From Addiction to Building a Health Brand

0:00My journey's been nothing short of difficult, but for where I'm at today and like what people know now, we are carving our way out in the health industry and we're really trying to stand apart from being like just a meal prep company. It's difficult but it's all kind of come together because of her. You know she manages the family, she manages the company, yeah she makes it work. Kayla Strauba is the founder of PowerFit TX. Alongside her husband and co-founder, Dennis Strauba. Together they've built a Houston-based health and lifestyle brand, combining fresh meal prep, nutrition coaching, personal training, protein snacks, and a growing network of retail locations. Okay I got the protein, I got the creatine and now it's like okay I got to watch my meal plans and everything and it's a lot and then all that at once is like why I could never get through that three months because it's just like Jesus then. That's why most people fall short of their long-term goal, it's the nutrition. Either you pick company A that sends you not so great stuff

1:02that you don't want to eat or you choose option B which is do it all yourself. So when a company like PowerFit comes along you know where you have a hundred different things on the menu that all tastes great and that all perfectly hit your macros and have zero preservatives. It's a pretty astounding thing to be able to do that and now meet your goal as you know. Yeah and one of the the things that does set us apart with you know in Houston there's a lot of meal prep companies but the other thing for us is that. The Living Your Legacy Podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Awesome.

2:06Hey welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again Jay Slangin and yeah we're here down in the Miami Beach studios and we get the privilege to talk to some of the best entrepreneurs, the disruptors and experts but also the moderners. Like we have here today a special couple that's joined us and let me tell you their story is nothing less than just incredible. I'm Kayla Strabby and the founder of PowerFit TX in Houston, Texas. We traveled here to Miami to film the show. All right and what's the name and I'm Dennis Strabby. I'm Kayla's husband. Co-founder and trophy husband. Hey okay okay what's up. But yeah so I have you guys been to Miami Beach. How's the studio's been? The studios are amazing. This is actually our second time to be in Miami so it was cool to know that this is where the show is being cast at but it's been a fun time. The new studio

3:06is super cool. So I just did your session right and it was quite amazing. We started off with some I like to ask people what kind of music you're into right because I like to check out different genres of discover new stuff and you guys were like into metal and I was like okay give me a give me a band and whoa okay that started my Friday off. It was like some hardcore you know some hardcore that's all I could say about it right but it was the heavy side of metal and yeah that's how we started and yeah you guys are have a lot of tattoos you used to be a tattoo artist. Yes. Did you you responsible for any of this artwork here? No the visible stuff. I've done a few things on our legs and stuff. Yeah. All right. I think so. No, but yeah. Your journey has been nothing short of incredible right. Your childhood you had you know dealt with some difficulties that no child should ever have to deal with when it comes down to addiction at 14 years old or you know sexual abuse as well at a young age and then getting

4:11over all that at such a young age and then falling into a young momhood right. And yeah I mean you guys are going to have to tune into your episode. It's quite an amazing journey right but yeah you've kind of come through all that even some time in prison right but you've come out on the other side incredibly right and now you have a business in the fitness industry tell us a little bit about that. My journey has been nothing short of difficult by for where I'm at today and like what people know now. We are carving our way out in the health industry and we're really trying to stand apart from being like just a mill prep company. So we offer personal training guidance. We have a protein bakery. We just opened up our first cafe inside of our flagship in Friendswood. So we're just trying to just leave a mark in the industry.

5:12How do you guys work together right. So we have another show called Couples Empire which you could have easily been on as well right. But I'm glad you guys chose a Montprenure but you have a family of seven right you're juggling this massive this massive business and yeah how how is it working together juggling seven kids juggling seven locations and having romance I guess in the in the relationship. It's difficult to balance everything that we have you know most people have a business an a kid or two instead we have a massive business and a massive family and still have to make time for each other. So yeah it's difficult but it's all kind of come together because of her you know she manages the family she manages the company. Yeah she makes it work man we she makes time for us to get away and do things together. Still spend time for the kids. My kids are all athletes. They're good. So we have travel sports. What what sports are your kids into the oldest played travel hockey

6:20and he went on to play junior's hockey so we traveled all around the country with him. He's now the Coast Guard gone. The oldest girl 16 she played travel across for state team and a national team so all over the country with her um 12-year-old just wrapped up travel softball our six-year-old girl was just selected for competition gymnastics so she starts traveling in January. I just I just wanted to put that out there because and I mean if you thought it was crazy before it's even crazier now because being a soccer mom or soccer dad as they say right that that sports mom and parent to traveling kids who are also like you said good so that means they're making state they're making nationals right. It's even crazier now like how do you make your kids big game or even not even not even the big game it's just that normal game also because they want you to be there for everything right yeah like how do you guys do it. We actually really have been working

7:20on this a lot recently where I'm needed a whole lot more in all the respective places of the business he's not needed in all of those different departments so we've re-aligned the schedule now where there's a balance and he gets off work every day by about two to a clock when he's done training clients and he's able to then make sure that all the kids schedules and stuff are accounted for whatever our home errands are that's been a significant change for us for sure because there for a while it was kind of like who's going to be where when um and with gymnastics and stuff starting up for her at this next level that she's going into I knew we had to make a change and for me one of the things that I'm always trying to find in life is like work life balance and I understand at my threshold an ability to work more hours and stuff like that is is higher and that's okay because I'm finding balance through knowing that my home is taking care of with my kids with one of the parents being present and I still make a lot of their stuff too but I remember

8:25there was a period at time in the beginning where it was like I could never make anything and that was hard and and now I know that they're always under the care of one of us and I'm able to make it to a large majority of their stuff health right was a little bit part of your recovery story right so you had some stints with with drugs with uh jail right um and then you went into jail a hundred pounds you came out two hundred pounds right and tell us about that kind of transformation right and how do health and fitness kind of work into that I've always been in health and fitness but of course not in the midst of like my stages of addiction um but when I went in I was obviously severely under-near-ished and not not connected with myself at all um I transitioned from coming off the streets doing drugs into finding the only gold mine that there is to find in jail

9:27which is commissary right um and then being sedentary so one of the places that I was at was 23 hours down one hour up and you can't you just can't do anything you know and and at that point I was in a lot of like holding facilities waiting to move on to the next place and in all those holding facilities there's no real schedule real life it's just you just sit still yeah literally you literally have to stay on your bed until they allow everybody up for an hour to shower so when I got out and I saw myself for the first time because there's also no mirrors there right so and I got out I was I literally did not recognize myself I didn't recognize myself for a win and I didn't recognize myself from where I got out but I knew that the one thing just from my prior experience that was going to be able to at least bring my mental state to somewhere positive was going to be getting active and I didn't have the confidence to get into the gym so the first thing I did was I started walking until my body was ready for me to start running and then after I was able to get

10:29through those stages then I was able to step back into the gym and you know lose weight pretty quickly and get my diet and stuff in order but yeah that was that was a difficult time and yourself yeah I mean you kind of had that same kind of thing I spent time in prison again as well a lot of lockdown stuff mine was more my fault I did a lot of violent things when I was in prison so I did spend a lot of time in solitaire I was in some pretty gnarly facilities people got stabbed a lot so we spent a lot of time on lockdown so I didn't really gain weight I lost weight I lifted I worked out so I came out of prison pretty much like everyone does shredded and yeah this was the bit of bitch yeah I got a whole bunch of tuna but that's not the workout plan that we're pushing here yeah it was a bad time so there's a little bit different story I didn't I wasn't able to be sedentary we had to work out we had to train you had to be ready to you know do bad things at any moment so I came out already fit healthy you know somewhat but then got into a relationship

11:40got comfortable things got bad I got depressed I got big you know I gained more than her I think at one point I got up to like 288 pounds then one day the same looked in the mirror so like dude this can't work anymore and I'll change that day I went back to fighting I've been in martial arts and MMA and Muay Thai you know most of my life so I went back to fighting I think I got down to like a hundred 88 pounds when I was fighting so pretty healthy then life happened I went through about with steroids with our in the beginning with our bodybuilding and stuff and uh it got pretty out there pretty big and then had some episodes where she was like dude you're done now so I quit got fat again um and then again decided no more you know we got a I've got to stop it so back

12:42into the gym healthy and now we pretty much just stay there yeah that and this whole time you guys are also growing the business growing the family a lot of the questions like how do you make time for the family for each other for the business but you also got to you know kind of control your own faculty and and take control of your your your own bats absolutely right yeah uh man you guys are facing battle fronts everywhere Jesus Christ while all going to you know your kids you know normal game not just the special games right yeah all the games you know we with the boy the oldest boy um at what at one point he played for what three different teams at once the high school varsity team uh triple a travel uh tournament team and then he played for the new Mexico ice wolves and the North American prospect hockey league so we were flying everywhere all the time still trying to take care of the younger one you know we had our daughter at the time and then

13:43we had a second boy behind her so you know uh it was a huge huge shift uh Kayla made what she could do you think that you could have done this with the seven kids going to all of flying around without entrepreneurship now absolutely no definitely not so entrepreneurship has allowed you guys the freedom to you know I guess do all these sex between the first time he was working for power fit in this time um he also ran a successful canine business working with police officers and stuff so he did his own bout with entrepreneurial you know activity too but and he had to hang it up after getting too many surgeries from dog fights oh okay yeah had to put stuff put back together bad damn yeah lots of that yeah so yeah so he retired from that now you know back into the brand but yeah I mean without the ability to move schedules around there's absolutely no way we could it goes words like a nine to five or even close to that yeah

14:43been able to raise kids it's a lot easier to now like joining forces so to speak back into the one brand rather than to try to run the canine company as well as power fit you know yeah because logistically speaking I still had to help with with the actual like business logistics because that's my my strong suit so I was like in two places at once so yeah I was hard you're you're running a family of seven kids right and you're running a business with seven different locations but also you're doing a lot of different programs uh specialized programs so tell us a little bit more about the business right you do a meal planning and tell us about some of those programs that you're also doing and also locations we have locations all over Houston um that's one thing that we focused on is like saturating our local community about 50 miles out in perimeter from our warehouse that's kept me out of the like pool of sharks of the bigger multi billion dollar meal

15:44companies that are out there that are shipping food across the US we wanted to protect the integrity of our product and service the community with stuff that is literally made right before you know it it goes out and it's a big difference I've I've subscribed to some of these larger chain meal plans you know and some of them are just like it looks cool in the picture yeah oh the pictures look amazing and then you get it then you nuke it and it's just like it's melted slop I mean not that bad but I mean the taste wise and you're just like yeah well the taste bet you know and that I think that is kind of was she has set power fit aside from every other company is that the food taste good health food essentially doesn't taste good it's like cardboard you know or like you said it's microwave slop before her and I got together um I would buy food from a nutrition shop next to our tattoo studio and it was like is what I needed to grow but it tasted like cardboard it was not good

16:46and then well it's hard to it's hard to kind of make your meal plans when you're trying to stay fit you know it's like you get motivated right and then it's it's like this like well actually with my personal struggles with it right I get motivated I'm like I'm gonna do this three month plan this fitness plan right uh shout out to body beast which I always try to go it to you know and do but then you're like okay I got the protein I got the creotine and now it's like okay I got to watch my my meal plans and everything and it's a lot yeah and then all that at once is like why I could never get through that three months because it's just like Jesus then that's why most people fall short of their their long-term goal it's the nutrition either you you pick company A that sends you you know not so great stuff that you don't want to eat or you choose option B which is do it all yourself it's so expensive to buy everything like healthy you know we're getting it clean food and then the time it takes for you to prep each meal and clean up and all this and then

17:49following the meal plan and eat the same thing so when a company like Power Fit comes along you know where you have a hundred different things on the menu that all tastes great and that all perfectly hit your macros and have zero preservatives it's uh it's a pretty astounding thing to be able to do that and now meet your goals you know yeah and one of the uh the things that does set us apart with you know in Houston there's a lot of meal prep companies but the other thing for us is that we allow all of our stuff to be customized and that's the difference you know you can send us your meal plan you can reach out and tell us whatever food allergies you have tell us you need a hundred and fifty five grant the fifty five grams of chicken breast on your plates and we make that happen it's not oh been the easiest thing to scale but it's definitely what has set us aside when we're specifically talking about like meal prep competition and you've got some programs that you do also tell us a little bit about that some of the other things that we offer inside of the brand and at the friends with location is we have a private training studio so we do one-on-one training

18:49we have a culinary active program for kids that can come in they learn how to lift recover fuel themselves and then they go into the back and they learn how to cook healthy make better choices do basics things that they just don't teach in school anymore yeah it's been so rewarding to watch those kids um and so you so you got your seven kids and now you're taking even a more kid we only got them for two hours though two hours and it's time to go that's different that might put you on top with the mom panor this right because you're tied for seven right we got a record of seven amazing woman she had five kids but she was pregnant with twins you know so that's what put her in the seven category right I just realized you were in that half pf right that that's a powerful logo yeah really really cool it kind of really sets you apart from other meal prep brands but you guys are way beyond just a meal prep groanie right and you also have some like some nutrition bars as well aside from the meal prep company we also have a whole protein bakery and webster so we make rice crispy treats protein popsicles like oatmeal cream pie cakes we have one of our most

19:55popular thing are our protein cheesecake cups are delicious um protein bars so that's how much sugar is in a protein cheesecake cup uh it's less than three grams it's the the biscoph one has seven grams because there's a biscoph cookie that that goes on top of it but we make everything from scratch we make all of our cake with almond flour it's all sugar-free so that's the bottom of the base the textures just like cheesecake they're amazing but the protein snack line is the one thing that I would take to national scale because it holds completely different than like meals do so that's one of my my focus points right now is is to figure that out it's like a protein bar you said we have yeah bars rice crispy is protein popsicles yeah that one I just recently developed enough the problem with protein bars is I guess uh what gets them to stick together because usually it's like sugar right yeah i have some kind of binding agent yeah yeah yeah and what what do you guys what's your technique i guess so we make our cake sugar-free and then we mix it with a a liquid so

20:57it can form kind of like a cake pop texture and that's what holds in the center and then we use a low sugar like lilies mixture to coat the bar or to drizzle the bar and then it just sets until it's finished we do keep all of our stuff refrigerated um we could make it shelf stable but we like to keep it refrigerated to you know hold up moisture and integrity so all of our protein bakery stuff is refrigerated and all with metal playing in the background or I was metal in the back yeah yeah it's no way to do it it was funny because this morning I was kind of just like man I'd miss you to listen to my whole Metallica or something like that or then you guys walk in I was like that's weird out there's like yeah how to just fit right but then you got to talk me to the deep head I was like damn I'm not ready for this but yeah I asked everyone what what are you guys most excited for like what do you guys got a cook in what's at the forefront of your industry that you might be involved in but yeah what's what's going on what are you excited I think for me the next thing is trying to figure out if we're gonna franchise or if I'm gonna keep following the route

22:01of trying to figure out how to get the protein dessert line on the open market but the hunger to expand and grow is still there even after seven locations seven kids more kids no more kids no more kids no more more kids in terms of the the kids that you're taking it for the food classes yeah we'll do that yeah yeah yeah no I didn't expect one and seven I'll be like if you do though let me know and I could put you on that record oh my gosh absolutely no all right you never know though you never know actually the woman with a seven she says that the guy was tied up and then I'll ask you a question about you know how do you keep the romance and then they were like well we went on this trip and that's how we got the twins because he thought he was tied up and so they got twins that's how we got he says they're rich twice yeah yeah how did you like so we have a daughter yeah like I said I had the steroid issue so I was pretty well sterile did some injections for our six year old girl that we planned then back into body building and back into PEDs and thinking you know

23:03I'll be sterile again mm-hmm wasn't while on one of the most one of the most aggressive compounds yeah this our son Zagan was born he's a madman when in a got got surgery after him uh didn't do my follow-ups because I'm like you know the surgery worked it's it worked well you did do one follow-up and we were like oh less than one percent yeah fine do you know well within he was born in October by March she was pregnant I got the this surgery in December by March she was pregnant right after that I had to get my second this had to meet so yeah so we have so no more kids this time they had to do a whole like different thing yeah yeah we're done triple dotted oh man he took chunk out this time I like cut everything out it's been a pleasure to have you guys on the show how do people find you we have two different websites if you want to learn about the company in general you can go to powerfit tx.com that teaches about all the different services that we have and if you really want to learn more about the food specifically then you go to powerfit prep.com

24:06you can find both websites by going to either url but they have kind of two different you know lives they live and what they do for the business okay and do you guys have your own Instagrams too where like personal stuff where people can follow you mine is just under Kayla strawberry or I have my coaching pages Kayla's strawberry coach and then the business pages powerfit tx okay and yourself mine is Dennis underscore strawberry and you find that on Instagram and we have a couple like random car pages from other stuff that we built amazing it's been a fun time to have you guys here my Friday morning where it's been our hectic week right but a good way to start the day it was that story where I was like you know so involved like oh where is this end I kind of know where it ends because you're sitting in the chair right and you know it takes some success to sit in the chairs here but I was like wow proud of you guys congrats you guys and yeah what an inspiration thank you so much for having us and thank you guys for joining us too and like I said

25:08tune into their episode because yeah it's that you know starter from the bottom and now you're here a story and so yeah when it drops be sure to tune in and thanks for tuning in to this show again guys and we'll see you next time cheers