We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anthony Minero a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Anthony, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

In our nearly five years of operation, we’ve witnessed many success stories. Members with previous injuries, such as bad backs or knee issues, have found relief and renewed fitness through our low-impact classes. For the first time, they discovered a workout that didn’t cause pain and allowed them to re-engage with fitness.

Our community includes die-hard members who take multiple classes a day, often back-to-back, and have accumulated millions of meters. Others come 1,2,3 times per week and incorporate our classes into their weekly routines. Beyond fitness, we’ve built a community where people form lasting friendships, continuing their connections outside the gym. This sense of community and support is a cornerstone of our studio’s success and something we take immense pride in fostering.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

One of the most rewarding things I have experienced as an owner of a boutique fitness studio is the posts, comments, and feedback I get from our members. The Row House is unique in that we have taken one of the most effective pieces equipment that used to either sit in the back of the gym unused, or was used simply as a warm up tool, and we brought it front and center. Because this was a new concept it took time for people to really embrace it. However as you can see by our many 5 star reviews, people genuinely love the classes and the results they are getting. We get so much feedback from our members that they have tried many forms of fitness and nothing seemed to work for them. Whether they got injured, or bored, or didn’t feel comfortable with the classes or their surroundings. Many were skeptical of trying us at first thinking it may be too hard, or too easy. After taking a few classes they began to understand. Rowing is resistance based. Meaning you get out what you put in. So if it is too easy, you can push harder. If it is too hard you can reduce effort, all while maintaing the same pace with the class. Plus our coaches and staff are truly amazing. They make all feel welcome and motivate them to push in a fun and inspiring way. Since opening we have had many people thank us for changing their lives and offering something to the community that finally works for them and their fitness journey. It has been a struggle to say the least. Being a new concept and opening two months before COVID was not an easy thing to overcome. But we have, and the feedback we receive from our members makes it all worth it.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

COVID! Being in the fitness industry COVID hit us hard. I still remember that March 16th when it was announced that most businesses had to shut down. I was devistated. This was two months after opening and we had taken out a huge loan, had our names on the lease, and were barely getting going. Definitely not even close to break even. I honestly assumed that was it. I would need to sell my house and upend my family and figure out how to survive it. However, we hung in there and slowly made the changes we needed to in order to continue our growth. We offered classes outside. Every morning and every night our staff would wheel out 25 rowing machines into the poarking lot and hold classes. Pretty amazing really. We followed all the rules in terms of 6′ spacing, sanitizing weights and machines after every class. Requiring masks inside etc. We are a fitness studion and exist to provide a healthy environment for our members. As a result we definitely didnt want to expose anyone to COVID and ensured we were extremely meticulous in following all requirements. It wanst easy as there were a lot of mixed feelings out there, but we errored on the side of conservative and our members appreciated it. Then things started to happen like PPP money from the CARES act which we qualified for because we kept all of our employees during this time. We slowly crawled our way back after also putting in some extra money of our own, and have somehow survived by really just never throwing in the towel even when it seemed impossible we would survive.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

For us being very local, just really a 3-5 mile radius of potential clients, we have found social media to be our largest generator of leads. We do a lot of referrals, and get a large amount from our great reviews in Yelp and Google. But as for paid leads we have a company that does our advertising and we provide a lot of the content to them that is specific to our location that is better then doing just a generic ad.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.therowhouse.com/location/granada-hills
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rowhousegranadahills/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RowHouseGranadaHills/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/row-house-granada-hills-granada-hills