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

Alright, Roman thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

My mission is to rebuild and modernize the continuing education marketplace for the professionals in the fitness, health, wellness, and coaching sector. Creating the future central hub for the millions of professioanls and the 115k clubs, facilities, private practices, and gyms who have to purchase continuing education.

I have made it my purpose to do this because this same community is the group that aided me in having a very successful business within Equinox, traveling the country as an educator, and being able to transition into tech. I persoanlly feel indebted to pull up the next generation of young professionals like me that want to do great things.

My personal journey has come with its fair share of trails and tribulations to get this point, so the least I can is make it easier for the next person coming up behind.

I have run a successful business winning awards, traveled the country leading educational seminars, oversaw over 300 professionals as Director of a Tech company, and now I have the opportunity to build a successful tech company (I know I will overcome the odd).

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So I have been working in the fitness industry for over a decade, I started as a Personal Trainer at Equinox in Bethesda, MD. Over a 10-year period, I won multiple awards within the company (Personal Trainer of the Year (3x nominee), Educator of Educator of the Year, & led a team to Club of the Year).

Toward the end of my time at Equinox I received an opportunity to travel the country leading educational seminars on the weekends for a man named Dr. John Rusin and his company PPSC (Pain-free Performance Specialist Certification). This opportunity allowed me to expand myself from the company of Equinox to have a larger reach outside of the company (and it was a great weekend side hustle lol).

2 years later, I was offered an opportunity to become the Director of Training, Education, & Marketplace Talent for an early stage tech company called Moxie (a platform providing the infrastructure for group fitness professionals to run their business on our platform and to promote themselves on our marketplace.

The company was not able to make it to the series A round of funding but during my time at Moxie I was prototyping my current company. When the company was prepping to shut down, I was able to go full-time into developing my company (TCM). Though I got pushed to start my company a lot sooner than expected, I took the leap of faith and just kept going. After that leap of faith things continue to work out in my favor, like all founders of companies, there are good times and bad times but regardless you keep moving forward.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

So for anyone wanting to find co-founders, you need to start building great relationships with people you meet in your professional and social life. I say that because my 3 co-founders came through people I had a great rapport within a professional setting.

My first co-founder (Rachael Rutsky) both work at Equinox and we also did work-related events together both as managers in different clubs. We had a few years of rapport and randomly one day when we were hanging out, I told about my business idea and she was excited about what I wanted to build for a company. From that point forward, we partnered together to make it happen. A few months later, we both transitioned out of Equinox to work for a tech company to gain experience. Once the company started to shut down, we both went full-time in our company.

My next co-founder (Joseph Aronez) was connected to me by one of my friends and fellow managers within Equinox. I told her my idea and then she told me about her friend who has a background in creating e-learning platforms. After we had a few meetings, he believed in our vision and wanted to join our journey to assist.

Lastly, my CTO (Jared Ross) was introduced to me by one of my friends and co-workers. One night I went out for drinks with her and her husband, told them about my business idea, and her husband told me he knew of a developer that work with him at AWS who would probably have some interest in what we are building. Once he made the intro to Jared, I told him about our company and vision, then he decided to join as well.

A lot of things to get my co-founders to work out for the better but the only reason I got the opportunity to find co-founders was because years prior I developed great relationships with people that I did not know could help me. Moving up in the world always starts building great relationships with people because you never know who could help you out one day.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Probably the most impactful book I have read as a Founder and young CEO was “The 7 Rules of Power” by Jeffrey Pheffer. Whenever I recommend this book, I tell them upfront this book is not meant for everyone. This book is meant for ambitious and driven individuals who are seeking to rise up the ranks and gain power. The biggest misconception is that wanting power is a bad thing, its not. More times than not, bad people seek to attain power (for whatever reasons) when more good people should be seeking to attain power (to use that power for good).

My goal is to attain power to serve my community for good and to do great things within this one life I have to live. I am also willing to do what others won’t do to move up this ladder along with the fact that I won’t quit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thecoachingmarket.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roman_empire813/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-rodriguez-b4a3a170/
• Other: TCM Profile Page: https://thecoachingmarket.com/profile/04c8e498-b071-7015-84e2-37911011c8ae?by=id