Welcome to the AdaptX podcast where we have conversations with individuals who
are building accessible businesses, advocating for inclusion or excelling
in adaptive sports.
Our intention is never to speak on behalf of those with disabilities, but
provide a platform to share their voice and amplify ideas to make the world
more accessible and inclusive.
Today we are joined by Leanne Reiber, the owner of Second Skin Society that
we're looking forward to learning more about.
Leanne, thank you for joining me today.
Thank you for having me.
Maybe just a overarching view of what Second Skin is, and then we can backtrack
into where you got there, but can you explain what the company is and possibly
why you founded it?
Yes.
So it's a health and fitness app designed around accessibility and really to create
the experience for people with disabilities and people without disabilities to be able
to work out together.
We are still in early stage production.
We'll actually be officially launching in market in September and have lots of user
testing things happening in the background right now.
So it's a really fun and exciting time.
How we got here is a very long and winding road, like many entrepreneur stories.
I won't go into all of the details, but essentially we started as a brick and
mortar yoga studio in Ontario, Canada, ran that for a year, ended up having quite a
lot of people from surrounding cities asking if I would come and teach in their
area.
And I took the risky move and decided not to renew the studio lease.
And what a reward I received when three months later, the pandemic came and I was
so grateful we didn't have that studio lease.
That would have been an incredibly challenging time for us, just given that we
were very new.
So we created a virtual platform.
We actually ran that for a couple of years, mostly in the B2B space, offering
employers a virtual wellness benefit they could offer their employees.
And really, I just came to realize that the most feedback we were receiving from our
members from the previous web-based application we were running was that people
loved our seated class options.
This is where my entrepreneur aha moment happened.
Many entrepreneurs experience this where they start off doing one thing and all of
a sudden get some information and realize, ooh, this is the direction to move in.
When I got that feedback and really it wasn't until I realized that we were
continuing to get that feedback over time, that's where everything shifted for
me because previous to starting my business, I had a career of over 20 years
supporting people with disabilities in a variety of capacities.
So I was actually hired when I was 13 years old, which is another story in itself.
But ultimately, I did so much growing up personally, being immersed in a community
and multiple communities of people with different disabilities, people that had
developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, some dual diagnoses.
And I really appreciated and loved the opportunities that I had to work in those
different spaces and when we got this feedback, I just started looking at what
was available for people with disabilities in the fitness space and how could we
create something that I would call inclusive, which was really the idea of
bringing people with and without disabilities together through movement.
How would you define inclusion broadly speaking?
What is your vision of inclusion when you think of it, at least maybe in the
fitness space?
Oh, goodness.
This is a tough question.
And probably if you asked me this question every day for 10 days straight,
I'd give a different answer.
At the end of it, when I kind of peel back all the layers, I would say for me,
inclusion is really just like a safe space that people get that sense of
belonging because they've entered a space in person or virtually or however they
enter that space and have this experience where they get to let their shoulders down
because they just know that they're included.
Like they know that they belong in that space and belonging in that space to me
is having people think of you before you enter the room so that the environment is
already created with you in mind.
That's what inclusion is to me.
That's the way that we're really developing our internal team and our
business practices.
And that's certainly the way that we're developing the app and the content.
We want people to have that experience.
And I really believe there's such a need in the fitness industry for what we are
doing because the fitness industry plays such a large role in the value that's
placed on bodies.
So the fact that people with disabilities are really quite missing from that
entire industry.
And I know there's lots of other businesses that are coming up to meet different needs
within the fitness space.
But still, when you compare the ratio of people with disabilities being included to
people without disabilities, to me, it's my mission to really disrupt that entire
space because of that fact that the fitness industry plays such a large role in how
valued bodies are.
Yeah.
I think that was a wonderful definition.
The idea of belonging, I think, might be kind of at the crux of it all.
I guess for a long time, to me, inclusion was like an environment where people with
and without disabilities were together.
But just doing so doesn't inherently mean that it's inclusive or that the individual
will feel a sense of belonging or that, like you said, the key stakeholders made the
prerequisite steps or took the prerequisite steps to making sure they were supported and
had all their needs met.
So inclusion seems to be a proactive process towards making sure people feel a sense of
belonging.
Absolutely.
We talk about this all the time.
Inclusion is not passive.
It's active.
It's not just saying, hey, if you need something, let us know.
It's us taking the step to say, what do you need?
Us asking first rather than waiting for you to share how we can create that experience
for you.
It's definitely active.
You mentioned that people with disabilities are often missing within the fitness industry.
How do you think fitness could be more effectively marketed to that population?
And how do you intend on marketing your services to people with disabilities?
Oh, goodness.
There are so many things that I'm thinking about in terms of what we're doing, but also
what I've seen as gaps or barriers for people.
There is when you look at any marketing related to fitness, even the fitness brands that are
marketing themselves now as inclusive are still not including people with disabilities
in their marketing materials.
So obviously, when you start to see a fitness brand saying, hey, this is for everybody,
hey, we're inclusive, and you look at the different marketing efforts that they have
across their socials or on their websites or on their app, and you don't see people
with disabilities, that's an issue.
No one's going to feel that sense of belonging if they don't even see themselves
represented.
The other thing I would say is that the instructor community that we have in the fitness
industry lacks people with disabilities.
And so part of what we are doing and we're assuming and hoping that people with
disabilities are going to be really inspired by what we're doing, by what we're
creating, that they themselves will think, hey, maybe I want to be a yoga teacher,
maybe I want to be a fitness instructor, maybe I want to be a dance teacher.
I never saw myself represented in that way, and now I do.
Maybe that's something that I want to explore as a career option for myself.
And so part of what we're doing is offering the opportunity to give people scholarships
so they can become certified fitness instructors and then we can hire them as part
of our content creation teams.
So definitely that representation in the fitness community as a whole, but also in
the instructor community is lacking and that sets the stage.
When you don't see yourself in a space, you assume you're not meant to be there.
Yeah, the representation and the visual depiction is definitely essential.
I think it's sometimes tough to navigate, at least I know personally in terms of
marketing, the inclusivity of our gym or marketing, for lack of a better term, like
our adaptive populations.
Sometimes it feels exploitative, like, oh, look at me, I run this gym for people with
disabilities.
And sometimes it's hard to make it just feel like it's the expectation and not the
exception.
Like to me, I'm very matter of fact with it because to me, it's just a part of our
business.
But to the untrained eye, and it's always well intentioned when it gets commented on,
like people are like, oh, this is so incredible.
Like, I don't want it to be incredible.
I want it to be like the expectation.
So I just wonder how it gets to that point.
I think more of us doing it is how we get it to that point.
You know, I've had a lot of people ask about other competitors and other people
emerging in this space.
And I love when we see someone new coming up.
It elevates every single person trying to do great work in this space.
And to make it so that it is absolutely just normal that people with disabilities are
here and that it's not, you know, it's amazing work because every body really needs
movement in some capacity.
So the work that you're doing is absolutely incredible, but it shouldn't just be
incredible because it's inclusive of people with disabilities.
It should just be incredible work because you're doing incredible work.
Competitors, competitors, right.
Competitors, competitors also like validate the need for something.
So if there's more people getting into the space, then you can probably assume that
there's a market for it or that it is a, a important idea.
Did the pandemic, obviously a lot of fitness companies went remote and added remote
offerings to their services.
Where, where did the pandemic, I guess, fall on the timeline?
I know you said you, you stopped brick and mortar a few months before.
Did you already have a remote like live streaming system in place by the time that
hit, or were you able to respond to it and start growing a business during the
pandemic?
Kind of what was that timeline and period of uncertainty like?
Yeah.
So I left the studio in December and of 2019 and in between December and March
was when I was actually traveling across Southwestern Ontario.
I was renting studio spaces and doing classes in different locations because of
the experience that we had had where people were reaching out saying, Hey,
will you come and teach in our area?
And I, and I thought of it as, you know, market research.
I thought of it as testing to see where are we going to be able to build the
biggest community to open in another studio.
That was truly my intention.
At the same time, I had always had it in the back of my mind, thinking about a
virtual membership because I'm, I'm a big thinker.
I love thinking about, you know, things that are possible or potentially some
people would say unrealistic.
I love thinking about how do you get there?
And for me, the idea of a virtual membership was something that was so
expansive and you can take it global and you're really not limited by
geographic location.
I thought that was, you know, maybe a 10 year plan that we build up the
community in the studio.
Then we start offering virtual opportunities and kind of take that and run with it.
And so the in-between time between losing the studio and, or letting go of
the studio and the pandemic was really that travel time.
And as soon as the pandemic came, I knew I was no longer going to be traveling
to teach in-person classes.
I didn't take any time to think about what I could not do.
I immediately started thinking about what can I do?
And I started creating YouTube content.
Then I, you know, had some friends who had studio spaces that were not being used.
They had said to me, I know I can't use this space and you need a space, you
know, if you're looking to film content.
And so we just did kind of an exchange of service to be able to, to give me the
opportunity to create hours and hours of content, most of which I threw out.
Something in me when I started creating content virtually told me it needed to be
perfect.
There, it's an interesting experience when you're used to teaching in-person
classes in a group setting.
It's normal in, as a yoga teacher to fall out of balance.
And for you in that experience, it creates this human connection with all your
students where you get to say, see, I'm the teacher and I also fall out of
balance and it's okay.
And some days, you know, my right leg might hold a balance and my left leg
won't, or some days I can, I can get deeper into a hip opener in this way.
And some days I can't.
And some days I fall out of balance.
And it creates a beautiful opportunity to connect with people around your
humanness.
But for whatever reason, when I started creating content virtually, the
perfectionist in me watching the videos said, Oh, that wasn't good enough.
Or you said right hand when you meant left hand, or you forgot to, you know, to
do this.
And so unfortunately, I created a lot of content, deleted it, and I was able to
a lot of content, deleted it, and later came to remember that it is the human
and authentic aspect of teaching that really connects us to our instructors.
So then I moved forward in creating basically, you know, my own library of
content outside of YouTube and worked on a membership from there.
Yeah, we always joke when I send, when I send videos that I make to our team that
helps with that, they're like, this is the first take.
And I'm like, absolutely knowing that there was about 55 takes beforehand that
I refilmed because it wasn't perfect.
But what are the advantages that virtual and remote have over in person, maybe
for people with disabilities specifically?
Obviously, convenience.
You know, there's a lot of different aspects of life that people with
disabilities experience.
And being, you know, knowing that if you go to a studio or a gym, and there's a
class running at a certain time, and the logistics of getting there at that time
can create a lot of barriers for people, let alone thinking about the accessibility
of the space itself and whether or not there's access for people.
So the convenience of it just allows people to, you know, show up whenever
they can, whenever their body has capacity for them to do it.
You know, there's just a lot of barriers that I would say are removed in creating
virtual opportunities.
That said, there can also be accessibility barriers in a virtual platform or a
virtual app as well.
And that's exactly what we're looking to reduce with the way that we're
developing our app.
Maybe on that topic specifically, digital accessibility wise, are you familiar with
what barriers and concerns they're looking at predominantly?
In a fitness app, you mean?
Yeah, just from like the accessibility nature of an app as a whole, like
screen reader compatible, color contrast.
Like, do you know what specific steps your team is taking to make that digital
experience more accessible?
Yes.
So first of all, we're having a lot of conversations.
We have had a lot of conversations with people with disabilities to understand all
of the different aspects of how apps for them have been inaccessible.
We're also working with a couple of not-for-profit organizations that are
supporting us in really learning and working on our project in a consultancy
capacity where they can look at what step that we're at and be able to review and
basically kind of provide an audit and share about the ways that we can make it
more accessible.
But a lot of the information that we've gathered from people and my team, I have a
fantastic team.
We have a chief accessibility officer and our CTO who both have extensive
experience in accessibility.
So they bring all of that, their own knowledge to the table.
But it's really around, you know, looking at all of the different compliance
aspects and then looking at the actual user usability experience to know that
there's so much that we're putting as much control into the app as possible for
people.
So things like, you know, to be able to navigate through the app and find
content if you're using a screen reader, to be able to change the text size of the
captions and the classes and the contrast and the lighting, we have a feature that
allows you to adjust the volume of the instructor separate from the volume of the
music.
So you can actually turn the music down or off completely if that's beneficial for
you.
It's one of those things where I look at the type of accessibility features that
were including being so impactful for people with disabilities, but also really
impactful for people without disabilities because, you know, I've certainly been
in a fitness class before where I didn't love the music and it would have been fun
to be able to turn it off and keep going with the instructor and put my own music
on in the background or turn the volume of the instructor up so that I could more
clearly hear and understand them.
Yeah.
There's lots of different accessibility features that we're baking into the
actual MVP, but then certainly, you know, a long list of features that we want to
continue to include as we roll out new features.
How have you bootstrapped this to get to that MVP level?
Like, if it's okay to discuss the business side of things?
Yeah.
If you have a CTO, if you have a Chief Accessibility Officer, you have yourself,
what's been the process like going from idea to hopefully this MVP coming out in
the fall?
What has been the process?
Divine intervention and miracle upon miracle.
Truly.
Every single person that has come into my life has shown up in such a unique and
unexpected way.
And I just finished a team meeting with our leadership team where I expressed my
gratitude for all the things that they're doing and where we are.
Obviously, running the brick and mortar yoga studio, I mean, we didn't reach
profitability in one year in that space, so there were lots of personal financial
contributions that I made for us to keep going.
I did as much, I have done and continue to do as much work as I possibly can in
all of the different capacities of running a business.
I'm not taking any compensation from the business today, and my team members are
also not taking compensation from the business yet.
When each of them showed up in their own different capacities, and it really
started with my COO, they approached me and said, how can I be part of this?
And I said, listen, full transparency, I want you here.
I think there's something really great here that we can build and create a
successful business with, but I don't have the resources today to be able to
bring you in.
And those conversations just moved to, well, what if I could support in some
capacity, and we kind of contracted an arrangement of how that could look,
knowing that we are fundraising for the business as well.
From there, it was people making introductions to other people and saying,
hey, I met Leanne, I understood what it was that she wanted to build.
I've heard from several people that the term or kind of the language around the
way that we're working is that we're doing it in the right way.
It is with the right intention.
It's slowing down the processes to build the foundation of this business with
the integrity and intention behind it that we want to have.
And people have continued to make introductions and have shown up saying, I
would like to be part of this too.
I'd like to have my name on it.
I know how much impact it can create for people with disabilities and kind of
our greater society as a whole.
And that's how we've gotten here.
I've also just, you know, done all kinds of things myself with, I did for a
period of time, I was coaching other entrepreneurs specifically around their
own mindset and the way that they were thinking about business and
opportunities.
So I brought in some resources that way.
I have done whatever it takes to get here is how it's happened.
Yeah.
Familiar with that process?
Yeah.
What's the path to profitability or what's the business model once the app
comes out?
How do you intend on monetizing it?
Yeah.
So at this point, we firmly believe that it's direct to consumer.
We have a monthly membership or a yearly membership.
We do also have corporate rates.
Just given that we were working in that B2B space with our previous platform
and we developed a lot of connections there, it made sense for us to just have
another rate, not specifically, you know, focus sales in that space, but offer
it if they were coming to us.
And then, I mean, ultimately in the future, it's really about building the
community within the app and looking at other opportunities to be able to
provide even more great service for them in different areas.
We're thinking a lot about, you know, training for instructors with disabilities
specifically, also thinking about training for people without disabilities who
want to be able to feel comfortable and confident in providing adaptive training
or adaptive offers for people with disabilities in their own careers.
Definitely, I mean, our name is Second Skin, so in my mind, there's a lot of
things to find.
There's a whole active wear line associated with Second Skin, merch
opportunities, things like that.
But the bulk or the core of what we're doing is really focused on creating
fantastic fitness experiences for people and creating as much accessibility
along the way as we can.
So even offering subsidized memberships for people that need it is another
aspect of what we're doing in partnership with some corporations who are helping
to fund that aspect.
Yeah.
Do you intend on marketing to people without disabilities or do you think
attracting that population will kind of be an unintended consequence?
Like you said, a lot of people like the seated versions of your classes when
you were first describing your offerings, and that isn't exclusive to
disability.
That could be to someone that prefers a seated workout class.
Do you intend on kind of both populations and only using populations to
differentiate between people, those with and without disabilities?
But I guess, yeah, do you hope that people without a diagnosis will also
take your classes?
Yes, 100%.
How we market that is still something that we're talking a lot about.
So first and foremost, we want to market to people with disabilities.
There's just such a need there.
There's such a huge gap there in the fitness industry, so that's certainly the
direction that we're going.
We do think that because of their social circles, we'll naturally be able to
attract people without disabilities in as well.
And the intention really, if I were to give you the one sentence of what we
do, it is that we're creating fitness experiences where people with and
without disabilities can work out together.
So the marketing aspect of it is certainly what I would consider a
challenge because we want to make sure that we're reaching the right people,
but we also don't want to exclude people who can benefit from the service as
well.
Really, every entrepreneur kind of goes through this, how do you frame it?
The intention is certainly for both to benefit, but we think it's likely that
we'll naturally attract people without disabilities because of the social
circles that are included in the people with disabilities that are coming in
and into the membership.
Yeah, absolutely.
You had mentioned onboarding coaches, both those with and without
disabilities, to become an instructor role.
How do you intend on formalizing that process, or are there going to be some
degree of standards for someone to be an instructor on the app?
Definitely.
We're in the process of creating our own instructor onboarding pipeline,
which really is breaking down the process of onboarding into different trainings.
So we look at what we are doing.
We're, as an organization, developing our own inclusive language guide.
It is specific to all the ways in which we as a brand speak or do not speak,
but also then taking into consideration the way that we speak and do not speak
regarding fitness.
I think in a previous conversation, you and I had, I spoke about how some
coaches still are out there going, do 10 more squats so you can earn pizza for
dinner.
That's not the way that we coach.
We don't move our bodies to punish them or to try to change them to fit a
certain mold that society thinks is valuable.
We want people to show up and challenge themselves in a way that feels really
good and will certainly coach and encourage and support people to do that,
but not in a harmful way.
So we've got that inclusive language guide as part of our training.
We work with people on confidence.
So some of the instructors that are coming in are new instructors, and it is
certainly a different experience when you're teaching to a camera than it is
when you have that energy of a room full of people.
So we work with people on really helping to build that confidence and have that
energy to present to a camera knowing that there are people on the other side
of it who are going to receive it.
So there's lots of different aspects of our training, but ultimately, the
unique piece of our instructor onboarding, I would say, is that we are not
providing exclusive opportunities.
Where I see a lot of other fitness brands have a few coveted fitness
instructor positions available, we kind of want to be able to do that.
We kind of want to do the opposite.
We kind of want to say, hey, you know, if you want to be here, we want you here,
and we'll support you to get through the instructor onboarding aspects so that
you reach that level of standard that we have set for our instructors and so
you can be part of our instructor community.
Really, truly every decision that we make in this business is through that
lens of how can we be as inclusive as possible.
And so if people want to be fitness instructors and maybe aren't quite at
that level, then we just need to start asking questions, how can we support
you to get there?
And that's really the experience that we want to provide for people.
How do you replicate community within a remote offering where the people on
the other side of the camera don't know one another and might not have no
interaction with each other?
It's a great question.
One, that we are still working to validate, but ultimately how we see
ourselves creating that community is providing a forum inside of our app for
people to be able to connect with each other, but also providing specific
topics or specific opportunities for people and showing them why they would
want to connect with each other.
So the example that I would give is, you know, as much as we can say, we want
to provide fitness experiences that are for every single body.
We are all human and we are all different.
And so if I am a full-time wheelchair user and I'm following an instructor
that's a full-time wheelchair user, it does not mean that my body will move in
the exact same way as the instructor's body.
And so what we see as being a great opportunity for that community
interaction and connection with each other is actually having our members
share what works for them and what didn't work for them in specific classes.
And were they still, you know, creating different adaptive movements in those
classes that they could then share with us for feedback so that our
instructor community can take that and into the next versions of classes that
are created, but also can we provide a platform so that they can share it
with each other and connect with each other on the value that each and every
human that is part of this membership can bring.
It is our differences that create the value, right?
It's an opportunity for them to connect with each other and say, yeah,
actually, that movement didn't work for me either.
Here's what I did instead.
And there's some great opportunities there.
That's obviously like I'm not going to kind of give away all of the next set
of features and where we're going with that community connection piece, but I
think it's really about creating this space for people to interact with each
other and giving them a reason to.
Yeah, absolutely.
What type of classes will be in the app?
I know we talked about yoga, but will it be exclusively yoga or do you
envision other forms of movement?
No, so yoga, dance, cardio classes, strength training classes, and then
there will also be a library of meditation and visualization audio files
for people to be able to follow along to.
All live or on-demand classes?
All on-demand, and that is again for convenience of our members, but also for
capacity of our instructors and making sure that we're setting up this space
where they have specific deliverables and timelines related to those
deliverables, but that it's not really, really taxing in creating a virtual
schedule that's live and what happens if one of our instructors isn't able to
teach the live class on the schedule and just kind of mitigating those risks
and making sure that we're providing as much support to our instructors as
possible.
Yeah, that's great.
The on-demand is convenient, obviously, for people, but I know also with the
live, you can get some interaction with the instructors as well, so I guess my
first thought would be how can you ensure through on-demand classes that
movements are being executed properly without that visual feedback or how can
your instructors play a role in people's experience beyond just recording the
workouts?
Yeah, so similar to how we're thinking about that community forum where there's
that engagement and interaction, our instructor teams are all present in that
as well.
It's an opportunity for that constant feedback loop and an opportunity for
people to just be able to share how the experiences are and to connect with the
instructors themselves.
Beyond that, I mean similar to any other virtual fitness platform that there
are out there, if you think about Peloton, there is a certain standard that
they have for their instructors and there is no necessary opportunity or
there's no real opportunity for the instructors in the moment of the class to
say, hey, this needs to be adjusted here.
It's our job as an instructor community to make sure that we are setting out
very clearly the different movements and what's happening in the body
throughout those movements and supporting people as best as we can.
But ultimately, yeah, we could only do so much with a scalable opportunity.
Yeah, absolutely.
What aspects of UDL, maybe on that topic of communication, like what aspects of
UDL will the app utilize to more effectively communicate with the user on
the other end of the screen?
That's a good question.
Like captions, still frame pictures versus videos versus like timers, like are
there specific features you think that will make the instruction a little more
accessible for someone who's unable to hear or unable to see, et cetera?
Yes, which is exactly where my mind was going.
So the first thing, obviously, there are captions in all classes.
We also have enhanced queuing in all classes.
And what I mean by that is if you are someone who's blind or has low vision or
if you're someone who just doesn't want to have to watch the screen to see what
the instructor is doing, we are instructing in such a way that's providing you
with great cues so you know where the body is moving or you know exactly what
we're asking of you to do without having to see the instructor doing it.
We have classes that are taught with American Sign Language for people who
rely on that type of communication.
We're still, again, collecting a lot of feedback from community members to
understand how we can even enhance the communication experiences further.
A lot of that is still, you know, we're early stage testing and collecting
feedback on those features.
But ultimately, you know, our starting point is the captions, American Sign
Language, enhanced queuing, and then just continuing to listen to what else
people need.
So is it currently kind of in beta testing, like the next four months or so?
Is it mostly just a special group of users participating and giving you
feedback so you can make the adjustments before you roll it out?
We're doing kind of two different types of testing.
So we're doing testing with, you know, basically right now we have some free
class options that anyone could try and give us feedback on the actual content
side of things.
Now, there are a lot of people within our community that speak to the different
communities that we really want to make sure that we're supporting.
So certainly that feedback is going to be really critical from them.
And then on the app development side of things, we're just working on all of
the different accessibility testing that's going on through all the different
sprints.
Some of that is in consultation or in partnership with some of the not-for-
profit organizations that we've been working with.
And some of that are going to be our community members coming in as testers
themselves and providing feedback that way.
So it is still, yes, I would say we're, I would categorize it as we have a
concierge MVP right now that we're working with people on.
If it was useful for us to direct some people towards those free classes,
where would they find them?
Yeah, so they can just go to our website, which is www.secondskinssociety.com.
Second is spelled with a K, S-E-K.
They can get some more information about what we're doing.
That whole website needs to be revamped too, which we're working on all of it.
You know, many, many moving parts at the moment.
But they can get some great information there.
There's a place for them to submit any questions that they have.
And there's also a space for them to submit email, which gets them access to
some free classes.
That was going to be one of my questions.
How did you land on Second Skin and why the deviation in the spelling?
So it's a great question.
And I usually talk about it being a little bit of an unexpected manifestation.
So when I first was opening the yoga studio, I was teaching a very niche style
of yoga called Bhuti yoga, B-U-T-I.
Not very well known in Canada.
It's a little bit more known in the U.S., but even still, it's quite niche.
It is a mix of yoga, some cardio strength, dance elements to it.
So not your traditional yoga.
And we did not open a traditional yoga studio.
Every yoga studio I've been in is very light and bright and airy, and you get
this sense of calm.
My yoga studio had black walls, a black ceiling.
We had mirrors across the front, but we used a disco light in the classes that
kind of moved to the beat of the music.
It was just a contrast to what I had seen.
And when I was thinking about the business name, I was thinking about I wanted
people to, I was thinking about the experience I wanted people to have.
And when I was thinking about yoga and the reason yoga is something that I now
love, I actually truthfully did not always love yoga.
I now love yoga because it never ends and it's this constant going deeper
within yourself.
A lot of times people think about yoga really from the movement aspect, and
there's a lot of pretty poses and there's a lot of fun things that you can do,
but the true essence of yoga is really about peeling back the layers of
yourself.
And that idea of peeling back layers to me was that kind of representation of
shedding the skin, just like the snake does, and cobra is a yoga pose.
So it was kind of all tied into it for me.
The K and even in our logo is actually a backwards K.
It was just to kind of create something that we thought was trendy and cool.
And when we moved from the studio into a virtual place, we had the original
business name was Second Skin Studios.
We changed it to Second Skin Society.
And now if you were to say to me, what does Second Skin Society mean?
It's very much the experience of stepping outside of your own body to
understand or to work to understand how other people live and experience the
world and for us specifically experience movement.
It's an opportunity that all of our instructors get to have every time that
they create content.
It's not just people with and without disabilities looking at how do I
experience this movement and how can I think about how other people are going
to experience this movement.
So that's what it is for us.
And we're still working to be trendy and cool.
So.
I like that.
That's well articulated.
I think a lot of us have some experience or introduction to disability that
really stands out.
I know for me, I was first introduced to it through Special Olympics
basketball and the first athlete I had the opportunity to work with.
I would credit to changing kind of the scope of my career, the trajectory of
my life as a whole.
You mentioned starting quite early when you were only 13.
Do you have a experience with an individual or just with inclusion as a
whole that kind of stands out?
I have many of them.
I want to speak to two that were very profound.
The first was being hired when I was 13.
All of my friends and all the people that I knew my age at the time were
getting babysitting jobs at that age.
And I thought, yeah, I could do babysitting or I could get a job.
And they're in a small rural area where I live.
There weren't many places to apply.
One of the places was a developmental services agency.
And I put in a resume really having no thought of getting anywhere, but I
did it.
And I received a call.
And they didn't know how old I was.
That was just not a question that was really asked.
But they knew I was young.
And I think that's why there was initial interest.
Because I received a call to work with a specific young woman.
Who was living with her family.
She had finished high school.
She was quite social.
She could read and write.
And she had a really full life.
But unfortunately after high school, she was living at home.
And she lived on a farm with her siblings.
She had eight siblings in her family.
And she was the youngest.
And everyone in that house had a family.
And everyone in that household, from the time the sun was up and probably
before, to the time it went down, was out working on the farm.
They had a very, very large farm operation.
And she really spent a lot of time in isolation and over time actually
regressed and wasn't speaking very much.
Wasn't very social.
Didn't have the same reading and writing skills.
And they had had teachers coming in to support her and kept having a lot of
turnover because of course they would get a full time teaching position and
then move on.
So the interest in me was, hey, maybe there's somebody here that can work
with this individual for a longer period of time.
And I was introduced to her and she repeated my name immediately in the
introduction.
Her mom said, you know, this is Leanne.
And the young woman went, Leanne.
And it was such an energetic moment because this is someone who at the time
I would go and spend four hours with and I'd write down any word that she
would say and she would maybe say two or three words in a four hour period of
time.
So for her to repeat my name back was just this kind of instant connection
that we had.
And her mom said, you know, if you're interested in coming, we'd love to have
you come.
And I ended up working with that family for six years.
I did so many things that I had no idea what I was doing, but really I just
wanted to know her and understand her.
We had dance parties.
We went to movies.
We did all kinds of just fun stuff together.
But then it came into, you know, really actually showing up and putting some
work in to help her social skills come back to, you know, anywhere where I
could get them further ahead than where they were, where she really wasn't in
that isolation anymore.
And at the end of the six years, she was speaking in sentences and going out
and doing things socially and having fun.
And it was just a beautiful experience to get to see her kind of come back to
that part in her life.
And the other experience that I had that was very profound for me was I was
supporting someone who lived independently.
So, you know, I worked many, many different jobs to support people with
employment, rec and therapeutic activities.
I worked with people who lived independently and also who received 24-hour
support.
And one day I was showing up to an apartment and this woman was just getting
home from work and she was in tears and she was very, very upset.
And I, you know, went into her apartment with her and I asked what had
happened and she said that the kids across the street were sitting on the
library steps.
And they were yelling across the street at her the R word.
And for me in that moment, still being quite young and at that time, a lot of
people, a lot of people were still using that word.
And I know there's still a lot of people that use that word today.
But in that moment, it was such a profound experience where I understood
more than I ever had before the power that words have.
You know, that woman was an incredible woman who got up and went to work
like many of us do.
And she did, you know, participated in lots of different community activities
like many of us do.
And she was just living her life.
And part of what she had to experience was that type of, you know, someone
across the street yelling out at her and calling her the R word.
It just made a big difference in my life and in how I understood people and
experiences in a new way and how important and impactful language is.
And it made me change how I thought about the words that I was using.
And I think about that example often.
And I also share that example often when I hear people, if I hear people.
I don't really have anyone in my network now.
But strangers, if I hear using that word, I will tell them that story of,
you know, how upsetting that was for that individual.
And there's a real reason that words have so much impact.
And we need to continuously look at how we are creating impact through our
language and work to be better every single day.
There's, you know, so many different things happening in society right now.
And I know people have shared with me before that it feels almost like it's
hard to get it right, you know?
And so people stop trying because they're afraid of being canceled or
they're afraid of getting it wrong.
They're so afraid of getting it wrong that they just don't say anything at
all.
I actually think that's a big reason why people with disabilities are
missing through every single industry.
You know, there's, I think there's a lot of people out there that want to
take steps towards being more inclusive or to create accessible products and
services.
And they're afraid of getting it wrong.
And I am just one of those people that really firmly believes in, I know I'm
going to get it wrong.
I know I've gotten things wrong before.
I know I'm going to get them wrong again in the future.
But if I continue to show up and listen and take that and learn, just like I
learned in that experience, how powerful that was, how impactful that was for
that individual, that's the only way that we can create real change.
Yeah, I don't have too much to add to that because that comprehensively
covers kind of our approach to language and growth mindset and just the
overall expectation that when your efforts are preceded with just passion
and compassion and care, then those mistakes are alleviated by your effort
and willingness to get them right and resolve them appropriately.
How do you think those individuals, maybe just in that second story, because
it's something that I'm very interested in, like why, not only are, why are
some people afraid to communicate with people with disabilities, but why are
some people critical of those with disabilities or why do some people feel
the need to even be demeaning in a situation like that?
What would change that individual's life who was yelling across the street
at your friend?
I think there's a lot of answers to that question.
I would say one of the things that would change is if those people had someone
in their network that had a disability, meaning if they had a friend or family
member that acquired a disability, it would shift their perspective.
Now, sometimes what I have seen and heard from other people's experiences is
that when that happens that someone is in an accident and acquires a disability
that way, it actually creates distance between those people because, again, the
person without the disability all of a sudden feels like I have to treat this
person differently and there's this distance that is like an unknown.
The only thing that I can think of as far as why that happens or why people are
afraid to or don't know how to speak to people with disabilities is I think in
large part simply a lack of representation.
If you go back only a decade or two, so many things were different in our
society related to people with disabilities.
We've seen such a great uprising and there's still so much to do when it comes
to awareness and education and really teaching people that there is no
difference to speak with someone with a disability versus someone without a
disability.
But I think going back to that time, there were a lot more people that were
really ignorant.
They were not educated around even that word specifically.
It was a joke to them and clearly not a joke for that woman.
So in all the things that we're doing and all the impact that we want to
create, it's creating better access for people with disabilities in the
fitness space but also better representation where people with
disabilities are included and it's not in a way that is oh, wow, just kind of
how you were speaking to before, how incredible it is that they get to
participate in fitness classes too or they get to teach fitness classes too or
not this inspiration porn idea and not this pity me idea but they're just
human beings.
We are all just human beings.
And there's so many people out there that just haven't kind of had that
moment where they've been personally impacted by disability because they've
either acquired one themselves or they've grown a social circle that
includes people with disabilities.
And they're likely still just feeling like it's fear of getting it wrong is
really the only thing that I can think of.
Yeah, I'm hoping the representation that you mentioned as well as just
exposure, the more the people with disabilities are immersed within just
traditional community environments and programs, the more people who will not
have that family member with an acquired disability but that will have some
sort of interaction with someone with a disability might change their
perspective or at least make them more reflective of their biases and not be
ignorant to how their words affect people and kind of how they view
disability.
But one overarching question that obviously we're fitness industry
specific but I think it can have broader implications is how you envision that
the fitness industry could be more accessible.
And I know we kind of already touched on a lot of those topics but do you have
any maybe like last thoughts on what other companies could do either fitness
or not to make their products and their services more inclusive and accessible?
I mean, the very first thought is just to start actively going out and having
conversations with people with disabilities because everything should
stem from those conversations.
But in terms of a broad idea, definitely thinking about, so I think about this
in all of the things that I do and not just related to my business but when I go
to conferences or when I go to specific events, I'm always paying attention to
who's not in the room.
I think it's often that we look at who's already in our membership and we're
looking to really get to know our community and we certainly need to do that.
But equally important in my view is to look at who's not in the room and ask why.
Have we not created the environment that they know that they're welcome to be in
this membership or in this conference or at this event?
What are the ways in which we can very easily make changes so that people know
that we're already thinking of them?
I attended a pitch competition in the fall and I had the opportunity to share a
60-second pitch and there was about 350 people in the room.
It was a great accessible building, accessible washrooms.
There were a lot of different things that were put into place, but it wasn't
marketed in any way where people with disabilities would know that they were
considered and thought of and simply in terms of image description in marketing
materials and camel case hashtags and actually talking about the facility
itself being accessible and putting in the marketing efforts or on the landing
page for the event that if there are specific needs that you have, we want to
hear from you.
Any of those things, those are very simple things that anyone can do.
But it's pretty tough when you get up in front of 350 people and talk about 25%
of our population having a disability and you look around the room and you go,
okay, well, I don't see anyone with a visible disability in this room.
There's a huge disconnect between how can there be this stat?
But I look around the rooms that I enter and I don't see people with disabilities
there.
So I'm always thinking about who's in the room but also who's not there and how
can we create that space for them to know that they're being considered and
they're being thought of and we want to know how we can include them in a way
that's going to be really meaningful and impactful.
I think at the end of the day, if we started, every business started asking
themselves who are our customers and what are the different avatars and also
who are the other people that could benefit from what we're doing or how can
we create more opportunities for people outside of those core members to be
included here too or those core customers to be included here too.
Get curious, ask questions and then go out and find people and have
conversations.
Yeah, that's perfect.
That's a great way to kind of conclude this.
If people want to learn more about Second Skin or stay up to date with
announcements, you mentioned the website.
Any other resources that they should be directed to?
Yeah, follow us on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Facebook.
We do have a TikTok.
There's nothing on there.
There will be when we get to that prioritizing the social stuff, but
LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, great place to get updated information.
Awesome.
We'll include the links in the show notes so people can more easily access
them, but Leanne, thanks so much for the conversation.
It was incredible, a bunch of things that really stood out to me that I'm
looking forward to sharing that I think are applicable outside of the
fitness industry as well, which is ultimately one of the goals.
Again, thanks so much for your time.
Thank you.
Pleasure to be here.
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