Becoming a Gym Owner

Becoming a CrossFit gym owner started with a tall, skinny, insecure kid that picked up a Muscle and Fitness magazine in sixth grade. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I knew it was what I wanted. I got my first set of Sear’s plastic coated concrete weights and never looked back, I was hooked! Bench and Bi’s, Back and Tri’s became my new religion.

Throughout high school and college I was always envious of everyone who always seemed to know what they wanted to do with their lives, the future doctors, layers, and accountants of the world. The ones who school seemed easy for and who had a path laid out for them. I all I knew was, I loved sports, wasn’t the best at school, and the only dream job I ever thought of was owning a gym. Gym ownership would always remain just a dream. The cost of treadmills, ellipticals, and pully machines was way beyond what one individual could afford. That was the world of the Globo gyms and individuals didn’t play there.

With no direction or sense of options, I continued my football career in college and maintained my academic excellence as a solid “C” student. At the end of my sophomore year, my counselor insisted I declare an intent of study and asked what I enjoyed doing. I replied “working out” and from there I officially become a Kinesiology major. At the time, I didn’t even know what the word Kinesiology meant, but neither did anyone else, so it made me feel special/unique when people asked what I was studying in school. They assumed it was something in the medical field and that my “C” average was probably someone where closer to the “C+” “B-“ range.

After 6 years and 3 universities, I did it! I received my bachelor’s degree and was off to start my career in the world of Kinesiology!!! Now all I had to do was go home and wait for them to send the letter informing me where I needed to show up for work! After a period not hearing anything and sharing my situation of waiting on my letter, I was informed there would be no letter. I had been misled by my own assumptions. No letter comes, no one tells you where to show up, and I would have to seek employment on my own. This couldn’t be correct, I had graduated college, I did what I was supposed to do. As confusing and obviously wrong as this seemed to me, I looked into what I was qualified to do. I could go to graduate school, which wasn’t an option because I had sworn I was done with school, or I could become a personal trainer. No degree required here, but I would have to go get a separate certification stating I knew what I was doing. That four year degree wasn’t enough, I needed more initials after my name. ACSM or ACE were required to show someone how to do a lat pull down to explain what a “super set’ was.

As you can probably guess, the decision was easy, I chose to go to grad school. I would go to get a Master’s in Education. I was going to be a Physical Education/Health teacher. Grad school was easy to get into, I only had to retake about half of my undergraduate courses at a local community college. Those “C’s” that I had originally showed up to class and blown farts to receive weren’t going to cut it. I eventually got into grad. school and took night classes while working full-time during the day. After 9 years of school and 2 degrees, I was ready to teach the future leaders of tomorrow the finer elements of the volleyball serve, the origin story of the family that created pickleball, and sex education. I was a teacher!!!

I loved teaching and found my niche with high school  freshman. I loved that they seemed more confused than I was and I would help them in any way I could. I also coached football and volunteered my time as the off-season strength and conditioning coach. Can you believe they paid me for this?!?! They did! $28,000 a year, and then next year I would make $28,250, and the next $28,500. I could tell you how much I was going to make 10, 15, 20 years from then. Wait! WTF?!?! It didn’t matter what I did, how hard I worked, I would get paid the same or less than someone who showed up, rolled a ball out, and just made sure no kids died. As much as I loved teaching, I HATED the pay and the scale that went along with it. Summers off were nice. 😊

Things were going great! I out kicked my coverage and had a smoking hot wife, we had our first of later to be 3 daughter, and I landed my dream job at Lane Tech High School in Chicago, IL. My wife was killing it in real estate, so my shitty pay wasn’t a big deal…until it was. 2008 hit and everything changed. The housing market came to a halt overnight and the difficulty of living off of a teacher’s salary became apparent very quickly. We lasted about a year until the economic reality of living in a major city with now two small children, forced a move we had been thinking about for quite some time. We packed our bags and moved to Lexington, KY, the hometown of my wife.

She could do real estate anywhere, and I could get a teaching job. The lower cost of living and a new start would help us get back on track. At that time teaching jobs weren’t as available as I had hoped and not knowing anyone didn’t help. I ended up taking a job in construction management, something I was loosely qualified for through working in the trades all throughout high school and college. The pay was good, but I hated it. I moved 400 miles to a place where I knew no one, left my family, and gave up a job I loved. It wasn’t the best, but it was what we had to do.

As a small consolation for making the move, my wife pushed me to rent a small warehouse space and open a gym. Around the time of the move in 2009 and before, I had been following the underground fitness movement of Gym Jones, RKC, and CrossFit. It had taken my training out of the Globo gym and into my garage. This training that started in Chicago by myself, in my garage, evolved into high school kids filling our back alley after school to come get destroyed with kettlebells, homemade sandbags, and oversized tires that we flipped. No one ever flips tires anymore, but we actually used to do it!

Now in Lexington, I rented about 200 square feet of warehouse storage space from my boss, built a rig out of plumber’s pipe, and set up my kettlebells, sandbags, and tires. A small group of people joined me for brutal workouts in a building with no A/C in the summer, no heat in the winter, and a bathroom that looked like a murder scene. I never though I knew what I wanted to do, but 20 years after reading that first Muscle and Fitness magazine, I was a gym owner, it was a shitty gym, but a gym none the less. I actually didn’t own anything, I had a space where I worked out, had crazy people that joined me and would throw a few bucks my way every month. It covered rent and allowed us to buy a new kettlebell every once in a while. It was AWESOME!!!

In 2012 I was approached by a group that were opening a CrossFit gym. My kids went to pre-school with the kids of one in the group and they had heard about my warehouse gym. They had a lot of passion for this new thing CrossFit, but only 1 coach among the 7. They asked if I was interested in joining them as a coach. I agreed on the spot, and a month later, my wife and I both took the CrossFit Level 1 course.

Joe DeGain was our Flow Master and at the time I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I wanted to be exactly like him and the other Seminar Staff Coaches. I feel in love with CrossFit!!! It was new, non-mainstream, hard as hell, and it incorporated my love of teaching, sport, and fitness. It was everything I was looking for!!! Mix in a group of new friends to do it with and the entrepreneurial aspect of being rewarded for the work you put in, there could be nothing better!

Since opening my first CrossFit gym in 2012 with a group of 8, I’ve either owned, coached at, or been kicked out of almost every CrossFit gym in Central Kentucky. I am now 4 years into my first solo venture and I am the proud owner of CrossFit Conductor! The workouts still scare the shit out of my, being an entrepreneur is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I love it! I am in awe of all the people that show up day after day and trust me and our coaches to take them on this fitness journey. I am excited about where myself, my gym, our community, and CrossFit has and is evolving into. 

I never thought my journey had a purpose, I thought I was behind everyone else my age with their careers. I now know to trust the process and to understand it has just taken longer to prepare me for the journey God has planned for me. I have the HARDEST and BEST job in the world. Like the new black belt, I have put in years of work and preparation to be ready to start this journey. LFG!!!