Alloy Personal Training Business 08: Rami Odeh- A Story of True Grit from the Trenches
In this episode, our guest, Rami Odeh, tells us about his journey of early success, near failure and a return to success with the sale of his training gym.
Rami started like a lot of people, in corporate America. He then went back to graduate school to chase his dream of opening his own business.
After graduating, he got a fresh start as a personal trainer and loved it for the instant impact it had on lives. This led him to open his own facility and propel a much larger number of people to the heights of success.
It wasn’t sunshine and roses forever though.
He moved the gym to a new building that he bought, ran into debt, and almost lost all that he worked so hard for. This eventually led him to overhaul his business model and once again taste success again.
He’s seen and done it all.
Stay tuned to know what and who all, apart from his grit, saw him through tough times.
Key Takeaways:
- Rami’s sports and corporate background (1:47)
- The one corporate meeting that got him to go back to graduate school (2:31)
- Did an internship in a gym; loved seeing an instant impact for what he did (4:51)
- Worked in large gyms; graduate degree in exercise science was an asset (7:04)
- His foray into in-home training; did it for about two years (8:27)
- Finding a place to open his own facility (9:48)
- Took up a part-time job at a hospital; helped help him market his gym (11:18)
- The first 8 years, the biz grew 30% a year; they were doing $1 million (13:42)
- Moved the gym to a bigger place; great revenue, not great margins (14:50)
- Got real close to walking away from it all (21:07)
- Had a third party personal training company coming into his gym (21:40)
- Looking at short-selling the building (25:21)
- Went about learning from the near failure; revamped everything (27:56)
- Grew year over year and went into profits again (30:01)
- Community support and a spiritual anchor really helped him (33:25)
- Sold the business and kept the building (39:38)
- Living a life of gratitude (42:32)
- He’s an author and has moved into talking about spirituality and exercise (45:26)
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