Meet David Southers | Stretch Studio Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with David Southers and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi David, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
In my life, aging has presented many bodily challenges in conjunction with the daily stress that compromised my body making it difficult to maintain a happy and healthy life. Over the decades, surgeries and arthritis have robbed me of the full range and motion my joints once enjoyed. Five years ago, during a bout with sciatica and using a cane, my wife, who believes if you try new things you can get new results, suggested trying a session at Kika Stretch Studios in Montclair, New Jersey. I smirked as I began my session thinking I already know how to stretch, but when I finished the session I realized boy was I wrong. A full body assisted stretching session with a trained professional completely changed my life. When I walked out of my Kika session, the stress and tension that I entered with was completely gone and within 24 hours I no longer needed a cane. Amen to that! Over the next two years my wife and I became loyal Kika clients spreading the word about this new fitness opportunity. Like myself, my family and friends also enjoyed less tension, better flexibility and more energy. We then decided to practice what we preached by opening a Kika franchise of our own when we moved to Smyrna. Within our first year we won franchise of the year and with this being our 3 year anniversary we still enjoy the positive feedback from the clients. Our clients come from every walk of life, athletes, people with physical challenges, children, adults, senior citizens, and they all come to feel better. It’s such a blessing to help people to help themselves so they too can enjoy a happy and healthy life.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
There are many roads in the “helping professions” and I was fortunate to grow up with two dynamic helping professionals as parents. Both of my parents were in education and from an early age I witnessed the profoundly positive impact they had on people’s lives. I learned my people skills from them, most importantly I learned how to listen which set me up to also join a helping profession. I chose psychology as my major at Brown University and while there I volunteered at several mental health facilities in the community. Working with people who had mental illness was an acquired skill that required not only the ability to listen but to provide constructive feedback to support the clients in their efforts to maintain stability and hopefully move toward attainable goals. It was during my college years that I realized my comfort in a variety of venues, with mentally ill patients, group settings where I was the only black person, or the only male, the only straight person, the only person without a physical disability. The bottomline was that I was comfortable with people from all walks of life which drew people to me as they could feel the respect I had for them. After college I worked in corporate college recruitment focusing on minority recruitment, but I was drawn to make a real difference in the lives of people who really needed help. So I began to live my true calling helping people to help themselves, with mental health organizations, men in the prison system, hospice patients, and children at a special needs schools. Although their lives were filled with tremendous challenges, I made it a point to focus on their worth and positive accomplishments regardless of how small, and always found those moments where laughter was the best medicine. After many years of working to make a positive difference in so many lives, my fondest memories will always be seeing my old clients on the street, feeling their warm embrace and seeing their smile as they yelled out, “Dave!” However, like everything in life there are lessons to be learned especially in the helping professions. The most important lesson is to take care of yourself, something I neglected to do and I had to end my career in social work. But there are three valuable lessons I learned in my recovery from the PTSD associated with social work. Number one, get the help you need to get yourself right again. Number two, like my mother use to say, take care of the people who take care of you. Last but never least, number three, always remember as one door closes many more doors will open. By becoming a Kika client I found that stretching helped to reduce my stress and helped me to regain/maintain my flexibility and this lead to me becoming an owner of my own Kika Stretch Studios franchise in Vinings. So my life has come full circle, I’m back in the helping profession again with the same goal to help people to help themselves.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
My social calendar must have three things, good food, theater and sports.

Nan Thai
Rumi’s Kitchen
Canoe
Chattahoochee Food Works
The Battery
Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours (Brunch)
Sabor Dominicano
Taqueria Del Sol
Jeni’s Ice Cream
Miller Union
Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q
City Spring Theater
Fox Theater
Alliance Theater
Georgia Aquarium
High Museum
Mercedes Stadium-Falcons Football, Atlanta United, SEC Championship
Georgia Tech Football

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The success of new businesses are most often tied to the support that they receive from businesses with similar symmetry. Like most things in life, it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel when other businesses have already established a working and winning template to grow their business. Our Kika Stretch Studios Vinings shoutout goes to Ashley Ingles, owner and operator of two Hotworx fitness locations (Smyrna and Kennesaw) and their support and mentorship throughout our three year tenure in Smyrna. Ashley has introduced our stretch studio to other health and fitness organizations as well as other local business professionals who have helped us to shift and pivot through these turbulent pandemic years. Like Hotworx, Kika Stretch Studios Vinings is also a boutique fitness facility offering a very unique style and application of health and wellness. Given our uniqueness we must market our services in an educational format that highlights the overall benefits of experiencing what we offer. Ashley and Hotworx maintain a cutting edge approach to marketing that provides nuances for existing clients and attracts new customers to become members. We at Kika Stretch Vinings are fortunate to enjoy a working relationship with Ashley and Hotworx and provide them this unequivocal Shoutout.

Website: http://kikastretchstudios.com/stretch-studio/georgia/vinings

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/kika_stretch_vinings

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/company/kika-stretch-studios-vinings

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kikastretchvinings

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/kika-stretch-studios-vinings-smyrna

Other: http://classpass.com/studios/kika-stretch-studios-vinings-smyrna