How To Open A Warehouse Gym Part 3
How I Turned My Van Into A Cash Machine (well, kinda.)
In part 2 of How To Open A Warehouse Gym you learned of my struggles as a budding entrepreneur, moving from location to location in order to find a home to training my clients. Ultimately, I ended up using my father’s used van as a vehicle for transportation as well as to drive profits into my pockets!
To this day I still drive the old, beat up, dirty, windowless, ugly conversion van that my dad gave me after my car blew up on the way to training some pretentious housewives at a “health club” that I hated. My friends and family are always asking me, “Elliott, why don’t you get rid of that ugly piece of shit and get yourself a new, respectable car?”
Well, besides the fact that it has less than 75,000 miles on it, drives perfectly and I would rather join the circus as a human cannon ball than enslave myself to a new car payment… it’s got some sentimental value to me. You see, if it weren’t for my van I may still be a slave to some corporate whore’s every whim and desire. I would MUCH rather drive my ugly van and be free, than to trade it in and join the ranks of emotional infants who still drool and suckle at the cold, corportate teat.
On the fated day I was approached by one of my favorite clients to start an outdoors “strength training” program for men, I immediately began collecting and filling my van with used equipment and trash for training my camp members with. Since I didn’t yet have a gym and my “equipment budget” was nonexistent I was forced to be very creative and resourceful when collecting tools for training.
My trusty van and I took a tour of the more obscure, outer limits of St. Petersburg in order to collect used tires, cinder blocks, logs, sandbags, tractor tires, wheel barrels and empty beer kegs from abandoned buildings and junk yards. I don’t think there had ever been a happier garbage man than I on that 97 degree day in Tampa Bay. We stopped and collected anything that could be lifted, flipped, pushed, pulled or dragged.
When I got home that evening I begun unloading most of this trash in my narrow driveway. My wife came home to find me grinning, ear to ear, amongst a pile of garbage in front of our new home. In her typical way, she simply sighed and shook her head as she navigated around the used tires and bricks carrying the groceries inside. I must say, she has ALWAYS been supportive of my crazy ideas and always confidant of my ability to provide for our family… even when the mortgage it over due and I’m running around the city sifting through dumpsters.
Within a few short days I was running my very first “Strength Camp” (I first named it “Primal Strength Camp”… but then dropped the ‘Primal’) at a local park. The class was filled with a few of my male clients along with their brothers, friends and neighbors. We only met on Saturday’s and I charged $15 per class. After a few weeks of dragging tires, carrying sandbags and pushing my van a few of the guys appoached me to open my class up durring a few weekdays as well. I happily accepted their proposal to pay me $99 per month to train their class 3x per week at the park.
The following Tuesday I hauled my van full of hundreds of pounds of trash across town to train my new weekday class. I pulled up at the park and sat in my van waiting for the gentlemen to show up at our designated time… 6:30 PM. As the clock neared 6:45 I began to feel like I had been stood up, no one was going to show up for my first offical “Strength Camp” class. At about 7:00 one of the guys shows up and remains in his car talking on his cell phone for another 7 minutes and then walks over to my van. He approached me with a warm smile, shoved a $100 bill into my hand and said, “Let’s get started!”
In the back of my mind, I was SO pissed off! The truth is that I just wanted to hand him back his money and go home to cry in my wife’s lap. But I didn’t… I trained him “one-on-one” (at a boot camp price) that day and the following day, and for a full month with none of the other guys ever showing up for my Strength Camp class. At the conclusion of that month, knowing that it was not prudent for me to continue training him he suggested that we discontinue the class… it was at this moment that I had to make a BIG decision. I could simply chalk this up as a failed experiment, or I could MAKE it work.
I also knew that if I did MAKE it work, that there was only one way to guarantee it would!
STAY TUNED FOR PART 4 where you’ll learn exactly how I MADE Strength Camp work… and the exact tool I used to do it!
Learn how you can escape the clutches of the Fake Fitness Facade and rebel with your very own Warehouse Gym Business!
See this now ==> http://www.WarehouseGymBusiness.com
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Read ==> How To Open A Warehouse Gym Part 1
Read ==> How To Open A Warehouse Gym Part 2
How To Open A Warehouse Gym Part 2
In part 1 of How To Open A Warehouse Gym you learned of my struggles as a student of fitness, a personal trainer and an employee of a mega-sized “Health Club” where most worthy trainers are treated like cogs in the big malfunctioning machine of the fake fitness facade.
After my departure from the marauding mess called “Lifestyle’s Family Fitness”… with zero clients, a new mortgage, over $10,00o in debt, my wife and 2 year old daughter… I was broke, lost and confused about how I was to go about getting paid to do what I loved most — Training Athletes.
What made matters worse, was that on my last day at the “health club” the only asset that I had to my name — my 1989 Lincoln Towncar, BLEW UP! Fortunately my father had sitting in his driveway the 1987 Econoline Ford Family Van that he used to lug me and my 3 brothers and sisters around Long Island several years back. He had no intentions of ever using it again and with only 70,000 miles on it he knew that no one would ever pay for what it was still worth. Little did either of us know that it would come to be worth over $300,000 to me over the next 4 years.
With the look of pride that only a father could have for his rebellious son… my dad handed me the keys to the only car that he had ever paid full price for, the old-school family van. With a heart broken, my seedling family and an old van I begun my first real journey into entrepreneurship.
My first plan of advancement was to find a local family owned gym where I could start to rebuild my personal training clientele. The first place I trained was in a Yoga studio, but that quickly ended since “Yogi’s” are typically passive and quite people (who also lack meat in their diets) and it seemed I was just too loud and rambunctious of a carnivore to share space with them. So, I was *shushed* the hell out of there in less than a month.
Next, I took my small personal training business to a local chiropractor’s clinic. This worked out quite well for about 7 months until one day I showed up at the office and the doors were bolted shut! It turned out that Dr. Crackmyback had not been paying HIS rent and had us ALL kicked out. I should have taken notice when the landlord threw a FOR SALE sign up on the front door… I guess I was too focused on correcting my clients form to see anything else.
Finally, I found a gym in downtown St. Pete owned by a female bodybuilder with an attitude worse than mine. The gym didn’t have many members and she liked it that way… most people seemed to piss her off. I sheepishly approached her one day and proposed to pay her $500 per month to train all of my clients at her gym. Surprisingly, she accepted my offer and turned her back to me and continued her 1000 rep dumb bell lateral raise routine.
It was at this small, barely surviving, half bodybuilding – half “cocaine station” gym that I had begun to get my “feet under me” and achieve some level of stability. The owner (lets call her “Cara”) was polite enough to me and my clients and seem to accommodate most of my needs. She and I both had strong personalities (and lots of testosterone) so for the most part we would aim to avoid each other. I kept my mouth shut and went home when I wasn’t training and she put her iPod on to avoid any useless conversation.
For about 2 years my personal training business grew from earning me about $2,000 per month to just over $10,000. It was at this time that one of my male clients asked me, “Elliott, you have such an amazing athletic background… why aren’t you training athletes?” This question stuck me like a dagger to my heart, the truth was that I wasn’t training athletes because I knew it would piss “Cara” off if I had a bunch of teenagers in here throwing around medicine balls… I was stifling my DREAM so as to not piss someone else off!!! This is the most insidious reason why most people never succeed, and I understood that this was exactly what I was doing.
With the idea of my dream rekindled, a semi-sustainable personal training business, and my 1987 Econoline Van I ventrued outdoors to begin my new business which I called “Strength Camp”.
STAY TUNED FOR PART 3 where you’ll learn exactly how I turned my van into a cash machine on wheels and finally gave myself the chance to do exactly what I loved to do…. and get paid very well for it.
Learn how you can escape the clutches of the Fake Fitness Facade and rebel with your very own Warehouse Gym Business!
See this now ==> http://www.WarehouseGymBusiness.com
