June 24, 2016

Meet Santa Monica Personal Fitness Trainer: Chris Chinn

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Chinn. He’s young, but has quickly learned how to take life by the horns and make things happen. His hard work, attitude and focus have helped him achieve a lot relatively quickly. Below you’ll find edited excerpts of our interview with Chris.

Chris, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?

We began as a boot camp company working at local parks in West LA, Santa Monica, and Culver City. We also ran private group programs like Sorority Boot Camp at UCLA/USC, Afterschool Boot Camp for teachers, and corporate events. After 3 years of this, we realized we were being limited by weather and daylight at certain times of the year, so we began looking into buying our own gym. We made contact with the owner of Easy Fitness, who was selling his successful small group training gym in Santa Monica. We agreed to purchase the gym, equipment, and customers. After a year of success, we reached back out to the Easy Fitness owner and purchased his Marina Del Rey location. We now own both locations and both are steadily growing!

Has it been a smooth road?

It’s been a relatively smooth road, primarily because we’ve prioritized low-spending on our expenses. Winter time used to be a major issue because of the cold, dark weather. The biggest speed bump we hit was when the parks in Santa Monica began charging an unreasonable amount of money for park permits. That’s when we realized we were better off having our own facility. Our other big milestones with our athletics program was agreeing to year-round contracts with the Irvine Slammers soccer club and Autobahn Soccer Academy.

What are your plans for the future?

Our plan for the future is to open more gyms in the LA and Orange County areas. We have aspirations of someday building our own warehouse sized gym with a weight room, turf field, nutrition center, and physical therapy department. The goal would be to still a group fitness class area, but we would really like to build out our athletic performance center. It’s a few years down the line, so we got to keep hustling to make it happen!

Let’s dig a little deeper into your story. What was the hardest time you’ve had?

Graduating college in 2009 and heading out into the “real world,” I was hit with the sudden realization that I didn’t have a career path. I had always figured that I would get my UCLA degree and everything would fall into place. But that’s not how the world works. You have to go out and make your life happen, not wait for it to come to you. Especially in the middle of a nasty recession.

I jumped around from one 100% commission sales job to the next. Every day was a grind walking around in a suit and tie in 90 degree weather going door to door. With each rejection building on the next, my days got long and depressing. And seeing no money coming in made it all the more devastating. The real world was awful.

After leaving my 4th job in 3 years, I sat down and started game-planning. I wrote out my strengths and weaknesses. I thought about how I could use my experiences from my previous jobs to help me with my next. And most importantly, I thought about what I was passionate about.

Growing up, my whole life was centered on sports. Playing, watching, and even teaching my little sister how to run the triple option in my grandparents’ backyard. So I began searching for sports-related jobs: marketing, media, management. I even took a sports agency course before realizing I’d need to go back to law school to have any sort of success. But the problem with finding a job in sports is that there are hundreds of thousands of applicants looking for the same thing.

So if no one was going to give me a job, I decided it was time to make my own. You have to make your life happen, not wait for it to come to you.

I remembered that my good friend from high school had started his own fitness/athletic training business in the Bay Area. He graduated from Stanford and was about 3 years into his business, already bringing in close to 6 figures a year. Light bulb!

I contacted my friend to pick his brain about the business. My friend asked me, “Is this something you’re looking to work full-time on?” I thought for a moment before confirming my commitment level. “Well then why don’t we work on a licensing agreement and have you start the Southern California division of our company?”

My best friend (and business partner) Zac and I drove up to the Bay Area the next weekend to go over paperwork, build our website, and learn about his training programs. A month later, we could officially call ourselves business owners.

Do you ever just stop and think WOW – I’ve made it?

Guess what business owners have to do? Walk the street and do sales. As I picked up my stack of flashy boot camp flyers and headed out to Westwood, all the memories of rejection and poorness came sweeping back into my head. But as I got out on the street, I realized that it was a whole lot easier to sell something that I was passionate about. I wasn’t selling insurance, I wasn’t selling education, I was selling sports and fitness. I remember coming home later that day happy, energized, and feeling like a million bucks.

Fast forward 5 years and I look at our company’s progress. Thousands of happy customers, kids and adults. A 5 star rating on Yelp. Complete strangers walking through our doors signing up for memberships. We’ve helped kids get recruited by college programs. We’ve helped couples get in the best shape of their lives before their wedding. We’ve saved people from their own unhealthy habits. We’ve made it as a successful business. And we’ve gone out and made our lives happen.

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