From Addiction to Building a Health Brand

we are carving our way out in the health industry and we're really trying to stand a part from being just a meal prep company. It's difficult, but it's all kind of come together because of her. Hmm, you know, she manages the family, she manages the company. Yeah, she makes it work. Kayla Stralba is the founder of Power Fit TX, alongside her husband and co-founder, Dennis Stralba. 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.

Yeah, and then all that at once is like, why I could never get through that three months,

“because it's just like Jesus, man. 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 that you don't want to eat, or you choose Option B, which is do it all yourself. 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 in 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 own. Yeah, and one of the things that does

set us apart with, you know, in Houston, there's a lot of milk rep companies, but the other thing for us is that it spans the goal, like a super high school, internet Elvis, and today Apple is going to reinvent, it's not over, I'm telling how we're living your legacy podcast for those who live to

“leave a legacy. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast.”

I'm your host again, J. 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 mob entrepreneurs, 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 Power Fit TX, in Houston, Texas, when we traveled here to Miami to film the show. All right, and what's

it, amen. And I'm Dennis Strabby, I'm Kayla's husband, co-founder, and trophy husband. Okay, okay, what's up? Um, but yeah, so, uh, have you guys been to Miami Beach? How has the

studios been? This 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 was being cast at, but it's been a fun time. The new studio is super cool. So I just did your sessions, 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 and 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. But it was the heavy side of metal, um, 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, we are. Did you, uh, you were responsible for any of this artwork here? None of the visible stuff. I've done a few things on our, uh, our legs and stuff.

Yeah, all right. You're a journey has been nothing short of incredible, right? Uh,

your childhood, you had, you know, dealt with some difficulties that no child should ever have to deal with, uh, when it comes down to addiction at 14 years old, or, you know, sexual abuse as well at a young age. And then getting overall that at such a young age, and then falling into a young momhood, right? Uh, and yeah, I mean, you guys are going to have to tune into her episode, it's quite an amazing journey, right? But, uh, yeah, you kind of come through all that even

sometime in prison, right? But you've come out on the other side, uh, 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, but, uh, for where I'm at today, and like what people know now, um, we are carving our way out in the health industry, and we're really trying to stand apart from being like just a milk prep company. So we offer personal training guidance. Uh, we have a protein bakery.

to just leave a marketing industry. How 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 mompreneur, but you have a family of seven, right? You're juggling this massive, this massive business. And, uh, yeah, how, how was it working together, juggling seven kids, juggling seven locations, and having romance, I guess, in the, in the, in the relationship. It's difficult to balance everything that we have, you know, most people have a business and

a kid or two. Instead, we have a massive business and a massive family. Um, 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, to get away and do things together. Um, still spend time for the kids, our kids are all athletes, they're good. So who had travel sports? Um, what, what, what's what's your kids into? The oldest played travel hockey, and he went on to play junior's hockey. So we traveled all around the country with him. He's now the Coast Guard gone, um, the oldest girl 16. She played travel lacrosse for a 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 wanted to put that out there because, 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 say good. So that means they're making state, they're making nationals, right?”

It's even crazier now. Like how, 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? Uh, we actually have really been working on 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 realigned 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. Uh, 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 it my threshold”

and ability to work more hours and stuff like that is, is higher and, and that's okay because I'm finding balance through knowing that my home is taken care of with my kids, uh, with one of the parents being present. And I still make a lot of their stuff too, but uh, I remember there was a period

of time in the beginning where it was like I could never make anything and that was hard. And now I

know that there are 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, uh, part of your recovery story, right? So you had substance 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 undernourished 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 defined in jail, which 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 can just can't do anything, you know? 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 when I got out, I was, uh, I literally did not recognize myself. I didn't recognize myself for win and I didn't recognize myself when I got out. But I knew that the one thing just from my

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 through those stages, um, 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, I mean, you kind of had that same kind of thing. I spent time in prison, um, again, as well, a lot of lockdown stuff. My mind 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. Um, people got stabbed a lot. So we spent a lot of time on lockdown. So, uh,

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. It's one of the benefits. Yeah, it's one of the benefits. Yeah, I got a whole bunch of tuna pads. But that's not the workout plan that we're pushing here. Yeah, that was a bad time. So it was a little bit different story. I didn't, I wasn't able to be sed of Terry. Um, we had to work out. We had the train. You had to be ready to, you know, um, do bad things at any moment. So I came out already fit healthy, you know, somewhat. Um, but then

got into a relationship, uh, got comfortable. Things got bad. I got depressed. I got

“big. You know, um, again, 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 they do this can't work anymore. And, uh, I'll change that day. I went back to fighting. I've been in martial arts and, uh, Emma Maine with high, you know, most of my life. So I went back to fighting. And I think I got down to like 188 pounds when I was fighting. Uh, so pretty healthy. Um, then life happened. I went through about with steroids, with our, in the beginning with our body building and stuff. And, uh, 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 to, I've got to stop it. So back into the gym, healthy and narrow, we pretty much just stay there. 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 take control of your, your own bats. Absolutely. Right? Yeah. Uh, so then you guys are facing battlefronts 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

we had a second boy behind her. So, you know, uh, it was a huge, huge shift, um, 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? No, absolutely not. Definitely not. So entrepreneurship has allowed you guys the freedom to, you know, I guess do all these things. Between the first time he was working for PowerFit in this time, um, he also ran a successful K9 business working with police officers and staff. So he did his own bout with entrepreneurial, you know, activity too, but any had to hang it

up after getting too many surgeries from dog bites. Oh, so. Okay. Yeah. I had the fun stuff put back together. I did. Yeah, awesome. 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, been 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 K9 company as well as PowerFit. 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 into places at once. So yeah, I was hard. You're you're running a family of seven kids, right? And you're running a

uh, specialized programs. So tell us a little bit more about the business, right? You're doing meal planning and tell us about some of those programs that you're also doing and also the locations. Well, we have locations all over Houston. Um, that's one thing that we've focused on is like saturating our local community about 50 miles out and perimeter from our warehouse. Uh, that's kept me out of

the like pool of sharks of the bigger multi billion dollar meal prep companies 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 goes out and it's a big difference. I've I've subscribed to some of these larger chain meal plans, you know, and in some of them are just like, uh, it looks cool in the picture. Oh, it's great. Oh, the pictures look amazing. And then you get anyway, then you nuke it. And it's just like this melted slop. I mean, not that bad,

“but I mean, the taste wise and you're just like, yeah, well, taste bad. You know, and that, I think”

that is kind of why she has set power fit aside from every other company is that the food tastes good. Health food essentially doesn't taste good. It's like cardboard, you know, or like you said, it's microwave sloppy before her and I got together. I would buy food from a nutrition shop next or a tattoo studio. And it was like, it's what I needed to grow, but it tasted like cardboard. It was not good. And then 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 like this cycle. I actually would my personal struggles with it, right? I get motivated. I'm like, I'm going to do this three month

plan. This goodness plan, right? Shout out to Body Beast, which I always try to go into,

you know, and do. But then you're like, 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. And that's why”

most people fall short of their long-term goal. It's the nutrition. Either 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, organic clean food. And then the time it takes for you to prep each meal and clean up and all this. And then following the meal plan and eat the same thing. 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 goals, you know. Yeah. And one of the things that does set us apart with, you know, and Houston, there's a lot of milk 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, a fifty-five grams of chicken breast on your plates and we make that happen. So not oh, been the easiest thing to scale, but it's definitely what has set us aside when we're specifically talking about like milk 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, we have a culinary active program for kids that can come in, they learn how to list, 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 the school and he's always like, yeah,

it's been so rewarding to watch those kids. And so you got your seven kids and now you're taking even a more kids, we only got them for two hours now, two hours and it's time to go, that's different. That might put you on top of the mop when you're in this, because you're tied for seven, right? We got a record of seven, amazing woman shared five kids, but she was pregnant

“with twins. So that's what put her in the surfing category, right? I just realized you were in that”

half, yeah, that's a powerful logo. Yeah, really, really cool. It kind of really sets your apart from other meal prep brands, but you guys away beyond just a meal prep groanie, right? And you also have 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 oat milk cream, pie cakes, we have one of our most popular thing are our

protein cheesecake cups, they're delicious, protein bars. So that's how much sugar is in a protein cheesecake cup. It's less than three grams. The biscofe one has seven grams because there's a biscofe cookie that goes on top of it. But we make everything from scratch. You make all of our cake with

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 focus points right now is this to figure that out. It's like a protein bar, you said? We have, yeah, bars, rice crispy, protein popsicles. That one I just recently developed enough. The problem with protein bars is that I guess what gets them to stick together because usually it's like sugar, right? I have some kind of binding in your tune. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what do you guys, what's your

technique, I guess? So we make our cake sugar free and then we mix it with a liquid. So it 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. 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 cleaning in the background or all with metal in the nail. Yeah. It was funny because this morning I was kind of just like, man, I should

listen to my whole Metallica or something like that. And then you guys walk it. I was like, dude, that's weird out of this like, yeah, how to just fence. But then you guys took me to the deep head. I was like, damn, I'm not ready for this. But yeah, I asked everyone, what are you guys most excited for? Like, what are you guys got cooking? What's at the forefront of your industry that you might be involved in? But yeah, what's going on? What are you excited for me? The next

thing is trying to figure out if we're going to franchise or if I'm going to keep following the route of trying to figure out how to get the protein dessert line on the open market. But then hunger to expand and grow is still there. Even after seven locations, seven kids, more kids, for no more kids. No, no more kids. No more kids in terms of the kids. Are you taking it for the food classes? Yeah, yeah. No, I didn't just have one in seven. That would be like, if you do

though, let me know when I could put you on that record. Oh my god. All right. 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 had twins. We said surgery twice. Yeah, we had it twice. So we have a daughter and like I said, I had the steroid issue. So I was pretty well sterile. Did some injections for six year old girl that we planned, then back in the body building and back into the PEDs and think, and you know, I'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 mad man. Went in and got, got surgery

after him. Didn't do my follow-ups. Because like, you know, the surgery worked. It worked. Well, you did do one follow-up. I did one follow-up. And you 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 discerger in December. By March, she was pregnant. Right after that, I had to get my second descent to meet. Yeah. So no more can. This time they had to do a whole like different thing.

Yeah. We're done. Triple dotted. Oh man, he took a chunk out this time. Like cut everything out. All right. 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 PowerFitTX.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 PowerFitPrep.com. You 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 Instagram as to where like personal stuff or people can follow you? Mine is just under Kayla D. Strawberry or I have my coaching page. Just

Kayla Strawberry Coach. And then the business page is PowerFitTX. Okay. And yourself. Mine is Dennis underscore strawberry. And you can find that on Instagram. And we have a couple like random

car pages from other stuff that we build. 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 involves like, oh, where is this? And I kind of know where and because you're sitting in the chair, right? And you know, it takes some success to sit in the chair as 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, tuned into their episode because yeah, it's that, you know, started from the bottom and now you're here, story. And so yeah, when it drops, be sure to tune in. And thanks for

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