IAM115- Fitness Enthusiast Helps Clients Improve Their Health Inspired by His Own Weight Loss Transformation

As someone with an interest in fitness, helping as many people as possible improve their health and seeing the benefits of his own weight loss transformation, Matthew Bible started his fitness company, CASS Fitness in September of 2013. The company started out with Matthew and his two partners Stephen Sengstacke and Ramon Thomas. Matthew is an in-home personal trainer, traveling to homes, apartment gyms, parks, offices, and more in Montgomery County, MD, Arlington, VA, and Washington, DC. Over the next few years, Matthew helped to recruit several talented personal trainers in the DC area as independent contractors. In 2017, CASS Fitness began teaching outdoor classes for the Parks at Walter Reed in DC and gained their first trainer in Pittsburgh, PA.

CEO Hack: Trainerize
CEO Nugget: Screen clients during the onboarding process
CEO Defined: Position of being in control

Website: http://www.cassfitness.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cassfitnessdotnet
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cassfitness
Instagram: http://instagram.com/cassfitnessmatt

Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have the Matthew Bible of CassFitness.net. As someone with an interest in fitness, helping as many people as possible improve their health, and seeing the benefits of his weight loss transformation. Matthew Bible started his fitness company CASS Fitness in September 2013. The company started with Matthew and his two partners, Stephen Sengstacke and Ramon Thomas. Matthew is an in-home personal trainer traveling to homes, apartment gyms, parks, offices, and more in Montgomery County, Maryland, Arlington, Virginia, and Washington DC. Over the next few years, Matthew helped to recruit several talented personal trainers in the DC area as well as independent contractors. In 2017, CASS Fitness began teaching outdoor classes for the Parks at Walter Reed in Washington, DC. And he also gained their first trainer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Matthew, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Matthew Bible 1:26

I'm ready. Yes.

Gresham Harkless 1:28

Awesome. Let's do it. So, the first question I had was just to hear a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Matthew Bible 1:33

Alright, so I've had an interest in the world of health and fitness, even when I was working on my degree at Penn State. And then of course, as you mentioned, I did experience my 50-pound weight loss and that was compiled, but all the weight gain resulted in bad decisions in college, but then the weight loss was just a motivation just ready to get back into shape. But then I was also helping people with like, advice on their nutrition. They're like, Well, how'd you do it? And I was like, Okay, let's do this and that for you a little bit different this, this and that, helping them with certain exercises. Unfortunately, the time I put my desire to get my personal training certification on the back burner, I was like, Okay, let me get finished my degree.

So I got into the corporate world for a couple of years. And then I got laid off. And then I fell back on hospitality hotel work and moves to college. So at the time, I had some aspirations of actually owning a resort. So I was getting promotions, and the hotel worked with a saw as content, but I wasn't too happy with it. So then I saw the stress that general managers and sales managers went through daily. And I kept thinking myself, ah, no, so like corporate, the corporate company, I ran the hotel, firing people left and right and took elimination of my position by corporate and then demotion back to the front desk to kickstart my dreams. So I left work pretty angry that day, understandably.

So I went to the gym for my second workout I usually worked out before, we're not hurt commercial for the NASM National Academy of Sports Medicine, one of the certifications. So that night, I looked at NASM, and a couple of other accredited certifications, like that they had a science-based program, and I liked that they had an actual payment plan too. So I pulled the trigger that night sign right up. I knew right then and there, I wanted to start a fitness business. And I knew which direction I wanted to go to me and my parents were initially against my decision not to start a gym. But I'm trying to give them my reasons. I was like, Well, seeing the high turnover of trainers at my gym fears of losing my job, no matter how well it performs, threw me away from working at a gym.

So then I got together with my two Venture Partners, Ramon and Steven who were a huge help in providing the marketing and graphic design, web design, and second opinions of my decisions, they knew the potential and a fitness business provided their services to help us get a good start. So I wanted to start controlling my destiny and play by my own rules. Too many times, I want to manage your changes at all jobs. And then when a system work, things always changed mostly, just in my opinion. I think for the worst, I also started a company because I wanted to build a foundation where I never have to stress out about bills, and I'm doing something that makes me happy.

Gresham Harkless 4:09

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, having been somebody that's been laid off once in a while it was about to get laid off again, I can understand how you might have felt angry because I know I felt I think angry was a nice word. So, no, I think is a true sign of an entrepreneur to be able to take those hard times and those things that happen but to be able to try to turn them around and you know, look within yourself and see what you're passionate about and kind of you know march along the beat of your drum so to speak, so increase your business so I appreciate you for doing that. So I want to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more about what you're doing at CASS Fitness. How are you helping out and serving these clients that you work with?

Matthew Bible 4:44

Okay, so we primarily provide in-home personal training for one on one clients, some small groups, and as mentioned, we do travel to the apartment gyms, condos, gyms houses and some people have the equipment and it's been a lot of anything so I so we all travel with anything from mats bands, some All weights I'm excited balls like battle ropes pretty much anything it's not a barbell or like some or like a sandbag, we have, I will bring it to them or Parks office gyms. I mostly work with weight loss clients and weight loss, it's more than just it's every person is different it's a different situation, different pieces to the puzzle it's a lot of it is a workout, but it goes beyond a workout to help them with nutrition and nutrition is trician although it sounds so simple, it's very tough because, you know, one, I mean, there are so many contradictory articles out there, like do this diet, that plan, and all the usually from credible people as well. And then so there's only so much confusion, and then all the marketing out there even like TV ads, like always go by if you see something advertised on TV as far as food 99% of times healthy, even if they say so.

So there's, it just temptations from work stresses. So that part of it, it's very personal to each person. Now I do help a little bit with corrective exercise as well, that was my second certification was NASM CES corrective exercise science, I found that as somebody that went through a pre-debilitating back injury for about a year, I just found corrective exercise to be so useful. And it actually about half of our clientele, you know, need some form of it, whether by the everybody has helped prevent injuries, but just to help someone recover once, once they're clear from a doctor or physical therapist, just to help them out with the preventing that kind of injury from happening again, it just, it's so much it's just occupation, occupational majority of folks now or you know, we're sitting at desks, most of the day, maybe not in most ergonomic, most like, ideal ergonomic situation, or there's a lot of repetitive motion.

So to like our technologies our technology is hurting us like physically. So it's like going to combat that that's a two this made two categories. And I do help kind of what the fitness well, they call them newbies, I guess in the strength world guy was also that skinny kid at one point to just help like a beginner to intermediate lifters kind of get to the next level with their strength training, as well.

Gresham Harkless 7:20

Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is something that you feel makes either you or, or your organization or both of them unique.

Matthew Bible 7:27

What makes us unique, I feel we truly made our client's experience personal, every person we treat just treated us like totally different. I mean, everybody's respective, of course, but like just every situation is different. Every program is different no cookie-cutter program to 30 days like this and that is it's nobody's a one size fits all situation. I think every trainer that's with us not only has personal training experience, but almost everybody has customer service experience from other jobs and I've had a lot of it drawn from working at hotels for several years, just knowing is even especially when I got into like higher end hotels, like just providing a certain level of service each time. I think I drew a lot of that from the customer service world.

And I think a lot of us have gone through personal journeys, whether it's been weight loss, injury recovery, or we have already had a trainer for a while, she still got close to where she moved to North Carolina, but she I shouldn't inspirational story like she was just she has turned 50 I think that the one got the bodybuilding four years ago just totally transformed her life. And she was on bodybuilding.com. And she has just put out a role model role for like, a lot of women, and especially in their 30s and 40s and 50s I think with us being human, just I think you see too much on social media you see, in I did this kind of signaling early on, I post like all kinds of crazy stuff I would do, but it's like, that's not what most people want, there's a very specialized group of people that do but you know, it's, it can be intimidating to some folks, it's just, so I kind of kind of drove away from that and just really just focus on Alright, what do they need.

And then we also, you know, in addition, personal training, we do like to work with different budgets, because we realize, not everybody could afford personal training, but we want to help out as many people as possible and help them with their college student and we want to help that that teacher just got his or her first job out of college. So we derive from a couple of my clients moving out of the area and still wanting to work with me to a client who lost their job and still wanted to work with me so I was like, Alright, let's do online training. Got a couple of people that moved I do Skype sessions with but then so that was born and then and then the program is kind of my budget option that I work with so I usually will give some me a questionnaire they'll give stats where they work out at or what they have access to. And then from there any injury history goals, occupation from that through our app, we customize a workout just for them.

So we program them every month, what they want to work out three, four, or five times a week. We'll put that in there. And then we'll give them email support just once a week. So that's, that's something that I also run with. And I can go to multiple areas with that. I mean, I'm more so focused in the DC area pretty much with that, but expanding out and just trying to help as many people as possible, that's kind of yeah, for example, yeah, you can read, you can read out of a magazine, you can read, watch, you can get YouTube videos, you can get programs anywhere, but Yeah, somebody with a knee issue, squats a great exercise the best, but yeah, knee issues, squats, probably not the best choice.

So it takes injuries into account as well. And then we give them instructions, full instructions on everything videos, some that we've done, and if they hadn't been ones we've done, we've handpicked every single one of them, that kind of in line with our values, because it helps somebody when they go to the gym. After all, you're the gym, and probably half of the people are doing the exercises wrong. You go to a gym, you see like lat pull downs, bicep curls, all kinds of stuff just butchered. Sometimes big strong guy and I hurt myself early on in my lifting career. I'm like, Okay, I'm just gonna watch what they're doing. And, pay the price.

Gresham Harkless 11:21

Doing the right thing either. So it kind of just manifests itself and keeps going. It's like a snowball.

Matthew Bible 11:26

Oh, yeah. I've had a better rotator cuff, not terrible rotator cuff injury, but I've had some rotator cuff issues in the beginning, from her watch and stuff.

Gresham Harkless 11:35

Right Well, cool. Well, it's great that you have that kind of individuality for every person so that you're able to kind of fit their needs. And what I wanted to do was switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Matthew Bible 11:51

Definitely. I'm gonna Yeah, definitely, I'm gonna expand upon actually the app that I just mentioned. So it's called a trainer's eyes. It's one of the more popular fitness apps out there. You can use it as an app. But there's of course the full capability on their website. So that's been crucial in business development and retention. So we use it for everybody, we use it for our one-on-one programs because it helps clients keep track of their progress, and they can see what their workouts going to be. And then of course I can, I can easily substitute an exercise. And then, of course, we do use that for online clients. And then we'll turn it on as it's cool. They can also they can check their chart, their weight, and their measurements, they can link like My Fitness Pal and other apps on their Fitbit as well. So we can kind of see their daily calorie intake, their macronutrients split manager, it makes again, as I mentioned, makes it easier for trainers as well. And then now that I and then now that I have several contracted trainers that also that's a good way to kind of check our stats as well for everybody.

Gresham Harkless 12:53

It sounds like keeping everybody on the same page as well, too, which is always important. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can kind of happen a time machine what would you tell your younger business self?

Matthew Bible 13:05

I wanted to grow so fast. When I first started Yeah, we end up going to first contractor trainer I was like, Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Like, I want to get all sorts of people out there to mache. But I did have one Nullam I love my contractors I had a great I did have one guy though. I didn't do enough like, a stringent interview process. So as I remember this, so he was having a habit of being late but what is not showing up he has not shown it to clients. And now we're starting to get is the first time I had to handle customer complaints, which I dealt with that all time working in hotels, so I was prepared to do so. And it was like, and I didn't train on Sunday. That was like the first Sunday I took off all the time. And niece was just born right before that. She's you know, she was about three weeks at the time.

So I drove up to Hershey, Pennsylvania to go hang out for the weekend. And he had this trainer had clients lined up. Oh, it was all Sunday morning. And I knew two out of three of them. And I gave him one of mine to get them started. And in all three of these were friends of each other and then so one texted me as like he never showed up. He said he would be five minutes late. And I was like, Oh no. And then I'm just sitting by the phone. I'm like, and then the second one calls me and then the third one calls me. Oh my goodness. I mean, thankfully I knew them. And I was one of that one of my former clients, I've become a client again, I wrote five I did have to get away from did have to go give away some free sessions. I did some volunteer work for a bit.

Gresham Harkless 14:39

But yeah, it makes sense. But that's huge. And making sure I can understand that you know, trying to grow and trying to grow fast especially sometimes you can sometimes get over you know some of the people you're bringing on but it's great to hear you've kind of rectified that with your company and been able to provide you know, quality services to people now, but that's usually sometimes the hardest way to learn but sometimes it's the best way to learn.

Matthew Bible 15:00

Yes.

Gresham Harkless 15:02

Me saying so. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So what does being a CEO mean to you?

Matthew Bible 15:13

Yeah, I mean, it's a position where you're in control. It's a position where you really, truly get to change lives, you get to play by your own rules, and get to do what you love every single day.

Gresham Harkless 15:26

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Matthew, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule, what I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and then also how best they can get a hold of you.

Matthew Bible 15:37

That's where to get a hold of us. You can go to our website, www.cassfitness.net. Our official site phone lines are always open as well, even through email through our website, we have a contact form on there as well. That's kind of me. And we have a nice blog on there as well. We have a lot of guest writers that come in and sign up for the emailing list as well and deliver the blogs to you that exclusive tips statement I find on the website. Exactly. So, yeah, I look forward to hearing from somebody as well.

Gresham Harkless 16:09

Definitely. Well, I appreciate you again. And what we'll do is we'll have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can follow up. But again, I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Matthew Bible 16:18

Thank you too.

Outro 16:18

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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