We recently connected with Danielle Cochran and have shared our conversation below.

Danielle, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

XX Fitness was actually born out of necessity, but it ended up being an ideal business for me to run in San Diego and has been for six and a half years. I left a negative work experience and wanted to create something more positive for myself and other gym-goers. I had always wanted to open up in a gym in Southern California, but my plans were rapidly fast-forwarded in 2017 and I ended up starting the business in debt, with no loans, partners, investors, or even a laptop.

I had grown a lot of a trainer at that former gym where I worked; I had to. When I began there, all the classes had zero people in attendance, maybe one if lucky. I had just moved cross-country to San Diego and needed all the work and hours I could get. I wouldn’t get paid at that gym anytime that no one showed up for classes, even at 6am, I spent years building up the classes to their max capacity and learned how to retain clientele.

When the pay and atmosphere only declined over the years at my former employer’s, I decided I needed a break, as I was burnt out to the point where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue to train anymore. When I communicated this, I was let go on the spot.

By that point, I had developed such amazing relationships with clients and had realized that I had a talent for training. It was inspiring to improve people’s lives and I didn’t want to stop that, even being burnt out. All those years of showing up with no pay at the other job, building up classes from scratch, I realized I had basically built a business- but for someone else. I knew if I built all that once, I could do it again.

I ended up training outdoors in parks because I did not want to work for someone else inside another gym. I had some clients who had been with me for years follow me when I began XX Fitness. I gradually got more and more equipment, and trained out of my car for the first couple years. During that time, it dawned on me that there is no reason to be inside exercising, especially in San Diego where it is nice weather year round. A lot of people felt the same, and the classes continued to grow, all from word of mouth or by neighborhood people walking by my classes. People loved the outdoor aspect of it, and there was no shortage of gym equipment.

By the second year, my car had turned into a low rider with all the equipment, so I upgraded to the XX Fitness cargo van and was able to expand even more. The community expanded, and it became this really special group of people over the years. By that time, I had really embraced the idea of outdoor training and decided to focus on that instead of always trying to make the next step a brick and mortar gym.

Even though it was born out of some chaos, XX really turned into the gym I had always dreamt of running in California. The outdoor aspect has made it really special for people and you can tell that it only improves the health and well-being of people after being indoors for work all day. So you have the outdoors- the sun and the fresh air, the community of friends, plus the awesome workout. It’s definitely all around wellness.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Fitness has always been the love of my life and the constant of my life. I grew up playing sports and from a pretty young age, I knew I wanted to somehow incorporate health and fitness into my career. After studying Exercise Physiology and Nutrition in college, I moved to San Diego to begin my career in a health conscious place.

I began XX Fitness in 2017 with the intention of creating a really fun and welcoming community. I really wanted to make it a place where people felt safe and accepted from the get-go. A lot of people feel intimidated going into gyms and end up not going back. There can also be lot of egos inside gyms, which can keep people away. It goes all the way back to grade school. P.E.- “Physical Education” classes- they really aren’t physical education at all. It’s sports education. You learn and play competitive sports. A lot of people aren’t competitive or athletic in that type of way, so that becomes the only association they have with working out. This unfortunately has created a lot of sedentary adults.

I personally loved sports growing up, so I never really thought about this issue until I had so many clients express their emotional scars from P.E. class, from being picked last, to losing in sports. This keeps people away from exercise… until they know better. One of my goals was to create a fun atmosphere and also give people a very challenging workout that they would actually enjoy doing. I wanted people to see that working out can be fun for everyone- not just the star athletes.

I had a long-term client, let’s call her D, who I trained one and one and she took classes. I could see how naturally strong she was, but she never saw herself as strong or athletic. Well sometimes for my classes, we will have Relay Races and games like that. One day she shows up for class, as we are lined up counting off “1, 2, 1, 2” for relay teams. D expresses to me that this brings up awful childhood memories of picking teams in P.E. and she immediately wanted to leave class and head for her car. She talked herself into staying, we play the relay races, everyone has a really fun workout. So after that, we use battle ropes with a 53 lb. kettlebell tied onto the end, to have a race. You have to hold a plank and pull the whole length of the rope with the weight on the end to you. I knew from the get-go that D was going to win that game since I knew her strength. She apprehensively raced the rest of the class and easily pulled that 53 lb weight down to her in about half the time as the rest of the class, even those half her age and won the contest. She was so excited to win… the next week she even came back to class talking about how she was able to brag to her family and coworkers about the shirt she won in the contest.

Long story short… it’s really great to watch people realize their strength and overcome those preconceived notions and barriers they have about themselves and about fitness.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

For me personally, social media proved to be a waste of time for my business. The first couple years of XX, I spent a lot of time trying to create an online presence, posting workout videos several times per week. I never had a single person sign up with be because of social media. All my new clients still were word of mouth or people walking by. You end up spending hours editing videos and writing hashtags, then the algorithm may only show it to a handful of people. I found there are much better ways to spend that amount of time.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.xx-fitness.com
• Instagram: xx_fitness_
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/xx-fitness-san-diego-2