Who Am I?

I’m going to give you the cliff notes (I am clearly an over talker). My name is Sam, I grew up in in Corpus Christi, TX in a lower income household raised by a single parent (Father). I had no clue what I was going to do in life, all I knew was that I wanted to open some kind of business one day. My dad who is my role model till’ this day made minimum wage as a supervisor for a meat butchering company and cut grass on the side. Two things he instilled in me was insane work ethic and wisdom about life in general. Unlike most parents one thing he didn’t do was tell me what to study or what to do for a career. All he was adamant about was for me to go to college to not end up struggling in life financially (we struggled a lot). I took his advice and found myself at the financial aid office at Del Mar College in 2005. College was only possible because I was blessed with government funded Pell grants and later scholarships.

After graduating with an associates degree from Del Mar College I took a leap of faith and moved to San Antonio, TX in 2008 to continue my studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio. I transferred from Del Mar College to pursue a 4 year business management degree. This was a big deal to me as I never saw myself leaving my small town. I left knowing there would be no support financially from my pops. I had some money saved up, but knew I would have to figure things out pretty fast.

I rented a room from one of my high school friends who was a personal trainer at a gym called Spectrum Athletic Clubs. He was the one that got me the job as a personal trainer. I started working as a personal trainer as soon as I moved to San Antonio. I was extremely optimistic and positive about the job. I was addicted to working out very young and in amazing shape. I thought to myself “who wouldn’t want to train with me.” Things went upside down extremely fast! I’ll save you the details… Personal Training was not what I thought it would be. I begin hating it after feeling like a failure the first few months. During this time I was the most stressed I had ever been in my entire life. I was a full time student working part time (1-2 clients) and had bills to pay! The money wasn’t coming in like I thought it was. My schooling was also suffering as the depression set in and the long hours at work with no returns. I became depressed! I even started to hate San Antonio, TX because of my situation!

The thought of failing my family and going back home was mortifying to me. I had to figure out what I was doing wrong as a personal trainer and instead of throwing the towel I began to work on myself. After a few weeks of big adjustments to my business everything started falling into place. I went from hating my job as a personal trainer in 2008 to loving it so much that I even decided to get a second bachelors degree in Kinesiology Exercise Science in 2010.

In 2010 (18 months after moving to San Antonio) I was awarded Top 10 Trainer in San Antonio for Spectrum Athletic Clubs. There was 11 Spectrum Gyms in San Antonio (I was competing against 400+ trainers). The awesome part about this was that I ranked #7 while going to college full time! In 2013 I graduated with two bachelor degrees and decided to Personal Train Full Time. Unfortunately My gym “Spectrum” was bought out by Gold’s Gym in 2013, right after my graduation. Everyone freaked out! I was so confident in my craft by then that I did not care and focused on being great in any setting. Within one year of working for Gold’s Gym I ranked Top 5 in the Nation! From 2013-2015 despite my success at Gold’s Gym the business culture was affecting my job immensely!

Gold’s Gym had an insane turnover rate with their employees! They were hiring, promoting, and transferring all kinds of personalities and inexperienced employees to managers in rapid time. Unfortunately I had some serious problems with management that never subsided.

After talking to my wife and getting her blessing I abruptly took my second leap of faith in December of 2015 (seven years later). In 2016 it was official! I opened up my own gym! The blessing of working for two corporate gyms with two different business cultures taught me so much! I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my gym based on my experience. My goals were simple: Take care of my future employees exactly how I would want to be taken care of.

The story gets crazier with me having to use close to 150k in personal credit cards/personal lines of credit to open the gym.. but I will end it here…. After a few years of Business Start-up struggles I was able to create a very successful gym and be debt free (personal & business).