We recently connected with Phil Gentry and Jim Sheppard have shared our conversation below.
Jim, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?
Jim: Seeing our students benefit from all of their hard work and dedication is hands-down the most rewarding part of the job. For some students, success is winning competitions. For others it’s simply arming themselves with the skills and know-how to defend themselves. Recently, one of our fitness students, Amanda, posted a stunning before & after picture of herself on social media. Since she adapted an active lifestyle she’s dropped 100 pounds! It’s all about baby steps; you don’t have to go from zero physical activity to 6 days of training per week. Start with 2-3 days a week at an intensity level that you can handle, and go from there. With someone like Amanda, she began to actually enjoy the process which made it much easier for her to make training at SBG a permanent part of her weekly schedule.
Phil, 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?
Phil: I come from a lineage of entrepreneurs, so being a business owner is something that I’ve always been interested in. In the beginning I had dreams of making it big in real estate, or going the Mark Cuban route and selling proprietary software to a company like Google for millions of dollars .After travelling those avenues for several many years I decided to match my drive for business success with my life passion, Martial Arts instruction.
The early years of the gym were a real challenge, but it let me know that I was in the right business and that I’d do whatever it takes to make SBG Atlanta a success. . It seems like an obvious choice now but my dreams of grandeur detoured making my true passion of martial arts and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. In my twenties, it was all about dollars and being in the most lucrative field. As i went into my 30’s I began to realize that I could pursue my passion and make good money, I would just have to veer away from the “old school’ way of running an MMA/Jiu Jitsu gym where the emphasis is on toughness instead of growth.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Jim: 2020 was an incredibly challenging year for us, as it was for pretty much everyone. Nobody knew what this COVID thing was or how long it was going to keep us shut down. Those first couple months of the lockdown were filled with a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, but between some inginuitive thinking on our end and incredible support from our students we were able to navigate through it and learn a whole lot of valuable lessons.
For the 60 days that we were shut down, we were constantly staying in touch and communicating with our students. Daily workouts were going out via email, coaches were making wellness calls to their students, and we were providing status updates every chance we could to keep our people in the loop. We were determined to not only provide content and care for our students but also compensation for our staff. We have a lot of young emplyees and we did not want them having to file for unemployment or worry about paying their rent.
It wasn’t always easy, and there was definitely of anxiety, but we knew it had to be done and it 100% made us a stronger business coming out of the pandemic.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Phil: This is something that I’m still constantly working on, and it’s probably the most challenging aspect of being a business owner. The bigger we’ve gotten the more we depend on our staff and caoches. The most simplified answer I can give you here is that is comes down to caring about your people. I make it a point to constantly stay in touch with my managers, coaches, and First Impression Team Specialists. It could be something as simple as calling them to ask how they’re doing. By knowing about them personally I can speak to them with sincerity and not like they’re just a cog in a wheel. When I speak to them, I not only want to ask about their well-being but also offer up help. “What can I do to make your job easier and/or more efficient?” Just letting them know that I’m here for them goes a long way, and I believe it’s the primary reason that we have such little staff turnover.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sbgatlanta.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sbg_atlanta/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StraightBlastGymAtlanta
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC476u1XyQqzP_3aHlj9infQ
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/straight-blast-gym-buford-buford-4