"The gym was full every day, even when the economy tanked. I always remembered that," states Alex Zaltsman. Alex now owns 3 Row Houses and 1 Pure Barre studio all under the Xponential family of brands. Originally from the technology, software & mobile application worlds, Alex discusses his entry into…
"What do you mean boxing and yoga? That makes no sense!" said basically everyone when Olivia floated the idea of this particular combination during her research. She went ahead, bootstrapped it all anyway (for all the right reasons!) and was immediately profitable. She had no outside capital and is now…
"You can and must make time for yourself, even if you think there's no time at all," states Rebbecca Schonfeld. Rebecca has battled mental health issues since she was young and has started sharing her story & experiences to help others on their own journey. Listen now to this important…
"Stay true to who your customers are. You also have to be ok not being appealable to everyone out there," states Andrew Hirsekorn, Principal & Founding Member of Eagle Merchant Partners. Eagle is a private equity firm and one of the owners of the largest Planet Fitness franchisees. Listen now…
"We wanted to find a way for health and wellness professionals to sell something that they were more confident in," states CEO Brett Maloley. Their team interviewed approximately 22,000 members, 11,000 trainers, and 1,000 physicians in the research phase. Ladder has ~65,00 users nearly 10,000 of whom are coaches and…
"When times were tough, the Mission and Vision of our club kept us going. It would have been very easy to slash our values for the sake of the dollar," stated Stephanie Coulon of Stone Creek Club & Spa in Louisiana. She and Larry Connor helped build this award-winning, high…
Mike Morris worked in specialty retail for nearly 25 years and helped scale national brands like J. Crew, The Vitamin Shoppe, and others. He specializes in retail & supply chain operations, software, and data management. After going through 4 private equity sales, he became a full time advisor in the…
Peerfit began with 8 employees and now has 100+ spread across the country. Their mission is ambitious! "It's to refine corporate wellness," states Chris Patton. He continues, "The value add is that we're doing something that it's hard for gyms to do, which is make that connection to the insurance…
Texas Capital Bank is a 30 billion dollar publicly traded company. (They do business nationally, not just in Texas!) The group just celebrated their 20th anniversary and have nearly 175 million invested in the HALO sector. "We're significantly different in that we talk about 'selecting partners' versus 'collecting clients,'" states…
"I look at private equity as a movie. You're walking into the theater halfway through, and there's all this action going on before you got there. If you don't try to understand how the plot has developed, where the players are, and what's going on, you're going to make mistakes.…
Physmodo is a software that, at its core,". . .measures human movement," states Andrew Menter, CEO. It's a 30 second screening using an infrared camera and proprietary technology which addresses some of the the negatives of the Functional Movement Screen. It also, ". . .helps with front desk engagement. It…
Mark began in the HALO sector in 1990 as a Personal Trainer and has worked with Merritt for 19 years. "You do the right thing, you take care of people, and the business takes care of itself," he states. With 9 locations plus 4 corporate, Merritt positions themselves in the…
Robert began his career in the HALO sector as a trainer in the Bay Area. He later dove in and learned sales with the teams at 24 Hour Fitness. After opening up his two current clubs and waiting (for years!) for a company to solve his data frustrations, he decided…
Rachel has been with Peake Media (the parent company of Club Solutions magazine) for over 7 years. Peake also publishes Box Pro, Mindful Studio, Campus Rec, and Community Rec Magazine, each with highly specific B2B audiences in the HALO sector. Their Mission? "Educate and empower fitness pros in a variety…
Jared has been in the HALO sector for over 10 years. He's a native Houstonian and scaled Dynamic Fitness to 3, full service locations ranging from 30-35,000 sq feet. "It was a whole lot harder than what I thought it would be. Overwhelming would be an understatement!" he joked. "It's…
The National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) is, by a large margin, the industry leader when it comes to educating top tier strength coaches who--many times--later go on to work with colleges, universities, and teams nationwide. They've educated over 30,000 professionals so far and operate as a non-profit. "We want…
A 30+ year veteran in the fitness industry, Dr. Kevin Steele earned his Ph.D at Pepperdine and had a personal training business even before there was even a term for it! Dr. Steele taught and coached at the university, and continued in the HALO sector with the legendary Don Wildman,…
"The industry is now embracing and accepting the space between medicine and fitness," states Lisa Dougherty, Founder of the MedFit network and--clearly--a woman on a mission! Like many of the best businesses, MedFit Network evolved organically from (an extremely important!) need that had yet to be met. The MedFit Network…
"I wanted to become the greatest we could become in one town and through influence, be able to affect the world," says Joe Cirulli. . .and he's done exactly that. Everyone in the HALO sector knows Joe's name. He's been a trusted Mentor, adviser and friend to many of the…
Chuze Fitness currently has 25 locations with 8 under construction and is one of the foremost brands in the San Diego area. Started by two families, Nick and Cory's parents were business partners in the hospitality space who parlayed that into the HVLP sector. This highly experienced team only decided…
Club Insider has become the "gatekeeper of the industry's history," says President Justin Cates. . . and anyone who truly knows the HALO space knows he's not exaggerating! If you haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting Justin's Dad, Norm. . .perhaps you haven't been around long enough and you're…
Josh McCarter's background goes back to when a T1 line cost "thousands" to install and when AOL was first scaling their dial up service! And through it all he's been adamant that, "Education across the board is super important." MINDBODY became a leader in the online booking field by--among other…
"Selling fitness has always been incredibly intangible, you're kind of buying it on faith. . .we made it tangible. You can see the vision of your future self," says Daron Allen, CEO of Visual Fitness Planner. Selling memberships used to be "incredibly unprofessional" and has changed significantly from what it…
Sean has been in the HALO sector for over 15 years. He (along with inventor Don Brown) was instrumental in launching the Ab Roller which went on to earn over 1 billion dollars. Flash to the 2007 IHRSA where, with only two prototypes in hand, he debuted the Ab Coaster,…
