Today we’d like to introduce you to John Dougherty.
Hi John, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was a good athlete growing up, playing soccer, baseball, and basketball, but was always one of the smallest kids. Going into high school I began lifting weights and I fell in love with it. I was not the biggest or strongest guy, but I quickly realized I had this capacity to outwork almost anyone in the gym.
I fell in love with the process and with the internal benefits of challenging myself on a daily basis. This would become one of the biggest anchors in my life for helping me to build confidence in overcoming any obstacles I would face in the future.
By 16, I knew I wanted to be a physical therapist and open my own physical therapy clinic, gym, or combination of the two. So, I went all-in on pursuing those goals.
I got my bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology (the study of human movement) from University of Maryland in 2011, and then my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from George Washington University in 2014. I became certified as a personal trainer my freshman year at Maryland and also began competing in bodybuilding competitions at that time for the next 5-6 years while in school.
After graduating PT school, I spent the next 5 years building expertise and learning as much as I could. I became a Board-Certified Clinical Specialist in Orthopedics and moved up into a clinic director position at an outpatient physical therapy clinic. I helped them open a new clinic location and take it from zero patients to profitable in about a year.
Simultaneously, I was doing a deep dive into learning all I could about business and personal growth— reading and listening to everything I could get my hands on about marketing, sales, and leadership.
I initially planned to open my own physical therapy clinic, before opening a gym, but when I started doing a business plan for it, I realized that with insurance reimbursements continually going down for providers of privately owned clinics, I wouldn’t make much more money than I would working for someone else, at least for quite a while, but would be taking on a lot more risk with no guaranteed income.
So, I started looking more at the gym space and discovered the small group personal training model. I was super intrigued. I realized I could take my background in physical therapy, personal training, bodybuilding, and athletics and make something truly unique for people. My whole idea was to get people really good results while keeping them healthy and injury-free.
The risk of opening a fully equipped 5000 square foot gym vs a 500 square foot physical therapy clinic with one table and a couple dumbbells was 1000x more. But, I thought, “hey, go big or go home”.
So, I went for it, and now three years later, we are the highest and most rated personal training gym in Frisco, we’ve helped hundreds of people transform their health and fitness, and I’ve had the opportunity to build incredible friendships, partnerships, and relationships with clients, employees, and other local businesses in our community.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Haha, not at all. From the very start, just getting approved for a lease was very challenging. I had no business experience, no assets, no money, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. But what I did have was determination and vision.
I finally found a landlord that was willing to talk to me, and although I had nothing on paper that said this was a good idea for them, I told him my story, and he believed in me, so they took a chance on me.
When I opened, I didn’t live in Frisco, had no friends in the area, no clients, and no connections. I had gotten bad advice that I couldn’t get an SBA loan and so funded the startup on 2 personal loans with 18% interest and maxed out 5 different personal and business credit cards. Oh, and the day before I was set to open, I found out that my wife was unexpectedly pregnant with our second child.
By August of 2019, 8 months in, I needed to make $12,500 that month or I would run out of money. The previous month I had only made $7700 and the month before $7300.
I made $12,534 that month and paid rent with less than $100 left in my account.
I went on to find a way to barely get by for the next 7 months, and then a little over a year into my business, Covid hit.
I had just barely scraped by to make it through my first year of business and now was being hit with a global pandemic that was a death sentence for most brick-and-mortar businesses.
I didn’t know how I would get through, but I set it in my mind, that no matter what, I would not fail. I would find a way to succeed.
I did everything, zoom training, hybrid training- in person and zoom sessions, we reduced our class sizes from 12 to 10 to 8 to 6 to 4. We went from one-hour sessions to 45 mins to 30 mins. We brought in new services and offerings. I put out motivational videos and content to my clients almost daily to keep them inspired— you name it, we did it.
But the true blessing in disguise came when I realized that as this pandemic went on, more and more people would need 1-on-1 training. There was fear around being in larger groups of people, but also as people stayed in their homes longer and longer, they were not exercising, they were eating poorly, and they were stressed. I knew they would need more guidance, coaching, and accountability to restore their health.
So, I revamped the website and our offerings, started pushing more 1-on-1 training, and added the semi-private option (up to 4 people with 1 trainer). Our 1-on-1 training exploded from 1% of revenue to 60%. I hired and trained the best staff and we focused on creating real connections with people and helping to meet them where they were at in their fitness journey.
We grew 100% from year 1 to year 2 during Covid, and another 114% from year 2 to year 3 in 2021, the second year of Covid.
That growth brought its own set of challenges— the need to hire more staff, the need for me to grow as a leader, and the logistical challenges of scaling a new business model that offered three core services instead of one.
The last three years have been the most challenging years of my life without a doubt. But, have also been the years of the most personal growth. As the business has evolved, I have continually needed to grow from a technician to a business owner who can market and sell, to a leader who can manage and lead people.
A business is only as good as the people in it, and even if you have the right people, without the right guidance and direction the business will not go where it needs to.
As an owner, you have to step up and lead, you have to drive the culture, you have to be the visionary that gives people a compelling future.
I’m incredibly grateful for the team I have in place right now at Conquer Fitness. We have the right people in the right seats and are poised to continue to make an incredible impact on our community by truly transforming lives.
We’ve been impressed with Conquer Fitness, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Conquer Fitness is a private personal training gym that helps people have more energy, more strength, and get more out of life! We specialize in helping people 30+ to look, move, and feel better while staying healthy and injury-free.
We offer three core services- 1-on-1 personal training, semi-private personal training (up to 4 people), and small group training (up to 12 people).
We are known for being much more than just a gym. We are a close-knit community where we really get to know every single one of our clients. We focus on building real relationships with everyone that comes through our door. We not only know your name, but your goals, your job, how many kids you have, your hobbies, and more.
People come to us when they want a result. Typically, they have failed at other gyms, with other trainers, or trying to do it on their own. They know they need more guidance, more accountability, and more support, and we are the best at meeting those needs.
We also understand that going into a gym can be an intimidating experience for a lot of people. Many of our clients are very successful business owners, corporate executives, and more. But they haven’t had success at losing weight, getting stronger, toning up, eating better, etc. So, stepping into a new gym, especially when they have failed many other times can be very uncomfortable.
We make a concerted effort to understand where people are coming from— what has worked for them in the past and what hasn’t, what limitations do they currently have (injuries, previous surgeries, etc.), what are their goals now, and what are the reasons why they want to achieve them.
All of this helps us to create a custom plan for training, nutrition, and accountability to ensure that they are in the best position to achieve their goals.
One of our primary focuses at Conquer Fitness that really sets us apart is helping clients to create long-term sustainable change, instead of quick-fix diets and exercise programs. We help clients get to their goals, but along the way, we are coaching them on the habits and routines that will allow them to maintain their goals for the long term. This is how true health is achieved.
Finally, I’m proud that the community of people we have built at Conquer Fitness is one that cares about our local Frisco and DFW community. We live, work, and play here and we have helped to foster a culture of people that care about each other, as well as, those outside our little gym family.
Within the gym, our clients are there for each other to help motivate and inspire each other on their fitness journeys. But we also care about serving and helping Frisco and the greater Dallas community.
It was an honor for me to host our first fundraiser at Conquer Fitness this past December where we raised over $4000 for Treasured Vessels Foundation, a local non-profit that helps provide safe homes and therapy for young women in DFW who have been sex-trafficked, it was an amazing cause, and even more amazing to see how all our clients stepped up to help be a part of such a great event.
I’m truly blessed for the people that have given us the opportunity to serve them in the last 3 years and help make their lives even a little bit better. I’m excited and inspired to continue to grow in Frisco and the DFW area over the coming years.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I think that we create our own luck. I believe that positivity breeds positivity and negativity breeds negativity.
Whenever I have been “lucky” or had some good fortune come my way in the business, it was always intentional. There were many times when I had no reason to be optimistic, yet I would almost force myself into it.
Instead of saying how can I make more money this month, I would ask myself, “Who can I serve? Who needs my help, and how can I help them?”
By aligning my intentions with serving and helping others, I have always found that I have become luckier with the right people falling into my life and business.
Contact Info:
- Email: john@conquerfitnessfrisco.com
- Website: www.conquerfitnessfrisco.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/conquerfitnessfrisco
- Other: instagram.com/drjohndougherty
Image Credits
Michelle Hoang
Mike Mezeul
