches that. And if it’s not your immediate cash flow, it’s your projected cash flow, things like that.

Will: Yeah, definitely. Definitely, cash flow is the biggest one that we always talk about, especially with young men; we mentor young people who are coming through and want to start their own little projects or side gigs. You got to know what your cash flow is because if you don’t, you’re never going to be able to succeed.

I’d say the other piece of advice that I give people is one that I got from actually just a person on YouTube, and I really respected what he said. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Ignore the naysayers, especially your own — the one that’s in your head — because the best bit of advice is if it’s something that’s never been done or something, even if it’s something that has been done, but it’s you doing it in a completely different way.

Ignore what everyone else is going to tell you. Ignore the people who are telling you it’s a hobby job. Ignore the people who are telling you you’re buying yourself a job. Ignore those because you’re probably not doing any of those things. You’re probably creating something that could be very important for your community.

And if you listen to the naysayers, it’ll never get off the ground.

Christina: Yeah, I think to piggyback on that, as well. Not listening to the naysayers is especially important if you’re doing something unique and novel. So, as we said in the beginning, All Bodies Strong is a size-inclusive gym. Obviously, we’re fat-bodied folks; we are both fat-bodied athletes and have been into athletics as lifters, trainers, and coaches for all of our lives — 24 years now.

Being a fat-bodied business owner can be a bit of a naysaying attracting factor, so to speak, just because, particularly in fitness, we’re really flipping the script of what it looks like to not only be in fitness but also to be a community leader in fitness and a business owner. And athletes and coaches, driving the sport forward. And so we’re not just saying, hey, let us play on your team. No. We want to coach the team. We run the team.

What is the best part of being a small business owner?

Will: I think what we both love, well, I’m not going to speak for Christina, but I’m going to say, in general, watching our clients do things that they thought were not possible. I’ve been coaching for a while and watching my clients who come to me and say, oh my gosh, I’m so weak. And then you throw like a hundred pounds in their hands, and you have them do a deadlift. The minute you do that, their brain just shuts down because they didn’t know they weren’t [weak]. They didn’t know they could do it.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. I think that seeing people walk into a space like this and make the comments — oh, I thought this was a joke. I thought you weren’t real. People have just been really surprised that this is actually a space that was created so intentionally for fat bodies, that size-inclusivity piece. The best part was seeing a need in the community, filling that need, and then having it become a space that isn’t just welcoming to one type of person. Our client range runs the gamut in terms of body size, body diversity, body type diversity, age range, diversity, gender identification, and LGBTQIA.

It’s just getting to build a space that has that kind of inclusivity at its core and being able to make the decisions around that. If you’re in someone else’s space, you’re always a little bit beholden to their mission statement or their bottom line. Here, we really made the intentional point of saying we’re going to drive those decisions.

So we’re able to react to the community as its needs might change. I think that’s one of those things that’s really been lovely to be able to do. Just, “Oh, do you have a need?” Awesome. Let’s fill it.

That part of being able to run a business this way has just been life-changing, for lack of a better word.

How is running a gym different than running another type of small business?

Christina: Every type of business that you run, depending on what you’re providing, of course, is going to have different things that are specific to that business. Restaurants are going to be vastly different from service-based providers. Service-based providers are going to be vastly different from product-based providers.

Here, we are obviously a service-based provider, and so what we’re doing is making sure that we, as a gym, have enough to support the services that we’re running. I would say the differences with small gyms are that you need to be very cognizant and reactive to what your clientele’s needs are and understand that they could change from month to month, season to season, and time to time.

The type of the classes, when they’re offered, how we offer them, and class sizes. What are the needs that are going on around? Is there something outside that could be impeding the way that our clients come into the gym? Weather, smoke, heat, all of those things.

And so for us, with running a small business, and that’s a gym, we had to really think through what are barriers that could prevent a client from wanting to walk through the door. Or, for folks who might not have felt comfortable in a gym, what would make them not want to enter a specific space?

We thought of things like parking. We have ten parking spaces in the back of the building. That’s unheard of in Northeast Portland to have parking spaces! But if you had to park really far away from the gym and walk half a block or a block, even if it’s a shorter distance, every step you take is one more step that could keep you from wanting to come through the doors. Plus heat, rain, all that jazz with that.

On top of that, we made sure to pick a building that had really good climate control. So AC and heat was really important to us in the building.

Will: I would say you hit the nail on the head with most of it. One thing I always tell people, especially whether it’s a gym or any business, is to know your statistics and know what those statistics say because statistics can change.

Know your business failure rate. What is your barrier to entry? When I was going through my Master’s certificate program, [Chrisina] had just finished her Master’s. We basically doubled up, but I went specifically into entrepreneurship and learned about some of the nitpicky little things that we need to look at. I had to figure out the barrier to entry for this gym, which is vastly different from the barrier to entry for a restaurant or even a brick-and-mortar product store.

The barrier to entry for gyms is really low. It actually is. The cost and the barrier to get in are super, super affordable. But the failure rate is 81% in that first year, and it goes down to 70% in the second year. So, you don’t see an actual true success percentage rate until your third and fourth years. Whereas with restaurants, most of them see that failure rate in year two. They usually survive year one, especially if they have good cash flow, but in year two, their cash flow is drained, they’re not bringing the clients, and they start to fail.

Knowing those numbers and how they translate to you is super critical because it allows you to take out the correct loan. Know your loan rates, know your amortization and all of those little details.

Christina: I always make the joke: Where’s the worst place to open a business? Where your clients aren’t.

Will: Yeah. Opening a business in Portland, Oregon, is not cheap. It’s challenging. Taxation is high from the city, the county, and the state. Realistically, if you’re looking at the numbers, it’s not smart. But if you’re opening somewhere that’s cheaper, it’s not smart. You may not have clients. So you got to balance that.

Would you recommend doing a Master’s program for business? Was it helpful?

Will: Mine is not an official Master’s — hers is! But I went through a veteran’s program. Because I’m also a combat vet, it was free. It was an accelerated eight-week program where you learn everything about entrepreneurship from a Master’s-level education in eight weeks. And I would definitely recommend something similar. If you’re a veteran, the entrepreneurial boot camp for veterans is part of the EBV program. There’s really good information there; there’s a lot of good data. And a lot of good opportunities to connect and network with other people.

There are also SBA and SCORE, which all have programs like this that you can take anything you can do to lower your risk. And that’s what this does. It doesn’t give you any knowledge that you may not be able to obtain through just being a good, savvy Googler, but it does lower your risk because you learn and network in addition to it.

Christina, what’s it like working a full-time job on top of running your own small business?

I joke; I’m highly caffeinated at all times! I drink a lot of coffee. No, I honestly really love it. It is a challenge. I’m not going to lie and say, yeah, no, it isn’t a challenge. There are days where it is really exhausting. But for me, I was a competitor, or am a competitive athlete, and so I’m in the gym training my own training 10 to 12 hours a week.

So, I was already coming to a gym four to five days a week after working. I have the habit of going from home to the gym. That part of it was not so much an abrupt transition. What was an abrupt transition was adding in the client’s training loads and learning how to do the nuts and bolts of running the business.

Thankfully, I think I picked up a lot of management habits from having worked both in veterinary practices, which was my initial first job, and then in corporate. So, I really picked up a lot of management habits from those two skills and a lot of time management, including communication style, prioritization, and being able to manage and triage problems.

And so being able to apply those lessons that I’ve learned from three different, very different career fields into this career field, it’s really awesome to see how it comes together. They do play off each other. But I think the biggest thing is if you’re looking to have that kind of a transition, if you’re not used to the schedule change, do it as gradually as possible.

Like I said, thankfully for my own training, I was in here doing my own lifting so it was just like adding on to an existing workload with that.

Will: Instacart is very useful, too.

Christina: But I was going to say if I had to measure the increase in my coffee consumption, it’s pretty stark.

What is your vision for All Bodies Strong? What’s next?

Christina: I would say that we really do have a vision of bringing All Bodies Strong to as many spaces as possible. We have thoughts and big pie-in-the-sky dreams of being able to expand it, not just beyond the immediate Portland area but other cities.

One of the things that we see is looking at fatphobia and body negativity and the issues that we see around it and really saying, “Hey, this is really not a great way for us to continue to live.” I think that gym spaces play an integral role in that because they should be something that is accessible to all bodies.

We were very intentional in choosing the name All Bodies Strong.

We are very much a size-inclusive space. We don’t want to be exclusive to any one particular body style. That being said, obviously, I think we’re going to attract a certain wedge of the population. But the goal is to see that wedge grow, and I think the concept of allyship is such a big thing because we need to normalize seeing fat bodies in motion.

And if you aren’t used to seeing it, how else are you going to see it? If you’re not in a gym where you ever see bodies moving, if you only see it one time on a TV or once in the Olympics every four years — one of the heavyweight weightlifters doing something.

We need to normalize it in places you’re going to go every day, restaurants, gyms, walking around the world, and we want to try to dismantle it from that perspective. Being able to bring All Bodies Strong to multiple locations and maybe even folding in services that tie into our central mission statement around: How do we continue to help bigger bodies live a better life?

Will: I see All Bodies Wellness. The term wellness has been used negatively for so long.

Wellness centers in the eighties and nineties were huge. You wouldn’t go to a gym; you’d go to a wellness center where you’d get a spa treatment and a detox to help you burn fat. You’d do some core building to help you burn that belly fat. And that was a huge thing. I like the idea of taking all bodies, even bigger, like Christina said, and adding services.

Turning this into a place where instead of going in and having to fit into this little wedge of the world, you’re learning how to move your body, getting acupuncture, meeting with your physical therapist, meeting with a chiropractor, or meeting with a nail technician. In our wonderful wedge of the world, our head boxing coach is a nail tech.

I want to see All Bodies become what I, what Christina and I know it can be: Which is a space where we change how people look at fitness. We flip it up on its head, and we let people know it’s okay to be who you are. It’s okay to be what you are, who you are, where you’re at.

Christina: It ties back to the central motto of our business: At All Bodies Strong, you belong. And our goal is to help you feel safe, seen, and celebrated.

Those things are really central to what we do, and they’re central to that long-term vision. Allyship is important, and what better way than to create a brand that if you see our logo, you know that you’re walking into a safe space.

Will: I also see a training program. One of my dreams is to create a fat training camp where coaches in fat bodies, people who want to become coaches, come and learn everything they need to know about how to coach people in fat bodies, and then they go off into the world and they become the next run of coaches. In most training programs, they say let your body be your business card.

And every gym I went to before — I found one here in Portland that was willing to take me — they all said, “I can’t sell you. Your body isn’t what we want. Your body isn’t going to sell.” And I want to change that. I would like a training program to change that. My body is my business card.

I am a fat powerlifter, and I know that I am strong and I know that I’m healthy. I want to have other people have that same feeling and that same power. And I think that’s what I want to do. I want to train people to become coaches. That would be cool.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

Christina: I can think of one other small thing. So, Will and I are partners in life as well as in business. And it’s really awesome to have opened a business with my best friend. We’re running a business together and are really happy doing it. We haven’t killed each other yet.

Will: Yeah, we just celebrated our 19 years together. I would say it’s pretty cool. That’s pretty rad.

Christina: Yeah, it’s been fun!

Vendor Round-Up

Which of our vendors and partners is assisting All Bodies Strong on their small business journey?

What site does All Bodies Strong use for gym software? A company called PushPress, and they use Stripe with a 4.8% fee; they do have a free program, but the paid service can integrate payroll software.

And a special shout-out to: Sock-It-To-Me, a Portland-based sock company where Will gets all his cool socks!