PACE Fitness Academy - Case Study

Building a Performance Business

Long before starting his performance business, Justin was a college athlete when he was diagnosed with Siliac’s disease which necessitated that his life focused on fitness, nutrition and lifestyle. He became a personal trainer at a small, boutique gym that he felt eventually became too sales-focused which resulted in Justin venturing out on his own after more than a year learning the personal training industry.

Tell us about your practice and how you stand out/plan to stand out?

I took on a partner that shared my vision of training clients, and then we set out to start a business that was centered on training clients for results. We can can easily sum up our training philosophy in four pillars: Purpose, Attitude, Commitment, and Effort.

• Purpose: Greater purpose for everything they do, every day.
• Attitude: We aim to produce great, positive attitudes
• Commitment: A mutual commitment from athlete to trainer and trainer to athlete.
• Effort: Giving it your all when you choose to do something

What does your clientele look like?

Clients include a mix of a variety of people of all ages, skill levels, lifestyles. We view everyone as an athlete. Whether it’s a teenage male or senior, they all need foundational movements and fundamental principles that apply to health through strength training.

What are some challenges you experienced as a trainer prior to TeamBuildr? Did you try any solutions?

One of the major challenges was getting people educated to form autonomy so that clients could take control of certain aspects of training. At first, people are intimidated by the gym which reduces confidence.

We felt like we needed a tool to communicate some of our training in ways where we did not have to be with them all the time. We concluded this would be in the form of an app that could communicate coaching cues and instructional videos, as well as simply getting workouts in their hands before coming into the gym.

The goal was also to create momentum with clients so that we could progress them, and to not allow training sessions to become redundant. Lastly, we were using Excel spreadsheets and we know that was something we wanted to get away from. For our sake, and our client’s sake.

How did you find TeamBuildr and what was your evaluation process like?

I got invited to the NHSSCA Facebook group (which is the new high school strength coaches association). I simply asked if anyone was using something digital to write and distribute working programming. TeamBuildr popped up.

What are some problems TeamBuildr ended up solving and what does it allow you to do now?

For clients, TeamBuildr is the point of reference for anyone looking to do extra stuff away from the gym. My older clients (stay at home moms, etc.), they don't necessarily know or care what exercises are called - they’re busy. For me, I may not see them enough to engrain movements or instruction as it relates to their exercises. The TeamBuildr app gives me confidence in assigning and communicating programming to those clients. It’s been a major help to clients looking to get more interaction outside of the one-on-one sessions.

It also helps them keep track of where they are in terms of weights and reps. Basically, it’s an online workout journal. For the coaches, it’s been a tremendous organization tool. I no longer have thousands of files on my desktop. I tried Excel, Docs, PPT and they were everywhere. TeamBuildr has solved that logistically. I need people to do things when we’re not training (2 of 4 sessions in person). This helps me stay onto people, communicate with them. See their results. And keeping clients accountable. I couldn’t do that before without constantly bothering my clients.

Remote coaching?

I’ve leveraged TeamBuildr to coach athletes remotely, and I’m actively looking to expand that part of my business because of what TeamBuildr can offer them.  Ideally, I can give them a consultation and get some baseline info from them (even via Skype or Facetime). Then, I wrote a program for them like I usually do but this time we program and train them remotely using Teambuildr. Every once in a while, we’ll trade video to critique form.

Which features do you think are the most valuable to your business?

Copy and paste on the calendar is key. We often do 6 to 8 week programs. Copying one week to 6 and then editing the progressions, sets, reps, etc. has been awesome.

Video embedding in the app is great too. We have a bunch of videos and are able to seamlessly use them in TeamBuildr for people to see. It’s probably the number 1 feature that we utilize.

So far your business has done well?

Yes. So well that we’re building a new facility: 8k SQ, 4k of weight room, 80 ft. of turf. Full court basketball/vball court. Two batting cages, 2 pitching lanes, and a padded room. Office and admin space built-in.