Making a living doing what you love is one of the most challenging things in the world. Most members of the human race spend their lives in desperate pursuit of this elusive goal. Though everyone has significant challenges on their way to living their particular dream, fitness is one of the hardest fields to break into. If you separate yourself from the intense competition, manage the daunting up front costs, and weather the notoriously low retention rates, then you can try to play in the big leagues populated by mega-gyms and fitness celebrities. Though the odds of breaking into the fitness game are long, people still manage to do it every year.
Today, let's take a look at a variety of people who have made their mark on the fitness world and came away with some serious green. Though they all have some things in common, each of these workout visionaries found success with some big ideas that separated them from the pack. Let's hear 10 Fitness Moguls Dish On How to Make A Living Out of It.
RELATED: Anquan Boldin Ditches Football Cleats for Soccer Boots
RELATED: Full of Symbolism, adidas Unveils Lionel Messi's Champions League Cleat
Jillian Michaels
Role: Celebrity Trainer / Fitness Guru
Message: Never sell yourself short.
Few celebrity trainers transcend the title of “Celebrity Trainer” to became a household brand. No one has been as successful at this difficult task as Jillian Michaels. A brief look at Michaels' career provides a wealth of knowledge for the aspiring entrepreneur. Michael preaches many of the principles that you hear from successful people over and over again: she believes in defining and refining your mission, she believes in mentors and protégés, and she believes in selective strategic partnerships. One of her primary business principles, however, is one that is often overlooked. Michaels believes it important to know your worth and insist that people honor it.
Michaels said, “Entrepreneurs often need to work through their dysfunctional issues and believe in their self-worth in order to succeed in business. A lot of people have old family dynamics, or issues such as being bullied as a child, that carry over into adulthood and really inhibit their ability to progress. Early on in my career, I made a business decision that didn't feel right, but I was afraid if I blew the opportunity, I might not get another. You can't make good business decisions if they're based in fear.” [CNN]
The Errico Siblings
Role: Founders, Equinox Fitness
Message: Location, location, location.
When Equinox Fitness was bought out by real estate mogul Related in 2006, it didn’t make sense to many industry observers. Once they took a closer look, the move made complete sense. The Errico siblings: Danny, Olivia, and Vito, founded Equinox in 1990. Equinox quickly became a leader in the high-end fitness market. A large part of the Errico's early success was largely due to knowing where to open new locations. A customer warned Danny Errico that opening a second gym on the Upper East Side would cannibalize his business. Errico responded, “You can’t cannibalize this business because New Yorkers don’t want to go more than ten blocks to a gym.” Current COO Scott Rosen echoes the Errico’s location focused strategy. In 2006 he told the New York Sun, "This is a convenience-based business, not a destination one.” Though all-star trainers, high-end equipment, and luxurious locker room flourishes have helped Equinox compete in the fitness business, their philosophies on location have helped them thrive.
It's only fitting where the Erricos got the idea for Equinox: they hatched the initial plan for their business while living in the New York, flipping rehabilitated apartment buildings.
Will Dean
Role: Founder, Tough Mudder
Message: Culture is as important as the product.
Obstacle and mud course races have become intensely popular over the last few years. Tough Mudder for its part has become the symbol of the movement, drawing thousands of people to their races all over the world. Go a few years further back, and obstacle courses were merely the province of boot camps and work retreats. What is the secret to Tough Mudder’s success? Will Dean attributes his company's growth to a narrow focus on two things: strategy and culture.
Dean’s focus on culture is intense. Here are a few strategies for building corporate culture that Dean shared with Inc.
“Once a month, we have something called Tough Mudder University, which everyone who's in New York attends. It's an 80-minute discussion of a Harvard Business School case study, based on a theme that's pertinent to Tough Mudder.”
“Every Tuesday, we have a staff meeting and give out awards. Our Kaizen Ninja Award, which is based on this Japanese concept about making constant improvements, goes to anyone who comes up with a great innovation. We also give out a Credo Award every week to someone who really embodies the values of the company.”
“We go on retreats every quarter to a house in the Catskill Mountains. There's no phone coverage, and the Internet connection is slow. We started the retreats to get everyone thinking about the future. We always have an event coming up, but we also need to think about how we're going to run events in 2014.” [Inc.]
Greg Glassman
Role: Founder, Crossfit
Message: Be your own client.
You can’t sell something that you don’t believe in. It follows then, that the more you believe in your product, the better your chances for success. Crossfit founder Gary Glassman developed his fitness program after years of using himself as a guinea pig. Glassman was a competitive gymnast and found that he was more effective doing workouts using his only his bodyweight than many of his peers who were lugging around huge barbells and dumbbells.
After years of dedication to his personal fitness, Glassman was able to question conventional wisdom when it comes to workouts and develop a program of his own. In an interview in Crossfit Journal, Glassman shared a bit about his perspective, “Put one of our guys in a gravel shoveling competition with a pro cyclist and our guy smokes the cyclist. Neither guy trains by shoveling gravel, so why does the CrossFit guy dominate? Because CrossFit’s workouts better model high-demand functional activities. Think about it – a circuit of wall ball, lunges, and deadlift high pulls at max heart rate better matches a larger range of activities than does cycling at any heart rate.”
He went on to say, “Gymnasts have no peer in trunk and hip flexion, upper-body strength in multiple joint angles, agility, accuracy, balance, coordination. Their domain is body control. Weightlifters are masters of power, speed, and hip and leg strength. Powerful hip extension is the most critical element of human performance and none have the capacity of the weightlifters. Sprinters have enormous physical potential due to their metabolic competency across anaerobic and aerobic pathways and because of the speed, power, and total conditioning that sprinting demands. Blending workouts from each domain gives us a total greater than the sum of the parts – a gorgeous hybrid.”
Gary Heavin
Role: Co-Founder Curves
Message: Find a mission you're passionate about.
It isn’t enough to just want to open a gym or create exercise videos in today’s fitness world. The only way to stand out is to have a clear vision. Vision isn’t something you can pull out of thin air. Often, the most compelling missions are borne of personal experience. Curves founder Gary Heavin lost his mother at the age of 13. She was only 40, but her lifestyle led to complications high blood pressure and depression. Heavin says, “I woke up one morning to find that she had died in her sleep. She had just turned age 40, and my two younger brothers and I were the only ones at home. I had to gather them in my arms and tell them, age 9 and 7, that mother had died and gone to heaven.”
Out of this tragedy came Heavin’s mission; his life’s work would be to create a space where women could feel comfortable getting fit, a business that focused on lifestyle instead of looks. In an interview with FranchiseHelp.com, Heavin reflected on twenty years in the women’s fitness industry as a way of healing his childhood pain. “I was teaching a group of women a weight loss session, about 100 women, and I caught myself subconsciously scanning the crowd for the face of my mother. I realized that for all those years what my life had been about. I was trying to heal women. I was trying to prevent what happened to me at age 13 and finding her, having died in her sleep, to prevent that in other people's lives. The other side of that was I realized when I was 40 years old what my destiny was to be, that I was going to heal women. That was the year that we franchised Curves. Consequences of that, 4 million women now made their way to the gym because of Curves and are living better and longer lives.”
Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler
Role: Co-Founders, Soul Cycle
Message: The experience matters.
Many fitness programs and exercise routines focus primarily on results. How is this particular routine going to get you lean and muscular and how fast? The founders of SoulCycle realized that there are other ways to attract an audience. Co-founder Julie Rice told Allure, "When we set out to create SoulCycle, there were plenty of ways to burn calories, but none were social and joyful.” Her partner in crime Elizabeth Cutler added, "The bottom line is, if you enjoy yourself, you're going to keep coming back, and that adds up—you will see your body change." A simple concept, sure, but now that they’ve grown a legion of devotees so fierce that The New York Times has written about their fanatical dedication to spinning, it is hard to argue with their results.
Marc Grondahl
Role: Founder, Planet Fitness
Message: Strange ideas aren't necessarily bad ideas.
Opening a gym for people who aren’t crazy about the gym seems like a foolish endeavor. It turns out that it is one of the best fitness concepts in recent memory. Planet Fitness has grown by leaps and bounds since it opened its doors in 1992. How did they achieve their exponential growth? Planet Fitness keeps membership cost low ($10/month), offers no classes, gives away free pizza, and crusades against the macho, intimidating weight lifters that make other gyms unbearable (or as they call them, "lunks").
When you hear Grondahl describe his business, it starts to make complete sense. “We are going after the 85 percent of the population that isn’t hard-core fit. We want people to feel comfortable and accepted here no matter what their workout level.” In fact, it sounds like while many fitness entrepreneurs chase hot trends and elite clientele, Grondahl has his eyes on the traditional bottom line. He adds, “It comes down to our business model. We run 24-hour gyms with 12 employees each. We don’t have salespeople, group exercise classes or child care. Everything is streamlined.” [Open Forum]
Alberto Perlman
Role: Founder, Zumba
Message: Always be on the lookout for inspiration.
In ten years’ time, Zumba founder Alberto Perlman went from hawking VHS tapes on late night infomercials to earning big-time accolades from the business community. The idea for Zumba itself had even more humble beginnings. The world-wide empire of Zumba was launched over the dinner table, during a conversation between Perlman and his mother. According to Perlman, "I go to my mom's house for dinner and she was talking about her dancing class. She said it was the only thing she'd ever done that didn't feel like exercising." Perlman’s mother’s words have become a mantra. Zumba’s guiding principle has been to create a workout that the inspires joy in whoever participates, and clearly, they have been successful.
Doug Levine
Role: Founder, Crunch Fitness
Message: Fitness can be social.
When we think about fitness, we often think of the solitary figure running to their breaking point, the lone weightlifter in the weight room, or the swimmer putting in their laps in an empty pool. When Crunch was founded in the late 80s, Doug Levine wanted to put a focus on something that is so often lost on adults: group fitness.
In an interview with CNN, Levine described the birth of Crunch like this:
“I saw that the health clubs in New York City were very generic, and I thought that we could open something that the emphasis was on classes that were different and novel and would make an impact on New York City … We're trying to build an environment that basically let's you feel, you know, you can be overweight, you can anorexic, you can be a substance abuser. If you're struggling with whatever you are, you're welcome here. I really think that the whole concept is that you can have a nose ring or you can, you know, be a grandmother and be very happy at this facility.”
Some of the classes Crunch provided in its prime included “pole dancing, bicycle-based yoga, coed wrestling, an "Abs, Thighs and Gossip" class run by a drag queen, and Capoeira.” [Wikipedia]
Barry Jay
Role: Co-Founder, Barry’s Bootcamp
Message: Sometimes you have to get back to the basics.
Barry Jay turned his life around with fitness. After spiraling into a numb existence fueled by drugs and alcohol in his early 20s, Jay pulled himself out of his life’s lowpoint by turning to a rigorous fitness routine. Eventually, Jay began to think he could stir the same results in others. Barry’s Bootcamp was born.
Though his gyms are known for a colorful environments featuring bright red lights, the workouts don’t require any fancy equipment or hot gimmicks. Jay says, “We always say it’s the 'Best Workout in the World,' and it really is. It’s so efficient. The treadmill is, hands-down, the best way to get cardio. And then you combine that with the free weights, and it’s really the whole package. You get everything you need in one hour.” [Spry]
RELATED: Anquan Boldin Ditches Football Cleats for Soccer Boots
RELATED: Full of Symbolism, adidas Unveils Lionel Messi's Champions League Cleat
