We recently connected with Christopher Martinez and have shared our conversation below.

Christopher , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

I believe family businesses are the bread and butter of any city or town. From big city life like Los Angeles to the suburbs of West Covina. Your mom and pop shops show you can get quality and great service from your neighbors to your friends to your family. As a small business owner, I have seen what a small business can do for a community. It brings people together, not just as a consumer but as a friend or family. You get that warm touch where the owner or associate knows your full name to your favorite color to your ticks. I have personally learned that sometimes listening to your customer goes a long way, from their goals to their daily schedule or to even how their day was.

Yes being a small business owner can be scary because at the end of the day you are in charge of the bills, rent, and of the overall outlook of your business – but that’s the fun. You’re the boss and you can decorate, to design, to operate your place to your liking and to your customer liking. It puts that fire under your butt to be the best in the area or even the county. It makes you want to strive and be one of the top businesses in your field.

I, as a single father of two beautiful daughters would love to have my children continue on my legacy because in my field, we preach and practice health and wellness and who wouldn’t love their children to believe their health and fitness is important. My oldest daughter (12 years old) has grown up in my bootcamp. She has seen the fun work outs, the smiles on faces of people who finish a work out, to the accomplishments many people have achieved. She as a little girl has seen the importance of taking care of your body and how working out can be fun, challenging, and rewarding. I strive to pass down my legacy and skills to my little ones.

What I see that works well to have a successful small business is keeping up with the current times and trends. Yes being unique is key to standing out but sometimes you have to appease to all crowds from your college kids to your gardening grandma next door. You can’t put yourself in a bubble to where you only limit yourself to one age range but rather appease to all age groups. Be fun, do community events invest in your city that you own in. It’s all important to be apart of the city that you want to stand out in especially if you want to be successful. How else are you going to get great people to come into your great business.

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

Hi! My name is Christopher Martinez I am the owner of Top Performance Fit Club in the beautiful city of West Covina. I am a single father of two beautiful daughters (1 year old and 12 years old). I am 34 years old and strive to provide fitness, health and wellness to my community.

I got into personal training and bootcamp training from a good friend of mine who was already working a bootcamp. He needed a new trainer and knew that I wanted to get into the field of fitness. After he brought me on, it was love at first burpee. I got certified for all bootcamp training and was off to the races.

The business I own, Top Performance Fit Club, is a bootcamp/personal training facility that specializes in High Intensity Interval Training with an emphasis on endurance, flexibility, and strength building. We strive to meet any types of body goals to fat loss, muscle gain, to overall health. Our goal is to help clients reach their health and fitness goals with us in hand the entire time.

As an owner/trainer, the biggest compliment we can receive is seeing our clients reach their goals and transform their body and habits. We want you to succeed, so we will go above and beyond to get you there. We design and write up challenging work outs for our class sessions that all fitness levels can do, we help with your day to day nutrition and help build a healthy relationship with food and we offer a large array of class times to cater to all schedules. We are engaging during the work outs and never make you feel alone or lost through out. We offer monthly memberships that are affordable to all budgets and encourage clients to bring friends and families to join them.

Top Performance Fit Club isn’t like your big box gym, we want to get to know you on a personal level. As I mentioned before we are a small business, so we want to engage with our clients, know your strengths and weaknesses and how we can help better them. We have built a community that is accepting to all, friendly and very sociable. Not only will you get great work outs you might just make some life long friends along the way.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The one thing we always strived for in our market was great customer service, client retention rate and an overall great experience. Being in the business for over 10+ years, you learn to give the client a one of kind experience, and if you provide that the competition or other bootcamps wouldn’t compare. If you make a great impression on your customer, they love to refer you to their friends and family. I have clients from the day I started training bootcamp that have followed me to my new location all because we have made them feel like family. They have seen us grow and we have seen them progress, and they wouldn’t go any where else.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

We have learned over the years that growing clientele isn’t easy but if you focus on key points in your business you can be successful. Within our market, we strive to give every client the same experience which is: great customer service, fun and engaging environment, keeping up with trends, clean and safe facility, variety of equipment and convenient class times and hours to match any busy schedule.
Advertising and marketing has changed over the years we have learned, we started with handing out flyers to people and on cars, then to the current market social media is a big play. With constant engagement through social media your business can thrive. Engaging posts, quick and effective replies to customers and referrals from customers.
One thing we have noticed that helps is the very welcoming customer service we give to every one. Each and every one of our clients get the same great experience that helps with client retention and thus word of mouth referrals.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://topperformancefitclub.zenplanner.com
• Instagram: @Topperformancefitclub
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/topperformancefitclub
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/top-performance-fit-club-west-covina

Image Credits

Ashley Cardial