Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Hotworx: Danika Kempinski's Infrared Revolution in Fitness
Unlock the door to the future of fitness with our vibrant guest, Danika Kempinski, the brains behind Hotworx in Vestavia Hills, who takes us on a journey into her 24/7 infrared fitness studio. Picture this: you're in an infrared sauna, pushing through high-intensity workouts with a virtual instructor guiding you right on the screen. Danika spills the details on how these quick yet effective 15 to 30-minute sessions are revolutionizing the way we approach our health and wellness routines.
As we chat with Danika, it's easy to catch the excitement for this innovative fusion of fitness convenience and variety. The Hotworks model gives you the freedom to choose from a multitude of virtual workouts at any hour—ideal for the night owls or the jet-lagged travelers. With over 600 locations worldwide, Danika explains the app-controlled scheduling and how this modern twist on traditional workouts ensures you're never too far from experiencing the next evolution in personal fitness. So tune in, and let's get heated up about staying fit with Danika's groundbreaking concept! #GNPBirmingham #Hotworx #HotworxVestaviaHills #HotCycle #HotPilates #HotYoga
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have Good Neighbor Danika Kempinski, and she is the owner of Hotworks in Festavia Hills. Danika, how are you this morning?
Speaker 3:Oh, Patricia, I am doing so good. How are?
Speaker 2:you I'm doing great Thanks. I'm looking forward to hearing more about Hotworks. It's got a whole new vibe, another vibe, a different vibe, and I'm interested in hearing all about it.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is the future. Of fitness is what we call it.
Speaker 2:Well, tell me how that. How does that look? How does the future of fitness look?
Speaker 3:So there's finally the introduction and the melting point of fitness and wellness at Hotworks and you work out. We are a 24 seven infrared fitness studio, meaning you come in and you work out. We are a 24-7 infrared fitness studio, meaning you come in and you will work out in an infrared sauna. So it is small group training, usually one to three folks in a sauna and you are led by a virtual instructor on a screen and our sessions are anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes. So super quick because they're super effective.
Speaker 2:Okay. So do you not have a? Um, a fitness instructor up in front of you on um, on a, on a, on a on a raised platform teaching you how to do this? It sounds very different.
Speaker 3:It is. It is very different. It is, honestly. We actually offer our first session free, because it's something you almost have to do to kind of conceptualize. So, no, when you walk in the sauna, the saunas are much bigger than a traditional sauna that you've probably been in, so there's a lot of more room and space to move around, to do yoga or Pilates, things like that, and there is a screen just a TV screen and you have a virtual instructor. I'm also one of those. So we go and film these videos in New Orleans and then they are pushed out over the year and you work out with us virtually.
Speaker 2:Oh, I understand so you. There's a variety of different instructors from all across the. Can I just call it the Hotworks Nation? Yes, and, and they contribute to a bank of of of instructional videos that can be used in each of the different locations at a time that is convenient for you.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly. So it's 24-7. And we actually, as the instructors, audition to be instructors for them and we go and pre-record them at headquarters. They then push those videos out every month and once you are a member, you get access to our app and you say I want to do yoga at 230am. You go in and yoga is ready playing for you at 230am. So we have yoga, pilates cycle, rowing we have 12 different workouts.
Speaker 2:Okay, so is it. Is it a schedule that is established already, or is it a schedule that I can establish for myself?
Speaker 3:It is a pre established schedule. So we already have the whole 24 hour block set and it's the same for every hot works. All 600 plus hot works is around the world. So I know that at 1015, um, so I know that at 10, 15 or 11 15, yoga is playing at my studio. I always know at 11, 15, 12 o'clock they run every 45 minutes.
Speaker 2:So is that from? Is that from, say seven, 30 until five o'clock?
Speaker 3:It's all day, every day, 24, seven, so it just yoga keeps going around the clock. Every 45 minutes it restarts and replays the same session over and over, and then you get a new session in a couple months. So every month the sessions change, it's really cool.
Speaker 2:I understand so there are hot works all over the world. Am I correct? Correct? So if I was leaving for a trip to Germany, theoretically I could find a hot works where I could do my workout without regards to my to your home location, my home location. Um, my, my uh. I was blanking out for just a minute. My uh, uh. You know you arrive, you. You're jet lagged, you're on a different time schedule.
Speaker 2:Um and um for you. Eight o'clock is is six o'clock after hours. Yeah, so you can, um, you can. Your body doesn't have to adapt. You would still be able to use your hot works membership in another country and still get your your same workout done. Keep that part of your, your body schedule, you know un unmolested, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yep, no, anywhere that you go, that schedule will be the same, obviously, time zone change difference. But yes, you will expect the studio should look the same, feel the same same kind of branding, everything like that. And then you would be able to just book through your app with the sweat everywhere membership. So it is very convenient for those who travel.
Speaker 2:So you can see, this is really freaking me out, because I've never heard of anything like this before. Oh my gosh, tell our listeners about how you ended up here, danika. What was your journey like?
Speaker 3:So I have been teaching yoga for about 10 years. That's what started me into fitness was yoga. Yoga is my passion. It changed my life and I have been involved in fitness, which branched into teaching, bar and all things like that.
Speaker 3:Hotworks has a competition every year to find new instructors for their brand, and so hundreds of people apply and you have to compete to win, and I won in 2020. And that was my first year and my first real introduction, because of where I was from, we didn't have Hotworks and I had just moved to Birmingham and I competed and won a position and went down to corporate to film these videos that we're talking about for the first time, and I just fell in love with the brand and the product and the people behind it and what it means, because infrared has so many more benefits than just working out health and wellness benefits and so I just really fell in love with it. And my mom, who is a business lady at heart, I sold her on it and so she became my investor and we found a location in our area that was for sale and we bought it.
Speaker 2:How cool is that? So your mom's, your, your mom's, your investor, your, your not so silent partner.
Speaker 3:She's my pretty silent partner at this point. Honestly, she was there at the beginning just to help me because I had never taken on something of this scale. I had my own yoga business that I had done plenty through, but nothing of this brick and mortar size and capacity, and so she was really there at the beginning to help me figure out. You know a lot of the legality and all of the business side, but I pretty much am the sole runner. Yeah, she's very silent now, um, and then I have a manager who helps me run the day to day.
Speaker 2:Um, and then I have a manager who helps me run the day to day. Well, now you've, you've, honestly blown my mind with the whole hot works concept and I know that you run across a lot. You must run a lot of cross, a lot of misconceptions, absolutely. Would you like to? Would you like to bust some of the big ones?
Speaker 3:Yes, so you are in in in infrared sauna and everybody's like, well, I've done hot yoga, I come from hot yoga and big difference Hot yoga is traditionally heated conventionally, most of the time with a blend of your conventional heat and humidity. You are working out in an infrared sauna, which is actually radiation heat, but not the bad kind. It is on the spectrum, though it's just outside of the visible spectrum sort of heat, and so it warms your body from the core, meaning that your detoxification starts on a deeper level than just the surface and sweat from the skin, and so there's a lot of healthy things that can happen within that. So big difference between the two. That is like the biggest probably conversation I have of oh, I've done hot yoga, how is this different? Also, this is an infrared sauna, not a traditional steam or stone sauna. These are carbon and ceramic heated saunas.
Speaker 2:So I mean now it's on my list of things that I absolutely have to try 1,000%.
Speaker 3:Yes, please do and then come call back, have me back on and let's chat about it again. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But what do you do for fun, Danika? I know you're a young business owner and probably there's not a lot of time for that, but you must do something fun.
Speaker 3:a young business owner and probably there's not a lot of time for that, but you must do something. Well, I have a toddler who's just turned two, so that consumes a lot of time outside of work, um, but honestly, I love to craft, I. We love to travel and go to the beach a lot, uh, and I've been traveling a lot for um work, which, when your work is something that you love as much as I do, it's really fun to. But, honestly, we craft, I craft a lot. I'm actually about to sew a dress for this weekend for an event I have, so that's how I spend a lot of my fun time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that does sound fun. And and then let's zoom out a little bit and talk about. You know, you didn't just land here suddenly. You weren't born with it. You weren't born on a yoga mat? I assume you weren't. You might have been. I don't know that would be cool, but usually we entrepreneurs get to where we're at because we have had to leap over some hurdles. Do you have anything like that that has happened in your life so?
Speaker 3:I landed on my yoga mat due to pretty rough pain from scoliosis that was my original. I had gotten in a pretty bad car accident and just like nothing was working and I was also going through a pretty rough breakup. I was in, you know, like early 20s, early early 20s and just was like I need to do something for me, right. Like it's, this shift started to happen. I've got to take care of myself, right and so I found a really power heated yoga and fell in love with it and I noticed such a significant change in not only my body but my mind and I really started to learn how to connect with myself and I just loved going deeper and deeper into that. And the more I learned about myself, the more I became connected to yoga and I was just like, if I can do this for one person, I, that will be enough for my life.
Speaker 3:And so I got laid off from my oil and gas job that's what I was doing to make money and I said, if this is what happens, I'm going to do yoga teacher training. And that is what my life just became. If this happens, then this and then then, and it just kind of kept going and I just really started trusting because I was loving it so much that I knew it was going to be where I was meant to be. So I I took my layoff, turned it into yoga teacher training, borrowed it from my mom for the another business right Borrowed. She invested in that business and met my husband, who I knew I was going to have to travel with and move with. So I was like, what can I do anywhere? Teach yoga and fitness. And so it just became my life and it just kept falling in the right places. So I knew it was meant to be. And then I found Hotworks.
Speaker 2:Wow, your life has just been one great big trust fall, hasn't it it?
Speaker 3:really has. And having a baby was a bit of surprise because I was really in buying a business and then I ended up having that. And this has been the biggest moment of trust these past couple of years, because I am growing a business and a baby at the same time and was not planning to do that and wasn't sure if I had that in me, to be honest, in everyday wonder. But again, going back to sitting on the mat and learning that trust and that connection to self and trusting self, bet on yourself, do that above all.
Speaker 2:God has a tremendous sense of humor.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah. And you, if you can't laugh along, life is not going to be fun and get a sense of humor too, so true.
Speaker 2:True.
Speaker 3:Smile lines.
Speaker 2:How would you like our listeners to remember Hotworks in Vestavia?
Speaker 3:our listeners to remember Hotworks in Vestavia. I would use the words life changing, but I have seen some really interesting people come in there with all sorts of different reasons and it is for everyone. I mean, I understand that you're working out in heat, but you don't have to have any. Whatever your goal is, it can be accomplished there, and we are a community of supportive people who just are all about health and wellness. It's not always about losing weight or becoming a lesser, thinner version of ourselves. It's about learning to love before we lose anything.
Speaker 2:So it's okay to take up space. Just let your heart grow along with your body.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Oh, I love that so much. Yes, absolutely yes. And how works is something so different than you've probably ever done. And just try it. It's free to try. So just try it and and it might change your life.
Speaker 2:How can our listeners learn more? How do they contact you, Danika?
Speaker 3:So best way to get a hold of us with Hotworks is to go to hotworksnet and slash studio slash Vestavia Hills. Just look up there's. Also. If you're not in this area, there's, like I said, over 600 locations. Even if it's not mine, go to a hot works and so look up on there where the closest one is to you. You can also follow us on Instagram, which is at hot works, vasevia Hills. I personally am at. I am Danika K and I travel all over hot works all over the world to visit different members, so it's really fun as well.
Speaker 2:Wonderful Danika. It's been a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you so much for coming by and sharing Hotworks with us, Of course.
Speaker 3:I am so honored to be here. Thank you so much, Fratosha.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, northport. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpnorthportcom. That's gnpnorthportcom, or call 205-809-4910.