Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jazz Lewis. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jazz, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

I can think of a few very significant moments in my life where opportunities have arose where I took a big risk which has paved the way for where I am today.

Before I dive into these moments, I think it would be cool to explore what risk and opportunity mean to me. I have learned over the years that risk does not come without opportunity, and without the presence of mind and court awareness to see when opportunity is knocking, we never find ourselves in a place where we get to pull the trigger and take a calculated risk. I think it is so important to be aware of these moments because opportunities are always presenting themselves, but we are not always in tune with receiving them.

The first moment in my professional career when I had to take a big risk was at the very beginning. I was in my early 20’s and I was going to school for business and architecture. I was enjoying these fields but wasn’t fully enthralled with architecture. One day I was longboarding at my college and crashed, completely destroying my ankle and the ligaments surrounding it. I went through a long, frustrating and tedious rehabilitation process until I found a process that fell in the category of neuro-muscular training. This modality of therapy got me on my feet, up and moving and back in action far more effectively than anything else I had done prior. I was fascinated. An opportunity presented itself for me to fly to Colorado once a month and expose myself to this process. It was decision time. I ended up quitting my job, dropping out of college and spending the next year, pretty much every waking moment, studying and flying to Colorado to try and learn this process. This was such a massive risk for me because I had already had 3 years of time committed into architecture and one and a half years into business, but I was feeling a strong pull and excitement towards this educational pursuit which I wasn’t feeling towards architecture, so I committed. Because I spent this whole year learning the material, I was able to maximize my absorption of biomechanics, neurophysiology and functional anatomy. This would become the base layer and foundation of my knowledge going forward with my educational pursuits.

8 years later I had a degree in exercise science, multiple certifications, a growing business, and a pretty solid process revolving around my operation. This was when my second, and in my eyes the most life changing decision/ risk that I ever took occurred. I was building a business, having many successes with clients, but on occasion I was running into walls with them. Also, it was a slow process of building a deep client list and I was ready to run not walk. I felt like, in my process, I was missing something. I spoke with a great friend of mine who informed me about a program that he was putting on in Seattle that greatly sparked my interest. It was a program that extensively covered client intake, decision making, retention, vision for the client and heavily focused on the science of exercise. All things that I wanted to incorporate into my business. This program was a program from Exercise Professional Education called a Muscular System Specialist Certification created by a brilliant man named Greg Mac. The big leap of faith for me was not so much about the monthly trip to Seattle and losing a few days of income every month. It was about having faith in this new process and retooling my business while at the same time shedding myself of the biases that I had formed previously that would have been roadblocks with the implementation of this new process. I was basically restructuring my business from the ground up and I would quickly realize it would be the best decision I ever made.

1.5 years later I had a full client load, working with 50 people a week. I had a 40-person waitlist and once again an opportunity presented itself in the form of a risk. I was currently in an 1100 square foot space which was plenty for just myself and my clients, but I needed to figure out how to help the people on my waitlist and I was never going to be able to do that if I didn’t on board another team member. There was a colleague that I had been connected with for years and he was getting fed up with his job at a local health club. I presented him with the opportunity to go through the MSS program that I went through and then come work for me and I would unload my waitlist on him. We came to an agreement and began working towards our 1-year goal of starting the client unload process. The big risk here for me was not onboarding Jeremiah but finding a new space that would be able to provide enough room for both of us as well as creating an excellent client experience.

Within a month of my colleague starting the program an opportunity popped up to move into a 2300 square foot space, but we would have to do a full renovation, paint, flooring, new gym equipment and the whole 9 yards. This was my leap of faith moment. The risks that I had to take into consideration were my colleague going through this program and then having him not work out with the client unload process and the second and most nerve-racking part for me was the expenses of renovation and equipment acquisition (basically my whole savings). I committed to the decision, took the leap of faith and it all worked out better than I could have imagined. My colleague is currently seeing about 30 clients a week and taking on more weekly. I can now provide our services to a broader part of our community, and we are now in a position to purchase our own facility by the end of this year. That will be the next saga of the opportunity and the calculated risk game.

Jazz, 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 I said in the previous section, my journey has been a series of calculated risks revolving around opportunities that presented themselves. I got into this business because of my fascination revolving around how the human body operates, but quickly realized that my passion lies in helping other humans to live better lives.

I would categorize our business in the exercise science, physical therapy, personal training realm, but kind of a hybrid of all of them. We differentiate ourselves from your typical personal trainer or physical therapist because of the way we approach the body. We look at the body from a systems-based approach. We look at everything as interconnected and interdependent. That means that if someone comes in with a hip problem, it might not actually be a hip problem and we love doing the problem solving to get the root of our clients’ issues. We as Muscular System Specialist are problem solvers, taking on complex neuromuscular and biomechanical problems. We are body optimizers, we are scientists, and we do everything with intention and excellence. Our process is on a continuum and the clients starting point in our process is directly dependent on the needs and wants and current state of the client. This is what makes our process so tailored. We make sure to never fit the client into the exercise program and always build the exercise and treatment program around the client.

Are client base ranges from the age of 9 to our oldest at age 93. We aim to make strong bonds and lifelong relationships with our clients. They are not just a number. We think of our process as a journey with that person and it is a team of two, working towards that clients’ goals. We know we don’t have all the answers which is why it is so important to work side by side with other specialists, doctors and medical providers and we approach this process and the specialists in our community with humble gratitude. I am most proud of the passion, dedication, hard work and tenacity that we hold in our craft. When we take on a client, we pour our heart and soul into building our clientele up and finding creative ways to solve their problems.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

One of the biggest learning moments from my journey was maintaining quality control throughout my team. Maintaining excellence throughout the brand is a key to our success. When you get busy and need to hand off clients that have the intention of working with you, things get tricky because there is only one of you and unfortunately you can’t clone yourself. One of the things that I found early on when onboarding a team is that you have to stay very closely connected with them to ensure that the brand stays intact. We do weekly “mind melds” (check-ins) and study sessions to ensure that my team upholds the standards of the brand. You don’t want to hold too tight of reins, but need to make sure the ship is moving in the right direction. It can be tough sometimes because correcting people’s tendencies to slack, skip steps, and make errors accidentally can be hard but if you come at it from a loving growth-oriented mind set it makes the whole team and the client experience better. My advice is to keep your finger on the pulse and ensure you can maintain brand integrity and you can take your vision to the moon.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Retention is such an important part of building a client base. Retention means that you’re doing something right and if you can make a raving fan out of your client base then marketing becomes easy. We have not spent a dollar on advertising, but we have spent countless hours focusing on client experience and retention. What I would advise to a business that is in the service industry is focusing whole heartedly on providing an unmatched experience and word of mouth from your client base will do the rest. The other thing that can create community traction and referrals for your business is the connection to others in your field.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theintentionalfitness.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theintentionalfitness/