#17-HALO Talks Fast Break: From Boutique to Big Box-Jay Shoates Shares Operational and Community Insights

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This is Dave Ganulin Horton Halo talks NYC coming

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at you in lieu of our fearless leader, Pete Moore.

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Today I got Jay Shoats on the line coming out of Atlanta,

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Georgia, longtime Halo sector veteran. He's got a

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lot going on and we're gonna get right into it. Jay, thanks for coming

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on the show, man. No problem. Thanks for having me. Of course,

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of course. So you are a longtime Halo savior,

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sector veteran, good friends of Liz Clark who

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we've also had on the show. Shout out to Liz, why don't you give us

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a little bit of a background and what you're doing now with vision

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management services and your new venture in. I believe

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you said it was in the Atlanta airport. Tell us more. Well, by the Atlanta

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airport. By the Atlanta airport. Sorry. Yeah. So I started out

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in the HALO set during the. In the meekest form as possible,

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training and then went from training

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to doing contract work for different cities

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and from there opening facilities and just

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letting it expand from there. Getting in the fit tech industry a

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little bit, doing some consulting work and

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just putting all of it together and understanding that all of it falls up under

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that halo sector. And what are you working on now with

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the facility near the airport? And

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we talked prior to hitting record here, we talked about you doing

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like a box within a box model and you also have

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some community, very cool community initiatives that you

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were telling me about when we first spoke. So talk a little bit about that.

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So I am actually expanding my facility.

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So my initial facility is a kind of like a fitness co

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working space for fitness and wellness professionals and they come in and

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utilize my space and kind of service their clients. And

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now we're expanding to where we'll be

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a gym within a gym model that a lot of people use nowadays.

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And we're expanding. We're going to call it the Airport Athletic Club. This would be

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a membership based facility for every day

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for people to come in and work out, you know, like your traditional

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big box gym. And we'll just add the component

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of the fitness coworker space to go with it.

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So it'll be a fairly nice size facility located right

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by the Atlanta airport, probably about three or four minutes from the Atlanta airport.

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How many square feet you talking about? So we're just under

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30,000 square feet where we'll be at. So we got

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a nice size footprint. Gotcha, gotcha. Now this is

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interesting. Talk a little bit about the. This co working situation that

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you currently have going on. Right. Do you, do

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you mean that you have like a, like a gym more and more Facilities

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are putting in like co working tables and you know,

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soundproof booths. And is that, is that where you go in here with the

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one you already have open? So with the one we have already

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have open is called the train or die compound. Right. And

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yes we do have offices that we let the fitness awardness professionals use.

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But what I mean by fitness co working space is more so we have a

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full service gym, a big nice 5000

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foot, 5000 square foot studio space

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also where trainers PTS

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ATCs, they can come in and service their clients and they have

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space to operate their business up under our roof.

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So that's kind of more so the fitness co working. I know a lot of

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the lifetime fitnesses are doing the co working space for the everyday person that

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comes in. We will provide space for that in our new, in our new

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facility. But our fitness co working space is more so

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catered to the fitness awareness professional to actually come in and run their

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business. So that's kind of the difference with that. Right,

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gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. And what are you seeing now?

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Like you've been doing this for, for a long time. I know that you've been

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profiled with, with hfa, right? They did a

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profile on you. And where do you see this going in the

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next, let's just call it, you know, five years, 10

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years out. You've been in this now for, for quite a while. What are some

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of the changes that you're seeing for better or worse in the, in the halo

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space? I just think that people have to

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be agile. Agile enough to be able to fit

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in the different components of the halo sector. The halo

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sector isn't, doesn't just consist of somebody that has a gym or

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somebody that just does consulting work. You have to be agile enough to be

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able to fit into any kind of, any one of those roles

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in order to really get full

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utilization and understand the full halo sector. I think

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that a lot of people only go at it in one area

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as opposed to looking at the whole picture and

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seeing what components they could really add to it. Because it might be, it might

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be three or four different ways that you can really, that you can really contribute

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to the halo sector. And I just think people limit their self because

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the halo sector is a trillion dollar industry. What is it like $3 trillion?

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Yeah, yeah. Some say four. Yeah, yeah. So

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if you're agile and you know, a lot of people now are

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getting away from, you know, the traditional big box

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gyms. So if you're getting away from your big box gyms and you're getting away

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from what traditionally the fitness industry. Understand,

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you just have to make sure that you're looking at the total

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industry and that just consists that, that consists of parks outside

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all the way to

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the entire city. What I

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like what I'm doing with the city of College park, making

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the city of College park in Georgia a HALO certified city.

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So incompatible where the gyms in

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the city, the parks in the city, the walking trails in the city,

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everything kind of coordinates together to

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where people that come into the city, that move here understand that

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this is a healthy city and that we're being very

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proactive with giving a

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different outlook of how health looks in the community.

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That's the definition of what the HALO sector is. It consists of all those

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things, right? So you got to understand that balance,

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you're not going to have a balance if you're not, if you're not connecting back

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to your community. You have to connect back to your community. And you have

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to be in some forms a servant of your community

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in order for your community to come service you. Yeah,

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no, 100%. And it's, you know, I believe in karma.

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It's good karma, right, to do that and little

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plug for integrity square here. You know, we helped the FDNY and

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continue to help the fdny, you know, that initiative. And I

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encourage anyone listening to this to get involved either

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with your local fire department, maybe consider

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donating equipment to those guys. Because when, when Pete

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Moore found out, what, three years ago that there was not a line

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item for the FDNY for fitness fitness

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equipment, that was what started up this whole thing. So the city

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gives these guys the firehouse, an empty firehouse, and the equipment,

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you know, the firefighting equipment, but no fitness stuff. So every time

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you saw a firehouse in, in New York in the boroughs, it was

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donated or it was bought out of these guys pockets. So

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you know, he lost it in a good way and we started this whole initiative

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and now it's great and it feels great too. I, you know,

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know I absolutely concur. It's, it feels great to,

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to be a part of something like that. So encourage

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anyone listening to this to find something that they're passionate about and, and

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give back to the community. So I got another question

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for you. Okay, Jay, since, since you

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have experience here on sort of both sides of the fence, and by that I

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mean what would be considered maybe like more boutique,

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smaller footprint and obviously now going

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into a much larger footprint. How

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do you look at those differently as an operator? Right? What

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like the KPIs for, for fitness boutiques

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are this in your head, and maybe they're this in your head for

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the, the, the larger one, right? Or your

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operational playbook, if you will. It's, it's the,

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this for the smaller facility and this for the bigger facility. Because

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you're, you're kind of doing two. You're, you're going into a new market here. It

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sounds like, you know, so how do you think about that? I think

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it's kind of one in the same because how I treated the, the fitness and

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wellness professionals is how I treated the everyday member, because

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they are my everyday member. It was just a smaller scale

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than having a public gym. So I think you still have to be,

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you still have to have the same type of service. You just have to, you

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just have a more people with a public gym. And I just

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think customer service is customer service. A lot of people try to

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make it seem like because you're switching businesses or you're

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switching who you're servicing, right? That you have to,

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you have to do a lot of different things. But if you're doing good business,

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you're doing good business. If you understand good customer service. Good

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customer service is dealing with

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the person coming in, buying a T shirt to the

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person coming in and buying a program for a year.

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I think each person should be treated exactly the same with

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good service, service that they remember and service that

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they tell their friends about, because essentially that's the only way. That's how we do

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business. You do business with having a service

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that people want to give you money to come and use. And

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it doesn't matter who you deal with. You have to understand that

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that's what you're trying to accomplish. You're trying to have the best service

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that people will go tell their friends about. If you have good

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customer service and you have a good product, you translate that

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over to 100,000 square foot facility. There's no getting away from that

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now. The challenge there is always, you know, train. How

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do you. Now, you've been in this for a while now. You, you can't

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be at the front desk all day, right? You have to do everything else.

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So in your experience, how do you,

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what's your, like, standard operating procedure, if you got one,

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to ensure that the people that you bring on gives

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and provides that, that good service. Right. It's critical, obviously.

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So how do you, as an operator, as an owner who's got a billion different

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things to do, how do you ensure. What have you done to

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ensure that that service Translates out. Right. Do you, do you

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have them read a couple of suggested books? Do you have a type of training

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that you put them through? Like the nuts and bolts of this?

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It is. It is a. You do have to. You do have to

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have a playbook. And I got that

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from Tom Fiorina from the Cincinnati Athletic Club.

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You know, he's a juggernaut in our industry. You know, his son took over for

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him at the Cincinnati Athletic Club. But he was somebody I do. I

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haven't talked to him in a while, but he was somebody I did talk to

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on a regular basis to learn the game. And it's

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understanding that things are gonna. Sometimes things are gonna come at

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you that are different. And so you have to be able to adjust,

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learn from that adjustment and add to your playbook

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or take away from your playbook to make it a better playbook.

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You know, you can't just. Like in NFL, you can't run. You can't keep running

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the same plays or you gonna get a new head coach. Right.

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You know what I mean? So you have to adjust and always be a willing

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learner. It's always about learning and

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getting better. That's just like now, even though I've been

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in the Halo sector and I've done a lot of stuff, I still want to.

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I still want to get into Halo Academy. I still want to learn. I still

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want to learn that it's just staying a

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student and understanding that this industry is

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the best. People in this industry are the people that understand that research and learning

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is how you get, how you get far. Yeah. Yeah. We had a

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long conversation about the Halo Academy, so I appreciate.

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I feel you. My background, formal background, is education. I was a

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teacher myself and we talked about it earlier on the

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phone. The best, the best learners, you

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know, are. They're always open minded. They're oftentimes.

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The best teachers are often really good learners. You know, just.

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It just never, never stops or. And it. Well, frankly, it

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shouldn't stop. So we're going to wrap this up now, but Jay,

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I really want to thank you for coming on before we hit the

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off switch here. You got any last minute sort of favorite

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quotes or inspirational sayings? We always like to kind of

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wrap up a podcast around this. Anything stick out at you like your

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employees, like, oh, yeah, Jay always says this, you know, anything like

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that, jump out at you. Be

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consistent. Be consistent and be

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available, man. I think that's the biggest two things that we can have in our

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industry. In this industry. Be consistent and be available.

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Yeah. I like it. I like that a lot. On that note

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sir, we're going to wrap it up. Thank you for coming on the show and

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best of luck with the luck with the new endeavor

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in Atlanta. Is any website or anything up yet now where can people

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find you? The website is down getting rebuilt because

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I got a lot of new ventures going on. You know we are on Google

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so feel free to get on Google and give us a call or come by

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and check us out. Like I say we literally three minutes off the exit

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on old national highway and we're doing a lot of different things

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in our community and we're expanding from there.

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We're not just a health club we're entire community

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and we're growing from there.

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Excellent. Well best of luck as we come into 2026 here

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and thanks again for coming on the show. No problem. Thank you. Thank you for

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having me.