Katy Stryker Greenbauer: Stryker Strong

“When I started Stryker Strong, I didn’t want to be tied down to one big gym. I wanted to have a client-centered business. What I do is mostly one-on-one personal training and nutrition coaching, and I also am the contracted personal trainer for residents of Beacon Hill, a senior living community in Lombard.

“[Beacon Hill] officially shut down in the beginning of March, but I wrapped up with most of my clients in mid-February because we didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to be coming from one gym to another. What we knew at the time really was that it affected older people, and now we know how much more damage it can do.

“I’m an athlete myself, so all the races that have been canceled [due to the COVID-19 crisis] affect what I do personally as well as my business.

“[At a local training center], I rent space for each person I bring in, but the gym is closed now. I had a few clients that only had a couple sessions left, and I filmed directions on workouts I felt would be safe for them to do at home based on the equipment they had. But I had quite a few clients who were right smack dab in the middle of the month. I paid [rent] for them for the month, but they’ve only gotten two weeks of service from me. So, whenever we go back, I’ll have to finish out my obligations to them because I still owe them what they paid me for.

“The health crisis has affected all of my income, other than my online nutrition coaching, which isn’t the biggest part of my business. Our financial hit is going to be down the road. We took a big hit in our retirement that’s just gone now. It’s not like you own stock that’s just really low; it’s just absolutely gone.

“I have some great clients and if they come out of this financially OK, I’m sure most of them will come back. But I know some of them will not. I know that’s discretionary income they won’t be able to use for what some people consider a luxury. I try not to spend a lot of time worrying about it because we don’t know what’s going to happen, and our family has always bounced back from bad situations before.

“In Illinois, I feel like I’m just swimming upstream constantly. Delaying property tax collections later on would absolutely help, especially because we don’t know where we’re going to be in October.

“There’s never been a case where we raise taxes and then all of a sudden everybody has more money in their pockets, and everybody is in a better position. I don’t want to sound like I don’t think we should help people or governmental institutions in place to help our most vulnerable – my daughter lives in a nursing home – and we do a lot of private fundraising for them, and they get some money from the government. But every year, we get the report that the state of Illinois is millions behind in payments for the facility and needs to raise another couple million.

“It’s like water through a fish tank: it keeps getting dirtier and dirtier if you don’t filter it out and get some new, fresh water in here. We need some fresh ideas.”

Katy Stryker Greenbauer
Stryker Strong
Villa Park, Illinois