Ep.12 - Matthew Januszek, Co-Founder and CEO of Escape Fitness

Rob Moore brings the wisdom of entrepreneurs worldwide to his guests each week on The Disruptive Entrepreneur Podcast. Listen to the inspiring, interesting and at times counter-intuitive results when the disruptive entrepreneur interviews the Escape Your Limits host and Escape Fitness co-founder, Matthew Januszek.

Sometimes falling is the best thing in the world that can happen to you. Just ask Escape Fitness co-founder Matthew Januszek who developed his interest in fitness at 15 and then clenched it that summer while housebound from a roller skating tumble left him watching ‘Pumping Iron” on repeat. As a child of the 80s, Matthew was inspired by the ability to remake the human body through bodybuilding and he had natural knack for metal and woodwork. Matthew’s father, Richard Januszek, was an engineer with a passion for design and invention and the goal to simply make things better. Their passions and talents led the father and son duo to start a company literally from their garage that they’ve grown into a $40 million global functional fitness equipment-manufacturing leader. In fact, Escape fitness has been invited to help provide innovative, exciting and successful fitness solutions to over 1000 clubs in 80 countries. This functional fitness force is redefining human performance.

Looking back over its two decades in business, while Escape has experienced massive changes that come with growing a global fitness solutions company, the hallmarks that have defined and shaped it are ever-present. Matthew believes their longevity in a tough industry proves that founding a business on deeply abiding passion, sharing that passion with like-minded people and making sure it’s contagious to customers is one of their secrets to success.

What makes Escape Fitness different in an industry that today boasts the praises of functional fitness is that Escape was “functional” before functional was cool. Today, the company offers hundreds of innovative and colorful products, from the Octagon frame range, to functional, athletic and strength equipment, to studio, boxing and flexibility equipment and more. Further, Escape offers a popular programming suite–MOVE IT, BATTLE FIT and HIIT THE DECK–which is a personalized approach to training that brings its functional equipment to life. Plus, Escape offers facility design and flooring. The goal: to continually make functional fitness safe, effective, exciting and accessible to people who want to be healthy, regardless of their fitness level. 

Matthew shares the most important things to him about keeping oneself fit mentally and physically to successfully run a company.

Episode Highlights:

• Create a routine that travels with you that addresses exercise, nutrition and sleep to stay mentally and physically fit and avoid the burnout that can come from being an entrepreneur, leader or CEO.
• When you have a passion, find people who compliment your skills so you can build a team around yourself; and embrace the skills you don’t have through ongoing personal development; in these ways you can turn your passion into business success.
• To ride the wave of growing a company for the long haul, when launching new ideas or products: keep it simple, focus on your business, persevere and don’t stop until you achieve your goals.
• Have the discipline to know when to pull the plug on a product or idea that’s not working the way you intended.
• Embrace hybridization for inspiration.

Join Matthew Januszek in an interview with Rob Moore, The Disruptive Entrepreneur to see what quite literally fuels, drives and motivates him to success over the long haul.

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