We recently connected with Ashton Ferrazzo and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ashton thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

We have a universal/nationwide program for First Responder and Military (Firefighters, EMS, Police, current and former service members) where we are trying to get down the rates of cardiac arrest, cancer, and injury at the department/station level. We take significant hits on our margins just to get the right equipment, flooring, turf etc. into these facilities to help these folks out. Here’s the main reason: I’ve got cancer history in my family. We also have a lot of First Responders who are patrons of our facility on a daily basis. We love serving those who serve others, and so we created that program specifically to benefit not ourselves, but that entire community. I want every First Responder and military member in the country to be able to increase their chances of surviving in the field, and decrease their health risks associated with job hazards like carcinogens, bad food, or even bullets!

Another reason we created this program in the first place is that I was having conversations with MANY firefighters who were explaining that they don’t really get much, if any, funding from their local municipalities to run a life-saving operation. This absolutely blew my mind. Why are those who are literally saving people from burning buildings getting the short end of the stick on funding? So I created this program to help them and really get the proper equipment in the station so that they can train between calls, and so those on the front lines for our country can survive longer in, frankly, very dangerous jobs!

Ashton, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started this business in my back yard, buying and selling fitness equipment mostly for home gyms. I realized I had a passion for this stuff, and really nerded out about it. Over time I fell more and more in love with the business and quit my full-time and very stable 9-to-5 job to start Freedom Fitness Equipment. We’ve expanded from my backyard to a large warehouse in Charlotte, NC, and offer new, used, refurbished fitness equipment, flooring, turf, and more, along with full repair, maintenance, installation, and extraction services for any gym.

For commercial facilities, and due to our variety and product offer, we are a one-stop shop for white-glove service, taking you from design/conception to buildout and ongoing maintenance of your facility without you having to touch anything. We fully focus on creating a space that “wows” its members, puts the facility on the map, optimizes space, and is as unique as the owner who created it! We don’t sell you on crap you don’t want or need, and we take a transparent, honest, and open approach that is foreign to most other business models.

For home gym owners, we solve the problem which plagues most people which is having enough time to workout by creating home gyms that are convenient and easy to use.

Most people know us for our willingness to educate you, and give you more knowledge than what you walked in/called with. I want our clients to be here 10-20+ years from now, so we invest time and energy in making sure that they get the biggest benefit from working with us, even if that means not working with us now! We want to treat others as WE would like to be treated, and that means upholding an extreme standard of integrity, something sorely lacking in the industry.

Plus we have fun – if you check out our social media platform, you’ll see us goofing around, posting memes, videos, and other content, both helpful and hilarious, to help and have fun, rather than sell you on crap. It’s way better this way!

How did you build your audience on social media?

The goal of building an audience is to get visibility, it is NOT, and I repeat, NOT to sell your stuff. You MUST build trust, you MUST build integrity, you MUST build a brand, and it cannot be product focused. The goal with Freedom Fitness Equipment is to build a brand that everyone wants to be a part of, and to that end, I started creating content that *I* would find interesting. Best barbells and equipment out there? Let’s make a video on that. Stall mats causing a nasty smell? Let’s create a video on that. Certain brands you should avoid at all costs? Let’s make a video on that. Create content that you and your audience want to see rather than pitching them on some product idea every 5 seconds.

I RARELY sell in my content, and we’ve made HUNDREDS of videos and long form content. Most of it is educational, funny, or meme-worthy, but it all speaks to the heart of the fitness industry, and what people are interested in. I don’t pull punches on things I don’t think people should get, and I think other businesses should do the same. Be honest, talk about your “hot takes.” Don’t hold back. And for goodness sake be authentic and stop reading off a script.

Also, post every day. Starting now.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Build culture. It is absolutely essential to the foundation of any new entrepeneurial venture. Without core principles, you are floundering for a purpose and for the type of people you want on your team. At our organization, we have core values: honesty, trust, dependability. These all bleed into the client experience. If you don’t bring on team members who OWN those values, and who are people of character, you might as well not start the business.

Your team will build their own culture in spite of you, and if you don’t hammer on whatever your core values are, the team will not follow.

HOWEVER, you MUST also live the values, not just preach them. I cannot STAND leaders who preach all day about trust and then lie to people behind their backs. You must take the approach “do as I do,” not “do as I say.” It is absolutely non-negotiable. And you must call it out if people are not taking this same approach. However, also being open to criticism is absolutely essential. If your team cannot call you out about the very values you are preaching, then you may as well not have a team.

Maintain high morale by doing things that are genuinely for your team. Don’t do the corporate thing and some genericized version of “team building.” Figure out what your employees love, figure out if there are common traits among your team members that you can do which would be entertaining, fun, or relaxing. Bring in food everyone wants every so often, or heck, have them over for dinner at your house if you’re just starting out! Team member does a good job? Give them a certificate/plaque telling them so! See something done that was exceptional? Call it out publicly! Get a customer compliment? Post it prominently! Is someone on your team a big football fan? Figure out a personalized gift relating to that team for their birthday! It doesn’t take much, but the little personal gestures here and there will make MUCH more of a difference long-term than large events that are largely impersonal. It takes a strong leadership team to do this, but it’s critical.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://freedomfitnessequipment.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freedomfitnessequipment/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freedomfitnessequipment
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/freedom-fitness-equipment/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXgkvIR-5ishTlFGJgNK9tw
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@freedomfitnessequipment