“Hi, I’m Margaret!”“And I’m Dawn.”Try to keep that in mind as you read. It’s easy to get us mixed up. We’re both “older” moms with a single child. We both have six-year-old daughters who are cancer survivors. We’re both successful career women who have been looking for a new direction – something that allows different generations to come together around the theme of fitness. We both have husbands called Rob (actually one “Rob” and one “Robb”). We can never remember which is which, but they both encourage us to quit larking around in our second childhood and actually embrace a respectable business model.
We’re getting there, faster than we ever intended. We started
PlayFit in May 2009 in Calgary, with the idea of giving busy moms a really convenient way to have a great, affordable workout and bring their kids – any age, any number. While the kids enjoy supervised play, one of us (we both agree that should be Dawn because she’s the professional fitness instructor) gives the moms a kickass workout.
In the warm months, except during Calgary’s inevitable mid-summer snowstorms, we hold classes in public parks with suitable playgrounds attached. In winter, we move indoors. We started this thing because, quite simply, we love it, but recently we woke up one morning and found we now have regular classes running at four locations around Calgary, and a growing online social community eager for interaction that goes beyond the synchronized bumps and grinds of the workout. Maybe Rob & Robb are right. Time to get our commercial rear ends in gear and think ‘nationwide rollout’?
We should give our daughters a big slice of the credit for what we’ve achieved. It was the way the girls bonded at Kids’ Cancer Camp in May 2008 that got the two of us thinking about starting a new business. Rob (not Robb) was with us, so we looked like a two-wife, two-daughter, one-Rob family. This slight imbalance was put right when Robb joined us on a later Children’s Wish Foundation to Disneyworld.
All the time, we were thinking about the things we loved and the things that bugged us about family life. We love being active, but why aren’t there more activities that parents and kids can get involved with together? Even when moms are able to find a child-friendly fitness class, why are they only allowed to bring one child, up to one-year-old? Wouldn’t it be great if kids could learn to interact naturally with adults and children of different ages instead of always being segregated? Wouldn’t it be even greater if they could learn to see being fit and active as a fun part of life?
In a small but growing way, we’ve built a business around those concerns. Moms love the concept, Rob and Robb are fully supportive of what we’re doing, and we have wonderful young daughters who literally can’t wait to get to the next PlayFit class and bond with other kids.
Nationwide rollout? If the demand is there, it just might happen. Right now, we’re having the time of our lives.
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