We recently connected with Storm Kaufman and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Storm thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

Freakin Fitness was established by my family in 2009 in our back yard. Since then, we have grown from a 900sq.ft pavilion, to two 10,000+ Sq.ft facilities and in the process of adding more.

We scaled up over the years by always looking towards the future and always looking to be leaders in our industry. We are never satisfied with where we are at. We could easily take the easy road and stay comfortable where we are, but we choose to stay uncomfortable and re-invest every $1 back into the business for long term, sustainable growth, not just for us, but for future owners under our umbrella.

Over the last 14 years, my brothers and I developed our own fitness brand, opened two of the largest hybrid functional fitness gyms, called Freakin Fitness, run 4 annual fitness events, run online programming for nutrition and manufacture our own fitness accessories and equipment. Currently working on expanding either by adding affiliates to our growing brand & opening more of our own brick and mortar locations.

Now this all sounds amazing, fun and exciting, but the journey to accomplish what we did in the last 14yrs was anything but that.

The struggles an entrepreneur goes through, when creating a brand name is something that is very hard to explain or convey. Everyone talks about it, but unless you are physically building your brand yourself, you will never understand. However, let me take a stab at it.

As an entrepreneur, YOU are the only one driving the ship. YOU are liable for every single task within your business and sometimes things outside your business. There is NO ONE coming to save you. If your ship is taking on water and you aren’t a mechanic to fix it. YOU better figure out how to be a mechanic to fix it, while also keeping up with the daily operations, which also have little fires everywhere. And if you aren’t a firefighter ready to put out those little fires, you better be studying to be a mechanic and a firefighter simultaneously, while maintaining operations. Also, you have outside economic tornados around your ship, which effect your new client acquisitions marketing, etc, etc, and if you are not a meteorologist looking for those upcoming economic tornadoes, then you better be studying for your mechanic, firefighter, and meteorologist degree, simultaneously, while maintaining your daily operations.

All of this while trying to maintain a stable home life. You will work 10-18hr days, 365 days a year, you will stumble, you will fail, you will continue to fail, until you SUCCEED. BUT, then you fail again, and again, and again. The truth is, you will fail more than anyone will try, and that is what gives you the experience, strength, perseverance, knowledge and growth to SUCCEED. Eventually you will start succeeding more than your failures and that’s where you see the magic of your journey.

It wasn’t until the past few years that I acknowledged this fact and embraced it. I wish I knew this earlier but I had to fail a lot to become the expert I am now, in my field. I still have a LOT of growth to go through, and I’m always excited about the journey.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My background in sports is baseball. Played my entire life from when I was 5 years old through my college career. I believe my love for fitness, discipline, teamwork, camaraderie, and integrity, partly came from this background and directly from my own parents example. I was the youngest team captain & starting Varsity baseball player at 2 different high schools, as well as team captain at 2 different colleges. It’s always been in me to lead by example, not by being the loudest in the room, but by being the quietest, observing and then leading by physical example.

This drive also allowed me to achieve my Biology Degree and further on into my Master’s in Exercise Physiology from the University of Louisville. I was planning on getting my Doctors in Physical Therapy but life took a turn into being an entrepreneur.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

Our 2nd location we bought out a struggling gym in a demographical area we had our eyes on for years. When the opportunity arose, we jumped on it. Wow, was that a learning curve. It was one of the best learning experiences in my life that has paid off and helped us grow as a brand and company.

We didn’t buy the gym because we liked it. We bought the gym because, at the time there was no other options to get into that geographical area. So, we bought it as a way to get in, and then used it to grow.

The acquisition process was something new to us. So we had to hire a lawyer, learn how to accurately read the books and decipher issues or red flags. We unknowingly took on ALL the filing fees which added up past $6k which I didn’t even expect (lawyers are expensive but a must have).

Due to liability reasons, and a clean start for the gym we went for an asset purchase only and took the space under a new lease agreement.

The lawyers and paperwork was the EASY part. Now taking your new clientele, and conforming them to the new systems, rules, policies, procedures. THAT was where the migraine came in. We lost 80% of the old clientele that didn’t understand our processes but replaced and gained a NET of 10% in the first year.

Looking back, I understand which changes and what things affected the existing clientele but we wouldn’t change a thing in regards to our operation. We believed in our brand and style, executed our plan.

However, the one thing I would have changed as far as the acquisition is, I would have had more capital to advance our systems and facility layout faster. We were very afraid of debt back then. We wanted to pay everything cash. Now that I understand business and cash flow better, I will only perform these big moves with substantial cash flow availability and excess to cover the unknowns or a business hard for to stay relevant in the industry.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I believe we built our reputation due to our own forward thinking. We never copied anyones processes. We developed everything from our own intuition. We saw all the mistakes and things our competition was doing and always developed steps to eliminate those mistakes. Everything we did, we made sure to BRAND it with ‘Freakin Fitness”. We always looked towards the future. If we couldn’t streamline it or believe it would work for the future, we closed it down or eliminated it from our protocols. It always had to do with duplication, and expansion in mind.

Contact Info:

• Website: freakinfitness.com
• Instagram: @freakinfitnesspines
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx_d0jcFMcICJQvxQ_wmWdw

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