EP #135 A Veteran Entrepreneur Explains How Fitness Becomes Purpose

Your gym can be more than a room full of equipment, and your fitness can be more than a before-and-after photo. I’m joined by Rich Brown from Honor Bound Fit, a veteran-owned functional fitness gym in Fredericksburg that trains people for the long game: fewer breakdowns, more capability, and a body that still works decades from now. If you’ve ever felt intimidated by “hardcore” fitness culture, Rich makes a clear case for strength, conditioning, and smart programming that’s built for everyday life, not circus tricks.

We also get practical about rucking, one of the simplest ways to build zone 2 cardio and real-world endurance: walking with weight in a backpack on purpose. Rich shares how Honor Bound Fit uses rucks to bring people together and serve the community, including Ruck With Pups on March 21 at Pratt Park with local humane organizations. You show up, walk at a steady pace, and bring dog food to donate while shelter dogs get time out of kennels.

Then we zoom out to the bigger mission through the Guidon Foundation: Ruck Hunger on April 11 supporting the Fredericksburg Food Bank, the yearly Guidon22 ruck tied to veteran and first responder suicide prevention, and a mentorship push to connect veterans and first responders with at-risk youth. Rich doesn’t just talk about leadership, he challenges other large gyms and organizations to step up and do more locally.

If you care about Fredericksburg small business, functional fitness, rucking, and service-driven community, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a new tribe, and leave a review with the cause you’d ruck for.

Rich Brown

Honor Bound Fit

honorboundfit.com

rich@honorboundfit.com

(571) 494-8069

45 Centreport Parkway, Fredericksburg, VA, United States, Virginia

Transcript

Welcome To FXBG Neighbors

Speaker 1 0:01

This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.

Speaker 2 0:13

Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I have a special guest joining me today. We've got Rich Brown joining us, and he is with Honor Bound Fit. Rich, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 0:30

I appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Speaker 2 0:32

Well, I'm excited for this to learn all about you and all about what's going on with Honor Bound Fit. So let's start there. What is Honor Bound Fit?

Speaker 0:43

So Honor Bound Fit is a project you've met Keith, and uh it was his dream to open his own gym. He started as a CrossFit certified coach when he was working for another CrossFit gym in the area. And he'd always dreamed of opening his own gym one day and uh was doing contracting overseas and uh started a family and all that, and uh life took a different path. He ended up uh going through divorce and he was spinning his wheels a little bit. And if I know anything, it's that you know, we all need purpose and we need uh a tribe around us, right? And so when uh when I saw him kind of spinning his wheels, I said, When are we gonna start your gym, bro? And so we started Honor Mountain Fit in the parking lot of Black Rifle Coffee on Memorial Day in 2024, and it's been off to the races ever since. We moved into our place on Centerport Parkway, and uh it is it's functional fitness. It looks a lot like CrossFit. We use the same kind of gear, we do similar workouts. The biggest difference between us and CrossFit is the intention, right? It's the goal we're working towards because CrossFit is really good at making elite athletes, and that's their whole mission, right? Is to make elite athletes. Our mission is a little different. We want to create great grandparents that can roll around on the grass with their great grandchildren and live a great life. Uh so we're not doing as much of the overhead press, we're not doing walking handstands, we're not doing the stuff that, you know, CrossFit's great. It has less injuries than uh than running. Uh the problem is the injuries are much more catastrophic. And so if you hurt yourself doing CrossFit, you're probably gonna have to have surgery, right? And so we're trying to uh to find that sweet spot in the middle where we're having less injuries. And when you do have injuries, it's like a lost toenail or you know, sprained ankle that you can recover from real quick.

Speaker 2 2:24

Gotcha, gotcha. Well, so you're coming up on your two-year anniversary. Congratulations!

Speaker 2:30

We are, we are. Most gyms, 93% of gyms fail in their first year. And we've almost made it to year number two now. So I'm very fortunate.

Speaker 2 2:39

Amazing. I hope you have a big celebration.

Speaker 2:42

Oh, we will, we will.

Speaker 2 2:44

Nice, nice. I I want my invite.

Speaker 2:48

You are you are cordially invited, and I'll send you an invite just for you.

Rich Brown From Marines To Business

Speaker 2 2:52

I love it. I love it. Well, I want to learn more about you. What's your background?

Speaker 2:57

Okay, so I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in Oregon and Montana. Uh, I was my mother giving me a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad, so I thought I wanted to be a business owner in middle school. Uh, and then a bunch of assholes, sorry, pardon my language, flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. And so my life took a big change, and I ended up in the Marine Corps. I left for boot camp four days after high school graduation. Uh, did Iraq in Afghanistan with 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines as a 0351 assaultman, like regular infantry, but I got to play with rockets and explosives. And uh I got stationed here at Quantico in 2007, and I was stationed at Quantico teaching student lieutenants for four and a half years. I was diagnosed with brain damage and told that I would not be able to re-enlist. And so I started looking back, having ideas about entrepreneurship again. And I started my first security company in 2010. And so by trade, I'm a bodyguard. I run Left Witch Global Protective Services and we do executive protection throughout this region. Work with a lot of politicians and a lot of people who go to see politicians.

Speaker 2 3:55

Wow. Very impressive. Very impressive. And now it has led you to meeting Keith. And in are is this your are you full-time uh running the gym or are you still doing some other Oh, what is full time? Well, I still run my executive protection business.

Speaker 4:15

Yeah, so I I'm still in private security. I still uh I still run an executive protection business. Uh Keith calls me Business Daddy. I run the back end business at Honor Bound Fit. And uh Honor Bound Fit recently gave birth to the Guidon Foundation, our nonprofit, and I'm the president there as well. So I wear a lot of hats.

Ruck With Pups Event Details

Speaker 2 4:32

Amazing. Amazing. And I understand that you have an event coming up on March 21st called Ruck with Pups. Tell me what is this?

Speaker 4:43

Yes, on my 40th birthday, we're gonna go play with a bunch of puppies, right? So uh we believe that you should use your fitness for function, right? You should try to use your fitness to uh either live a great life or live a great life in the service of others, hopefully. And so we have events like Ruck Hunger and now Ruck with Pups. And so on March 21st, we're gonna meet at Pratt Park and we're linking up with Old Dominion Humane Society and SFC Squishy Faces, which is another uh sort of Humane Society-esque organization. And they're gonna bring us a bunch of dogs that need to get out of kennels and go for a walk. And so, rucking, I don't know if you're familiar, but it's it's walking with weight in a backpack on purpose, right? It's a great way to get into zone two cardio. Uh, it's it's better for your overall health than than running than some of these other athletic events. Um, and so we lean pretty heavy into it. We've been trying to introduce this region to rucking. Um, and so we started with ruck hunger two years ago, which is our our food bank ruck, you know, like any other food drive, we want you to bring food to donate to the to the Fredericksburg Food Bank. Difference is we're gonna make you put it in a backpack and carry it three miles to donate it. Uh, in this case, uh, you can we put together teams of 10, or you put together a team of 10, gather all your food, you meet us at 5'11 Tactical in Central Park, and then we've got a three-mile course for you. And you can do that course as many times as you want because the team of 10 that donates the most pounds of food in that 12-hour window wins a thousand dollars and a trophy and bragging rights and all the things. Now we're doing uh ruck with pups. This is our first ruck with pups. Instead of doing regular food, we're doing dog food. And so we're encouraging people to bring dog food in your backpack, and then at the end of the ruck, we'll donate it to Old Dominion Humane Society.

Speaker 2 6:27

Amazing. And so do you have to be part of your gym or is this something anyone can join?

Speaker 6:34

It's open to anybody and everybody. In fact, I think most of the people registered right now aren't gym members. We've got about 40 people signed up. Now our gym members are going to show up too, but they're not as great about signing up and telling us that they're coming first. So we're just supposed to assume they're coming.

Speaker 2 6:50

Amazing. And so I'm new to learning about wrecking. So is this something that uh you know all fitness levels can participate in, or is this for the people who are really tough?

Training Up To Guidon22

Speaker 7:03

So the way we do it is we do it a three mile an hour pace. It's a it's a it's a walk, right? We're not running, it's not even a trot like the army does. It's a walk. It's three miles an hour. You probably walk that fast when you're walking with a purpose. You're not, you know, you're not Oprah walking, but you're trying to get somewhere with a purpose, right? That's about three miles an hour. And so uh you can scale it by adding more weight to your backpack to keep up with that three miles an hour, right? So if you want to get more out of it, just carry more weight in the backpack. Now, throughout the year, we work up to guide on 22, which is 22 miles with 22 pounds. It was November 22nd. This year will be November 21st because it'll always be the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Uh, but that's for veteran and and first responder suicide prevention. Um, and it's it's a big deal to us, it's our kind of capstone of the year, but we work up to that throughout the year. So we'll have Ruck with Pups and Ruck Hunger, which are both three miles long, and then we start adding a little bit of distance, right? So we'll go six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen up to twenty two miles in November.

Ruck Hunger Food Bank Challenge

Speaker 2 8:05

Okay, interesting. And you mentioned Ruck Hunger. That's April 11th, is that right?

Speaker 8:11

That's correct.

Speaker 2 8:12

Tell me all about that one.

Speaker 8:15

Yeah, so I I pretty much gave it to you already. It's uh it's a free event. You just need to bring food that you want to donate. Um, and we start at 6 a.m. at 511 tactical. You don't have to show up at 6 a.m. You can show up at whatever time you want from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. But the idea is to carry as much weight as you can over that 12-hour period to uh donate to the Fredericksburg Food Bank. I'm really kind of humbled by the fact that, you know, we we told the food bank what we wanted to do, and they were supportive. Like, yeah, cool, you know, we'll give you a van and you can gather the food and it'll be great, right? And then they showed up to collect the van at the end of the event and they were very surprised and very impressed because they said nobody ever gets this much food, their first event, right? Yeah. So it's it's simple. We just make people compete with each other. That's that's the idea behind the cash prize and the trophy and all that is you make it competitive, and certain, you know, certain people tune into that, right? So the first year was a YouTube channel called Kingdom Tactical, they won it. Uh, and then the next year was the Army National Guard put together a team, the local uh combat engineers over there on Route Three, they put together a team and they won it last year.

Speaker 2 9:18

Amazing. Well, I absolutely love what you're doing. You're not just a gym, but you are giving back to the community and you're giving people purpose. And so I just absolutely love what you're doing. Thank you for providing us.

Speaker 9:33

All right, can I argue with you? Can I put a little spin on that? Yeah, because I love to kind of talk crap to people in my own way, right? Because we we are just a we we are just a gym. We are a small gym here on Centerport Parkway by the Amazon Distribution Center. We have less than 30 full-time paying members. We've yet to turn a profit. Keith and I still take money out of our own pocket every month to pay the rent for the gym. And yet we've gained over where, you know, we've gathered over 5,000 pounds of food for the food bank. We've donated over $5,000 to the uh various veteran charities that we support and stuff like that. And so if us, a little small, you know, local veteran-owned gym, can do this for the community, where's Gold's gym? Where's Planet Fitness? Where's these other huge gyms in the area or other organizations? Like what's stopping you from doing this kind of thing?

Speaker 2 10:22

Yeah, yeah. Very valid point.

Speaker 10:26

Where's a couple of dumb grunts that taught officers?

Speaker 2 10:32

Well, I you have a very good point, and I feel like that is a challenge that I hope is received by others.

Speaker 10:40

Me too.

Speaker 2 10:43

So, what is something that you wish the listeners knew about Honor Bound Fit?

Speaker 10:50

Well, uh, like I said earlier, we we gave birth to the Guidon Foundation earlier this year. Uh, and you want to talk about just a little Jim. Um the Guidon Foundation is now responsible for uh Ruck Hunger and Ruck with Pups and Guidon 22, but we're doing other things as well. So we're starting a mentorship program to pair up uh first responders, veterans, etc., with uh kind of at at-risk youth in the local high school systems, um, kids who haven't figured out what their purpose is yet, and trying to encourage them to find some type of service-oriented mission for their life. Um we're working very closely with the local military institution installations to try to uh find those guys who are getting out of the military, those guys and gals who are getting out and they don't know what they're gonna do with the rest of your life. And our message to them is you know, you didn't peak at 22, right? You you you may never be that cool again, right? But just because you take the the uniform off doesn't mean you're gonna stop leading people. It's fine to decompress after service, but you have to snap out of it because eventually that turns into isolation and that's not good for anybody, right? So we talked earlier about you have to find a new tribe and you have to find a new purpose. And that's what we're trying to do with our local veterans in the area is help them find those two things. Uh, because it gets real lonely and you start to wonder, you know, if you're ever gonna do anything else cool with your life. And we're trying to tell them, like, hey, you know, pick up your guide on and lead. You've got all this leadership ability. It doesn't matter what MOS you were in the military, what your occupation was, you were taught how to be a leader. So let's use those leadership abilities and go find a new cause in your in your community to pick up your guide on and lead.

How To Join And Follow

Speaker 2 12:31

Amazing. Amazing. What huge impact that is for both for both. You know, the the children that they're they're working with, as well as the the veteran. I mean, that's amazing. I love it. I love it. If so, if if there are listeners who maybe, you know, are veterans and and they want to get involved, or or if someone wants to join your gym, tell me all of the ways in which people can join your mission.

Speaker 13:02

Sure. Well, first we gotta we gotta get we gotta get better at our messaging because I've had a couple of people tell me now, well, I want to come work out or I'm looking for a new gym, but I'm not a veteran or I'm not a first responder. And that's wonderful. Please come hang out with us because you know, we started this gym to be a place for veterans to go and find a new community and all that. But we have more middle-aged moms working with us than any other demographic. And we're very, we're very happy for that. We love that they feel comfortable with us and they love our gym. Uh, but that's goes to say, like, we're open to anybody and everybody. We want everybody to come experience this. Um, so to more directly answer your question, it was honorboundfit.com, guidonfoundation.com, or on all the socials, uh, Facebook, Instagram, all that. It's either honorbound fit, no spaces, no periods, or guidon foundation, no spaces, no periods.

Speaker 2 13:51

Amazing. Amazing. Well, I'm glad that you uh you dispelled that myth because I think that there are probably people that might feel a little intimidated, you know. And so you're for everyone. So I really love that you said that.

Speaker 14:05

We really are. We really are. We've got 13-year-olds and 63-year-olds working out with us, and we're we're very proud of it.

Speaker 2 14:12

Amazing. Amazing. Well, Rich, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing Honor Bound Fit with us.

Speaker 14:21

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 14:22

Okay, thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to FXBG Neighbors Podcast.com.