We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Greg Preston a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Greg, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Most people don’t realize bone density peaks around age 30, at which point bones begin to slowly weaken for the remainder of life, even in active healthy people. The human body won’t allow muscle tissue to be stronger than the bone it is attached to, so as bone weakens with age, muscle tissue weakens as well. The natural weakening of the skeletal system after age 30 is the primary culprit that explains why people get weaker as they age, even if they are exercising regularly.

Once bone and muscle tissue has been compromised, it leads to lots of other health issues including: loss of balance, poor posture, increase in joint and back pain, higher risk of fracture or injury, and even higher blood glucose levels.

When people say “my body is not what is used to be,” gradual bone loss is one of the underlying reasons why that is true.

So, how do we fix this? Conventional wisdom says we should take pharmaceuticals and do weight bearing exercise. A lot of people don’t want to take bone density drugs because of the known side effects. Weight bearing exercise and its affect on bone density has been studied by hundreds of scientific studies. What’s surprising is that almost all forms of normal weight bearing exercise have little to no benefit in increasing bone density.

Yes, you read that right. Walking, running, weight lifting, yoga, pilates, tai-chi, biking, swimming, hiking, etc. do NOT put enough force on bone to trigger a natural adaptation, and thus have little to no benefit on improving bone density.

On the contrary, high impact sports like gymnastics and competitive power lifting are effective at increasing bone density, however gymnastics and power lifting are not a practical solution for most people, and these activities damage joints over time.

If everyone is losing bone density after 30, which ultimately causes age-related health issues, and normal forms of exercise aren’t effective, and high impact exercise isn’t practical, what should someone do? This question is what led Dr. John Jaquish to develop a new technology called “osteogenic loading machines.” These machines were designed to mimic high impact forces on bone, but do so in a safe controlled way that almost anyone can do. This innovation allows most people to get the benefits of high impact, without the associated risks.

Osteogenic loading technology has been proven to effectively strengthen bone and increase bone density naturally. OsteoStrong CEO and founder Kyle Zagrodsky partnered with Dr. John Jaquish to make osteogenic loading machines available at OsteoStrong facilities across the globe.

“Our mission at OsteoStrong is to deliver the most accessible system around the world that delivers maximum physical freedom and capability to people of all ages”. -Kyle Zagrodsky, CEO & Founder of OsteoStrong.

OsteoStrong has helped thousands of people of all ages and physical abilities improve their bone health naturally through osteogenic loading. An OsteoStrong session takes about 15 minutes one time per week, and each client works 1 on 1 with a certified coach. The benefits of osteogenic loading include: improved bone density, increased functional strength, better balance, improved posture, decreased joint and back pain, healthier blood glucose levels, and reduced risk of fracture or injury.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Greg and Tiffany Preston own two OsteoStrong centers in Denver. OsteoStrong is a membership-based integrative wellness center that helps people of all ages strengthen their skeletal system.

Greg is a materials engineer and former collegiate athlete who has always been passionate about optimizing health. Tiffany has a background in education both as a teacher and an administrator. Greg & Tiffany first learned about OsteoStrong at Tony Robbins event in 2017, and soon after decided to pursue opening the first OsteoStrong location in the state of Colorado.

“We are both passionate about helping people in our community improve their health in a meaningful way. Once we learned about the benefits of OsteoStrong and realized there weren’t any locations in Colorado yet, we knew it was time to quit our corporate jobs and make this technology available to our community in Denver.

Fast forward to March 2022, and there are now 6 OsteoStrong centers open in Colorado. We’ve worked with everyone from young professional athletes to seniors with advanced osteoporosis. We’ve seen people set new personal records in their sport, and we’ve seen people too weak to walk unassisted ditch their cane or walker. We’ve seen so many people increase their bone density, and in some cases completely reverse their osteoporosis or osteopenia.

Our favorite stories are from OsteoStrong members who have had a really bad fall or accident and are shocked they didn’t fracture, as well as our members who have been able to resume some of their favorite activities that they’d given up due to physical impairments or pain.

OsteoStrong is the only place I can think of where you can have a young elite athlete, seniors, and everyone in-between all going through the same regimen to experience the amazing benefits of a stronger foundation: the skeletal system.

We are blessed to be able to participate in improving people’s lives while owning our own business and raising a family.”

Greg & Tiffany live in Denver, CO and have a 1 year old son named Harrison.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

In March of 2020, we did what many businesses were forced to. We closed our doors due to COVID-19. Everything was uncertain in this moment. How long will this last? When will we be able to reopen? How will we keep the amazing team we’ve built employed and paid?

COVID-19 was out of our control, so we diverted our energy and focus to creative solutions. The first thing we did was we called an emergency meeting with our entire team. Many businesses were furloughing their entire staff. This seemed reckless, impulsive and immoral to our values. We decided to not only keep our entire team employed during shutdown, but we gave everyone a $2 raise effective immediately. We wanted our team to know that in the worst of times, we had their back and they didn’t have to worry about when their next paycheck would come.

The next issue we had to tackle was obviously cash flow. We decided to put together a special offer for all of our existing members. In exchange for continuing to pay for their monthly membership while we were shut down, we offered a credit for a free month and a free 3 month membership for a friend. Over 70% of our beloved members took us up on this. That was only possible because of the relationships our entire team had built with our members, who we’ve always treated like family.

We then had our staff write personal thank you cards to every member who supported us. This allowed our team to continue to log hours while working from home. Many of our members are older and were considered “high-risk,” so our team also helped deliver groceries and pick up prescriptions so they could remain at home.

This solution allowed us to maintain 70% of our normal cashflow during closure, and we spread out the 1 month credits we owed to members across 3 months when we reopened, which minimized the hit to cash flow for any given month.

During our 6 week shutdown, we hosted weekly webinars for all of our members, and even developed a new virtual sales process to sign up new clients over the phone rather than in-person. As it turns out, this virtual sales process was more efficient, and 2 years later we are still using it exclusively.

Most importantly, we came out of our shutdown more connected with our members and our team.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

When we were opening our first location, we hit several snags during our buildout that delayed our opening. We had all of our equipment, and yet we didn’t have a business open to offer this amazing technology. We didn’t anticipate this, and we had just completed a successful marketing event that generated a lot of new leads for our business.

We knew if we waited 3 months until we officially opened that many of the people who had expressed interest would be hard to reach. This was stressful and frustrating. We knew we had to come up with a creative solution.

In the prior months, we had started networking with other business owners in the area, and building relationships with potential referral partners. One of the those businesses was Realm Chiropractic in Lakewood, which was just a few minutes from where our location would be. We asked Dr. Rachel Kapustka and her husband Dr. Nick Kapustka if we could host an event at their space and bring in some of our equipment. They agreed, and after emailing and texting all of our leads and renting a box truck to move some equipment, we signed up our first 30 members and brought Realm Chiropractic some new patients as well.

The next week, we met with a 55+ community across the street from our location and made a deal to offer free 3 month memberships to their entire community if we could use one of their conference rooms as a temporary space until our buildout was finished. When we opened 3 months later, we had 100 members.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.osteostrong.me
• Instagram: @osteostrongdenver
• Facebook: @osteostrongdenver
• Youtube: OsteoStrong Denver