IAM566- Co-founder Provides Training Experience or Runners

Chris Hoffman, Owner and Co-founder of Formula Running Center in Arlington, VA, has always been passionate about running and endurance training. After years of training, Chris continually found himself searching for a place that provided the complete training experience for all runners, a place where runners could train together and grow. From there, Chris worked with a longtime friend and business partner, to create and cultivate the home for runners – Formula Running Center. Chris has competed in numerous marathons, running races, and a variety of triathlons as well, and through his running journey, he became an RRCA-certified running coach and a NASM-certified personal trainer.

• CEO Hack: Book – The New Gold Standard by Joseph Michelli
• CEO Nugget: Focus on personal relationships with clients
• CEO Defined: Not losing sight of your team effort

Website: https://formularunning.com/

Instagram: @formularunningcenter
Twitter: @Formularunning
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/formula-running-center/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/formularunningcenter/

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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 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Chris Hoffman of Formula Running Center. Chris, it's awesome to have on the show.

Chris Hoffman 0:39

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Gresham Harkless 0:41

Yeah, no problem. Super excited to have you on and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Chris so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Chris is the owner and co-founder of Formula Running Center in Arlington, VA, and has always been passionate about running and endurance training. After years of training, Chris continually found himself searching for a place that provided the complete training experience for all runners, a place where runners could train together and grow. From there, Chris worked with a longtime friend and business partner, to create and cultivate the home for runners – Formula Running Center.

Chris has competed in numerous marathons, running races, and a variety of triathlons as well, and through his running journey, he became an RRCA-certified running coach and a NASM-certified personal trainer. Chris, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Chris Hoffman 1:25

Absolutely happy to be here.

Gresham Harkless 1:27

Awesome. Happy to have you on and to kick everything off? I know, I touched on a little bit, but I wanted to hear a little bit more about your CEO story how you got started with your business, and everything you're working on.

Chris Hoffman 1:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you touched on a lot of parts of that. But in terms of my overall background, I actually started in terms of my professional background, not in not in the fitness industry. I was a lawyer by trade, but have been for the past, say 20 years or so 15-20 years, I've been really passionate on the personal side of things about running and endurance training, and just staying active in my personal lifestyle. Then overall I just really got involved with it and I just love the community that entails and the people that I meet on a day-to-day basis, that are also involved with those types of fitness activities.

Over time, my partner and I, who are also an avid runner, just were searching for a facility that met all of our needs, we kept having to go to various facilities to get different things met, whether it was training, whether it's recovery, whether it's other things along the way. No such facility is putting everything together for us for the call it the runner, an endurance athlete. That's when we started talking about the idea of actually putting together what we would consider our ideal facility training and recovery center. That's what led to Formula Running Centre here in Clarendon, Virginia.

Gresham Harkless 3:00

Nice, I definitely appreciate that it sounds like a one-stop shop, so to speak for the runner, as you were saying, and I think so many times, especially in this area, as we talked about offline before when we first connected is that it was so many different guys running opportunities, but to have to go to so many different places to find that it makes it a little bit more difficult.

Chris Hoffman 3:20

Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously, a lot of people just like to run outside and we we don't try to take away from that, we're trying to complement people's overall training. So in terms of our facility, we we like to view it as a complete training experience. But I can if you want I can delve a little bit into what what we sort of what we sort of view is what makes up to that. Yeah, it makes up that completed experience. So for us, four tenants make up our facility that round out this complete experience. Number one, it's just the training right so the training side so we're an indoor base group training facility, we have about an 1800 square foot training floor the overall size of our facilities around 5000 square feet, and our training floor is about 1800 square feet and we have 24 Woodway treadmills in that room.

We do that in on a day-to-day basis and our bases were doing that indoor base group training so we have both classes that focus just purely on running either in deep endurance work, speed work into interval work, or that strength work, really Hill work. But we also have classes that work on focus on strength training a big reason why a lot of runners end up getting injured is there is they're putting a lot of mileage out there or or even under other endurance athletes putting a lot of mileage maybe on a bike, but they're not spending enough time on the strength training side of things. So we have in our facility have put a big emphasis on strength training so that's overall body conditioning, but with a focus on what runners and endurance athletes need. That's a lot of lower body work. That's a lot of core work. That's a lot of stability work.

We're hoping that people will be able to focus on that. It's going to keep them as much as we possibly can injury-free. So that's on the training side. The next real component of our facility is the recovery side. So in our facility, we have a separate yoga studio, we do yoga for runners classes, and foam rolling and stretching classes. So for us, recovery is just as important as the training side. If someone visits our facility, they'll see that right away, they see that there's a huge emphasis on recovery. In a different in addition to that yoga studio, where we do the yoga and the foam rolling and stretching, we also have a separate recovery room. In that recovery room, we have a number of different elements, recovery elements, to give our members a variety of choices in terms of their recovery.

In that room, we have a full-body cryotherapy chamber, we have NormaTec compression sleeves, we have a cold water-soaking tub, and we have an infrared sauna. The last sort of component is we also have a massage room so we can do we work with this specific sports massage therapist who works out of our facility and it's fantastic if you do need that sort of interval individualized care as well. The third real component is on the assessment side. So in the facility, we do a number of different assessments really geared towards runners. So we do running gait analysis, complete runners assessment, something called a runner, runners tune-up. We work with a fantastic physical therapist, Scott McAfee, who works for a company called Movement and comes in and does those analyses out of our facility.

It was very important for us that our members when they had that analysis done were really working with a physical therapist that just has an enormous background in working with runners and endurance athletes. We're really happy to have him as part of our team. But we also enhanced in terms of the assessments we do. VO two Max testing, resting metabolic rate testing and we also have a diet registered dietician on staff that can do basic nutritional counseling all the way up to performance-based nutritional counseling. Then the last component is really on the education side, we're just really big on education here.

Educating our members on all different types of topics. For example this month we have a mechanic's of speed workshop going on and then we also have a shoe Education Day, learning about why it's so important to get in the proper shoes, and then having one of the local shoe companies help get people actually into the correct shoes. So it's just a major component of our facility. A lot of people whether it's nutrition, whether it's just proper running form, people are lacking various things in terms of that education. We want to be that we want to be that on at the forefront of that educational component in the local running community.

Gresham Harkless 7:45

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely think that's huge. I know when I first started running more than I had ever run before, I neglected a lot of those aspects, especially the continued to do the shirt trading to my lower body. I need to say I used to have integer injuries, largely because I was neglecting some of those things. Because I was reading so much not realizing how important the holistic aspect of running and health is and how all those things kind of tie in and it's not one aspect that you have to focus on, it's like everything you have to do to be so successful and to recover and to make sure that you can continue on.

Chris Hoffman 8:18

Yeah, absolutely. I mean when you're younger, you think you can do everything, and you just go out and do stuff. Then as you, as you get older, you realize that it really is that holistic approach, right? You need to be paying attention to your body, not only on the training side, but you need to be focusing on the recovery side of things as well. Just proper stretching before and after workouts is just so important in terms of staying healthy and injury and we hope by making those elements as accessible as possible, that they're there at the same place that you're potentially doing your training at two, we're hoping people engage on that.

That's what we're seeing in terms of our membership base, they're starting to engage on that on the recovery elements getting into those stretching classes, they're getting to the yoga for runners classes that's fantastic and to see. Because that's our goal, right? We want to help our clients reach their goals, and part of that is staying injury-free, why do they do that?

Gresham Harkless 9:16

Absolutely hit the nail on the head, a lot of times accessibility is one of those big reasons. So to be able to do that at the same in the same facility in the same place. Definitely makes perfect sense. So you might have already touched on this, but do you think that holistic mentality or that approach and how you guys have built everything and grown is what you would consider to be like your secret sauce or thinking that you feel that you or your organization are apart?

Chris Hoffman 9:39

Absolutely. So that's one of the major components of just putting together that sort of complete experience for our members. But I think in terms of an additional aspect of calling it that secret sauce is just our focus, right, we wanted to focus our facility on a specific group have that a specific segment of the athletic, group of athletic community, really focusing on those runners and endurance athletes. Now some of our services can certainly be extremely beneficial, especially on the recovery side to everyone who participates in fitness activities. But in terms of designing the facility, and looking at what we wanted to include in this facility, we wanted to be essentially laser-focused on that. That may mean overall, that there are some people where this is not the correct athletic facility for them, or just call it gym for them and that's okay.

But we want to make sure that for the people that come to our facility, we're meeting their needs, and we understand who they are. So let me just give you one more example in terms of being so focused as we are what makes him breakfast a lot of the time is our coaches, right, in this sort of fitness community, right, and who's actually instructing those classes? I mean, if you look at the backgrounds and biographies of our instructors, I mean, it's unbelievable, the people that we have that we've teamed up with here that, that I'm so proud to have on our staff, I mean, they're professional runners, they're Ironman athletes, like 10, 20 30, 40, 50 times over, I mean, it's unbelievable the level of experience that they have, the passion that they have.

That's the one thing that resonates across all of us whether it's our client advocates or our front desk staff all the way to our coaches, it's our staff here at Formula Running Centre has just a passion for running and endurance athletics, especially that coaching side, it just speaks volumes of the knowledge that they have, and the ability to pass along that knowledge to our members that for us really sets us apart.

Gresham Harkless 11:48

Awesome. So I truly appreciate that and I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So that could be like an app or book or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Chris Hoffman 12:01

When I think about, let's say, a book that I go back to, although it's not it's not a unique book, probably a lot of people read it. But I always, for me, personally go back to the new gold standard of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company by Joseph Materially. So for me, the important takeaway from that book is really just how to treat clients and employees. Because here for us, my partner and I, that's just of the utmost importance to us.

Gresham Harkless 12:29

I definitely appreciate that. Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget and that could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you could happen to be a time machine what would you tell your younger self?

Chris Hoffman 12:40

It's really still that for me, that golden nugget is, and I have some, I guess, the advice I give to my younger self, but in terms of that golden nugget, it's really focusing on those personal relationships with clients.

Gresham Harkless 12:53

Now, I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO, we're all gonna have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Chris, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Chris Hoffman 13:01

Well, for me personally, it certainly means being a leader, but at the same time, the most important component is to not lose sight of the overall team effort. I am part of a team here at Formula Running Team and every person on that team is vital to our success and helping our clients succeed. So it's really like I had mentioned earlier, it's empowering our employees in setting that tone from the top. But making sure everyone here feels empowered, and treating them with respect, and every sort of step of the way. Right. This is like I mentioned, this is not simply the way that we think they should be treated, which it is, but it's also we also want them, we also feel like this is the best way to get the sort of maximum results right out of our employees, if we're all for all operating under this team effort, then we think that also holds people accountable.

If somebody's late to work, then they understand that has impacts on the other team members and puts pressure on this team structure that we have. We've been, I think very successful in implementing that culture and environment here. Being that leader is important, but understanding that nothing's gonna work without that team effort here. Always remember that and I serve I certainly do, and my partner certainly does. Our employees are fantastic. We couldn't just have a greater group of employees here and team members. It's always keeping sight of that, always keeping that front and center front of mind.

Gresham Harkless 14:53

Absolutely. Here a lot of times as we talked about some of the craziness of running a business you need that Northstar to remind us of like why we're doing what we're doing. But also how to stay true to the things that we're doing and a lot of times is that by having that culture and staying true to that culture, and everything that we do, so I definitely appreciate that perspective. I appreciate your time even more, Chris. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get ahold of you to find out about all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Chris Hoffman 15:23

Sure, absolutely. So I would encourage anybody to visit our website, it's formula running.com, which has all the information about our facility, and about our events coming up. There's an events page so that I can touch on some of the events coming up, but every month, we have new and exciting events. So that's a great way to find out that information. If anybody has any specific questions, they can always email us at info@formularunning.com. If they want to ask me a specific question, my personal email is choffman@formularunning.com. So I welcome anybody to reach out to me directly. Happy to talk to anybody about Formula Running Centre. What their goals are, and how we can potentially help them accomplish their goals.

Gresham Harkless 16:09

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Chris. I truly appreciate that. We will have the link information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. But again, appreciate everything that you're doing and all the awesome things that you're building, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:22

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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