Podcast

Host (01:42.21)
Oh, well, shake. Shake. guess I could.

Guest (01:54.328)
Shake me.

Guest (02:03.928)
Post-shake, post-crack shake. That's like, I'm already warmed up.

Host (02:05.784)
thumb it a little bit.

Host (02:10.594)
Yeah, sure you are. No, there's, this is very fruity. If you want something different, we can change it up. There's this other one though that's at Whole Foods, and I don't know the name of it, but it's fucking bomb. We started getting them at the Chase Lounge, because we're like.

Guest (02:22.348)
I'll drink that.

Host (02:34.326)
Chase Sapphire card holders so you get into the lounge there. Yeah, it's like pretty fucking cool. But anyways, they have these these cool electro like dreams. So you just we just take like 12 of them and we leave. We're like we pay a thousand dollars a year. We should be able to get these. Can pocket a bunch of these. Yeah. Cool.

Guest (02:47.009)
Nice.

I can pocket a couple.

Guest (02:58.668)
I sent you another email. I did. I saw that. ago. know, we're working with this marketing company and so we're hitting all these different pieces of the puzzle. And one of them is that questionnaire came out to all the trainers. And so I hadn't filled it out yet and I filled it out this morning and it just, it seems to overlap pretty well with where we're at in our process. Yeah.

Host (03:23.47)
I mean, I think I've told you this before. Anytime you, anytime you engage with a marketing company or a marketing person, they have their process and they have their things that they want. And it's like almost always fucking correct. But it's like, what are you going to do with this information now? Are you going to use this and put it into like creative marketing or is it just shit that sits on a shelf somewhere? And that's where it gets a little bit weird.

That's why I'm super stoked that we get to use this fucking here today. Yeah, like. First of all. Thank you for doing this. This is the first in-person podcast that I've ever done. I've never had somebody literally sit across from me and just talk to me and have these funny microphones in our faces and doing all that shit. So I'm super stoked that you're doing it. You're an easy conversation, so I'm happy that we can we can do this.

Guest (04:23.118)
Well, none of this is abnormal for me, so write down and do it.

Host (04:25.07)
Right, you this every day. I have a whole list of questions. Some of them are from you, some of them are from me. But one thing that has been gnawing on my brain since I started with you and I've never gotten down to like the core answer is like, why do you own a gym? Like, I know you had a gym.

up by Tahoe in Truckee. And I know that that did really well until you guys decided to move, make some changes, and you came up here and brought Fortitude to Bend. But like, why did you open a gym in the first place?

Guest (05:11.606)
Yeah, mine is more like a fitness journey, just like everybody else's. Right. Hey, I started when I was young and I used to do this and then time went by and I didn't do that as much. And then I did this. I think most people can relate to that. And so for me, it was just various different phases of life that I went through. You remember growing up and hearing that you should get good grades and go to college?

Host (05:39.854)
Yeah

Guest (05:40.888)
get a job and then find somebody and settle in and have a fence in the house and the fence and the kids and the dog. That was definitely a path that was put out in our generation and definitely in my family. so that was a path I was on for quite a while. And then there became a time where I was just really, well, at the time I was hurt, but I was also just dissatisfied.

I pictured my life to be something with a daily career that was something I either enjoyed, was passionate about, or could have a dramatic effect on people with. And I was coming out of the software world and sold software and I wasn't very good at it. And I used to go to their gym. I worked at Oracle Corporation, so it was a gigantic...

corporation, think my employee number was something like 28,300. And so, you know, being just a drop in the bucket of it, or maybe even a drop in an ocean of employees there, my passions didn't lie within software whatsoever. Yeah. So I was living for the weekends and living for the weekends to me meant going wakeboarding.

Host (06:42.798)
50.

Guest (07:04.378)
or getting out of the Bay Area and going out and doing something fun. And I wanted to do that more often. And so it really kind of changed my perspective on how do I want to spend the rest of my life and how do I want to show up every day as far as going to work. And when I was showing up at the corporation, I wasn't really showing up very well.

Yeah, I wasn't very present. wasn't excited. If anything, I was nervous.

Host (07:37.174)
way to make some money so that you could do the weekend stuff.

Guest (07:40.098)
Well, you know, with the the career path or the picket fence college, all that stuff that we talked about. I felt lost. Yeah, I felt lost. And so. I really wanted to do something different, and there was a time where I just dreamt really hard. What do I want to do? What's what am I passionate about? How can I turn something I enjoy doing?

into something that's not going to feel like work. Yeah.

Host (08:11.086)
Yeah. What age were you when this happened?

Guest (08:14.956)
so I was, I know exactly when it was. I was 29 when I was doing this, this type of contemplation.

Host (08:22.338)
That's interesting. There is a weird thing about the change of age, right? When you're 20, when you're turning 20, I mean, it's all about the party man, That's girls and partying, and that was kind of the thing. And then as you approach 30, you're like, I don't know if I can do this for 10 more years. What am I going to do?

But there's somehow there's a fundamental shift in your brain that happens at 30 and then it happens again at 40 and I'm sure it happens again at 50 and 60 and so on. But that same type of thing happened for me. It was after my 30th birthday. I was hung over for like three days and that had never happened before. And I was like, man, shit's gotta change. This is freaking wild. So for you to start that at

just before that is pretty cool, knowing that you're like, yeah, I gotta do something different, but I still want this other piece of my life, this weekend piece.

Guest (09:28.79)
Yeah. So what that really became for me was I wanted to become what I would call a weekday warrior and not live for the weekends and be able to, at the time, the things I was really passionate about were wakeboarding and snowboarding.

And so for me, I wanted to be able to snowboard on a Tuesday. And that's not really possible when you're working in the corporate world. That's just not the way it goes. You roll the hours that the corporation dictates to you, and you probably work even a little bit more over time.

And then on the weekend you get released. for me the hardest thing that I recall doing was these Sunday nights I'd just stare at the ceiling and go, man, I gotta go back to work tomorrow. And I would just have dread. And I had a million dollar quota at the time. I had to sell a million dollars worth of software a year. The objective was to make 50 phone calls a day.

Host (10:26.74)
Hope.

Guest (10:26.99)
I was calling people that were much more intelligent than I was that were much more educated on the product that I was selling them and I just felt kind of inept and so I wasn't seeing myself wanting to do that forever and I definitely didn't see myself being that that successful at it

Host (10:38.614)
Yeah.

Guest (10:51.4)
And so I had this really deep desire that I wanted to be an expert in something. And I don't know what an expert is defined by, but in my opinion, I was no expert at software sales and it wasn't where I wanted to have my future. And I was already along that life path. I was married at the time I had the house, I had the dog.

Host (11:17.496)
The same.

Guest (11:17.782)
And I had the fans. Yeah. And then the kids were like in the really near future. They were on the horizon. And so. You know, when you have that situation, you're kind of set up that, this is now the path that I've chosen. And it comes with certain circumstances like continuing to pay the mortgage. For me at the time, my wife was a pretty big breadwinner.

And so she was holding down the fort for us in certain ways. And for me, I wanted to potentially change my life and change my career, but I didn't see an opportunity or an option for that. In particularly because if you have the kids, then the breadwinner stops working because I didn't necessarily see myself as Mr. Mom. And...

Man, that was just kind of a predetermined, all right, here's what you're going to do. And potentially you're going to be a career guy for the next 20, 30 years of stressing on Sunday night.

Host (12:31.622)
Were you already training at that point in time? You said you went to the gym on the weekends or you used the facilities there? Yeah, but I- training hard?

Guest (12:38.542)
I would work out at lunch. Yeah, so I would, I would, they would encourage you to not leave the campus during lunch, meaning they brought nice restaurants and things to the campus. They brought your dry cleaning to your desk.

So the whole objective was to keep you around and keep you working. And they had a great gym. I mean, it was beautiful. Had a swimming pool, had a beach volleyball court, indoor track, basketball court, free weights machines. And I'd see these young people, personal training, and they were my age at the time because I was a young guy. And I'd look at them and go, hmm.

Host (13:10.99)
whole night.

Guest (13:29.902)
That's something I'd have some interest in doing. I'd always lifted weights. I had this big influence in my life when I was 13 who taught me how to bench and squat. He ended up being my wrestling coach. He was my Spanish teacher. And so he was one of my first very influential mentors. And I've had quite a few of them in my life, fortunately.

So yeah, he definitely taught me how to lift weights. And then I was doing that at the age of 26, 27, 28, working in the corporate world. was kind of still using those same principles that I learned back then, but I wasn't training people. And I really didn't have the inclination to train people yet. I didn't know what that looked like.

Host (14:16.686)
Sure.

Guest (14:17.794)
But what I did think was there's no way I can go back to making the amount of money that a personal trainer might make, especially entry level with the situation that I was in, right? My mortgage, kids on the horizon, all those things. So I had a lot of financial pressure to succeed. And then I had this significant dissatisfaction with career and life and kind of

what path it looked like it was going down and just kind of dreading like, man, here I go. I've seen people go down this path before in my lifetime and I just committed to it. So that was, I can take myself and put my soul or mind in that situation and feel that kind of dread. Yeah.

Host (15:13.59)
Yeah. So you're training. At what point do you say to yourself, I'm going to give this thing a shot.

Guest (15:22.269)
O-L-B

Host (15:22.826)
In a gym owner, a personal trainer, any of those things, because it seems like a pretty big leap. I'm interested in it. But then like, how do you turn that into a career?

Guest (15:33.102)
Sure. Well, I would say that the easy answer was, have you ever heard of rock bottom?

Host (15:39.726)
Yeah, I've been there quite a few times.

Guest (15:43.372)
So I would, you know, it was a matter of a couple years worth of progression from pretty much the time I was, I can define it, from May 1st of the year 2000, I was 26 years old. And I would say there was one day that changed my life there, and that led to some...

failures and some experiences that led to needing to make some life choices.

Host (16:18.318)
Yeah. So when you started, how do I ask this question? Did you start personal training at someone else's gym? Or did you say, are you the type of person that's like, fuck it, I'm going all in. I'm going to find some money. I'm going to open a gym. I'm going to pack it full of people and start going.

Guest (16:24.312)
Did.

Host (16:47.138)
But what did that look like?

Guest (16:48.376)
Yeah, so let's just say I had no money, no expertise, and really no connections at the time. I was living in Redwood City, California. And when I mentioned rock bottom, like what what led to this was in on May 1st of 2000, I was wakeboarding. And I tried a trick that I had been

Host (16:53.889)
Hahaha

Guest (17:17.422)
Rehearsing mentally, watching videos on, really desired to accomplish this next level trick, wakeboarding. And I recently bought a new boat.

And I was, at the time, it was my girlfriend. And so that's the one thing I did out of order. You know, we were talking about the college and the house and the thing. I actually went to college, got the job, found a girlfriend, bought a boat.

Host (17:52.165)
Hahaha

Guest (17:54.164)
So I fell in love with wakeboarding and it was a thing that I did on the weekends. And I was really hoping that these guys that I was introduced to would invite me. Hey, is the invitation coming this weekend? You know, I was pining for it because it was just so much fun and it was so much of release of not thinking about all the other stuff. And I was inherently and naturally good at it.

Host (17:59.576)
Yeah.

Guest (18:23.52)
So that made me feel good. Sure. I was actually doing something I was good at. And then I got hurt pretty soon. I was tried this trick. It was called an S bend. I. After lunch session, I remember it distinctly like approaching the wake. OK, this is the time I'm going to do it. And I went up in the air and.

did this maneuver that's pretty outrageous. It's like a Superman with a rotation and a spin and basically just smashed on the water. And when that incident happened, it was obvious to me that I was hurt. so long story short, I broke my foot in half, I broke my ankle.

tore a bunch of tendons in either side of my foot, did not tear my achilles. Everyone's like, did you tear your achilles? I was like, no, I basically did everything but.

Host (19:22.422)
Right. So that's the only thing that held on. Yeah.

Guest (19:25.256)
I got a really strong Achilles, which is kind of ironic, right? All right. So that happened. And that kind of changed my physicality that you hear sometimes like, well, that's when you found out your parents were human. This is when I found out I was not impervious to injury.

And I'd been hurt what I would call significantly twice before that, when I was 16, once when I was 17. But beyond that, man, I thought I was super kid. Yeah. Yeah. I would go out there and put my body at risk regularly without too much

For thought. Because, hey, I've gotten this far. I've hucking my carcass for years, in particularly to impress my brothers when I was a kid. And when this happened, it was like, I can get hurt. And then what, the long story short is I'm still hurt from it.

And so this is 26 years later. And so the first three years of that really led to a downward spiral of not being myself, not feeling confident, not doing a job I liked, and then not being able to live for my weekends. really kind of diving towards that rock bottom, which led towards I got divorced. I ultimately married the girl that I had the boat with.

Two years into our marriage, I got divorced. And so this really spurred a transition for me where I was like, well, I'm no longer married to the Bay Area. I'm no longer married to corporate life. And by that time, I wasn't selling software. was like selling insurance and trying to to find my way through not selling software because I wasn't very good at it. But it was also a tough time. It was like when the bubble burst.

Guest (21:40.524)
Yeah, so when the bubble first burst and I was hurt, I could hide for a while. And then after that, it was like, well, the guys who got through that are now like kicking butt. And I'm basically looking for a job. Yeah. So I got I would like to call it I got released or re-released into the wild.

Host (22:02.808)
Attaboy. Yeah.

Guest (22:04.512)
And that's really, it might've been pretty dark at the time, but that was really a huge turning point for me in transition of going from, you know, like playing other people's game and life path to like, I'm gonna buck the system.

Host (22:24.696)
Yeah, that's, I mean, aside from me sharing my whole story, I have some similar paths in there. I didn't necessarily go to college, get a wife and buy a boat. I got a job early, bought a bunch of toys, a truck, a quad.

Didn't go to college. Then finally went to college. Then realize what it's like to come out of college at 25 instead of 21 or 22 like most kids do. So it's pretty life changing, right? It's just like all of a sudden you're like, oh shit, what do I do? So let's maybe fast forward a little bit to to you starting your first gym and tell me what that was like. That was up in Truckee, right?

Guest (23:13.6)
Well, it's really actually in Tahoe City, California. So when I got divorced, I moved to no other than Tahoe City, California. And people might go, well, how the heck did you choose that? I'd be like, well, I grew up in Colorado. I went to two years of high school and four and a half years of college in Wyoming. I moved to San Francisco mostly because my brother lived there and everybody else I knew was either going back to their respective town in Wyoming.

Host (23:23.134)
yeah.

Guest (23:43.114)
or they were going to move to Denver. And it was like, well, I've already spent time in both those places and I'm ready to do something different. so moving to San Francisco was it was a great big opportunity. And I feel like I kind of got chewed up and spit out like the the keeping up with the Jones type of philosophy, the tech money that was being thrown around.

all of that, and I was kind of a failure at it. I was kind of a dropout at the time. so I told you I contemplated hard on my passions. And I came up with this concept of what I would call an indoor board sport training facility. That's like...

I had, when I was a youngster, I had what I would call paralysis by analysis. And that meant that I, you know, if someone goes, Travis, what do want to do when you grow up? I'd go, I have no freaking clue. At the time, I'd probably say something like, well, I'm going to be successful and I'm going to make money. And what, what that

Host (24:37.87)
Yeah.

Host (24:56.792)
sure.

Guest (25:02.858)
Sounded like and looked like at the time versus what it really is, especially now. I'm at this age It's like way different story. But the the problem was I did not know what I wanted to do with my life and so When I when I worked really hard on it, it was like you want to do something in the the the sports space Because that's really where you feel at at home and

It's really where you kind of shine and excel. And then, you know, I was a traditional sports athlete. was a soccer player, baseball player. But then I also like when I was 13, I fell in love with skateboarding. I dreamt that the entire planet was paved so I could just like surf the earth. Yeah, pretty glad that didn't work out. If anything, it derailed my life, but.

Host (25:52.472)
Skateboarding saved my life.

Guest (26:01.102)
It was a great lifestyle that was associated with it, which was like hanging out with your boys and doing all that stuff. And that translated into snowboarding where I grew up. I grew up in the mountains up in Evergreen, Colorado. And so in our neighborhood, we would build jumps in the snow. we were on the forefront of snowboarding at the time. I have two older brothers.

and they were at an age where they were mobile, you know, and they were also in the know, they knew the trends that were coming up. And so they were some of the first snowboarders at ski resorts in the state of Colorado. Yeah, so that's like a bleeding edge of snowboarding and.

Host (26:41.718)
wild.

Guest (26:50.134)
getting back to it, like those were the things that I was passionate about. That's what I was raised on and that's what I really dug. And then taking three years off after being hurt, it was like, what is it do I want to do? And I was like, I want to get back to that. And I came to the conclusion that, you know, when I got hurt wakeboarding, I was doing something that was over my pay grade.

And when people want to learn these types of things, like they're either going to pay the price like I did, or there's got to be some better way. my better way that I came up with was to have some type of forgiving environment to learn board sports tricks, basically. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's plenty of people who then this you got to recognize that this is the year 2000. And so the snowboard park and the ski park is really a kind of a new thing. wasn't it didn't exist for that long before that. And these jumps are gigantic.

I don't know if you've seen what these things are, but it's what you see now in the Olympics. Yeah, half pipe, but we're talking like freestyle snowboard. Yeah, gigantic jump. So, you know, like how do you learn how to spin yourself two to three times in the air, taking a what we would call a 70 foot booter?

Host (28:08.398)
Right.

Guest (28:23.85)
And then the booter and then, you know, not casing the landing or overshooting it or trick just landed on your head. And so that environment is just not forgiving. It's it's rock solid. It's it's.

It's a great way to destroy yourself. Yeah. So what's the progression there and how to how do people do that differently? So that's really that's that's the path I was headed on. So I moved to Tahoe. I became a snowboard instructor. The roundabout way is I went up to Alpine and I interviewed for a job with this guy's name, Shadar Edelman.

Host (28:47.192)
Fuck yourself.

Guest (29:11.444)
And I said to him, was like, yeah, I think I want to create an indoor board sport training facility. So I want to work at the Snowboard Park and I want to help design these jumps and watch these guys do all these tricks and then be able to coach those tricks in an indoor facility. And it seemed like the route for me. And he goes, he's from New Zealand. So, you know, he says, you don't want to do that.

And they're what he goes you want to be a coach he want to be an instructor and so he Happen to be hiring for Snowboard instructors rather than hiring for this the park that was a whole different Department. Yeah, but little did I see through that part But he said yeah, you want to be in you want to be a coach Or you know in that world, it's called an instructor

And I was like, yeah, you're right. I want to be an instructor. Yeah, you know what I want. But no, I bit into that really hook line and sinker. I was like, OK, I want to be an instructor. And I thought I knew how to snowboard pretty well because I was 30 at the time I started snowboarding when I was 13. Stop skiing at 13, basically exclusively snowboarded from 13 to 30.

Host (30:13.4)
sure dude. Yeah.

Guest (30:36.934)
Started skiing when I was four. So that was kind of a big thing to give up and that was this culture clash So it was taking place too And so, know snowboarding finally was becoming more Available and accepted. Yeah, I mean you take skateboard and surf culture to some to the golf club Yeah, that's kind of what what snowboarding brought to skiing. So it's fun and I had that I have these

Host (30:50.902)
snowboarding

Guest (31:06.38)
these tendencies of being quite conservative. That's kind of the baseball player, soccer wrestler in me. And then I have these other tendencies that are just kind of like, fuck that. And so with that is the culture of snowboarding and skateboarding and the kind of that rebellion. I got that in me.

Host (31:33.972)
yeah. Something that you said in there is really interesting and I don't know if you've recognized it at that time, but just to come up with the idea of finding this little pocket that you can help people in. That's an interesting thing because what I normally see out of adults or

entrepreneurs or business people, whatever you want to call them, is they're looking to solve big problems and make big money, take big risks, things like that. And I've done something similar to you in my life. Like I've tried to find the little tiny pocket where it's like, and you could really fuck yourself.

up if you try a 720 and you can't even land a 180 on a snowboard. Like, what are you trying to do? You're just trying to keep up with the trends, the culture, your friends, whatever. And you're like, well, I'm going to just make an indoor thing for this. And I don't know if it was like, all right, put your snowboard on. We're going to fuck around on a trampoline. Or if it's like, hey, we have one of those artificial, I don't even know what the hell they are. Those

those ramps that are made out of like fake grass or whatever. Like, I don't know what you were going to do there, but it doesn't matter. It's the way that you think about that problem. And I think that is really interesting. And I'm wondering if you took that same thing to the gym after this venture, or if you even recognize that that was something that you do. Like, what does that look like in your life?

Guest (33:20.15)
So I would say that this is my path that I was on. And so the dream of the indoor board sport training facility was that. It was a dream. And so what do you want to do with your dreams, Travy? Make them come true. Right? So let's start chipping away at that.

Host (33:39.67)
Hell yeah.

Guest (33:44.43)
If there's some things that could describe me, I think that you could say that I am I'm scrappy and That I'm determined Some well and particularly as I was younger I'm headstrong and I'm persistent and So those are traits that are good for training Because training really is about being consistent. It's about showing up

And so what I found was I needed to get on a path. And I needed to get on that path, and I needed to focus. And so the first thing about it was, well, how am I going to create this facility with no expertise and no money and no connections? And I just moved to a new town. So I don't have history here. Nobody knows me.

I don't have hookups or connections or sponsorships or people are hearing like, oh, that guy's a dick. Like I have nothing. I got a fresh clean slate, which is cool. But it's also like, man, I'm starting at zero. And so the first step was becoming that snowboard instructor. Like I snowboarded that year for 120 days.

I got my level one certification. So I learned how to become a snowboard instructor. I learned the teaching model that something called the American Association of Snowboard Instructors has already chartered and carved out and figured out. And so that gave me a model to teach by. And then it also gave me a methodology of breaking down the snowboard and all the different movement patterns.

into things that I probably did but didn't know how to describe them or identify them. So that was a really cool experience and that would have been really applicable to the indoor facility. And so the next step was it was like, okay, the snowboard season's over. You've got no real job anymore, homeboy. And what are you gonna do now? And I went down to the local gym in town.

Guest (36:07.18)
It's called Asante Lakeside Fitness. And it's the only gym in town. And it's really cool. It's on the backside of this Safeway. And it's on the backside of a building that faces Lake Tahoe. And it's, again, the only gym in town. So when people decide, hey, I'm going to get fitness in this town.

They go down there and they buy a membership for $55 a month. They sometimes put them on sale certain months of the year. So people like hold out. And then they get it for $48. And yeah. And so they, you know, they waited for that to happen to delay their fitness. And then they, they buy the membership and you know what happens when people buy a membership, they feel better on.

Host (36:59.0)
sure.

Guest (36:59.63)
And so they don't necessarily start going. They've already just kind of cured that itch a little bit. And then when they do go, what do they do?

Guest (37:12.546)
Where are the results? And so what I did is I went to this local gym and I went to the owner and I said, hey, nice to meet you. I'm Travis, new to town, like to be a personal trainer at your gym. And the lady was very forthcoming, but also kind of upfront like, well, are you a personal trainer? And I was like, well, no, I'm not, but I will be soon.

And she goes, well, I've got a front desk job for $10 an hour. Oh, boy. And I'd be willing to offer you that. And in my mind, you might think, OK, I used to sell software. used to make $120,000 a year at one point in time. I thought about it for about two seconds, and I go, heck yeah. Take it. Yeah. Let's do it. And I mean,

Host (38:04.076)
Yeah, I'll take it. I'll fucking take it.

Guest (38:09.75)
Remember I got re-released into the wild. So my overhead's pretty low, right? I don't have much to take care of. I had my own apartment. I rented a condo in a fourplex and I had my own place and then pretty soon after that I moved to this Rasta man that I snowboarded with.

Host (38:21.676)
sleeping on your homie's

Guest (38:37.6)
into the extra bedroom. so he was paying, you know, half the rent. And that saved me some dough. And I know I basically just had to pay for food and I had some money at the time. But when I say I didn't have money to start a facility like I was living on money to be able to eat little above ramen. Yeah. But wasn't going out a lot. Yeah.

Host (39:01.75)
I've been there. Yeah.

Guest (39:04.204)
Great times to look back on as far as like not having much responsibility. But that was what was cool about it. Like I took this job, 10 bucks an hour, it's the only gym in town, so all these people are walking in the front door. I think they had approximately 600 members. And guess what? I got to be the one that checked him in at the front door. Hey Dave, hey Tom, hey Joe, hey Sandra.

Right, so they're coming in each day. I'm meeting them. I'm getting to know everybody in town. I'm getting to know everybody who works out. I'm studying for my personal trainer certification. I'm getting my cert and there's another girl that works the front desk. Her name is Kelly and I say, hey Kelly, I'd like to personal train you for free. She says, heck yeah. And so.

We're basically front and center of the gym. I'm personal training Kelly. Kelly works at the front desk. So when I'm not there pumping myself up at the front desk saying, hey, I'm now a personal trainer. She's there and they go, hey, we saw you training with Travis. What's that like? And she's like, it's fun. He's doing things a lot different than maybe I would have exercised before. And it's it's fun and it's challenging. And she was a snowboarder as well.

And in fact, she ultimately became Jadar Edelman's wife, which is cool because ultimately she became my first trainer. Nice. You know, six years later.

Host (40:34.402)
So let me stop you really fast.

I have so many questions about this part. You said, can I train you for free? And the person's like, hell yeah. What did the owner say? Get back to your front desk position, what the fuck you doing training? Or were they just like, yeah, do whatever you want. I don't care.

Guest (40:58.508)
No, it wasn't like that. You know, I started working there. This would have been, I moved to Tahoe in October of 2003. Ski season happened. And then this is March, April that I start working the front desk. It's probably now late July. And so I'd had time on the desk, time to get my, or working on my personal trainer certification.

All knowing the owner's like, I know what you're up to. You're working your way off the desk into a personal training. Yeah, it was agreed upon. It was a predetermined path. Like she wasn't surprised that I was going to become a personal trainer. Is that's what I told her I wanted to do the first day she met.

Host (41:34.614)
Yeah, so they allowed it.

Host (41:48.238)
Right, right. Yeah, the expectations were set. And then so you start the training process with this person and they say you're doing things a little bit differently or you're doing different moves. Were these moves that you knew before? How did it differ from the training program that you were in, the personal training program?

Guest (42:11.34)
Well, I studied this thing called the National Academy of Sports Medicine. It's a book at the time with some videos, I think, supporting it. We got to remember we're in 2004.

Host (42:27.618)
They gave you a CD-ROM.

Guest (42:29.742)
That's not far off for sure the future ones I know from that organizations were still on CD-ROM. So let's see. She said that it felt different or maybe we were doing something different. First of all, what is different? And then what's the norm? You know, like that's the big question about like, well, how do I get fit? And people go, well, I'm going to

I'm going join a gym or they go, I'm going to start running again or they go, hey, I started doing push ups yesterday. And there's like, in my opinion, there's a problem with all three of those that happen that you would hope wouldn't happen, but they basically happened to everybody. And so I think that I wanted to train people effectively.

You know this evolved over time, but I think the intent originally was to do it right. Hey, here's how to move correctly and most people just they just don't move well. Yeah, and so that'll be a big topic of our conversation is like what is proper movement and what is moving well?

Host (43:48.174)
I mean, that's what we do at your gym. To be fair, I go to your gym and you personal train me. But there's all this background stuff that it's not super present anywhere out there in the world that you have all of these credentials. You have all of this history of all this trial and error.

And so we're kind of getting up to the point where the gyms come in. And then obviously I want to talk about the business side of the gym, but I certainly want to work my way into your philosophy about this and how you look at it and how you can get people to move their bodies correctly. I think a lot of folks are similar to me, probably the men we trained for sports, right? But we were trained by our coaches.

who were old men, drunks, they were just like whatever, they were just your football coach, they were just your baseball coach, your soccer coach. They weren't ex-college athletes, some of them were maybe occasionally if you had a good one. You just listen to your coach and they're like put more weight on there, go down deeper. And so I had years of training.

That was probably the wrong way. I think I have some good form in some situations, right? And I know my body can remember some of these moves, but after two years of training with you, I'm like, there's all these other things that I didn't even think about. And so I kind of want to get into that perspective from you. Um, you know, where did you learn that stuff and how do you deploy that into your current gym? But

To be fair, I want you to keep going with your story.

Guest (45:38.29)
Right on. You know, I think the story continues to build on itself and as time goes by, all the pieces of puzzle you'll see, they kind of fit in. So my goal is not to be long-winded about my story as much as, you know, these are the things that I experienced and these are the things that I went through that evolved my philosophy on this and what made me a trainer and then hopefully what made me a good trainer.

So, you know, at the time I'm coming off of what you knew, you know, like high school weight room. We're in high school or even in my case, junior high, I started lifting and I mentioned that I had this coach who was my seventh grade Spanish teacher. Well, he was a bodybuilder.

And he had his own garage gym. so at one point, my mom wanted to do this big bike ride. And so she asked this fella, hey, will you teach me how to lift some weights? I want to get stronger and I'll ride this bike. Ride the Rockies.

And so he had us over to his house and it's the first garage gym I'd ever seen. He had mirrors on the wall in his garage. He had a full set of dumbbells and a squat rack and a bench and a real barbell and like those metal plates that clank. The classic ones. Yeah. So he taught me how to squat and bench at 13. But beyond that, I knew what everybody else knew, which was, you know,

probably try to lift as heavy as you possibly can. Bench press is king. Squats are in there somewhere. I kind of avoided deadlifts growing up. then everything else seemed so accessory. was like deltoid raises and just kind of dumb worthless bodybuilding moves that I attempted to repeat for what if I learned it.

Guest (47:48.352)
that at 14 or 15 and we're getting to 30. So I'm now 30 and I know that routine. know know back and buys. I know chest and tries. I know how to squat. I didn't clean much. I didn't deadlift much. And so that's what most of us are acquainted with. And then there's calisthenics, you know, like you do push ups or sit ups or.

jump on stuff. Right. But you know that's basically what we all knew. Wasn't didn't very much. So you know this is back in the day before the Internet. So you saw the same Men's Health magazine that I saw. Right. Like that was one of the only sources of of where to get workouts maybe. Occasionally you might see like a.

Host (48:22.222)
Yeah, right.

Guest (48:41.42)
a workout and a ski magazine. And other than that, was like, test and try back and by, skip leg day. That was just really, really common way to work.

Host (48:43.512)
sure.

Host (48:48.952)
Yeah.

Host (48:52.27)
God, I used to hate that. just remember all the dudes in high school that were like jacked in their upper body and they had these little chicken legs. It was, it was, it was back and bias chest and tries. That was the thing.

Guest (49:05.518)
So I was good at bench press, like probably abnormally good at it. There was a contest that I recently uncovered a medal that I have when I moved. And it's from 1988 from a bench press contest and it got second place. Yeah, so it was pretty cool. was like a local weightlifting competition. It was probably the only weightlifting competition I was ever in. But

anybody who's ever laid eyes on me knows that I'm short. I'm small. And so learning how to lift weights gave me an opportunity to be stronger than just being small. And bench press was something that you did. And in this contest, I think I weighed 100 pounds, if not under 100 pounds. yeah, I bench pressed over 135.

Host (49:52.974)
sure.

Host (50:03.79)
Dang. Yeah.

Guest (50:04.312)
Yeah, so that was memorable. But that was, you know, that's what we did back then.

Host (50:12.622)
That's wild to think about. Pull that mic up too, just a little bit. Yeah.

Let's see here, where do I want to take it from here?

Host (50:28.396)
I we should, I think we should take it like, not necessarily. mean, we have great, great pacing. We still have another hour and a half. So the pacing is great. I'm more like talking out loud. or thinking out loud, I should say. But it's, mean, just we'll do this. We'll pause for a second. Great conversation. Like I love the background. It's going to be.

Guest (50:32.014)
fast forward a little bit.

Host (50:58.572)
the stuff that people listen to, right? Because at the end of it, it's like, he's a gym owner. it's right here in Bend. You know, I'll put the links in and all that stuff. But that history is fucking awesome, man. The way that you think about it is awesome. So I think where I want to take it is. I guess I could just ask you the question, like. Because we're kind of on it, right? We're talking about.

the stuff that was out there. And it's like, well, what were you seeing out there that wasn't working and how did you want to change that? So let me just jump back in. We'll just do one of those types of things. So I guess where I want to take it is like, so if you are seeing all of those things out there and you're seeing this gap and there's not really a place to find a lot of this information, this sounds like the problem in the industry. So.

How do you see that out there in the world in terms of the problem in the industry and how do you try to fix that?

Guest (52:10.304)
Well, I was working in my niche, which was in a little tiny mountain town in Northern California, and I'm surrounded by ski resorts. And my goal is to have an indoor board sport training facility. So of course I want to be like anybody else, famous.

What I mean by that is I wanted to work with pro skiers and snowboarders. I thought that that was my niche. I was like, I want to get these guys that, and gals, that ski and snowboard and do rad stuff and, you know, be surrounded by that and be a coach of them and be an expert in the field of throwing these tricks. That's kind of where I put my head.

And so it was like, okay, we've got this gym in Tahoe City that has people doing plate push machines and treadmills and stair step machines and ellipticals. And I'm there and I'm training people and I ended up training people on two mats, which if you understand the mats in a gym world, this is a four by six.

foot piece of rubber that we stand on so that we're not on hard ground. And I had two of them and a squat rack and a barbell. And I would basically train people in the corner of the gym using a barbell, a squat rack, two mats.

And at the time I used a lot of the Swiss ball, the big inflatable ball that people will sit on like at their desk. Yeah. I had a lot of thoughts of how core training was highly overlooked. And so I would do a lot of balance work on that ball and I would have people do resistance training on the ball.

Host (54:08.364)
I see a lot of that now. Cam Haynes does a lot of that stuff. He'll do like. They'll do like lunges. Standing, he'll take one of those bands and he'll stretch it between the bars and he'll stand his front foot on that and then behind him, he'll put his foot on the ball and then he's doing like lunges in between all of that.

Guest (54:28.596)
Right.

Guest (54:33.068)
Yeah, that's wild. the Swiss ball was actually when I first started in my first, well, I would call it from 2004 until the 2008, that was a big differentiator because I was really focused on core strength. And so I thought core strength was quite overlooked. And if you look at a sit down plate push nautilus machine,

Core strength is not included.

Host (55:02.414)
Yeah. Well, that time it would all of the machines were moving in that direction. Right. Like. You have the Arnold days of the gyms, right? And it's the clanking old.

Guest (55:16.78)
weight. Yep. And also some of the less useful moves like the front raises.

Host (55:24.814)
Right. And then you then you have Chuck Norris comes out with a total gym. Right. Yeah. That was the banded fucking body weight things. Right. And you're watching Chuck get jacked and you're like, well, Chuck kicks people's ass. I'm going to get this thing. So all the the.

Guest (55:42.254)
yeah, I owned a Bowflex.

Host (55:44.514)
Bowflex, that was another thing, right? And so you started seeing some of those big machines move in that direction too.

Guest (55:51.234)
Yeah, well that's the home market, which is a whole different competitor.

Host (55:54.904)
Sure. But even the gyms,

Guest (55:56.718)
In the gym, know, at 24, we're just talking, hey, you've got a chest fly machine and you've got a chest press machine and you got one that goes up about 45 degrees over your head and you might got one that goes up 90 degrees over your head and then you've got one that you do leg curls with and you do another one with leg extensions. a big theme that's going on there is these are what we would call single joint movements.

You're typically seated, so you're not really supporting your body or moving in space. And the huge problem with this in my philosophy is that you just don't find those things in life. And so the training really became a lot about

Free weights it always has been I've never trained people on nautilus machines Yeah, and I've rarely if ever trained people to bodybuild. It's always been for some type of fitness or athletic performance or Let's say life independence Preparation right. It's a whole different thing to think about

Host (57:12.055)
Yeah.

Guest (57:16.108)
going to the gym to have your body be strong and capable and flexible than to look good in the mirror. how it's the side effect is the mirror. The intent for me may have started in the mirror, but the way that I train people has almost zero to do with the mirror.

Host (57:37.26)
Yeah. So where did that philosophy come from? Did that come from your own brain or did that come from watching like the CrossFit era kind of come up and then joining that and being a part of that? where, where does that fit in? Like what came first? Did you just already see this lack of core strength?

Guest (57:56.846)
Yeah.

Host (58:05.378)
from the early days and then just kind of tie that together in your brain and go, God, yeah, it's just, doesn't make sense we should be doing it that way.

Guest (58:13.772)
Well, let's just say that in my own fitness journey, I tried bodybuilding. Probably not much different than you did. Sure. Right. You did bench press, you did curls, you did triceps and you wanted to you wanted to look big or bigger. And you and I were both, I would say. Yeah, fortunate enough to never see five eight.

Host (58:34.242)
Short Kings, baby.

Guest (58:41.346)
you know, when you're in that that stature, you want to be bigger. So I tried that stuff and it didn't work that great for me. And I was an athlete, but that you know, those those front raises really never helped me snowboard better or kick a guy's ass wrestling or whatever it might have like.

you know, been applied to. So I think it was obvious that there was things missing. And then I was training athletes to do things that were athletic. So it made sense to work on balance and to jump on things and spin on things and those types of things that weren't available in your Nautilus setup.

or even your Arnold setup. then, so I did that for five years. I watched people move one on one. I built a business of zero personal training clients to, I would typically do about 25 personal training client hours a week, which in the time I was like, man, that's a pretty good personal training business. I shared a percentage with the gym that I worked at.

And like say I was working out and training people inside an environment that I was in conflict with. And so then I met CrossFit and dude CrossFit was

Host (01:00:18.286)
CrossFit saved your life.

Guest (01:00:20.558)
CrossFit certainly enhanced my life. really plugged the holes of what we're talking about about missing core strength piece, doing functional fitness training of multi-joint movements, defining what it was to really train differently than Arnold or the Nautilus. it was so just, it came with this

attitude and energy and group awareness and group suffering and just the environment. I love the hardness and the industrialness of the environment and I love the competitiveness of the daily and I love the support of the daily and it always came with a coach.

Host (01:01:15.244)
I mean, it's so funny. It fits right into your story perfectly. Like skateboarder, snowboarder, child misfit, troublemaker, whatever, whatever bucket you are in or whatever you experience through your life. When that thing comes along and it's loud and it's different and it aligns with you, like, of course you would just jump right into that. Yeah. Both feet like let's fucking go.

Guest (01:01:44.178)
And what's funny is like at the time certain things would come up on my radar and I would have true awareness of them going I see you and then I would put them on the shelf for like two years. So one of the things that made me different is I was hurt. And so when I started training people I had the intent of seeing them for being hurt.

And a real differentiator for me at the time was that 26 year old jackass that was careless with his risk taking, with no empathy and with a sense of indestructibility was now evolving into a guy that like has been hurt, is still hurt.

is capable of seeing people for, you can't do that because you can't do it. It's not you can't do it because you don't want to, or you don't have the courage to. So that made me a different person at the time. I was really, I'd run into these things. I ran into this thing called the Agoskew method. And it's a whole training.

regimen and philosophy based on restoring load joints to neutral positions. Which to that's kind of a big way to say if your body doesn't line up well and you experience pain or lack of performance, it's because you're not in a balanced and neutral position. This was a big part of my

differentiation of coming up as a trainer because I was really interested in having my own injury get better. It was a slow burn.

Host (01:03:40.834)
Yeah.

I think it's great. It's like a

I mean, the story in my head that I'm hearing, it's the same as what you're saying, but it's slightly different. It's like, I was on this journey to fix myself. And then I had a gym, you know, like the gym is the byproduct of your journey and you trying to heal yourself and change your, your personality, not necessarily, not necessarily your personality, but like,

Guest (01:03:52.078)
Thanks

Host (01:04:15.032)
change how you view things, right? You kind of were reintroduced to the wild. You thought that whole path was like, okay, this is not for me. So I have to make this change. I got to go in this direction. So this is all about you in this process. Yeah. And I don't say that in a bad way. It's not like all about you and you're this ego maniac. It's like, no, I have to be a better person and I have to fix my body and I have to do the things that are right and best for me.

Guest (01:04:30.382)
Yes.

Host (01:04:45.324)
That's fucking wild that you were able to get to this point in life, have a successful business, be growing that business and in a better mental place for that as well.

Guest (01:04:59.788)
Yeah, you know, we're all trying to improve ourselves and those of us who aren't, I'm not hanging out with them. Sure. Not because I'm not willing to because I'm not exposed to them because I'm mostly hanging out with people that want to improve themselves. And I absolutely wanted to improve myself. I had plenty of things to work on.

And I was a work in progress and I'm still a work in progress. Of course. Therefore, this evolution of going from watching people move for five years and then in those five years I would teach group fitness, which was ski conditioning class. I wanted to get people in shape for skiing and snowboarding still. It was just like my indoor board sport facility was

transforming or I was falling into my niche and finding my place by still staying focused on my path of training skiers and snowboarders and keeping them from being injured out on the hill. It just turned into personal training and instead of training professional skiers and snowboarders it turned into training what I would call without judgment ski moms. Yeah like

First of all, women were willing to pay for personal training. Women were willing to ask for assistance. Women were willing to show up more regularly and also allocate funds for fitness. And they were also not above asking for help, thinking that they had it all figured out. So if we look at my male clients at the time, or non-male clients at the time,

A lot of guys think they've got it figured out. They've got their program that we were talking about that they still are using from high school and what they're not getting, they're supplementing with what they get out of men's health. They're off the couch athletes at 27. They're off the couch athletes at 30. Then they become the off the couch athletes at 40. And then...

Guest (01:07:15.254)
we start talking about the range that I really care about, which is the range that we're in now, which is the 40 to 70 year old. And so some of those guys are finally coming around going, man, I have been a non-gym guy for a long time now.

Host (01:07:29.122)
That was me. Yeah, that was all me. I was like, I haven't lifted a weight since high school, but it's now time. I got to do this. I was what? 38 when I started. Somewhere around.

Guest (01:07:40.558)
And when I met you, your back hurt. Yeah, but you know, of you were experienced is what I like to say, like your your body parts were.

Host (01:07:43.64)
Yeah, that's still fucking hurt.

Guest (01:07:56.652)
You were coming in with a body that had been with you for the last 38 years. And that's what we see in my gym is we see this person who's coming in at this later age in life. Some of them have been working out regularly. Some of them have been recreating regularly. Some of them have been taking care of business, which most all of them, even if they've been working out, they've all been working hard.

And most of them have had to sit many, many of those hours to get there. And they've also put other people in front of them as far as priority of their resources, time, importance. And so I think that around this 38 year old guy, he finally gets to be that age and he goes, man, maybe I should do something about this. I'm not getting stronger.

Host (01:08:31.904)
Also me.

Guest (01:08:56.149)
I'm not getting thinner. I'd still like to do the things that I'd like to do. Like in your case, you had a baby on the horizon, which to me says, if anything, picking up something that's going to get heavier every day.

Host (01:09:11.381)
Yeah, and she gets heavier every fucking day.

Guest (01:09:15.566)
And to have the wherewithal to be able to keep up with a kid, to pick up a kid. But then when she's eight, to be able to take her skiing and you be capable of skiing. And when she's 14, going on your first river raft trip and those things that you have to be capable of independently keeping yourself alive.

Host (01:09:43.566)
So you kind of got to this point where you found this kind of ideal person that fits in the gym. Did it take all those years in the first gym, second gym, third gym, however many gyms you've had at this point to understand that that's the person that you want in the gym right now?

Guest (01:10:07.522)
Yeah, if we went from what was my original ideal client, was somebody that someone else knew that was cool, which meant pro skier. It was kind of that notoriety or whatever came along with it and the radness. That was kind of important to me then. It's not important to me now.

Host (01:10:20.472)
Right, it was the athlete.

Host (01:10:30.744)
Sure.

Guest (01:10:34.004)
And so the evolution became, hey, I'm going to watch people train one-on-one and learn about how to do this for five years. I'm going to do that for 25 to 30 hours a week. In the winters, I'm going to train groups of people and learn how to train groups and do that for about eight weeks at a time. All along, I'm getting

More trained in snowboard teaching each year. I became a level two and then a level three snowboard instructor, which level three is the highest level other than being an examiner. So I'm an expert snowboard instructor and I'm gaining certifications in things like we talked about the egoskew method and the NASM certified personal trainer, but also a performance enhancement specialist from the NASM.

which is basically like how to turn regular personal training into athletic training for athletes. So I'm learning how to train athletes. I'm learning how to stretch and work on the body to resolve imbalances in the body and seeing how important the imbalances that people bring to the body, like in your case.

how to resolve that and how to work around that because if you have a brand new vehicle and you're driving down the highway at 60 miles per hour or 100 miles per hour, it should go pretty straight. you have one from like my body from 1973 that's been in plenty of crashes like some that

Host (01:12:05.266)
In 2026.

Guest (01:12:18.316)
have bent the frame and should have been a total wreck. We're now taking that body and then trying to like add weight to it and say, go move well, go get in shape with your bent ass body. Right? And so all these things are falling into place with my own experience. Like, I can't run anymore and I can't.

do some of these things. And when I squat, even though I can squat multiple hundreds of pounds, it's probably imbalanced between the two sides. So I'm like learning all these intricacies of my own body and then how to resolve these imbalances in other people's body. And then we met CrossFit. And so when I met CrossFit, that's when I started my first gym. So I've already been a trainer for five years. And then

we're now introducing movements that are above a lot of people's pay grade. And they're bringing that body that we're talking about with that. I like to adoringly call it experience. We're talking about they're broken, they're tainted, they're tight. They've...

Broken their collarbones before they've had back surgeries and tall was super common. Have it if you didn't have an ACL surgery like you hadn't been there long enough. And there was plenty of I think at one point I had three people in my gym that had had broken backs within the last five years. And things like that. So we're dealing with a clientele. It's like. Been through a lot and now we're doing some moves that were.

Host (01:13:58.008)
Peace.

Guest (01:14:08.788)
over many people's pay grade. so that was an environment where we had to be our own self and our own self monitor of how to guide people through that process and then ultimately decide how to scale and modify things.

And scaling and modifying things can differentiate you from one gym to the next because the next gym either encourages it, discourages it, embraces it, is clueless to it, or is just too fresh in the industry to know better. And this is the problem with where CrossFit got its poor reputation.

And in particularly because of the way trainers would come up through the organization. Oh, you're the best athlete in the gym. You're the fastest. You're the hunkiest. And so you show some interest and then you get this. You take a course. And then you go for a weekend seminar and you pass a test. And now you're a trainer and now you're the next guy who's.

Host (01:15:06.594)
You're a trainer.

Guest (01:15:24.322)
Let's say for lack of a better word, yelling at the next group of people and encouraging them based on your philosophy and how you came up through it on how much weight to add or how much intensity to have or how it should be done and get them to be badass.

Host (01:15:43.724)
Yeah, that's I mean, that's like yoga, right? Do you know what you have to do to become a yoga instructor? You sit through a weekend training session with the company Yogi or whatever. It's called teacher training and they make a bunch of money on it. So it's like six grand per person. And so if you can convince 15 people to go in to this training program.

then you get a bunch of money and then you're putting out these trainers in the world. And I'm not saying that this is the wrong way to do it, I guess. It's just something to be aware of.

Guest (01:16:26.188)
Sure. would actually like, I would put that on its ear a little bit and say, yoga wouldn't be the category that I would bag in this conversation. Because historically, yoga training actually forces you to go through like a hundred hour training to become a yoga instructor. So I'm going to give yoga

back to the yogis and say, respect you, see you. You guys aren't over the weekend trainers. But I'm gonna talk about my industry.

You can become a trainer in a very short amount of time, as short as two-day weekend seminar and passing to get a certification.

Host (01:17:11.51)
And is that just for CrossFit or is that kind of in any personal training setting right now?

Guest (01:17:17.966)
Well, let's just say that none of them are, hey, you just showed up this morning with zero prior knowledge and you're walking out 48 hours later with coachability. It kind of sounds like that, but almost always there's preemptive coursework. There's a book. These days it's all online and there's tutorial videos and then there's...

pass fail questionnaires at the end of each segment and then ultimately it's building to a test that it's going to cumulatively get to. And so I don't want to throw it under the bus too hard and say, hey man, this isn't legit. People get their certifications in a weekend. There's more to it than that. But let's just say it's not getting a four year degree.

Host (01:18:12.43)
Right, right. Yeah, it's super interesting. Yeah, go ahead. We'll just leave it running. Go ahead.

Guest (01:18:26.638)
think we're.

Host (01:18:32.592)
Straight out this door.

Host (01:22:27.086)
depth and deepness of it, Stuff that we don't really get to talk about when we're in there bullshitting.

Host (01:22:39.874)
Yeah, so we're not throwing anybody under the bus. But there is. Sorry, I jumped right back in there. We're. We're not throwing anybody under the bus. But there is some level of concern when you are signing up for a gym. What am I signing up for? Where am I going? And some of those bigger corporate gyms.

Guest (01:22:49.742)
That's perfect.

Host (01:23:07.822)
Maybe not corporate gyms. That's not the right word. Some of the bigger chain gyms that I've seen or been to or been around. I don't know who the person is. Let's say your work, you know, you've seen those gyms where they're like station one, two and three. And then there's like three or four workouts in each station or something like that. I'm just going through and just doing it the best I can. I don't have a fucking clue.

what I'm doing. I don't know if I'm doing them right. You've got 30 seconds to do the workout per line item in each zone. So it's like 30, 30, 30. And you just rotate through those three exercises for five minutes before you go to the next station. And you're like, no one's watching me. No one's coming over and giving me any adjustments. Like I don't want to be at that gym.

That's why I like the personal training. I want to know if I'm doing it wrong. I want to fix my squat at 135 pounds before I attempt 240 or even higher. I want to fix it there first. Those other settings don't really allow for it, which probably bleeds into the CrossFit stuff a little bit because it's like the goal is to see how fast you can do something.

how heavy you can do, that's what the CrossFit Games seems to be about. And maybe that's what it's become, and less of what it was in the beginning, but I do love that idea that you're taking a big giant ball and you're putting it over your shoulder and you're running 50 yards and back and whatever you're doing there. That's way more like everyday life. You know what it's like for me to take two fucking kids through an airport?

I got my backpack on, I got my roller bag, I'm carrying one kid and I'm pushing another stroller. So you're like kicking something, you're carrying something and you get through security, you get through the thing, you gotta walk down the tunnel and now in Redmond, the tunnel's 400 yards long. So it's like that is way more like, well it's like CrossFit as opposed to sitting back up against, you know,

Host (01:25:34.71)
a bench and you're on this control machine where it's super smooth on your joints and you're doing this and it's an isolated workout on just your pecs or something like it just seems to make more sense. But without oversight, it seems like it can go off the rails very quickly. And so you're the way that you've come up in this industry, however, twisty and turny it's been.

Sounds really, really good to me. And it's probably the reason that Marshell was like, gotta go, you gotta go over to Fortitude because I think he does it right.

Guest (01:26:21.24)
We're talking about a couple different environments that are available to people. You've got what we would call a Globo Gym. And that term, it could fit a lot of different places, but we're looking at stereotypes. So a Globo Gym is a gym full of equipment with a bunch of different people in it, all kind of doing their own thing.

And you'd look at it and go, what's that look like? And you might look at a couple of people and you go, well, that person knows what they're doing. And you go, well, that person's wearing their headphones, so they're not approachable. And that person over there doesn't look like they know what they're doing. And that person over there just looks like they're grinding away. There's a lot of different looks inside just that environment. And then you've got.

Something that might look a little different, like a gym that's hardcore and it's all free weights and all we do here is dumbbells and barbells. Right? Get your stair step machine out of here. You know what I mean? So that's like a whole different environment. And so you're going in there and you're lifting heavy weights and one guy knows what he's doing.

One guy doesn't, another guy's over there just grinding away.

Host (01:27:51.886)
So outside of your gym, because I want to set that aside and just maybe say that it's different in that way, outside of your gym, how many people know what the fuck they're doing in a gym?

Guest (01:28:07.488)
I mean, I don't know, but what we do is we evaluate people after they've come in for our consult. So our whole objective in our marketing, everything that we're trying to do is get people to come in and meet us and say, who are you? you are a 40 to 70 year old. You have been working out or you haven't been working out.

Host (01:28:09.72)
just in your experience.

Guest (01:28:36.898)
You've been having success or you haven't been having success, right? You have some endeavor that you want to get better at or train for. And then we go, what have you done before? I've been to a global gym before. OK. What do you do recently? Well, the pandemic derailed everything for me, so I bought some dumbbells and a kettlebell during that. OK, what have you been doing since then? Well, actually, you know, maybe.

not been doing that much lately. In fact, my life's pretty stressful and I'm drinking too much or whatever it might be. Those are the realities of people who are coming in our door. And they've been to these environments before and not been successful and they've had a home gym before and they've not been successful or they have, but now right now they're not motivated. So they're looking for something different. They're looking for a change.

Most people think that they're either going to lose weight or get fit or get strong. But really they're looking for, I want to feel better. Right? Who doesn't want to feel better? Everything about life. Like if you think about like, why do you turn on the heat in your house? I want to feel better. I want to be comfortable. All these things that we do are to feel better. And then when you go and you do hard work,

Host (01:29:50.072)
field.

Guest (01:29:59.85)
It seems like it's just going to be hard work and that's going to be uncomfortable. And then and only after you've done some hard work and you're done. Most of the time people feel better. That took a heck of a lot of hurdles to get to, especially if you didn't know what you were doing or you did something to just grind it out, but you've got all these imbalances and it really just made you hurt worse. Or you went in there and you just felt like an.

I felt when I was selling software, like everybody else knows what they're doing but me. And am I doing this right? And, and, or like, I don't want to get hurt again. And then, you know, somebody out there knows what they're doing. But how can we take all that that we know and then create an environment that's cool or appealing? And so really where, where my gym is unique and

what is appealing to me is to provide an environment where somebody who's 40 to 70 can go, I want to make a change. I don't know where to start. I hear there's this place. And my biggest hurdle right now is getting people to hear about this place and know where to go to have this 20 minute console. But when they, when they walk in the door, go, Hey, welcome. Yeah. We're glad to have you.

You know, we come with no ego and we want to meet you where you're at and we want to listen to your story and listen to your experience. And then we want to go, well, how can we best help you? And then we provide coaching. And so we provide coaching for all of our clients. Our whole model is client based. And so the people are coming to us for three different reasons. They're coming for accountability, know how and gear.

And so if they're and then what they end up staying for is community. So we can talk about accountability, we can talk about know how and we can talk about gear. But ultimately, like community is kind of the like what makes it cool.

Host (01:32:10.926)
What do you think it is about community, or specifically your community, that people glom onto?

Guest (01:32:17.262)
Well, first of all, we're trying to appeal to a fairly specific but broad audience. Our audience is from 40 to 70 years old. That's three generations or three decades difference of people, but they all seem to be able to have some commonalities. I think recreationalism, right? People move to Bend because they like the outdoor environment.

many, many people moved to bend in the last five to six years. I moved here six years ago from Lake Tahoe. So they're coming from somewhere else. When I moved here, it was the appeal of the outdoors. I, I, I moved here because of the mountain biking and I really moved here for the opportunity to start this gym. And it was mostly about the real estate opportunity and the population kind of boom.

So what that meant is people are they're working at home. They're brand new to town. They have very few friends and the friends they have they're calling it kind of fallen into right there are my friends friends or I met them at the coffee shop or they're here. They live next door. They they're like friends by environment. Yeah. And so there's this thing that I'm really

push and I think everyone needs and that's the third place. And so the third place is it's not work. It's not home. It's the third place. And so back in the day, most people didn't work at home. So now I work at home. I live at home. My spouse is at home, but I don't know anybody and I don't want to be an alcoholic.

Host (01:34:17.581)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Guest (01:34:21.004)
Right. Because the third place can be the bar and you can go to the bar and you can fraternize with other bar rats. And I've got no problem with that because I tell people really if I didn't own a gym, I'd probably own a bar. Because I like bringing people together. Like that's ultimately what I do. I bring people together. And so this community is really people come to a place where they're recognized. Like what what's the one thing that you remember from the show? Cheers.

Host (01:34:34.286)
100.

Host (01:34:52.066)
where everybody knows your name.

Guest (01:34:53.418)
Everybody knows your name and like who's the one guy that comes in the door and they are there you go, bud so imagine that you could you could walk into a gym and Have me go What's up, Kev? Yeah

Host (01:35:08.952)
Well, it's funny. Every time I walk into the gym, somebody is like, what's up, Kev? Even if I don't know them, they just know me by proxy by me coming into my whatever we call it, an appointment or, or, my session after them. Those two nice people that I come in, I don't even know their names, but they know my name. They know my kid's name, but I just know them by seeing them. And that's part me just being an asshole. Like,

Hey, and then you just move on, but they know my name. And so I feel that community thing at your gym. Yeah, very interesting.

Guest (01:35:47.758)
And you're a personal training client, like you're coming in in an hour where there's it's you and me in the gym. Right. Yeah. So you're not as exposed to as many people per se in a one on one personal training.

Host (01:35:59.118)
I still see it every time I come in. It's after a group session or after another private session. And now all I'm saying is that I feel that there.

Guest (01:36:07.874)
Good. Yeah. So let's imagine that you're an even more integral part around other people, right? Hey, I work at home. I work by myself. I come here. I'm around other people. They recognize me. But also we're like going to do some hard stuff together. Yeah. And we have a leader because our leader is going to be our basically our guide. I like to think of the personal trainer as a guide. If you look at my

experiences and injuries and recoveries and ways to do things properly. Those are all, hey, I've already stepped in all these potholes. I'd like to have you avoid them. And I'm going to have you train intelligently and I'm going to have you move properly so that you don't get worse, so that you get better.

And when you do it, I'm not going to judge you or think, man, this person sure is X, whatever it is. I'm going to go, hey, I'm going to meet you right where you're at. I'm going to find ways to communicate with you that you can understand and relate to. And we're going to move your body. And we're going to probably get uncomfortable, but not get hurt.

Right? So that's a whole different experience of being a guide and walking someone through an hour of movement and then having other people surrounding you that are also going through that. So you're having this, for lack of a better term, group suffering where you're no longer adversaries. I'm your guide. We're there together. So we're a team.

The other people are experiencing the same difficulty. Maybe they're getting through it with more ease on one day, but the next day something else is going to pop up that you're not as good at that that other people might shine, which is what's cool about the variety in the programming. And now you've got camaraderie. And who doesn't like camaraderie?

Host (01:38:19.818)
Everybody does man. It's this I think a lot about jujitsu when I think about Your gym in particular, but this environment that you're talking about You go to jujitsu and there's 20 other dudes in there strangling shit out of each other and sweating all over each other and dying and gasping for air and you spend that hour hour and 15 minutes together and when you're done you're like

Guest (01:38:37.186)
No.

Guest (01:38:49.784)
Hey.

Host (01:38:50.21)
We all made it through this thing. Everyone's here and we're better because of it. It's a hell of a feeling to go through that. And I think where some of that stuff falls apart is when the communal part is forced. And that's a fine balance to try to find. Where it's like, no, these are the natural

communal aspects of this as opposed to here's all the events that we do and we kind of really want you to show up wink wink like fucking show up.

Guest (01:39:28.142)
I don't measure it like that.

Because I surround myself with people who are trying to improve themselves, there are obvious relationships that develop out of the gym that become friendships. so this weekend, I'm having dinner with two other couples. And so it's my wife and then another couple that are both members of our gym. And then another couple that the fella is a member of the gym, but the gal.

Currently is not, but she's joined some of our seasonal programs. And we're having the dinner and having the discussion. And it comes up that one of the fellas has been invited by three of the gals that are also in the same class to have all the couples get together and eat dinner outside of anything gym related. I'd never heard of them.

putting that together or knowing that they were developing friendships. But the whole idea is that these things transpire. So these people are now developing relationships outside of the gym that they wouldn't have had had they not had the gym. And it's not forced community. Yeah. Yeah. But now they have friends. Yeah.

Host (01:40:58.05)
I I think it's really cool and there's always a bit of a friendship, community making process anytime you do something in a group of people. But you seem to attract the people that have very similar interests inside this box and outside the box. I'm not saying they're only in one box.

Guest (01:41:25.334)
Well, there are a variety of walks of life for sure. Right.

Host (01:41:30.138)
There's a commonality between them that's just naturally happening. Agreed. And I'm curious about some of the hard things that you've had to go through, not only in business, but in creating a gym and creating this this community. Like, was it always this natural?

Guest (01:41:52.502)
I'm sorry, we're going to have to set up another couple hour podcast for you. No, it hasn't always been easy for sure. And I think that the conversation started with the evolution of Travis and the evolution of Travis's fitness journey and then becoming a coach and who his clientele were, but also what age I was at the time and what my philosophies were, but also what my immaturities were.

Host (01:41:56.789)
for sure.

Guest (01:42:22.51)
And so when I first started at the gym, 2009, first off, we started a CrossFit gym inside of a Globo gym. And that was like oil and water. So if you're like, has it always been easy or has it always been hard? I would say it was hard from the very, very, very first day. so the...

Host (01:42:33.07)
country.

Guest (01:42:50.912)
The gym inside the gym lasted about six months. And one of the biggest and hardest and most difficult things, and particularly in Tahoe, was to find a gym space. And so we wanted an industrial space, like a, let's call it a 1500 square foot garage with a garage door and a toilet. Not asking a lot in the world. You know, concrete floor, maybe a window. And

we would like it to be affordable. Well, this didn't exist. And so we really had to seek it out. And this was 2009. And it was a time where we had to, there was a recession going on. And so this excavation company had actually built this new building, but they had no tenants because the economy at the time.

And they were like, well, we plan on having like a rough muffler repair shop or something in that space. But yeah, we'll rent it to you guys. And then we had to go through the bureaucracy of Placer County. boy. And, you all these things. And so we were we had to go through conditional use permits and traffic impact.

fees and studies to prove how many cars we did or didn't have coming up the street to impact either our $18,000 permit or try and chip that down. And let's recognize like we started with a couple barbells and a couple kettlebells. So our initial outset of gear didn't exceed $18,000 and our first day we got slapped with like this fee.

that we had no idea that we should even be expecting. Whoa. So it was a hurdle from the very, very first day. When we told the gym owner that we were previously working in the Globo gym, that we wanted to go elsewhere, basically tore our pictures off the wall on the same day of getting that news.

Guest (01:45:11.692)
And so that was, you know, like a relationship that had been really solid for like five years that now that I'm trying to pursue bigger and more appropriate environments. We're creating divides. So relationships, this is a relationship business. So that was challenging.

The part having a partner for 10 years and owning two gyms and having two guys personalities influence the ownership and leadership and and chosen philosophies and running hand in hand together for 10 years and like he was 25 when we started I was 35 when we started.

Guest (01:46:07.918)
I was different at 45 than I was then and he was certainly different at 35. And so managing that relationship and then, you know, ultimately having an amazing thing that was cutting edge that became very popular and I would say like feverishly successful in the uprise of CrossFit and like the

The good times that were had and the camaraderie that was built out of it and the friendships that were present as a result of sharing fitness with people was incredible and unparalleled and cool and fun. And I look at that as a very like the 2013, 2014 era of CrossFit.

was a peak for me. It was just so cool. Had over 300 members at the time, two gyms, 15 miles apart from each other in two different communities, but kind of the same. So we'd have a lot of overlapping events. And the community was just, it was very tight and cool and neat. And.

everyone was fit or everyone was a fitter version than they were when they started and they all had that in common. So they all had this growth pattern to them that was exciting and it had my signature on it. I have this mobility that I add to the programming that's not uncommon in the industry, but it's certainly something I make sure is there that a lot of people overlook. And so that would be one thing that I'm proud of.

And just the, you know, that was true community, because they were a lot of people that they did spend a lot of time together in the gym, but they could do stuff outside the gym. And that was very cool.

Host (01:48:17.964)
Yeah, I mean, seems like it's a timing played a big issue or a big role in that, right? Because it seems like in that era, CrossFit was becoming just like a big giant thing. And then you have your gyms and then you have the people that are in the gym and then there is your community. But that community is also.

Booming because they're seeing growth in themselves. They're getting bigger. They're getting stronger. They're getting badass or right. We're getting all of this stuff done. That's just an exciting like Movement that everyone is going towards this same goal together. So that's got to be super cool and super exciting How does that differ? Or or how is that similar to the current gym?

Guest (01:49:08.322)
Right, yeah. So, you know, I apologize that it's taken so long to get to this point in the conversation. it's good. big important parts of my life that have really influenced on who I am now, what I'm currently going through in my own fitness journey, and what version of that I'm putting out in the world.

And so in 2019, I made a hard decision to close my gym in Truckee after 2018 dividing the two gyms and splitting up partners and things like that. So really trying to find my own life path. And I wanted to retire someday. That's I don't think that's asking too much, especially for a guy who's at that point in time put

16 years in the fitness industry with full determination, working 100 % self-sufficient entrepreneur in the fitness industry. In Truckee, towards the end, my rent was super expensive. And it felt like pushing a boulder up a hill and that I was gonna get crushed at any point in time. And I severely dodged a bullet when it came to moving because I moved in October of 2019.

And if I hadn't, I would have re-signed a five-year lease on this property that was extremely expensive and trucky. So I would have been wiped out. So in a way, it was a blessing. It's kind of like my injury. like it was a terrible thing to happen. But in a way, it's a blessing. It's taught me a ton of things. So knowing all that, I wanted to...

find an environment that I could control more, which was having my own piece of real estate. So by having my own piece of real estate, I could someday retire, but I couldn't get evicted. I wouldn't have problems with noise complaints. I wouldn't have rent increases that were unforeseen. Like a lot of things that were

Guest (01:51:29.26)
constantly keeping me up at night. are the business problems. buddy, these things have been keeping me up since 2009. And so here we are in 2019 and it's like, okay, let's get a better control of our destiny. And also what's the next thing look like? And I think that's the point. The next thing looked like creating a gym and bend.

that was personal training focused and coach focused. So we're talking about, it's not open gym. You don't go and just show up at 3.26 on a Wednesday and come in for your workout. Everything is pretty well thought out. It's, hey, we meet our clients at the front door first day.

We have a meeting with them and talk about them. And then we set a plan with how that plan is going to affect what service we're going to provide them. And that service is typically going to start with some type of coaching. And so the coaching is either going to start with one-on-one coaching that leads to something else, or it's going to be one-on-one coaching like you and I do. So does it?

Host (01:52:50.286)
does it typically start, do most people enter at that personal training slot until they are comfortable with the moves, with the programs, whatever it is, before they jump into a group class, per se?

Guest (01:53:07.79)
Well, let's just look at it like we have three different levels of service that we provide. so group class is the one that most people might associate with a gym like mine. Oh, you do CrossFit or you do something like CrossFit, but they see or envision multiple people in a room at the same time working out probably at a

because it's the same time it's a class and because it's a class maybe as an instructor. Right. That's what we have in common with a lot of different other facilities out there. But we're looking at what's the quality of coaching. What's the vibe. Are people intimidated or are they welcomed. Are people in the know or are they clueless. And are they being coached or are they not being coached. And so I would look at that and go.

Hey, you're coming in here, you're hiring us for our guidance and our expertise. We're going to start you with personal training. And then it's going to either stick with personal training or lead to something else. And so if they come in and they go, well, I'm really attracted to those classes. And we can agree that that's a good product for them, you know, for their

knowledge base or you know what they're trying to accomplish and we can go great we're gonna start with three days of what we call on ramp that's personal training with the intent of going to class but it's so much different than going hey do you know how to swim yeah and then pushing them in the deep end and going show me or let's see how you do or good luck that's a way different deal than

Hey, I'm to spend three days with you. I'm going to teach you the four archetypes of weight training. And you're like archetypes and you're like, well, think of it as let's build a house together. The foundation is your core. And then the pillars on each corner are these different movements that we do. And we look at that and go, OK, what are these different movements? And I go to you and I go, well, what do know? And you go, well, I know push ups. And I go, well, let's see what that looks like.

Guest (01:55:23.68)
And we learn about pushups and we see where you're at. And then we see if you need a modified version of that or if you can do it on the ground or if you're killing it or if there's a better way to like place your hands or your elbows or there's core muscles that you can turn on. This is where we're starting. We're starting at like the foundation of fitness. And then we go, do you know how to squat? And they go, sure. And then we watch them squat and we go.

you're certainly lowering your torso down and getting it back up, but there's more balanced methods of doing it. There's more maybe range of motion that's desired here. And then there's ways that you can do it with, if you were to add weight to that, would you want to add weight to that? Or would you like to learn how to make that a little more structurally sound and then add weight to it?

Host (01:56:18.464)
super high touch man very high touch very high personalization to this thing i don't have a ton of experience in other gyms so i can't comment on on that other than the globo gym that i was referring to before here's all the stuff here's what's on the board time starts now go outside of that i don't have a ton of experience 24 hour

Guest (01:56:43.138)
Yeah.

Host (01:56:48.526)
how fit, snap fitness. But you know, I go in there and I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'll revert back to what I did in high school. I knew some bench, I knew some squat, push-ups, sit-ups, treadmills, whatever else I thought I could do at that time. And when I joined Fortitude, it was like,

Guest (01:56:49.048)
it.

Host (01:57:13.366)
Okay, this is a lot different. It's a lot more hands on. It's a lot more personalized. How do you feel today? All right, we're going to pair this work down, pair this workout down or ramp it up according to how you're feeling. And I think that that is, I think that's really cool. I also think it's really cool how you can kind of throttle that in a class as well.

Guest (01:57:31.454)
Is

Guest (01:57:40.055)
Yeah.

Host (01:57:40.652)
You know, there's modified versions of it and you know, all right. The board says this, but hey, Suzy, do the modified version. Do the pushups on that bar over there. It's already set up.

Guest (01:57:53.358)
So we can clarify for our audience when he refers to the board we're talking about a television that's presenting the workout by like in text. It's a written workout on a television and so in some places you can go in and they might even say hey the workouts up there go get it or the warm-ups up there let's get started.

And so what's different about Fortitude fitness training? I'd love to tell you a little more about the name and where that came from and things like that. Well, let's talk about the process in particularly. We're talking about we're meeting with the coach every time that we come in, so we're never going to be lost, right? We've got our guide with us. The vibe is welcoming and inviting, meaning that you walk in there and you're not like, my God, what do you? Right, you you're.

you're going in knowing what you're getting into and the coach is going to walk you through it and he's got you through it every time before that and you can have trust there. And you know that it can be scaled and modified. So you know that if I can't do something, I'm not just going to stand there and wait for the day that I can. For example, a lot of people can't do pull-ups.

So if pull ups come out up in the workout and it says do five pull ups, maybe I can do one. Maybe I'll never done one, but the person's not just going to stand there under the bar and look at it and go someday, right? Like it's going to be, hey, we're going to do this instead. It's going to be a similar type of genre. You're going to be use the same type of muscles that are going to get you there eventually, if not lead you that direction. And

You're going to do this many of them and you're going to do it in a manner that you're capable of. So we just took something that was impossible and then just slightly changed it. What we call modifying and then made it doable and made it. Hey, and now I can be successful and move on to the next deal and the coach helped me through that process by his guidance and navigation and.

Guest (02:00:09.122)
You know, in the future, I know that that's now my option for that, but I probably learned that in the on-ramp process. Right, so we keep reinforcing these types of philosophies that we can scale and modify things to allow people to be successful every time they come in.

Host (02:00:30.638)
I mean first of all, I'd love it. I think it's great, especially for the age range of people that you're talking about. They already come in and be who you want to come in. My assumption is that you want that group, say 40 to 70 to come in because you have the ability to actually help them feel better.

Guest (02:00:44.181)
a

Guest (02:00:57.038)
.

Host (02:00:59.712)
And anything under that, they're probably still in the I know it all phase. I know how to do it. I've CrossFit before I've done this. I also want to be very clear that you're not a CrossFit gym. I think that's we've been kind of talking a lot about.

Guest (02:01:16.894)
Yeah, I think we can cross the definition of what that is and what it's not. And so what we might look similar as is our environment is quite similar. We have a rubber floor. We work with dumbbells, kettlebells, and barbells. We have a pull-up rack. So it looks kind of the same.

What's not the same is the library of exercises. I've minimized it. So I've taken these high risk, low reward moves that I've seen over the years that let's say stress people's shoulders or backs. And I've kind of completely removed that exercise. And I've kept the ones that are similar to that, that are doable.

and that our high reward, low risk moves. So a great example of this would be the overhead squat versus a front or a back squat. And so if the overhead squat requires you to hold your hands over your head while you squat with your hip below your knee and then stand back up.

you're going to find that you either can or you can't do it. And it's going to be painfully obvious, very, very quick, either in your shoulders, your backs or your hips. You have to have flexibility for it. So then we have this other animal called the snatch, which is a dynamic, basically throwing of the bar from the ground to overhead.

to land in a dynamic overhead squat.

Guest (02:03:06.37)
doesn't really make sense.

Host (02:03:08.91)
I think that's something that I don't know that I could do that.

Guest (02:03:13.442)
Well, it doesn't make you worse on your mountain bike to be able to snatch. But that type of movement, let's just say that I could do what I call a paired down version of that, the safer version of that that I teach in the on-ramp, which is called the hang power clean. And so it's just a shortened abbreviated version of taking weight from above your knee to your shoulder. Where the other one, the whole meal deal might go from the floor

to all the way over your head in one move. the hang power clean can make you very good at mountain biking because it can make you explosive and strong and flexible and coordinated and timed. So like all these things can apply through the snatch. But if you take the body that we talked about, the person with the bent frame.

and go and say, hey, we're going to get in shape. Now we throw them underneath a barbell at a velocity. And it's just a recipe for a disaster. And that's some of the mistakes that we made in CrossFit before, but that CrossFit made for the world, in particularly with a

you know, they tried to educate and certify their coaches, but let's just say that was a big task and they made a terrific impact on the world and actually created a ton of amazing coaches out of that portion of the industry. But like anything done improperly, it's not as effective or it could hurt you. And I draw a conclusion to that kind of like

I'm a huge fan of chiropractic care. From what I understand, not all chiropractors are created equal. Sure. They may have all gone to school, but some of them are just good at it. Some of them are like natural healers. Some of them are doing their best to implement what they learned in school, but they're maybe not that good at it. So I see the same in CrossFit gyms or in boutique micro gyms like mine.

Guest (02:05:26.882)
where we all have our own personality that's baked into it, but ultimately you have to have more staff that handles these things. And so it's really your philosophy and your methods than your personality that you're baking into your fitness service. And so for me personally, I'm 52 years old now. If I went to a gym, I'd pick mine.

because I'd feel like it was welcoming and not intimidating and I could go in there and I could either, you know, as for me personally, today I'm not the athlete that I once was, but I could go in there and go pretty hard and go heavy. Or I could go light and do it right and...

people wouldn't look at me any differently one way or the other, because the gym is not about judgment by others. And I'm not trying to keep up with other people in there or try to prove to them how bad ass I am today or once was, because our philosophy in there is not to focus on other people's efforts. It's really the coach focused to each individual and each individual's in there trying to do their best and their best version of it.

And then at the end of the day, we all got through it and we go, hey, man, that was tough when we got to that third round. I saw you. You stopped for that one quick break. man, I was suffering at that point. Yeah. And when we're at the end, we're basically walking out the front door going, good job. That was cool. I'll see you again on Friday.

Host (02:07:02.062)
So for those, those people in that 40 to 70 that work best at this gym, who you help best, who you serve best, what kind of results can they expect? And I want to be very careful about the results word because it's not, I mean, if anyone has ever worked down their, their life, they know that results don't happen overnight. So what kind of results would you say people get out of?

Guest (02:07:06.488)
group at

Guest (02:07:26.136)
Sure.

Host (02:07:31.406)
training at Fortitude.

Guest (02:07:32.456)
Sure. Results are either measurable or they're subjective. So what are measurable results and what are things that are a feeling? I think that when you first come in, you have a feeling, I'm not in shape. I'm overweight. I'm not flexible. I'm not strong. Which turns that into something like

I'd like to be strong. I'd like to lose weight. I'd like to get more flexible. And I think we all have all those things in common, but ultimately it's almost like it's a feeling. I'm feeling inadequate. I'm feeling not my best version of myself. I'm feeling like I'm not.

working hard for myself currently. And if I did some work with some guidance that I could get somewhere that I'm not currently. And so everybody gets results because they come in and they do the work. And the trainer guided them, hopefully preventing them from getting injury, but also teaching them how to do it. And so therefore, they're learning through that process.

And so over time, they're gaining more of their own agency over their body and over their fitness and over their future workouts of life. So that if they moved away, if they've trained with us, then they're going to have knowledge of how to do exercise properly. So we're really passing the torch of the responsibility of form to the client by teaching them the form. It's that good old adage, like I could feed you today.

Or I could teach you how to fish and you can feed yourself. And you might say, well, then why are they going to need a personal trainer down the road? And I say, well, someone else is going to need a personal trainer down the road. So if it's not them continuing to gain from us, then they can be re-released into the wild and they can go do it on their own properly and well, or with somebody else well. Next person to walk in the door who was in that person's shoes two years ago.

Guest (02:09:46.52)
Here we are, we're ready and waiting for them. So in our model, we're gonna move towards personal training or something that I'm super excited about, which is semi-private training. And so what that really means is it's personal training at a reduced price. And I get to share the room with a couple other people. So I'm sharing the price of the trainer with the people.

but I'm still getting a customized workout that's applicable to me. So it's not a, it's not a family style dinner. It's still, Hey, I ordered the fish. And so I get served the fish and the person next to me, Hey, I ordered the chicken and they're getting fed the chicken. And we're in this, we're sharing the table together and we're sharing the, could call it the waiter or the chef or the administrator. this

Host (02:10:34.741)
dinner together.

Guest (02:10:35.454)
Right? So you're going in there and you're working out regularly. So you're having the accountability. That was one of our big pillars, right? Accountability. Do I show up regularly? And then the know-how is there because the trainer's there administering the workout and helping you and a couple other people. And then...

The gear obviously is there. That's why you're there, because we've got the gear and we've got the space. And at the end, we walk away with the community. And at the very, you know, like what's the sales pitch here, Travis? Well, it didn't cost you as much as one-on-one personal training. you gained being around other people, which is more like your third place. Right. How cool is that? Perfect.

Host (02:11:26.434)
Yeah, I mean, not that I want to stop paying you for personal training, but that sounds appealing to me too.

Guest (02:11:33.002)
Imagine that you and three others though, because group classes we we have our group class is a 15 person model which compared to other things out there. It's still about half the number of people you're going to find 20 to 30 people in a room at an orange theory, right? For about the same price as our personal as our group class, right? But you're going to have more quality of coaching.

and half the number of heads in the room and that's at our lowest price point service. So the one-on-one is like you have, you see it's very customized to Kev. Hey, this is all about Kev today. Still gonna be like that when you have this four person training.

It's about you and your experience between you and the trainer and your workout. It's still about you. But again, you're getting to share the space with a couple other folks. The price point's 40 % less. Sure. And you can do that for a lot longer. Yeah.

Host (02:12:38.776)
I mean, it sounds cool and it sounds appealing. It sounds like there's enough levels in there to kind of meet a lot of different personality types in there too, right? For those people who are less extroverted, who are like, I prefer small groups, but I still want this private kind of feel. can jump into this semi-private.

Guest (02:13:04.334)
Yeah, sure. And you know with that you're still meeting your goals or striving towards your goals and still customizable. Yeah. And you're still a guide. So you get the things out of it that personal training gives you.

Host (02:13:05.678)
Whatever. Session.

Guest (02:13:26.784)
And I think the affordability part of it is huge. Yeah. Because not everyone can personal train. For sure. Yeah. I get it. But how many people out there in their life have gone, I'm dissatisfied. Maybe I should hire a trainer. And so we're talking to those people. You want to hire a trainer? Great. We got three levels of hire and a trainer. Right. You hire a trainer and it's just you and the trainer?

Will you hire a trainer and you and a couple other people or you hire a trainer and it's you and up to 15 other people. Either way, all three of them are provenly successful. Very much. All three of them give you great results. All three of them give you coaching, accountability and know how and gear, but they all like.

turn out a certain level of community ultimately. And really what we're trying to do is give people what they want. Hey, I want to get stronger. I want to get in better shape. And we provide them that, but we provide it to them in environment that's fun, positive, upbeat, loud music. And when I say positive, it's like, what's the opposite of positive? Well, people don't.

pay money in their 50s to get people to yell at them. I might have yelled at you when I was 35, but I'm not going to yell at you now. Like my maturity and level of coaching now and the philosophy that we're putting into our coaches moving forward and historically is to be positive, to meet people where they're at, to encourage them, to teach them new stuff. Right? It's stuff you want.

It's not the stuff that you don't want. It's like, I don't want to get yelled at. I don't really even want to be told what to do. I want to be encouraged. I want to be shown how to do things properly.

Guest (02:15:30.316)
I want some autonomy as well, right? And so I think that we can give all that to people and have them have a fun experience, energized experience. A lot of what we're trying to do is like give you the best hour of your day. And so what does that mean? Well, it doesn't mean like pointing out all the shit you're doing wrong. It means like, hey, you got here. Let's get into this.

You know, I know you got a lot on your mind and you've got a stressful lifestyle, but let's think about you for this hour. Let's focus on you. Let's not think about what's for dinner. Let's not think about little Joey at the moment. Let's think about you and getting you some head space to focus on continuing to make a better person out of you. Some days that's just showing up. Some days that's just breathing hard and like

surviving through it. Some days that's just open in the throttle and kicking ass, right? So it's kind of whatever you're capable of that day, but we're going to meet whatever version of you shows up. I don't think that's typical of what you're going to get with other environments. I really do feel like we care about our people and have that relationship.

Host (02:16:50.274)
feel that too. I definitely feel that there at that place. For the sake of time, I know you gotta get out of here for your next training session. Tell people where they can get in contact with you or how they can get in contact with you. Your business, your business name, website, all that fun stuff. If they wanna sign up because they listen to this, how do they do it? Say some fun things there.

Guest (02:17:15.252)
Absolutely. Well, first off, it's an honor to be with you and be on this podcast. I appreciate you and thank you for your time and thank you. Opportunity to put the word out. would say for me, my biggest challenge as a entrepreneur and as a fitness trainer is getting people to have awareness that we're there.

So when people get there, we do a really great job of fitness training. But I didn't go to school for marketing. And even if I did, I probably wouldn't have been very good at it. It would have been like selling software. So for me, thanks for the opportunity for everybody out there to listen and just maybe give our gym an opportunity to see if we meet your needs.

Host (02:17:46.382)
Not very many people did.

Guest (02:18:03.342)
We're located in Bend. We're located at 63222 Service Road, which is on the north end of town, basically where Empire and Highway 20 come together. But if you can think about where Highway 97 and Highway 20 hit Empire, that's about where we're at. So pretty good location, pretty easy to get to. We got tons of extra parking. We got a huge extra parking lot.

We're open at six in the morning. And we close about 630 at night. We're typically open Monday through Friday, but we do have personal training available seven days a week currently because we've got a.

Host (02:18:36.706)
getting after it.

Guest (02:18:47.094)
new staff that we're providing more and more of these training services for people so we can make it as flexible and like available. So we're getting beyond hey the Travis show and helping lots of people. Our process is to jump on our website fortitudefitnesstraining.com go.

look around on there, but ultimately book an appointment for what we call no sweat intro. So the no sweat intro is exactly that, no sweat. It's like you show up in your street clothes. We have a conversation about your past. We've already talked about that a bit. We talk about what services are applicable for you and then we start training. So we'll make appointments from there, know, sign the waiver, get your credit card. But the main thing is

We're going to create your plan. And so people are going to start showing up typically two to three days a week. That's mostly what they can expect is a two to three days a week. And every time they're going to show up, they're going to be with a trainer. So each time they're going to have guidance, they're going to have accountability, know-how, plenty of gear.

And then we got some other levels that we didn't really talk about in the group fitness, but we have group fitness Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then Tuesdays and Thursdays, we've got circuit training classes in addition to weightlifting classes. And then we have women's specific strength training classes. And then seasonally, we have mountain bike strength and conditioning as well as ski and snowboard strength and conditioning.

And then we have three pickleball lots. Yeah, pardon me. Three pickleball courts in our parking lot. And so we've got ample opportunities for people to apply their fitness in a lot of different ways. But with a coach and with effective results. Yeah.

Host (02:20:49.688)
That's awesome man. Thank you so much for doing this. I want to have you on again. Because there's a slew of questions that I have about the business side of this stuff that I would love to get into. But thank you for taking the two and a half hours that we're at right now to do this. I really appreciate it.

Guest (02:21:09.844)
It's been fun. Hopefully I haven't repeated myself too much or led you down a path that wasn't interesting.

Host (02:21:16.11)
That's okay, if someone tunes out and then they tune back in later, they get to hear it. Cool, thanks man, I appreciate it.

Guest (02:21:19.598)
right on. It's my pleasure. Cool.

Guest (02:21:26.924)
Right.

Host (02:21:27.352)
Dude.

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