Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Gise.
Hi Jacob, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m a southern boy who grew up in North GA about an hour from Atlanta. From an early age, I knew my purpose in life was to make a positive impact on this world by inspiring and educating others on how to intentionally live on a daily basis to improve their health and fitness and overall quality of life.
My dad, a doctor of chiropractic, instilled strong values about being proactive in my health and fitness from a very early age. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years playing sports and being active outside with friends and family. I did manage to get injured quite a bit as I always had an overwhelming amount of energy and probably overdid activities/training a lot during this time period. Rehabbing my injuries led to me spending a lot of time with PTs and learning so much about the human body and how to improve it.
After graduating college from UGA, I decided to use that knowledge in a productive way so I got NASM certified as a Personal Trainer and started training clients at the local gym in Athens, GA. I quickly worked my way up to managing the PT team at that gym and had well over 50 clients I was seeing on a weekly basis. This was great and all but I didn’t really see eye to eye with the owner of the gym so ever since that moment I quit I knew inside my ultimate goal was to open up a gym of my own one day.
Fast forward 8 years later after saving up enough money in the nightlife industry as a bartender/manager/and eventually OWNER, I finally made the decision to sell the bar and move to LA from GA and live out my dreams of being a gym owner.
Once I got out here I had no idea what to do or how to do it but where there is a will there is a way! I ended up meeting a real estate agent who was looking for a gym location for me and he knew these two guys from Australia who just launched a fitness franchise and were looking to expand into America with someone who would help them spread their gyms across the states.
From here I ended up moving to Australia for 7 months and helped them launch the first Sydney location while also getting the experience I needed to be able to come back Santa Monica and launch the first Body Fit Training in America for them.
Finally, in November 2019 (after about a year and half of searching for a location with that real estate agent and then building out the gym) we launched at 401 Wilshire Blvd successfully! But as you may know shortly after in March 2020 the most unexpected thing happened – Covid 19.
I had just signed up enough members at the end of February to be able to start making money for the month of March and finally have a profitable gym of my own! At first, we thought it was just a 2 week shut down but I was for sure panicking for I had no idea what was about to happen and was legit scared all of my hard work the last 2 years was about to be for nothing.
In June 2020 Santa Monica released permits for outdoor fitness and we were literally the first studio in town to apply and start using these permits to reopen. I was very determined to adapt and do whatever it took to continue to train the community I built up and not let my baby go out of business.
It was A LOT of long hours and hard work to move over 3,000 lbs of weights on a daily basis outside and setup workouts for my community every morning at 5am and evening at 4pm. But my team and I loved every minute of it. Because we were one of the only gyms in LA to open so quickly outside we started to grow like crazy and in no time we’re more than double the membership numbers and monthly revenue that we were right before we shut down.
We quickly grew to over 350 members and have been one of the most popular/flourishing fitness communities in LA ever since.
Nowadays we still like to go back outside to local parks and the beach on the weekends for fun community workouts and events and are forever appreciative of the weather in LA to allow us these opportunities.
In 2023 I personally am in the process of starting my own online health and fitness brand to complement my brick-and-mortar business as a way to continue spreading the positive impact I have on this world and those who I touch in it!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Obviously, the beginning of Covid was a struggle but it was almost a blessing in disguise for it allowed us to truly shine and show how much we were willing to sacrifice to make sure our local community had a safe outside fitness solution during the pandemic,
Being outside left us exposed to the mentally Ill who frequent Santa Monica though so having to deal with people yelling at us and physically attacking us was not ideal. We are glad to be back inside walls and safe from all of that nowadays!
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We introduced a new age way of “group fitness training.” Instead of doing an exercise class with one cheerleader on a microphone yelling at a group to workout harder, we decided to develop a scientifically proven training program that was overseen by multiple personal trainers to groups of up to 36 people. This way you are moving in ways that have been proven by science to make you look better, feel better, increase your strength and muscle mass while losing body fat and ALWAYS having fun!
Basically think about bridging the gap between group training and personal training. Giving members the best of both worlds for a very affordable price tag.
What matters most to you?
That good energy and LOVE is shared because at the end of the day if your intentions inside come from a place of good then the world will inevitably be a better place for us all!
Contact Info:
- Website: Bodyfittraining.com
- Instagram: @bft_santamonica
- Other: https://members.bodyfittraining.com/auth/login
