My Exact Playbook For Building A $1.5M/Year Fitness Business
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hi guys! My name is Jake Rowzee, and I am the co-founder of Arsenal Health and Fitness. I started this company 3 years ago for the purpose of building healthier communities.
We primarily work with active adults looking to optimize their health with a comprehensive approach.
This can include labs like hormone, metabolic, or micronutrient testing, diet modifications, supplementation, working with one of our personal trainers to improve the way you move, or jumping in one of our group classes to fill your need to be social.
At Arsenal, we recognize that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being, not just the absence of disease. In order to obtain the highest standard of health it takes a coordinated approach.
Instead of just treating your symptoms, we focus on understanding your body as a whole system.
We dig deep by looking at the interactions between your genetics, lifestyle, and environment. No one is the same, so our approach shouldn’t be either.
True preventative care is about identifying and treating the root causes of your health issues through personalized science based approaches.
Today we bring in around 130k/month.
How did you come up with your business idea?
The idea for Arsenal Health and Fitness was really formed through my own personal experience dealing with health issues.
Growing up playing hockey, I racked up my fair share of injuries, one of which, “benched” my goals of making that a career. My life was centered around training for my sport and pushing my body to its limits, so when I stopped playing, I was a bit lost as to where to focus that energy.
I had lost my sense of identity and a goal to pursue.
I eventually turned to bodybuilding, fascinated with the preparation and amount of detail that went into designing training programs and dialing in your diet and nutrition to optimize for your goals.
My body started to change in a way that became addicting to try and obtain what, at the time, I considered the epitome of “health”; look good, feel good, right?
Whether it was experimenting with peptides, supplementation, training technique, or sports recovery, I was always pursuing inventive ways of combining multiple modalities to improve my health and fitness.
My passion for this grew so much that while attending the University of Colorado Boulder, with one class left to finish my Economics degree, I decided to start on a completely new path towards obtaining a degree in Integrative Physiology.
This ultimately led to me becoming a Neurophysiologist and a part owner of my own practice.
During this time my body began to fail me, I was chronically fatigued, and had started to put on excess weight, which is when the anxiety and depression started to creep into the back of my mind.
Confused because I had always done everything right to be “healthy” I began to seek out an answer.
I started by going to my primary care doctor, they ran some blood work and said I was totally healthy. I was just “stressed”, and they ultimately tried to put me on anti-anxiety/ depression medications.
I’ve always sought to understand what could actually be done to be proactive about my health, and through my own experience I knew it didn’t have to be this way.
One day while listening to an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast on my way home from the hospital, I heard about a doctor that was treating veterans suffering from PTSD with testosterone. He had found that from all of the concussions they had received during combat they had damaged their pituitary glands. (A function of the pituitary gland is the “control center” of hormone production.)
He had found, through a simple blood test, that all of his patients had severe hormone imbalances. Miraculously, with the use of testosterone he was getting them off all other prescription medications.
I found this fascinating. I was annoyed that my primary care never bothered to test my hormones in the first place, but this gave me a renewed hope that I may be able to fix what I had been dealing with.
The next week I got my hormones tested, and much to my surprise my testosterone levels were that of a 60 year old male in my late twenties.
I began testosterone therapy the next day, and had nearly complete symptom relief in about 3 weeks.
Figuring out my own health issues sparked a new passion, to empower others to take control of their own health and be proactive rather than reactive to symptoms that arise once something is already wrong.
Through my years of working as a Neurophysiologist, and my own experience, I have seen how traditional healthcare has failed so many people.
As a society we are conditioned to be reliant on the “sickcare” model of health, which only provided symptom treatment rather than finding route cause.
I quickly became a “resource” to my own community to help them become “healthier” versions of themselves.
What I realized in doing this was that there wasn't a single place that someone could go to combine different methods to achieve better health.
I had intuitively blended functional medicine’s root cause approach with more traditional integrative therapies, because that is just what made sense in my own mind, but no one was doing this. When attempting to combine a multifaceted wellness plan there was no continuity of care between practitioners because they all were separate practices.
This epiphany gave me the idea to combine the best of every health solution under one roof to create a truly comprehensive treatment plan.
So many people suffer from the burn out of doing everything they know how to stay healthy just to yield little to no results. I wanted to remove the guesswork, and give them access to all the means necessary to achieve their goals.
Someone looking to lose weight should be able to do labs to look for a hormone imbalance, metabolic dysfunction, or micronutrient deficiencies FIRST to understand how their body is functioning as a whole system and remove things that may be holding them back. At the same time they should be able to work with a dietician and a trainer all working together in unison as a coordinated team effort.
So, when COVID struck and the world got turned on its head, we decided to start Arsenal Health. While to many it seemed like a bad time to start a business, to me it was the perfect time.
It gave me a chance to help fulfill my own mission - to create healthier communities.. and Arsenal started as a passion project to do just that.
So when we started, I did just that, I texted everyone in my contact list, and made sure to mention it to everyone I talked to at the gym. Instead of just providing my recommendations, I would change my messaging to “I’m here to help”. This was received very well by my network and helped immensely on getting us started with no marketing budget.
Give us a step-by-step process for how you built the first version of your product.
The first things that came to mind when starting the company was, where are we going to do business? What legally do we need to do to serve our clients? How are we going to finance this?
Since we would be providing healthcare, we began by working with a legal firm to make sure we went about creating our business the right way. In all, this cost about $15,000 for legal services, setting up the LLC, and drafting the appropriate contracts/documents. This was personally funded from savings.
The next step was to find a place to operate our business.
One of the most common modalities I utilized while training and recovering from injuries was NMT (neuromuscular therapy) or more commonly known as manual body work.
I had become friends with the owner after spending countless hours on his table, and approached him to “team up” (ironically the name of his business was “Teamwork Therapy and Sports Recovery”) and add therapies to his existing practice.
He had built a very successful practice working with top athletes like World Strongman Brian Shaw, so I believed this would be a great starting point to try and tap into his existing client base.
He agreed to let us move into his humble 600 sqft office in Frederick, CO on a profit sharing basis.
He already owned recovery tools like compression boots, percussion therapy devices, and a cryotherapy chamber so all we needed to do was staff the functional medicine portion of the business.
Through our connections at the hospitals we worked at, we were able to find and hire a medical director, PA, and nurse to staff the health clinic portion of the business. Besides our Medical Director the pay structure was set up on a PRN status or “as needed” so we only paid out when we had a client to serve.
We had now managed to find a place to operate out of with an existing client base within our target demographic, the expensive recovery tools, and a fully staffed clinic all without paying anything other than legal services until we made our first dollar.
This entire process took about 3 months to orchestrate into an operational product, but this was far from “functioning” the way we had envisioned.
No one had any experience in operating a functional clinic, from finding suppliers and compounding pharmacies, to navigating the 503b vs 503a pharmacy regulations, we had a lot of work to do.
Luckily, I had made friends with the PA from a clinic I had used in the past. She was nice enough to be a consultant to help us get us started and make introductions to different pharmacies and vendors, helping us to negotiate good pricing.
As soon as we got our “sea legs” operating the clinic by trialing it out with some of our family and friends. We noticed we were still missing one component, a training space. Around that time the tenant next door was moving out, it just so happened to be a small personal training studio which was pretty much just used as the owners personal gym. We negotiated with the landlord to take over the space and the ultimate vision was starting to take form.
While building out the expansion, the clinic started to see some real success. We were gaining on average 25 new clients per month. I remember thinking to myself “wow this is actually working!” This side passion project was actually becoming a functioning business.
As the year neared an end and I was riding the high of our early success I got a phone call that you never want to hear; “I’m out”.
The additional services we brought to Teamwork had started to require them to be open longer hours, putting stress on his admin staff, and the increase of foot traffic in a small space began to create a hectic environment distributing his business, so the owner of Teamwork had made the decision that we needed to move out by the end of the month.
This crushed me. I felt my dream slipping through my fingers.
Reluctant to give up, I tapped into my internal grit and went back to figuring out how to pivot this existing business into a new location.
The silver lining was that it made us figure out how to serve our clients virtually. We sent them lab orders to get draws at Labcorp or Quest and had the pharmacies directly ship to the client rather than us dispensing out of the clinic, which later proved to be vital tools to expand our customer base out of our brick and mortar location.
It took us a few months, but we found an awesome space in an existing training facility in Arvada, CO called Brute Force Training Center. They were a Crossfit style gym in an impressive 12,000 square foot facility. We took over an office space that was previously used by their sister Company Brute force, a unique workout equipment company that had one of the original designs for a sandbag used for unstable load training.
Due to the nature of how we started, we had no official business name, website or a way to collect payment.
Drawing on my experience of growing up with my dad, a “serial entrepreneur”, as I like to call it, I began to breakdown the steps that needed to be taken to develop a “brand”.
I started workshopping names and landed on “Arsenal Health”. As I commonly refer to the term of having a full “Arsenal” of tools to use in helping someone optimize their health, it felt like a natural fit.
With my dad’s help, we created a logo and used Squarespace to develop a website, and integrated Stripe to collect payment. Within two weeks, Arsenal Health was born and we started up at our new location as our own entity.
This created financial challenges, we were no longer paying rent as a percentage of “profit” and we had to buy all new recovery tools. Our rent was modest at $2500/mo but it cost around $100,000 to purchase all the equipment we needed.
We leveraged 0% interest credit cards and pulled out a HELOC to cover the difference.
After the initial “start up” phase of building out the new location, we picked up where we left off adding more new clients every week.
Within the first year of being at the new location, we were approached to buy the entire training facility and officially rebranded the company to “Arsenal Health and Fitness” at the beginning of 2023.
The business model has stayed the same, but now we had the new challenge of cross-selling into the existing gym membership base. It seemed much easier than it actually was. This is when I learned that not everyone that works out is interested in diving deeper into their health.
This was a defining moment in our business, up to this point I thought that everyone who is physically active would be interested in our services. This continues to pose a challenge for the business, and has been the driving force around shaping a lot of our messaging and being specific about who we are actually marketing to.
How did you “launch” the business?
The launch of Arsenal was a pretty casual one. My friends and family had already identified me as an “expert” in all things health and wellness. I would often get random text messages saying, “Hey, is this a good supplement to take?” or “what kind of exercises should I do to get bigger biceps?”.
So when we started, I did just that, I texted everyone in my contact list, and made sure to mention it to everyone I talked to at the gym. Instead of just providing my recommendations, I would change my messaging to “I’m here to help”. This was received very well by my network and helped immensely on getting us started with no marketing budget.
What I learned from the launch was that people don’t want to be sold to. I believe the reason I had such good success with my “soft launch” was because of the rapport I had already built up with each person. I had already spent the time getting to know them.
I would ask questions like, “What have you tried up to this point, did anything work?”, “What do you feel like is the biggest thing holding you back?”, “If you had to pick one thing to focus on, what would it be?”, “What is your time frame on when you would like to hit your goals?”
I like to call myself the “expert of recommendations”, I’m not a salesperson. After getting to know each potential client better, I would give them my recommendation on what to do, let them know that I was here to help them, but it was ultimately their decision to make a change to improve their overall health. “You have to want it,” I'd tell them.
People know themselves better than I ever could, and this gave me a chance to learn what was important to focus on first, avoid things that didn’t work, or explore things that they had some success with, but didn’t get lasting results.
The most important thing however, is to be transparent about price and timeline. We can’t give guarantees to how long it may take for someone to hit their goals, but we can be realistic about it. Most people I see in the health and wellness industry sell “fast fixes”. This may be effective in getting someone to click on your ad, but what I have found is that people care more about doing it the right way and finding something that is sustainable. I like to under promise and over deliver for my clients.
During the launch of the company, I was still running my Neurophysiology practice, which at the time was about to embark on a multi-state expansion. I’m not sure that I would have done anything differently with the amount of time I had at my disposal. For all intents and purposes, Arsenal was still just a side passion project for me.
I pride myself on being a “doer”, someone who acts rather than just talks about it. However admirable that may be, it forced my business into a breaking point. I had successfully created a business that lacked any formalized procedures or structure that could be passed off to someone else. The business operations quite literally lived in my head.
How did you land your first customers?
I couldn’t tell you who the first sale specifically was, but we made our first sale on day one. I remember being so excited that people actually wanted to work with me, that I became hyper focused on the quality of service and overall experience they received.
Constantly checking back in with them to see if they needed anything, or neurotically checking the portal to see if lab results came back praying they had a good experience.
In reflecting on my first week in business, I had a weird epiphany. I was not only the person delivering the service, but the advocate for the client to make sure they were receiving the highest quality of care. It was a strange feeling to be constantly switching between different modes of thought.
As a founder, it is easy to get tunnel vision and be so focused on the product or service that you provide and how you stack up to the competition that you lose sight of the customer.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said it best “We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards”.
From that moment on, I knew that Arsenal was going to be “customer obsessed” moving forward.
How have you grown your business?
I've never been big on social media, in fact my Facebook page was made by a group of my friends in college that insisted I needed one to keep up with people my age.
After seeing some good success in my “grassroots” marketing approach of reaching out to people I knew. I decided to try and build on that.
We found a business coach by the name of Jesse Ewell, he runs a company called Habit based Lifestyle, which helps people utilize their personal social media pages to drive sales without the need for paid advertising. Being conscious of our budget, or lack thereof, I decided this would be a great opportunity to see what we could do.
My first meeting with Jesse, we reviewed the strategy of “awakening” my facebook page, that I hadn't logged into in over 5 years. He explained that I needed to play into Facebook's algorithm by posting daily engaging content. Additionally, he helped me switch my page into representing my company, almost like a virtual business card. We made my bio a one sentence pitch on the service that I provided.
My Bio read “We strive to help active adults perform, recover, and optimize their health so they can be the best version of themselves.”
He provided me with a posting schedule that had several topics related to my area of expertise, all of which were questions that I would be asking my “audience” (followers) to get them engaging with my profile and learning more about what I did.
Each post followed one of the below categories:
The questions were simple to answer, that could apply to everyone.
“Do you stretch regularly?”
“Raise your hand if you go on daily walks”
“How many pounds would you + or - right now?”
“What is your favorite meal”
Cautiously optimistic, I began to post for 30 days straight and began to see my engagement skyrocket. One post reached 95 comments. These were by no means “influencer” numbers, but what I had learned was each time someone commented on my post it made it viewable to that individual's friends list. So those 95 people were more like 1000s of new potential leads.
After priming my facebook page it was time to do an “ask” post, but first I needed to make my “offer”.
One of my biggest takeaways from working with Jesse was how to develop a “high ticket” offer. We packaged multiple services together that I viewed as the most successful way to achieve one's goals.
The first package we developed was the “Arsenal VIP Weight Loss Program”.
“Arsenal VIP Weight Loss Program” For clients that need to lose >20 Lbs
Client Cost: $2000
Length: 12 week program
- Customized peptide program tailored to the individual to aid in weight loss goals.
- Habit Based Nutrition coaching- This includes body composition testing (Before/after) daily lifestyle changes to improve health and maximize sustainable weight loss.
- Coaching and accountability- Clients will be invited to a private facebook group. EOW there will be a 30 min Q&A session, EOW there will be a 45 min accountability/check in call. These will be recorded so people can go back and view at any time. Two times will be available per week for convenience.
Jesse taught me how to take transformation/testimonials and turn them into posts to get people thinking about their goals, and show people real life examples of what is possible.
I started by having the client send a transformation picture and writing out a testimonial.
Transformation Post:
Client Name: Dion Steffonich
Results: Lost 85 Lbs in 6 Months
Client story: “Looking back on my last year of my life it has changed drastically. At age 39 I was fatigued, angry and overall disgusted with the trajectory of my life. One of the best days of my life as a parent was my oldest graduating, but looking at the photos from that day, all I could focus on was my physique and how I was a shell of who I wanted to be. I hated being the “funny fat guy” that I became. I then vowed to change and I looked to a good friend who I knew could help me on this journey to get back the life I wanted. Though I know nothing comes easy, I was ready to change.
Jake Rowzee and the professionals at Arsenal Health and Fitness gave me that confidence. I was hesitant to face the consequences of my current health issues and family history of chronic conditions that had become everything but certain. Since being introduced to their professionals and having proper testing and guidance, we were able to make a plan that suited my life.
At my heaviest I weighed 270 lbs at 39 years old. I was depressed and stuck and now I’m confident in my own skin.
With the introduction to their HRT and a peptide regiment, I have lost over 85 lbs, gained energy, and strength. I went from being at the brink of needing medication for high blood pressure, cholesterol and antidepressants to stunning my PCP with my transformation. I now sleep normally, have more energy, and am excited for what the future holds. I am more confident now than ever.
Money can buy anything you want but your health cannot be bought. But with proper tools and education you truly can change your life.
Arsenal Health and Fitness has given me back my life and I cannot repay them. I hope my story can give others the confidence to change their lives.”
We then chopped it up into bite sized pieces to be easier to read. The end result looked something like this:
How my client (name) went from depressed & stuck to losing 85 lbs and being confident in his own skin.
Transformed from "Funny Fat Guy" to Confident and Healthy:
My Journey with Arsenal Health and Fitness.
Are you feeling stuck, unhappy, and out of shape? I know the feeling.
At 39 years old, I was exhausted, frustrated, and embarrassed about my body.
But I decided to take control of my life and sought help from Arsenal Health and Fitness.
With the guidance of Jake Rowzee and his team of professionals, I lost over 85 pounds and gained a new sense of energy and confidence.
They provided me with the proper tools, education, and testing to create a customized plan that worked for me.
Thanks to Arsenal Health and Fitness, I no longer suffer from chronic health conditions, and my PCP was stunned by my transformation.
I now sleep better, have more energy, and am excited about my future.
Your health is priceless, and Arsenal Health and Fitness can help you achieve your goals.
Don't wait any longer to transform your life.
Take action and reach out to Arsenal Health and Fitness today.
I repeated this process weekly, booking the people interested for discovery calls, and converting about 5 new plans per week. This process more than doubled the monthly revenue of the company.
I had successfully found a reliable means for new clients, but I still had one big problem. Our new location in Arvada was a converted Carpet Exchange warehouse that was tucked away behind a building. We had little to no street visibility resulting in no foot traffic.
When people would come in for the first time I would often hear “wow this is an incredible space, I had no idea this was back here”
I did a simple search on Google to find that we didn’t rank on the first page for any search terms relating to our business. In fact, I think we were maybe 15-20 pages deep. Further than any reasonable person would look to find something on a search engine.
In desperate need for SEO help, I started reaching out to everyone I knew for a good referral. Pleasantly surprised, one of Arsenal’s existing clients owned a firm called Pneuma that specializes in connecting us to our future customers that are looking for us.
If you visit their site the first thing you see is “Make it stupid simple for your next customer to find you”. I was sold.
Their team was highly skilled and professional, they quickly identified some “easy wins” by cleaning up our GMB (google my business) profile.
For those that are in local businesses, I highly recommend investing in your Google My Business. They updated photos, cleaned up our reviews, built a few localized landing pages, and also found a duplicate GMB page that we merged into our main page.
From there, we created a strategy to garner reviews, and within a quarter we went from 100 to 256 reviews. Throughout that quarter, and since then, the number of walk-ins have been incredible, and consistent.
My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs would be to find something unconventional that is more cost-effective than traditional advertising. Without a large ad budget I was forced to find ways of advertising that relied on my personal relationships that I had developed over the years. Focus on the customer and the word of mouth will carry itself. This continues to be the most reliable form of advertising in my business.
Give us a breakdown of your revenue & financials.
Our average monthly revenue over the last 8 months is around $130k, with a few $140k months in the mix. We’re still growing, and hoping that we cross $200k/mo by early next year.
The exciting part is that we’ve had 1,400% growth over the last 3 years, and are profitable in the midst of all of that growth.
We’ve had plenty of learning lessons along the way, but my advice to anyone owning an in person business is to understand your cost model. The price to fulfill your services is crucial, and often times entrepreneurs only consider the costs that go along with the services delivered, not the costs of the overall business (like our lease, updating equipment, and more)
What does the future look like?
To be successful in entrepreneurship I think you need to have a certain level of resiliency mixed with a bit of insanity. My confidence level for the business is always going to be high, but if I’m looking at it rationally, we are projected to have a 1400% growth rate as we finish up our third year in business.
Our goals for the next 6-12 months have been to focus less on top line revenue and more on maximizing profitability. We will be doing this by negotiating with suppliers to reduce our COGS, cutting unnecessary expenses to drive more efficiency, and reduce customer churn.
One strategy will be to create an e-commerce store to sell our supplementation utilizing a warehouse and fulfillment center. We have higher margins on our own supplementation, and it wouldn’t require my clinic staff to manage orders and maintain stock.
Beyond that I would like to have a second location in a completely new territory within the next 5 years.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
One of the biggest mistakes I made starting Arsenal was creating myself a job, not building a business.
I pride myself on being a “doer”, someone who acts rather than just talks about it. However admirable that may be, it forced my business into a breaking point. I had successfully created a business that lacked any formalized procedures or structure that could be passed off to someone else. The business operations quite literally lived in my head.
I found this out the hard way when growing my team. We had seen some early success, and so I was overly confident that it could just be scaled if I had some extra hands.
This couldn’t have been farther from the truth. This led to high turnover in one of the most important roles in the company, causing higher customer churn and a lot of time wasted “hand holding” and onboarding people into a role that, in its current state, was impossible for someone other than myself to fill. Rather than working on my business I had been working in my business.
One of the best decisions I have made is to bring in the right people to help create clarity to the business operations and vision of the company. I needed help bringing it all out of my head and onto paper.
It is truly amazing what you can achieve when everyone understands the direction you are heading, and shares a common goal.
One of the most helpful habits I have implemented to keep me focused on building my business is looking at it through the lens of a potential buyer. “If I step out of this business will it continue to operate? “Can the business grow without me?” I have no intentions of selling anytime soon, but it helps me focus on making Arsenal scalable.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
I think that every entrepreneur will tell you that nothing can replace experience. Success matters, but it's the experience that comes with overcoming failure that is the most valuable.
Most problems you will face in building your business are not entirely unique to you. Someone out there has been faced with and overcame the same problems you will struggle with. There are no bonus points for struggling in silence and figuring it out “on your own”.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to ask for help. If you're new to starting a business, go out and find someone that has successfully run a “start up”. In my experience people are more than happy to share how they solved problems within their business.
It is important to seek to understand the how and why they made those decisions so you can sharpen your problem solving skills. DO NOT try and find someone to just solve your problems, or you will be reliant on them forever.
Additionally, every successful business has had their fair share of luck. The key is to learn how to control your own luck. My grandfather used to say, “if we didn’t have bad luck then we wouldn’t have any luck at all”
When bad things happen, take it as an opportunity to improve on the things that you can control and move on.
Maximize every opportunity that comes your way by being prepared. Position yourself with the knowledge and ability to take risks when opportunities come your way, because they will.
Learn to create opportunities, join a group/club, meet new people, get out of your comfort zone.
If you can master these principles, you will seize every opportunity that comes your way and you will be able to control your own luck.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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