We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eric Zimmerman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Eric, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s something crazy and unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
For anyone who has ever started a business, they know the difficulties in simply getting a business up and running, not to mention the continued efforts in maintaining that momentum once things do start moving…and sometimes moving very quickly, although not always in the right direction. My business partner and I started Phoenix Freerunning back in 2013, a way for both children and adults to learn parkour and freerunning safely and efficiently. We started by teaching classes at local parks in Livonia, followed by renting space at a gymnastics gym to continue our program, until finally in 2015, we opened the doors to our first individual gym space called Phoenix Freerunning Academy. The first few years were very difficult to maintain such a niche business, but we persevered and finally started seeing some growth…until 2020 when the pandemic hit the world, and gyms in Michigan were placed into an especially difficult category, keeping us closed for about 6 months. Even upon reopening, the return rates were very slow as people were hesitant to return to group gatherings. It wasn’t until fall of 2021 that we started seeing some growth again. To digress for a moment, one of our clients favorite features of our gym was the foam pit – a place for people to safely learn advanced movements such as flips and other acrobatics, but also just a fun area to jump in and play! That being said, maintaining a foam pit is a lot of work. Every year, we had to close the gym for a few days to completely empty all 2,000+ cubes from the pit to vacuum up all the foam dust, wipe down all the surfaces, inspect and clean each individual cube before returning it to the pit. It was by far the least favorite job for our staff at the gym. We had just finished the annual deep clean of our foam pit in May of 2023 when one day later, I woke up to a voicemail from our landlord that there had been a fire at our gym. As I listened to the voicemail, my mind panicked and my heart sank. I immediately spoke with the landlord and with my business partner and went to the gym to investigate the situation. Upon arrival, it was worse than I thought. Very early in the morning, when nobody was anywhere near the gym, an unused exhaust fan in the ceiling of the warehouse had somehow activated, sparked, caught fire, burned hot enough to fall out of the ceiling and bounced into our freshly cleaned foam pit, catching the foam on fire and spreading toxic chemicals and soot throughout the entire facility. We lost everything. To make matters worse, our liability insurance didn’t cover fire damage and so insurance did not cover any of our losses. We were devastated; destroyed. It’s been more than two years now, but we’ve been fundraising and working hard to rebuild and we just hosted our first event at the gym this past Sunday, May 25 which also marked the 10 year anniversary of our first opening at the gym. We still have a long way to go in our rebuild efforts, but just like parkour is all about overcoming obstacles, we’ve overcome the challenges of starting a business, overcome the challenges of a global pandemic, and now we are overcoming the challenges of total loss due to electrical fire. We are Phoenix Freerunning and we will rise from the ashes!
Eric, 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?
As a kid, most kids play on playgrounds but then eventually start to grow out of it, For me, however, I did not grow out of it and as I continued to play, eventually the playground became too small and I began to expand my playground into local architecture and city obstacles. In 2004, a friend showed me a YouTube video of parkour and it was beyond anything I had ever considered trying, but I immediately became interested in learning more. I began training on my own for about 8 years before I eventually met others who had also been training for a long time. My training accelerated tremendously in just 1 year of training with others than it had in the 8 years on my own. From there, I began working with others to share our knowledge and experience with anyone interested in learning parkour, until eventually turning it into a business and officially offering classes and lessons to both kids and adults. We started Phoenix Freerunning Academy to offer a space where people could safely and comfortably learn parkour without constantly being told to “get down from there” or “don’t jump on that.” When I started my training, there wasn’t any place meant to go to be able to learn or practice these movements. We want to offer a home for those currently in the parkour community but also a place where anyone interested in learning parkour can feel safe and welcomed into practicing these movements. We are more than just an academy, we are a community of athletes and coaches and individuals working to learn and grow and support each other through every obstacle in parkour, and even obstacles in life.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
None of Phoenix Freerunning Academy would have been possible without the amazing coaching staff we’ve grown over our years. Our coaches not only teach the fundamentals of parkour and freerunning, but they build relationships with our students, ones that help inspire confidence and courage as well as create a sense of belonging. I believe that a lot of our clients come to us in hopes of learning parkour, but stay with us because of the community we’ve helped build and the relationships and life skills we’ve helped foster.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
When we first built and opened our gym back in 2015, we originally had a spring floor that was only 3 lanes (18’x29′) and used the adjacent space for parkour obstacles including large walls and vault boxes. Our goal and focus was to offer a facility dedicated to parkour and freerunning. After some time, however, we realized that we needed to shift/broaden our focus to include additional movement disciplines, such as tricking, aerial silks and breaking (breakdancing). In order to offer these services, we needed an appropriate space to do so. For this reason, we tore down our large-wall obstacle and the “vault valley” set of boxes and expanded our spring floor to 5 lanes (30’x29′), now allowing us to offer more open-floor activities and creating the opportunity to bring in coaches from various other movement disciplines to help our community expand and grow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.phoenixfreerunning.com
- Instagram: @phoenixfreerunningllc
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/phoenixfreerunningacademy
- Youtube: @phoenixfreerunning
