Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Madsen-Killian.
Hi Jessica, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My story begins as a collegiate athlete at Park University in Kansas City, Missouri. I played basketball for four years and fell in love with how amazing our bodies are and what they are capable of.
After I graduated with a Bachelors’s in Biology and a minor in Chemistry, I returned home to Duchesne Ut. where I went to the gym twice a day to keep my body in shape.
I was working in a lab doing chemistry work for an oilfield business and decided that wasn’t the path for me. I considered going to medical school and started studying for the MCAT.
As a sort of test to myself, I started an EMT class and began working as a paid volunteer in Duchesne ambulance. I fell in love with emergency medicine, and less than a year later, I obtained my Advanced EMT license and was working full-time on Roosevelt Ambulance. We were an ER-based ambulance, which meant we were in the ER at UBMC when we weren’t on an ambulance call. This is how I met my husband, Tyrel, who was an RN in the Emergency Room, where he had worked for 13 of his 18 years as an RN.
My sister might have coerced him into asking me out, she knew him from work as well, but it was for his better good. We will be celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary this July. Once we were married, I moved to Roosevelt where I noticed a lack of fitness centers. There was very little opportunity for me to continue my physical fitness regimen in Roosevelt. There was a small gym on the edge of the city, and a small gym in the hospital but neither could accommodate the Roosevelt community very well.
It took me almost a year to convince Tyrel that a fitness center would work as a business and to take the risk. So we approached the bank and after a year of doing our homework for projections and altering many building plans, the bank approved the loan and we started construction in Dec. 2019. The building would house both Mad Sports and Fitness and Xceed Vitality.
Then COVID hit during construction. Which caused construction to take about four months longer than projected, which presented a problem because our first child was born in the midst of them finishing construction. Tyrel and I, with the help of family and friends, assembled and installed every piece of equipment for the gym. It took about three weeks to install it all with a newborn baby right there with us. It was quite a feat and we can honestly say we put our blood, sweat, and tears into our business. We were able to open on Oct. 7th, 2020 and we haven’t looked back.
We have seen so much support from the community and are so happy we can provide such an awesome facility with brand new, top-of-the-line equipment. I think it helped a lot of people in the last 18 months to escape the stresses of this COVID world and work on bettering their health, both mentally and physically.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Our first challenge was getting a bank loan. Our original building included a basketball/volleyball court. We included this because Roosevelt does not have a rec center and there are no indoor courts in town besides in the schools, which are not open to the public. The bank denied this plan because they “did not feel like there was a need for it in our community”. So we had to alter our plans a few times before the bank agreed.
We also faced challenges with COVID. Some supplies were delayed or almost impossible to get because of the shutdowns. All of our gym equipment, that was supposed to arrive close to when construction was finished, was shipped early, due to the factories wanting to get them all shipped before their factories were shut down.
This left us with around 20 8×10 crates of equipment and around 20 pallets of other equipment, and no building to put them in. Equipment was put in our garage, storage lockers, family members’ garages, my father-in-law’s shop, and anywhere we could stash it through the rest of winter, spring, and the summer.
COVID also affected our opening. We were able to open as soon as we were ready to, which was fortunate since gyms had been shut down earlier in the year, but there were more rules and regulations we had to follow in order to be open to the public.
Another challenge was the growth of our family. Right after we started construction, we found out we were expecting. Construction was supposed to be done in June, with the baby expected in August. We had hoped that we could have the business up and running before her birth.
Due to COVID, everything was delayed and construction actually finished almost two weeks after our daughter was born. It was a challenge starting a business with a newborn, but we managed. She is now almost two and thinks she is the boss around the business. She has all of our staff and regular clients wrapped around her finger.
We’ve been impressed with Mad Sports and Fitness & Xceed Vitality, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Mad Sports and Fitness offer live classes, free weights, Olympic lifting equipment, pin-loaded weight machines, cardio, cross-training equipment, locker rooms with saunas, a racquetball court, and a pickleball court.
All of this is available to gym members 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Members get a key fob when they sign up, which works for the amount of time they sign up for. We have top-of-the-line security cameras for the safety of our members.
Xceed Vitality is Tyrel’s part of the business. It offers IV Therapy, cosmetic injections, Botox, PRP injections/therapies, massage therapy, cryotherapy, and more.
Tyrel works with Dr. Kristian Kemp, MD as a medical director to bring alternative medicine/therapies to our community at affordable prices. Dr. Kemp is an ER physician on the Wasatch Front, and available via telemedicine to prescribe therapies to the people that come in, Tyrel is then able to provide the services.
Tyrel has done extension training/classes to become a Cosmetic injector, PRP injector, Botox injector, and IV therapy courses. His years in the ER also help make him one of the best at the skills needed to perform these therapies. Xceed Vitality also houses Dr. Kelby Martin every Monday.
Dr. Martin is a chiropractor that provides full-body adjustments at an affordable rate.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters most to us is helping people feel good about themselves. We are all our own worst critics and if there is some way that we can help boost someone’s confidence or self-esteem, we want to!
If I can’t personally help them, I can put them in contact with the person that can. We work closely with trainers, nutrition specialists, doctors, and chiropractors to be able to provide the services that will help our clients reach their goals and not only feel better physically, but also to feel good/happy mentally.
Something as simple as Botox or cosmetic fillers can help someone feel younger or more attractive. Tyrel loves to help women in their forties, fifties, or even maybe older feel less self-conscious about their wrinkles. Chiropractics, cryotherapy, massage, and PRP all help ease some of our physical pain. PRP is wonderful for the rejuvenation of tissue, including in injuries. IV therapy has endless uses. We offer simple hydration drips but that’s just the beginning.
Tyrel has many different mixtures of medications to treat many ailments. He offers IVs that help get rid of migraines. Immunity IVs can be used to boost the immune system before or after you are sick, many have used this to help fight off COVID. He also offers Vitamin IVs, hangover IVs, anti-inflammatory IVs and even weight loss drips. He sits down with each client and talks with them and together they decide what is best for the client and tailor the IV to their needs.
The fitness center can help us feel accomplished by putting in the work every day. Many people just need an out from their day at home or at work. Nutritionists and trainers help our clients reach their weight loss goals or fitness goals. Our overall mission is to help others feel good.
I’ve explained the how, but why? I think it’s important to both of us because we have both witnessed the ugly side of medicine working in the ambulance and in the ER. We have both worked to save lives, many times after it’s already too late. We want to be on the preventative side of helping people.
If we can help someone find health and wellness, maybe they won’t end up in the ER with a disease or illness when it’s too late. Not only is this better for the client, but it’s also more affordable, and takes the pressure off of the ER in these trying times.
Contact Info:
- Email: madsportsnfitness@gmail.com
- Website: Xceedvitality.com
- Facebook: Mad Sports and Fitness, and Xceed Vitality
