We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Emmanuel Martinez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Emmanuel below.
Emmanuel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
Personally, I tend to be methodical in my decision making, cautious at times. Despite knowing this of myself, I never want to have the burden of a “What If?” That mindset allowed me to jump into opportunities I otherwise would shy away from. The biggest risk to this day is, opening my own business. The statistics would tell you that failure is imminent. That didn’t scare me. What did scare me was living with regret of not pursuing my passion of inspiring and helping others change their lives all through exercise and nutrition. The process of opening a business was arduous, tedious, and painful. However, I put my focus on the end goal, the vision. Nearly two years since opening our door, the risks have compounded with COVID-19. We were met with a challenge of opening a business that is meant to be person to person in a historic time period of social isolation. As you would imagine, this compounded our risks tenfold, What did we do? Overcame!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My eyes were open to the possibility of starting my own business in the fall of 2018. I was working at a corporate sales job at the time that was not fulfilling. Clocked in, clocked out. I lacked the fulfillment of knowing that I was creating real change others. At the time, I didn’t even know that’s what I was seeking. I honestly figured that the tech sales world was it for me. I peaked in my professional life. I couldn’t have it all, right? After all, I had my health, a loving wife, and supportive family – I didn’t think I should complain. In retrospect, this self-limiting mindset that caused me to be complacent. That was until my colleague gave me an unexpected push that I didn’t know I needed. He knew deep down I had a passion for fitness. He was right!
I fell in love with fitness from my first introduction to it in high school. I loved the ability to create change for myself simply by the effort applied. When so many things are out of my control, this was an area well within my grasp of control and solely based on effort. Exercising has also taught me patience and discipline. Patient to understand that results will not be instant and discipline to maintain the consistency regardless of the speed of progress.
During a conversation with my colleague, he challenged me asking, “why don’t you become a trainer?” – It was a fair question, and while I wasn’t looking for a life-changing conversation that day he pushed me into an uncomfortable, yet necessary topic. His first challenge I brushed off. I had seen trainers at gyms, and frankly, they didn’t look fulfilled or even happy to be training.
Truthfully, I didn’t know what I would want to do within the fitness world, and that’s when he dug deeper and asked, “Why don’t you start your own gym?. I chuckled, but I had no clue where to start. He didn’t stop there. He encouraged me to see what options when he mentioned Fit Body Boot Camp.
I left the conversation knowing that I would not apply it or take any sort of action. Honestly, I was hoping he forgot the whole thing. But my colleague was a special kind of person who saw something more in me. He followed up with me by sending a link about franchising with an added encouragement of “Don’t be a little b****!”
To this day, we laugh about this, now, infamous statement. To appease him, I filled the form out as a “there you go! Now get off my back!”, but it ended up being the words I needed to hear. We all need a push sometimes, or, in my case, several of them.
After vetting through my options, franchising was the best decision for us. We partnered with Fit Body Boot Camp, as they aligned perfectly with our vision and mission to inspire fitness and change lives. This is our calling – touching people’s lives through fitness. Around February 2019, we were officially committed.
We found what fills our cup: inspiring others and changing their lives and we honestly couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Fit Body Boot Camp specializes in high-intensity interval training (HIIT) in a group setting. We work with clients of all ages (18+), all levels of fitness. Each session is coached by a certified personal trainer. We teach clients basic and complex functional movements with the use of kettlebells, dumbbells, TRX, slam balls, battle ropes and more with a focus on strength and metabolic conditioning for maximum fat loss. In short, we are a coaching program designed to help clients lose fat in only 30-minute workout sessions.
We take a special interest in each one of our clients. While it is group training, we ensure we put our attention to each clients’ individual needs. We are proud of the community culture we have built-in huge part to our dedicated clients.
When you come to Fit Body Boot Camp, you are not just a customer but a client. We are not in the business of collecting membership fees. We are in the business of changing lives. We will care for you like you’ve been with us since the start. Allow us to show you rather than tell you. Reach out to us and let us know you read about us here!
When you walk through our doors you will always be met with sincerity, integrity, compassion. We out care all of the competition. We wholeheartedly, without an ounce of doubt, believe this and practice this every single day.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Since beginning the endeavor of owning our own business, we’ve traveled on a path filled with roadblocks. After we committed to franchising with Fit Body Boot Camp in February 2019, it took us six months to find a location. This was double the average time expected for a franchisee to find a location. It took us another four months to negotiate the lease and another 3 months to get the keys, which was also longer than expected. March 5, 2020 we breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally!” we thought. Now we can get to work and transform our location into beautiful fitness center that we’ve been waiting for.
March 13, 2022. The shutdown begins due to the pandemic. We forged ahead with anticipation that this would all clear up in a matter of a few days or weeks, at the most. Clearly, that was not the case and this made it increasingly challenging because we had three month window to open our business. In June, three months later and we were still not ready, so we pushed for a July opening. Delays upon delays were coming left and right. and we had to keep postponing our opening from July to August to ultimately, October.
The pivot that we made was in August. After postponing so many times, we felt we had to take control of something. In business and in life, we can’t control many things, and we find ways to cope with that. For us, we concentrated on what we could control. That’s when we decided to pivot to live virtual training sessions for our clients. On August 24, we began doing zoom training sessions. We didn’t want to make our clients wait any longer, so we made the best out of the situation, while we managed the delays for seven more weeks.
Looking back, this was a great way for us to get to meet our clients, see their faces, engage with them for 30 minutes a day. It was a humbling experience that reminded me why I got into this, patience and discipline. These two attributes were necessary every step of the way. The worst thing we could have done is nothing, waited out the delays. Our pivot to live virtual training allowed us to serve our clients under the challenging time of the pandemic.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
Outcaring the competition! It’s how we treat our clients. Meeting each client where they are at in their fitness journey and giving them hope. You can be the most decorated trainer/coach with certifications and degrees, but if you fail to connect with your audience, then it’s all for nothing. Taking a real, genuine interest in the lives of our clients is the reason we are going on two years in business in one of the most challenging times in our lifetime.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://fitbodybootcamp.com/10485-lakeline-tx/about-us/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lakelinefbbc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lakelinefbbc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCz7IbmXwi6jdK0EWBYJIJw