Introduction: Sitting Inside the Spenga Studio

Brian 0:10

All right. Well, welcome back to the Bureau Beach Podcast. I'm Brian.

Shawna 0:13

And I'm Shauna.

Brian 0:14

Shauna, you should be a little bit closer than Mike.

Shawna 0:15

And I'm Shauna.

Brian 0:16

There you go. Now everybody knows who you are. So welcome back to the podcast. Today we are sitting at Spinga. I was like, I am I gonna say it right? I don't know. And I did figure out how to spell it, but how to go to your website. But we're sitting here with Christy Wade and Brad here from Spinga. And we're excited to have you guys on the podcast today. It's good to be here.

Shawna 0:34

It's Brad Bacon, not Brad here.

Brian 0:36

Brad Bacon. Oh, I thought it was Brad here the whole time. Bacon, now I'm hungry though.

Shawna 0:41

That's a new name. Like you can't not say bacon.

Brian 0:44

Yeah. I'm gonna let Shauna first. As usually we know we go right into tell us a little bit about yourself, but I'm gonna make you guys wait for a minute. We're gonna keep the audience in suspense. Yes. But I want Shauna to describe the area that we're sitting in right now because Oh, good. Go ahead.

Shawna 0:57

I love I love describing the environment that we're sitting in. Right. Okay, so we are in the studio and it's so beautiful. I love how you have um incorporated your colors. It there's lime green and black and white, and I love that. And that beautiful wood wall over there, that's for selfie opportunities, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Um, yes. So in this part of the studio, you can see all three portions, which we'll get to that in a minute, of spanga, the spin area, the strength area, and then the yoga area. And it's just it's very clean, it's very calming, very beautiful. I absolutely love this space.

Brian 1:36

It's well, you know, the first thing I noticed when I walked in was the smell. I was like, oh my gosh, it smells amazing in here.

Meet Christi & Brad

Brad 1:41

The say the spanga scent, as we call it. We sell it. We do. Yeah. Essential oils, but it's customized for us.

Brian 1:50

Oh, wow. Nice. Well, it's a great first impression, that's for sure. Thank you. But well, hey, well, we're glad you guys are here. So we like to start off usually asking you guys to share. Just take about 30 seconds to tell us a little bit about you, and then we're gonna really get into the story of learning how all this came to be. So we'll start with you, Christy.

Christi 2:07

All right. Uh my name is Christy, and uh I grew up uh in Miami. Uh moved to Vero Beach now 30 plus years ago uh with my husband, um, a couple years after getting married. Uh, I have two children. They're both grown and married, and I have two grandchildren.

Brad 2:25

Well, I uh moved to uh to Vero Beach, which by the way, I'm the general manager and Christy's actually the owner. Um so thanks for having us on today. Uh I moved to Vero in 1991. Um, been here a while. All of my seven children were born and raised here. And uh I actually moved down here, someone you're probably familiar with, to work at Christian FM back in April of 1991. I worked there for close to 25 years and uh and uh have been here at Spanga for almost a year now. I mean, I'm uh my wife and I, Heidi, came here when they opened. We're founding members back four years ago, almost to date now, four years ago. But I've actually been the manager for about a year.

Brian 3:06

Okay. Wow. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah.

Miami to Vero & the difference

Shawna 3:08

Can't wait to hear more about that.

Brian 3:09

Yeah, we love Christian FM. We've been working with them for a while. Great people there. Uh so it's interesting that we have that and that little tie there. So that's small town. Small town, small towns. Oh, love the small town. Okay, so talking about small towns, you coming from Miami. What has been the biggest difference for you, for you and your family moving from Miami to Vero?

How your fitness journey began in Vero Beach

Christi 3:29

Uh, well, it was a big difference at the beginning. I had just gotten uh engaged when my uh husband came to me and said he had an opportunity up in this area to work actually for his father, who had retired from Chiquita Bananas, and they had retired to Sebastian area. And so, and I had already been out of college working down in Miami, living in downtown Miami. And uh his dad had called him up and said, I have two years worth of work. Would you consider coming? So initially, when we came into the area, we moved up to Melbourne because he thought it might be a little uh younger and more vibrant uh at that time for us. And uh he told the story for many years afterwards as we drove into uh Melbourne that I just started crying. And he said, honey, we can live anywhere. I'll take you anywhere. You can pick out where you want to be. But uh no, but eventually we found a spot and it was great. We were in Melbourne for about three years. And through the business he was doing, he connected with someone in Vero Beach that ran a similar business. So my husband had designed irrigation farms or irrigation systems for banana farms, and the person he joined businesses with in Vero supplied irrigation materials to citrus growers. And so they blended the businesses, hoping possibly to cross over and supply materials internationally to my husband's contacts.

Speaker 3 5:03

Wow.

Christi 5:04

So that that's what brought us to Vero. Uh, because he had to be located in Vero, and technically we could have been located anywhere.

Brian 5:12

Wow, that's so cool. So then how did your fitness journey begin in Vero?

Christi 5:17

Yes. So um I, well, for one, I grew up doing gymnastics. I did gymnastics for 12 years, competed a year at uh University of Maryland in Baltimore County before transferring to University of Florida. And uh at University of Florida, I got into health and fitness and uh started working in the health clubs, got my degree in exercise and sports sciences, and right after college, worked for a very high-end spawn resort as their exercise physiologist and doing some other different components for them. So that's what I was doing for the couple years before I got married. And uh then when we came up into the Melbourne area, um, I continued with the fitness. I did a lot of in-home personal training at that time. I started a group exercise program for a club that wanted to add one to their um facility for them. And uh when we relocated to Vero those three years later, um, I was approached by a club that was opening in Vero. It was gonna be the first franchise, a world gym, to come into Vero Beach area. And they brought me in to help with their personal training and their group exercise program.

Brian 6:34

Oh, wow.

Shawna 6:35

Was it, oh no, go ahead. But I was just gonna say, was it always part of your vision to have your own place someday, or was that kind of a surprise?

Christi 6:41

Uh, it was not necessarily a vision, uh, but some things kind of happened along the way where the banana industry um was there's a lot of regulations around it and it was um the companies weren't putting as much money into it. And so at that point, we had had our first child, and uh we really loved the area. Both our parents lived near the area. And uh my husband was looking at possibly if the industry kept going in the direction that it was, that we would have to relocate to another area to have him do the same type of work. So that's when we started kind of brainstorming what could we do to stay in Vero. At that point, we really loved the community, loved where we were at. So my husband's degree was in business.

Speaker 3 7:31

Oh, okay.

Christi 7:32

And so we decided to blend the two. And back in 1997, we started Christie's fitness.

Brian 7:39

So, what I'm taking away from here is that you guys decided to make a banana split.

Speaker 3 7:44

Oh, yeah. Oh, you got bulking.

Shawna 7:48

You mean Brad all the time?

Christi 7:53

You got it.

Shawna 7:54

Yeah, you're the dream team. Yeah, that's perfect.

Christi 7:56

Yeah, yeah. And during those early years at Christie's, actually for for most of the years, we worked along with Brad uh because he worked for Christian FM and other people. And so we developed a friendship, especially my husband and Brad.

Brad 8:11

Yeah. And Steve was a uh a true entrepreneur. I mean, he just has that mind. That's why I enjoyed spending a lot of time with him because he just he was always looking forward into the future. What could he do? What could he do to grow and expand? And um, it's just he had the mind for that. So that's awesome.

Brian 8:28

That's awesome.

Christi 8:28

Yeah, yeah. He did a year and a half ago. He got pancreatic cancer. So it was a stage four diagnosis, so which is not a good one.

Brian 8:36

So you know, that's the that's what I love about entrepreneurs is it's it's definitely it can be to meet people that are willing to take that step forward, not knowing what that step is or what it actually looks like, you know, always looking for those those new things, or what is what could this become, what is the next thing to jump onto? It takes risk, right? And and bravery and courage.

The moment you realized you wanted to run a fitness studio

Brad 8:57

Steve was a risk taker. He was for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes probably too much for Christy. Because, you know, he was, I mean, that's what it takes to to really to do that and be on the cutting edge and things like that. So okay.

Shawna 9:11

When you realized fitness wasn't just something you did, but something you wanted to build, um, build your life around, what was that moment like?

Christi 9:21

I it's hard to say it was a specific moment because I felt like fitness has been part of my life my entire life. So as a very kind of young, I was a swimmer and swam competitively. When I was eight years old, I shifted to gymnastics and competed competitively. When I got into college, I taught group exercise and you know, was kind of in the fitness world. And so really, I don't think I've ever gone without fitness in my life longer than maybe the six-week period after having babies where they tell you don't exercise. Right. And I did a little walking, you know, in between. Yeah. Uh, but I truly um have had fitness in my life my entire life.

Shawna 10:06

So maybe a better question to ask then would be how did that happen? Were your parents very into fitness, or how did that happen where it was just such a through line in your life?

Christi 10:16

Yeah, uh, yes, yeah. Actually, well, my parents kind of uh with I have uh two siblings and all of us uh had to pick a sport. They they put us in swimming early because we lived in Miami and they wanted to make sure we were uh drownproof. We lived on a lake down there.

Shawna 10:31

Yeah, yeah.

When was Spenga born?

Christi 10:32

And so that's kind of where it started. But um we could pick any sport or any activity we wanted to be involved in, but it was just always part of all three of us uh siblings, and we all three had different activities we chose and did.

Brian 10:45

When was Spanga born?

Hurdles you've faced as a business owner

Christi 10:47

So uh we opened Spanga in January of 2022. We sold Christie's in 2018. So we had several years in between. Uh, I did not think we'd go back into business. Um, but as Brett Brad reinforced earlier, my husband was very entrepreneurial and with after a year or year and a half of selling, kept bringing me ideas to do businesses. Some of them weren't fitness at all. And I was like, no, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm volunteering, I'm doing a little work here and there, I'm enjoying my kids. And I would say to them, if you want to do that business, I will support you. But um, but I don't want to be involved, you know, like that. And they and these were all different things. Wow. Um, but then actually, someone approached me and that was did fitness with me and uh said, we've heard about this new place called Spanga, and they've got one down in Fort Lauderdale, and my friends are raving about it. Well, you go down and check it out. Maybe you could just bring the concept back into a club here. So I brought my husband with me, and we went down to Fort Lauderdale and took a session, and we almost immediately fell in love with it. I mean, the concept was just so efficient and it was beautiful. We used to say when we were first opening, if uh Peloton and Apple had a baby, it would be Spanga. That's how we would describe it before people could see it inside here. And um, so we ended up down the uh road of investigating it. And um uh the headquarters were in Chicago, and so we went out there and then uh eventually opened it in uh 2022. Well, and I was all in. Did you have something you wanted to add?

Brian 12:24

I didn't. Okay. So okay, so what would you say has been your biggest hurdle as a business owner?

Christi 12:32

Well, in the early years, it was financing, so coming in undercapitalized. And um it led to uh my husband at one point checking in with a bankruptcy attorney, but deciding that didn't feel right to us, um, to him picking up another job on top of our full-time job that we had at the facilities. It also um continued with my husband's risk taking, where we continued to expand, even though we were tight, knowing that we needed to bring in more members. So in our early years of Christie's, we over eight years we did um six expansions.

Shawna 13:13

Wow.

Christi 13:13

And then um after that point, we ended up purchasing land, um, building a building and doubling in size.

Why didn't you quit when things got hard?

Shawna 13:21

Okay. So the building that you could see now, because we live right down the street from Christie's. Yeah. So like putting that all together when I met you, I was like, oh, I see, okay, I get it. Uh that building is gigantic.

Christi 13:32

That opened in 2004. Okay. And then we sold the business in 2018.

Brian 13:37

This isn't something that a lot of people talk about, right? I mean, especially if we look at it's never usually about like the struggles and the challenges. So with you sharing that, it's easy to quit.

unknown 14:28

Yeah.

Brian 14:28

Especially when times get tough. So I would love to know what kept you guys going. Why didn't you quit?

"Together" by Steve & Christi

Christi 14:35

Uh, I think it's a couple things. So definitely the passion for what we were doing. We loved what we were doing. So we've always been in business where we said, we love our job. Like, could we think of anything else we'd rather do? And we would come up empty. Like it was what we knew we loved doing and we were supposed to be doing. So that was part of it. Um, you know, we have a really strong faith also. So I think that, you know, we trusted that God would provide. And there were little things that would come up, just like what I mentioned before. My husband was approached at one point to be a fitness manager for a tennis facility in town that needed the help. And it just came right at the right timing for us. Um, and then at one point, he was asked by Masters Academy to come in and do uh work for them. And it just kind of came right at the right timing. And so it seemed like God always kind of opened the doors. Um, and I think, you know, amongst ourselves, just between, you know, him and I, we would just kind of also say, well, you know what? We're gonna keep, you know, striving forward. If it does come to an end, we're young, we're healthy, we can start again, we'll do it again. Yeah. So we kind of had that attitude of like, okay, well, if we have to do it, you know, a different way, we can do it. And so I think that helped too, and maybe took down some of the level of the stress. My husband would say he bore more of the stress because he was more of the warrior, and I'm not as much of a warrior. So we kind of complimented each other that way.

Brad 16:05

Yeah.

Christi 16:06

Um, which kind of helped too, I think.

Brad 16:08

Oh, yeah.

Christi 16:08

That's beautiful.

Brad 16:09

I will say we really think about this, but Stephen Christie actually wrote a book, published it four or five years ago called Together. I think it's available on Amazon still. So it tells the whole story. Oh, okay. Yeah.

What would you say to the listeners facing challenges?

Christi 16:20

Yeah. It's our whole fitness journey, and it does talk about even the struggles that we had through the years and then when we became profitable, and then even through the sell of the business. Oh, wow. This crazy story.

Brad 16:32

Together is the name of the book. Together. I'll get that. I love it. Yeah, we definitely got to check that out.

Christi 16:36

Yeah.

Brad 16:37

That's good. Yeah.

Christi 16:38

And in hindsight of things, because I've shared with you that my husband passed away um about a year and a half ago from cancer. Um, but really the book was his passion after we had sold the business. And he had said at the time he wanted to do it as a legacy for our children. And without, you know, knowing what was coming in front of us, for him really to kind of pull that off. I mean, I came along and helped with some of the stories and fine-tuned it, but it was really his, you know, his book that he did. Wow. Wow.

Shawna 17:04

Yeah. What a blessing to leave that behind. Absolutely. Yeah, because there's so many stories that get lost in time. Yes. You know? Yeah. Yes. And such a testimony. That's what I look at it too, is like it's a testimony of God's faithfulness to like bring you through that whole, yeah, that whole journey, basically.

Brian 17:21

Absolutely. So, you know, there's there's probably gonna be people listening that some might be going through those hard times right now, too. Um, especially with a lot of changes happening today, a lot of you know, concerns about AI and stuff like that. So first I would say anybody listening should definitely go check out your book. But if you had one thing to say to them, what would you say?

Christi 17:44

Well, I think for us our biggest anchor was our faith. And um, you know, and even like in hindsight, going through what I went through with my husband. I mean, I could just not even imagine doing it without faith. And um definitely that's an anchor that can give you a peace. Um you know, going through hard times. And um so that would be my um my biggest piece of advice is to get someone and learn more um about the Bible. And uh I love that because I mean what there is afterwards.

Brian 18:20

You know, Vero Beach is so many churches around here too, which is a beautiful thing. I think like what I'm taking from that is yeah, don't you don't have to do it alone. You don't have to do this alone. Find a community, like find a church to plug into like you're talking about faith. It's like really learning about God's trust in you and how much he loves you too. So I I love that, and I think I totally support that. So thank you for sharing that. All right. Well, okay, I don't know how we can continue any more questions on this episode. So I think that's a great way to end it. So thank you so much, Christy and Brad. And we're excited to get into part two where we're gonna learn more about the behind the scenes uh ex and get learn what Spinga is because I'm very curious. I see a lot around going on around here. I got some ideas. I see bikes, but I don't think they go anywhere. But uh and these look like paddle boards, just not on water, but we'll get there. Uh I'm gonna need your help here, guys. So uh with that, if you guys have enjoyed the episode, make sure you click that review. That'll help other people learn about your local podcast.

Shawna 19:17

And catch you next time, neighbor.

Brian 19:22

Good job.

Shawna 19:23

Yeah, very good job.