HALO Talks: Elevating Wellness

"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 end facility from the ground up 10 years ago and it's been going strong since. They opened in a down time, and in a saturated...

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 PE world 12 years ago and currently works in both the fitness and retail side. Mike's wealth of ex...

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 carriers. Gyms and studios are good at what they do, but dealing with insurance probably isn't in the...

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 Charles Adams. Listen now to learn more about the process of apply...

"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. Our job is to figure that out!" states finance industry veteran, Peter Brockway. This comprehensive discussion touches o...

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 really grabs people's attention. It kind of looks like a video game!" laughs Tyler Nicholson...

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 upper middle market tier. Listen now to learn more about why they, "...decided to try and stop competing with everyone else in...

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 to do it himself. Fitness BI is an extremely comprehensive analytics platform that--in 3 short years years--counts ~1,400 clubs as custo...

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 of niches," says Zabonick. Listen to this IHRSA 2019 interview and learn what trends Rachel i...

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 about learning from each mistake that's made and continuing to move forward." Listen to learn more about Dynamic's m...

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 to stay at the principle level and make sure that everything we're shari...

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, Founder of the Health & Tennis Corporation of America. Dr. Steele later went on to research and scale the first nat...

As the Executive Vice President of the American Council on Exercise (ACE), Graham has been in the HALO sector since 1991. As a former competitive cyclist with a BS in Athletic Training, he notes, "Our Mission, really simply stated, is to get people moving." With over 90,000 certified professionals in 100 different countries thus far, ACE continues to make its mark. As a non-profit, ACE is also sel...

"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. It is now the largest directory of fitness professionals on the Internet who work with special p...

"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 top people in the industry and is highly respected across the board. He worked for 6 clubs that all went bankrupt before borrowin...

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 to take on private equity on their 14th location. They operate off the maxim, "We want to be the...

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 missing out! Industry icon, Norm Cates, is one of the Founders of IHRSA with 44 years under his belt an...

"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 was 10 years ago. VFP has been at the forefront of this, with everything now being "API f...

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, which also went on to huge success! The Abs Company never took outside funds and--in this wide ranging discussion--Sean discusses e...

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 things--constantly driving this point home. And as far as scaling a successful SaaS model, "It doesn't...

A 40+ year industry veteran, Andrew began his career with Joe Cirulli--where shirts and ties were required for Nautilus instructors. . "which was the only machine available back in the day," laughs Levine. "He didn't want us in athletic wear and we had to watch 50 training videos at the Nautilus HQ. If you didn't pass you weren't allowed to work for minimum wage. And you know what? We all fought f...

Jersey Strong used to be called WoW (Work Out World.) The club (which was started by Stephen's Mom) eventually morphed into one of the most well known independent health club chains in New Jersey. Stephen Roma, Jr. began from the ground up and was instrumental in helping the club stay on the cutting edge of sales & marketing strategies. Learn how this family continues to remain on top, how they we...

How do you avoid standard interview responses? What's a better way to give & receive feedback? How do you get comfortable as the company rapidly expands? What's the 'right' number of clubs for Area & Regional Managers? Shawn started in the HALO sector in 1994 and worked with Joe Cirulli for 20 years at the iconic Gainesville Health & Fitness, ". . . doing every job you possible can!" Currently the...

With 20 years in the fitness industry and a former Danish national karate team member, Rasmus Ingerslev is a pioneer in helping to spread (and change the perception of fitness) in Denmark and other European countries. In 1999, his first venture became the largest club group in the country. Fresh Fitness, his next project, now has 75,000 members. He started the Danish Fitness Organization and helpe...