Today we’d like to introduce you to Evan Flock.
Hi Evan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
It sounds crazy to say that garage-gym fitness is in my blood but… it is. I grew up in Playa Del Rey and for as long as I can remember, my parents had fitness equipment set up in their garage. Sports was never really my thing, but lifting weights with my dad in our garage was a regular 5-time-a-week experience we shared once I was old enough to care about my own health (about 14 or so.) Ten years later, I’d actually start my career in fitness as a crossfit coach, yoga instructor and tactical strength and conditioning facilitator (that means I was certified to train our men and women in uniform). I still lived at home so I was training people in my neighborhood out of that same garage for six months before I landed my first job as a personal trainer at a big fancy gym in Westwood. I would go on to be one of the top-performing trainers in the entire world for this company, serve as a “master instructor” (which means I trained trainers on how to improve their skills in coaching and business) and – most importantly – meet my future wife, Brittany. In my six-ish years with that company, I would consult at gyms around Los Angeles, helping to open fitness departments for golf-coaching facilities, boutique fitness gyms, and one of the largest entertainment agencies in the world. In December of 2017, Brittany and I would move into our home in culver city and begin to build our own garage gym.
In March of 2018, LookLike, LTD. was born. We started with 14 clients training 1-on-1 and within 90 days served 35+ clients every week. For us to continue to grow our business (without having to leave behind our slice of garage-gym-fitness-heaven) we transitioned our 1-on-1 training business to six-on-one semi-private personal training. This also required me to learn a new skill (programming for multiple people at once) and I developed our own training system called “FITMAPS” in order to serve our growing list of clients. Our business continued to grow until March of 2020 when covid hit. We transitioned our business all online (as all personal trainers did) until we felt safe to reopen. Fortunately, because we run a private and outdoor training space, we were able to reopen relatively quickly (and back to capacity). As gyms continued to shut down around us personal trainers in our area began to reach out asking for advice on how to do ‘the whole garage gym thing.” And in august of 2020 we started our consulting business – The Garage Gym Revolution – and our lives changed entirely. Brittany, who is one of the strongest women you’ll ever meet and loved by all of our training clients, took over the personal training business so I could focus on the growth of the consultant business. We now run two businesses from our home – a semi-private personal training studio that serves our local community and a national consultant company that helps personal trainers and garage-gym owners structure and market their own successful training businesses the same way we have.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Ha! When we moved into our home in December 2017, it was a dream to turn our 900 square feet of space into a training facility that I dreamed of. We thought that I would slowly trickle clients away from the big gym that I worked out of and eventually transitioning into the garage gym thing full-time within a year. (Un)Fortunately for us, that would come a lot sooner than expected. I was fired from my job as a personal trainer that February. I thought about giving up fitness altogether but… I’ve never really been good at anything else. So I had to be all-in on our garage gym. We spent almost every dollar we had to make it work and as good as I was at selling fitness in a big fancy gym, I had NO IDEA how to do it from my home. I took part-time jobs training at start-ups around the area and even worked as an orange-theory coach for a year as we tried to make ends meet.
Fortunately, we were able to recover pretty quickly… And then covid hit. Most trainers (myself included) opted for online training. But I quickly realized that I hated it. I also realized that this “dream” that I kept seeing business coaches, consultants, and marketers push of “training your clients while you lay on a beach somewhere tropical” wasn’t actually my dream. I love my home. I love my garage gym. And I love training people in person. I knew that there had to be people out there like me who felt the same. So when covid forced shutdowns across the world, I knew that there was an opportunity to show trainers how to serve their communities safely doing what they love to do (and not what some Instagram fitness guru was selling them as the future of fitness).
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
The Garage Gym Revolution is a semi-private personal training studio based out of our home in Culver City. We are known for our strong community of local professionals interested in improving their health together. To my knowledge, there are no other garage gym businesses in the area that provide the services, equipment ($100K+), and level of care we provide to our clients. We also created a proprietary programming system (FITMAPS) that helps our clients choose the path to their results. Most importantly, a semi-private training environment means that our clients are able to hold themselves and each other to the highest level of accountability possible. The Garage Gym Revolution’s success allowed us to offer consulting services to like-minded fitness professionals who want to build better businesses and better training communities for themselves and their families. We created a five-course program (all online) and done-for-you marketing services designed to help personal trainers scale their businesses to multiple-five-figure months. Most of our consulting clients end up earning their first 5-figure month within 30 days of our program. Unlike other coaching programs, our clients focus on delivering high-value in-person training services (not online). We have a free coaching group for our consulting clients on Facebook where personal trainers can learn more about us. facebook.com/garagegymrecruits
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Born and raised in Playa Del Rey and going on 35 years as a resident. Los Angeles has everything. People who were raised in this city understand not just how beautiful our surroundings are but how beautiful our people are. You will meet some of the most welcoming human beings in this city. If there was anything to dislike, it would be an outsider’s perspective that LA is full of fakes and phonies. Sure, with 10 million people you’re bound to meet a few people here and there that you’d rather not spend a lot of time with. But my best friends today have been with me since first grade – and they still all live within 5 miles from me. And because this city has so much to offer, we all work in different careers and can still connect over the stuff that brought us together 20+ years ago.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @thegaragegymguerrilla
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegaragegymguerrilla
- Other: https://www.facebook.com/groups/garagegymrecruits
