We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kyle Frazier. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kyle below.

Alright, Kyle thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

I own a CrossFit gym, but I consider it to be more of a place of healing for people. We work to cultivate a sense of community that embraces exercise but also incorporates meditation, breathwork, a yoga program, functional bodybuilding, and nutrition into our approach. We also recognize that community is incredibly important to the health of our members. This approach creates a positive environment of growth for people.

We’ve seen a growth of gyms in our culture that encourage quiet lifting, the promotion of candy at the front desk, people listening to headphones and not talking to anyone, and plenty of every other stereotype imaginable. While CrossFit has its own stereotypes, we work to keep the atmosphere “friendly-competitive” some folks compete with each other, while the majority push themselves to beat their own scores and congratulate the extra push of effort from the people that are doing the workout next to them. The combination of hard work and effort from classmates, the leadership of coaches who do the same workouts, and the attention to what happens outside of the gym are what make CrossFit James Island a special place. It’s not just about exercise, it’s about creating balanced, healthy, and whole humans.

Kyle, 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?

I am originally from Forest VA. I was a multi-sport athlete (soccer and lacrosse) growing up. I played both in high school and continued to play D3 lacrosse at Hampden-Sydney College. I found out in high school that weightlifting and training could really change the way I performed on the field and really boost my confidence off of the field. I took that knowledge to my college career and while I wasn’t the most gifted athlete with a stick, I learned through training hard I could get myself into much better shape than my peers.

When my college career was over I was eager not to let myself get out of shape. I did P90x for 90 days and while it was challenging and worked like a charm for weight loss I found myself at 185 lbs compared to my normal resting weight of 205-210. I was far too skinny and felt that something was missing in my training. My coworker and good friend told me to check out CrossFit. I started to get on the Crossfit.com website and pull workouts that I could do in my old high school gym. I was hooked. I ended up doing CF on my own for about one and half years until a CrossFit gym announced that it would be opening up across the street from my workplace in Roanoke VA.

I reached out to Brickhouse CrossFit and offered my services in helping them get going. I had a lot of experience lifting and a decent amount of coaching experience and felt that I could help them with coaching in exchange for a free membership and maybe some extra cash. Jay and Amanda Forrester reached back out immediately and within a few months, I had gotten my CrossFit Level 1 Certification and started my coaching career. I worked with Jay and Amanda for 2 years at Brickhouse until I decided that the banking world was not the place for me.

In October of 2011 my best friend Chris Hall and I decided to open up our own facility. We had our eyes and hearts set on Charleston, SC. We visited Charleston over Halloween weekend to scope out some places to rent. The last place we checked out was where we have been ever since. We both knew intuitively when we pulled up to the front entrance. We moved in January of 2012 and began training our first few clients in April of 2012.

We started with a small amount of equipment and about 50 members we’d picked up on GroupOn. We never looked back. Since then we’ve trained thousands of people, we’ve built the business up and our clientele from those 50 to over 150 members. We’ve built out our facility with more equipment and people than we know what to do with. We created a culture of community, hard work, and a relaxed atmosphere that made people feel like they were at home. Chris and I always wanted a facility where we would want to train ourselves.

That vision has remained the same, yet it has changed as methodologies and practices have evolved. We offer breathwork on the weekends, we’ve added nutrition consulting, we are always looking to bring our client’s athleticism and sense of community outside of the doors of the gym as well. We take our gym to paintball excursions, cold plunges, Halloween parties, and oyster roasts. We also try and serve our fitness community and local community through various fundraisers and volunteer opportunities.

Our focus has expanded from just physical health to mental health as well and I believe that sets us apart as an organization. We host three 30 day life challenges each year where we focus on various aspects of our client’s health including proper sleep, hydration, meditation, mobility work, and even their creative outlets. These challenges have given our clients a reason to focus on what is truly important and this remains one of my favorite parts of CrossFit James Island.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The gym is constantly evolving and changing. We’ve gone from concentrating on just fitness and nutrition to looking at the whole person and attempting to get our members to focus on much more than just the basics. We are about to shift the business again so that CrossFit is not the primary focus, but simply part of our methodology. We recently purchased a 6 person barrel sauna and a cold plunge to begin a new program of heat and cold exposure. The science on these is incredible for helping with depression, preventing cardiovascular disease, and improving the immune system. We will be changing our brand as well so that new clients will have a better understanding of our overall goal for them and for ourselves. This will be our second brand shift in 10 years. This keeps everyone excited and it also shows that as we learn more, we incorporate more.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

This is a no-brainer. Be genuine. When people come to your business, ask them how they are doing. When new customers come in, ask them where they are from and try to create a connection. We are a big vacation location as Folly Beach is just 10 minutes away. We put together some little restaurant cards to guide them to our favorite spots and potentially have a big impact on their vacation experience. With our recurring clients, we become friends, mentors, sometimes therapists, and life coaches in our own way. Our coaches are in constant pursuit of making themselves better and this radiates to our client population. This will be part of our new rebranding, we will concentrate on emphasizing the importance of personal development to help you and to radiate to those around you. You cannot change other people, but by changing yourself you improve those around you. If you can support your clientele and create positive impact on their lives, your reputation can only go one direction.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.crossfitjamesisland.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crossfitjamesisland/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CrossFitJamesIsland/

Image Credits
Chad Savage, Emily Rittenhouse