Kyle Davis Degan got busy. As a corporate real estate attorney and partner at Dallas legal firm Locke Lord and as a parent of two kids ages 3 and 5, she was trying to balance her work, her new role as a parent, as well as her health. It was nearly impossible to squeeze it all in, especially with the different components of her wellness routine scattered across town.
So she built a one-stop shop. Wesley Wellness Club opened in late October and offers multiple membership packages with different fitness classes and spa features like infrared saunas, lymphatic massages and cold plunges.
“You can access those things, but you have to go to a separate space from the gym,” Davis Degan said. “You can’t just work out and then walk across the hall and go to the cold plunge. That was what I wanted, personally, flexibility and to maximize feeling good.”
In the few months the health club has been open, Wesley has gained roughly 100 members across the gym’s different tiers and had a stream of visitors from subscription services like ClassPass.
Davis Degan, 38, put in more than $250,000 of her own capital to get the club off Ross Avenue near Lower Greenville underway. She was loaned roughly $1.4 million from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
“Without it, this would not have been possible,” Davis Degan said. She earns a good salary as an attorney and can’t imagine being a small business owner without the access to capital or information she had, especially when it comes to knowing what resources are available from agencies like the SBA.
“That’s why this program is so important, and that’s why it’s probably underutilized by some communities,” she said.
The loan paid for the gym’s build-out, furniture, equipment, labor costs and even the initial inventory of beet and kale chips.
Administrator Isabella Guzman, a member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet, visited the 6,800 square-foot health club Tuesday, as a leg on her tour of the nation’s small Black-owned businesses launched with the assistance of the SBA.
In what the agency is touting as a small business boom under the Biden-Harris Administration, the SBA has doubled its lending to Black business owners and tripled lending to Latino businesses, said Ted James, a regional administrator for the SBA overseeing five states including Texas.
In 2023, 5.5 million new business applications were filed, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. It’s the strongest year of new business applications and the third consecutive year of historic small business growth, according to the SBA.
The monthly average of 440,000 new business applications during the first three years of the administration is 46% higher than the average of the previous four years combined, stated the SBA.
“We‘ve seen 16 million new small business applications filed and the highest rate of Black ownership in three decades where we’ve doubled the number of Black households who have small businesses themselves,” Guzman said. “It’s really an exciting time.”
The gym is outfitted with lavender lockers and a self-serve açaí machine. Davis Degan’s goal is for every member to know her and the story behind Wesley. The club is named after her daughter.
“It’s my love letter to her,” Davis Degan said. “To encourage her to take care of herself.”
