Inspiring Conversations with Travis & Whitney Washington of Life Addicts Studio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Travis & Whitney Washington. 

Hi Travis & Whitney, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
As a husband and wife-owned business, our company Life Addicts Studio is about legacy. But not just our own legacy–we care deeply about the legacies of our members just as much. We both know the grief of saying goodbye to loved ones whose illnesses were preventable if they knew how to make healthier lifestyle choices with the support to see them through. 

Because of this, we’re passionate about education and how nutrition, movement, and neuroscience work together to heal and transform our minds and bodies. 

Becoming a Life Addict isn’t about quick fixes, diets, and deprivation, or numbers on a scale. It’s about learning how to live life to the fullest, building habits that last and gaining the mental and physical strength to thrive now and pave the way for the next generation. 

Over the past 8 years, as a first-generation business, we’ve learned together by trial and error, hard knocks and intentionally seeking educational resources, programs, and coaching, how to create a business model that’s sustainable and scalable by offering a unique approach different from that of the typical gym. 

Our business offers clients a holistic training program for a minimum of 1 year that includes functional training sessions, behavior coaching, strategic goal setting, nutrition support, creating space for members to challenge themselves beyond the gym by prepping and running their first 5K and bike camp and more. 

This intentionality has allowed us to create a space where some members have been with us now for 6+ years, continuing to evolve, grow and change their lives for the better. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As a black-owned, 50% woman-owned fitness business in an area where “fitness” isn’t necessarily booming as much as it is in the south and on the east and west coast, we’ve had to navigate quite a few challenges with breaking through the perception of the type of “quality” we offer. 

Having positioned our services as a premium membership-based off of the value we provide and the outcomes our clients are able to achieve with us, we still experience pushback as to why our rates aren’t comparable to that of a $10 gym membership or why we don’t offer $5 classes like other black-owned businesses. 

Instead of becoming frustrated or feeling unsupported, we’ve intentionally developed a diverse community of members where everyone regardless of race, gender, fitness level, etc. can come and feel safe doing this really hard thing together. 

We’ve committed ourselves to delivering nothing less than excellent service, regularly soliciting feedback from those we serve and meeting the challenges we face in entrepreneurship head-on. 

We refuse to allow fear, past failures, or other people’s perception of us to create any form of stagnation because we know that regardless of the color of our skin or ethnic culture we represent, we’ve been called to help people change their health so they can change their lives. That for us is what the entrepreneurship journey is all about. 

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Initially the business started simply with personal training. Travis started training to relieve stress & channel personal frustrations in a healthy matter as a black man. He began seeing some great results in how his mind and body began to transform in the process. 

With people seeing his results on social media, we started getting inquiries asking how could they train with us and decided to open a small personal training suite where Travis trained & Whitney jumped in to support with business operations and facilitating fitness classes. 

That evolved into us facilitating our own unique classes like hustle & step (a mix of hustles choreographed to modern-day ballroom music), training thousands of youth during our county’s annual youth summits, facilitating classes at universities, etc. We’ve since expanded from that first 410sqft suite to an almost 3000sqft facility inside Grand Central Plaza here in Grand Rapids. 

With having family histories of chronic illness, we started to take a serious look at how our services were impacting lives and the implication that could have in our generation and among our people. About 2 years in we started diving more deeply into nutrition and behavior change and what we have now is simply a strategic evolution of our passion to serve in a way that brings people back to life holistically. 

We’re most proud of the fact that we’re not just a gym, we’re a community of people who’ve committed to LIVE and not die if we have a say in the matter. We hear stories of clients NOW being able to keep up with their kids, not have to ask for a seat-belt extender on a plane, lower their BMI enough to donate a kidney to a family member, have enough energy to help their elderly parents move…and the list goes on. It feels good to “look better”, but it feels better to actually BE better. 

What do you think about happiness?
Seeing people’s lives changed for the better. We’re often repressed by so many factors in our lives and feel like we don’t have enough power to control things that affect us. This work helps us help others get some of that power back in a way that has real, true, life-sized, lifetime impact. It also allows us to pass our value for life down to our daughter who has been enveloped in health & wellness since the womb. Whitney was literally on her way to facilitate a fitness class at a local university the day our daughter was born. We get to share not just the gift of being born but the gift of living well and that is absolutely priceless. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lifeaddictsstudio.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/lifeaddictsstudio
• Facebook: Facebook.com/lifeaddictsstudio
• Other: https://lifeaddictsstudio.com/gmlbcall/