We recently connected with Evan Flock and have shared our conversation below.

Evan, appreciate you joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

I spent five years working as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor at different gyms around Los Angeles. In 2018, my wife and I moved into our home in Culver City and we converted our garage and driveway into a private training studio. After a year of doing one-on-one personal training from our home, I attended a seminar and met with a speaker who introduced me to “semi-private personal training” – a concept I had never heard of before. I took a leap and converted my one-on-one training business into a six-on-one training business and it took off. This model enabled me to charge people less, deliver personal training results, and create a community all at the same time. When the pandemic hit in 2020, we shut our home operation down for three months before reopening with strict guidelines on space and safety. As we were one of the only operations in town, personal trainers from all over began to ask me for help on “this whole garage gym thing” and I jumped into consulting. From 2020-2022 I helped over 250 personal trainers and garage gym owners establish semi-personal training offerings for their clients and taught them how to market their businesses online. As much as I loved helping gym owners, my passion remained in fitness and I the idea of “semi-private personal training” had not become well known. I wanted to build a high-end personal training training gym the way that I built my personal training business: by focusing on providing individuals with relentless care and connection through team-based personal training. I partnered with two of my clients who believed in the mission and vision of the brand – Brian Galli and Maria Galli – and in October of 2022 we opened our first commercial training studio – Sessions Personal Training in Mar Vista, California. In March of this year and after 18 months of making and breaking a lot of systems and processes (and spirits) we were able to open our second location in Santa Monica.

Evan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Like many fitness professionals, I got started in this industry after falling in love with fitness. I was a crossfit coach and yoga instructor before getting certified as a Tactical Strength and Conditioning Facilitator (TSAC-F). My focus on TSAC was to help provide personal training programs for men and women in our armed forces. I quickly learned how injured much of that population (and the general population) is, and entered into massage school so I could focus on body work for my clients. A few rabbit holes later, I was able to position myself as the alternative to Chiropractors and Physical Therapists for clients who found themselves dealing with chronic pains and recurring injuries who also wanted to focus on getting stronger and healthier. I’ve always had a goal of helping as many people as possible in order to create a lasting impact on peoples lives and discovered a passion for digital marketing once we opened our garage gym to the public. I fell in love with the creative process of running ads on platforms like Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn as my messaging helped me establish the true pain points of my audience and how I could better communicate the benefits of fitness to the people I wanted to help. What’s true in fitness is true in marketing: getting clients isn’t about who can shout the loudest, it’s about who can listen the best. I attribute the rapid growth of Sessions Personal Training toward our ability to communicate effectively to our audience – whether that’s in person or via a 30-second instagram ad.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Sessions Personal Training was one GIANT pivot. I had spent so much time thinking about how to create a systematized and replicable personal training business that I glossed over some important details. Like: how is all of this equipment supposed to fit into a 1,400 square-foot gym? After assembling one of our (many) pieces of equipment we realized our layout and format was not going to work in the space. We realized quickly that we had only one option: pivot. This pivot allowed (forced) us to create a new way of delivering personal training in a way that has not been done before. Our initial model of two separate coaches training two separate groups of individuals transformed into a community format where our members would get to work with two coaches simultaneously – one coach would specialize on strength development with our members while another coach would specialize in conditioning. This pivot allowed us to create a unique format for delivering personal training results that we would call Team-Based Personal Training and is only available at Sessions Personal Training.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

I’ve always viewed marketing and paid advertising as high-risk, high-reward. If we can find creative ways to get our message out there, we will attract the right kind of people into our business. If we do what everyone else is doing, we will get lost in the sea of gyms. Which is why we’ve always aimed towards polarizing messaging in our advertising.

Gyms typically advertise the same three things: great coaches, great workouts, and great communities. But if all gyms have those things… none of them do. So instead of leaning into the big three, I took a different approach with a very risky take:

“CARDIO FUCKING SUCKS” were the first three words of the most successful (and most controversial) ad we’ve ever run. I can’t tell you the amount negative comments I received on that ad (hundreds? thousands?) However, people who saw that ad and believed that we might do things differently at Sessions Personal Training couldn’t wait to see what we were all about.

That ad campaign helped me realize that placing an emphasis on our beliefs, values, and attitude allowed us to do three things:

1) Attract people who think like us
2) Deter people who don’t
3) Stand out in the massively saturated Los Angeles fitness market.

And any people on the fence after seeing an ad like that who do some research quickly discover that this gym also has great coaches, great training, and a great community that they’re probably looking for.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sessionspersonaltraining.com
• Instagram: @sessionspersonaltraining
• Facebook: @sessionspersonaltraining
• Linkedin: @sessionspersonaltraining
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sessions-personal-training-los-angeles
• Other: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sessions-personal-training-santa-monica