October 15, 2016

Meet Glendale Personal Trainer & CEO: Armen T. Ghazarians

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Armen T. Ghazarians.

Armen, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
In high school, I was a cross-country runner. I was fit and felt great. However, that began to change when I started college. My all-encompassing focus then was getting into Medical School and I lost sight of my health and fitness. I gained 50 pounds over 5 years and my cholesterol shot through the roof. The ironic part is that I didn’t realize how overweight I was until I had to retake my driver’s license photo. I was shocked! Determined to regain my fitness, I hired a personal trainer who became a strong influence in my life at that time, and I started attending Weight Watchers meetings. However, it wasn’t long before my trainer told me that he had landed a gig on a TV show. Understandably, he moved on to pursue his dreams and I was left with the dilemma of what to do next. I had begun to realize that if I continued to pursue the path to medicine, I would be doing so in complete disregard of my health and wellbeing.

After a great deal of soul-searching, I made the decision to change course. I studied fitness, received my certification, and began a career as a personal trainer. Initially, I worked as a personal trainer at various big chain fitness clubs and eventually moved into the role of fitness manager.

Now, after spending nearly 20 years in the fitness industry and receiving over a dozen certifications, I’ve started my own fitness company, Finish Fit®. I created Finish Fit® with the desire to help all those who are struggling with their health and fitness just as I did. My mission is to help change lives for the better, just as my trainer helped change mine.

Has it been a smooth road?
Pursuing a path to excellence is never an easy one. It requires tremendous self-discipline, hard work, long hours, relentless study, and the willingness to fail without giving up on one’s vision.
My ultimate goal is to make Finish Fit® into a fitness brand that is unrivaled by any other. There are thousands of CEO’s and companies who’ve tried, failed and given up; many with more experience and financial backing than I. For me, failure is simply a learning tool that can lead to amazing results. The way I see it, the lessons learned from each failure bring me closer to my dream.

In the course of trying to make my vision a reality, I’ve had to overcome countless obstacles. Admittedly, the biggest challenge for me has been making the transition from Technician (personal trainer) to Entrepreneur (CEO). I’ve had to master various subjects on my own, such as networking, accounting, marketing, web design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media, branding, sales, and a host of other important skills. The learning curve is steep. I literally listen to 3-5 audiobooks a week on every Business and Entrepreneurship topic imaginable to improve my skills. I’m constantly asked how I find the time to listen to so many books. My secret? I listen to audiobooks while I work out. It’s a great way to maximize productivity while working on staying fit and healthy.

Each time I hit a roadblock, I think of my favorite quote from the movie “Heartbreak Ridge” when Clint Eastwood (“Highway”) responds to the accusation of his man cheating to win a contest. Highway states, “He didn’t’ cheat. He adapted, overcame, and improvised.”. And so, I find myself constantly having to adapt, overcome, and improvise to achieve my goal of making Finish Fit® a household name.

I believe that we each pursue our own individual path in life and my experiences have taught me that we do so under divine providence. I cannot foresee where my path will lead, but I am absolutely certain that it is the right path for me.

Tell us about your childhood, what were you like growing up?
I was taught discipline from an early age. As a boy scout for nearly 20 years, I learned to love my country, lead by example, educate myself, work hard, refine my skills, and learn from my mistakes. I am a person of faith. I’ve made many mistakes in my life, and I’ve always tried to learn from them and grow as a person

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite memory of childhood was spending a year in Italy. For a year I did not attend formal school. I simply attended music school and did TaeKwonDo. I got to see different parts of Italy and fell in love with the culture and its history. This inspired me so much so, that my minor in college was classical civilizations.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
My plans for the future are to make Finish Fit® a fitness brand unrivaled by any other. I often think of great companies like Zappos, Amazon, Ferrari, Apple, among others, and what qualities make them so successful. To me, the answer is simply that they never compromise on the customer experience, they create innovative products that are generations ahead of their time, and they stand behind their products with risk reversal. It is these qualities that I’ve tried to implement at Finish Fit®

Over the years, as I worked at various big chain fitness clubs, I felt frustrated with an inefficient and defective system of delivering health and fitness. I felt that skill level and knowledge of trainers varied vastly in the industry and that there needed to be standard that would make all the trainers working within the echo system of a fitness brand equally skilled and knowledgeable. I wanted to create a system that would deliver consistent, quantifiable, and measurable results for clients despite the trainer’s experience and knowledge level just as Ray Kroc did for McDonald’s. So, I created the “Finish Fit® Coaching System”.

In this system, our Coaches send Finish Fit Personal Training® members periodized workouts based on their goals and assessment results, reviewed by their managers, on our app prior to every live workout. Our personal training clients are able to refer back to our app (Finish Fit® App – Personal training) to see (via written explanation and video demonstration) what the workouts they are about to do for each phase of our training system instead of doing random workouts of the day. And when they travel, they can continue with their exercise program with custom workouts delivered to their mobile device.

In order to supplement live Finish Fit Boot Camp® classes, I implemented the Finish Fit® App – Boot Camp where our members could access over 500 classes that they could participate in from any device with an internet connection.

I’ve always felt that education is the key to a long-term sustainable health and fitness program. Something that I felt was lacking in the industry. So I created the Finish Fit® Nutrition Program. In it, I implemented a 12-week online self-guided nutrition course with videos and quizzes so our members could learn how the body functions and how the various macronutrients and exercise effects them and I added weekly live webinars so our members could be updated with the latest research on nutrition and supplements and allow an open forum for them to have their questions addressed by their Finish Fit® Nutrition Coaches.

To improve our members eating habits, I had my team create a custom nutrition app named “Finish Fit®”, which allows our Coaches to deliver tailored meal plans designed by dieticians and adjusted to meet our member’s needs to help ensure their success.

Finally, to continually keep our members motivated and up to date with the latest fitness information, I introduced Finish Fit Magazine®, a biweekly newsletter which is delivered to all our members to help them Finish Fit®.

I firmly believe that the combination of services that I have created for Finish Fit® including but not limited to our boot camps, live and online personal training, or nutrition services are by far the best in the industry. I’ve always felt that no company can claim to deliver excellence unless it is willing to offer a complete risk reversal. Guarantees are common in almost all industries except in fitness. There are very few if any fitness companies that offer an unconditional money back guarantee for their services.

As such, I’ve backed up all our services at Finish Fit® with a 30-day unconditional money back guarantee. This policy is what encourages every member of my team to strive for excellence and execute our mission statement, which is as follows:

“To exceed our client’s expectations through innovative programming, unparalleled member experience, and unconditional support to help each and every person Finish Fit®.”

As Finish Fit® transitions from the infancy, adolescence, and maturity phases of its growth, my goal is to refine these systems and improve upon them, based on member feedback and collected metrics, to ultimately make the Finish Fit® Coaching System the “Gold Standard” in the industry.

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