Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Cobb County. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Milli M. helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Cobb County, Georgia.
Is your business serving the residents of Cobb County? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpCobbCounty.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County
E44: Reclaiming Your Athletic Potential at Any Age at Marietta Performance Training
Aging doesn't have to mean giving up the activities you love. That's the powerful message from Nyles Stewart, founder of Marietta Performance Training, who joins us to discuss his mission of bridging the fitness gap for active adults who notice they're "not quite the same" as they once were.
Nyles shares his journey from athlete to fitness entrepreneur, describing how he built his business from scratch through early-morning free training sessions in parking lots and parks. What began on Craigslist has evolved into a thriving fitness practice serving both everyday adults and competitive athletes, including several national champions. His approach focuses specifically on restoring the strength, power, endurance, and core control that naturally diminish with age.
One of the most valuable insights Nyles offers is challenging the widespread myth of "instantaneous results" in fitness. Drawing parallels between physical conditioning and other life aspirations, he emphasizes that meaningful transformation requires consistent effort over time: "These things don't just happen overnight. As you stay consistent, the results start to multiply." This philosophy served him well during the pandemic, when many fitness businesses collapsed while his relationship-based approach endured.
Whether you're looking to get back into tennis, enjoy hiking without pain, or simply move better in daily life, Nyles' straightforward guarantee is compelling: "As long as you do what I ask you to do, you're going to get results." Follow Marietta Performance Training on Instagram or Google to learn how you can restore what time has taken away from your physical capabilities.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Millie.
Speaker 2:M. Hello everybody, Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, Millie M. Are you in need of a sports and fitness company? Well, one might be closer than you think. I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Niall Stewart of Marietta Performance Training. How you doing, Niall?
Speaker 3:I'm doing excellent today.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. Well, we're excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us more about Marietta Performance.
Speaker 3:So Marietta Performance Training was founded in 2014. I initially founded it to primarily work with trying to help improve the health and fitness and really wanted to target active adults or adults that like to do, you know, sporting-like activities, and so I started with that. And so I started with that and somehow I started working with a couple of athletes and then somehow the athlete population started to grow. Now we have a unique balance, a unique flow between, you know, working with adults and also working with athletes.
Speaker 2:When you say sporting-like activity. So I'm not an athlete, but I am an adult.
Speaker 3:So what kind of sporting-like activities would you have for someone like me? So let's talk about adults like yourself, right? So you're probably getting older I don't know how old you are, but you have right and so sometimes you want to, you want to go on a hike, or sometimes you decide I want to play tennis again or I want to, I like to jog, right? And so during those activities even jogging is an exercise during those activities you start to recognize that I'm not quite the same, that I was, um in my teenage years or my early 20s or even for some people in their early 40s, right, yeah all right, all right.
Speaker 3:So, uh-oh, we going in and out. Uh-oh, all right, I'm back, and so so we're going to do, yes, what. What we want to do is I call myself the bridge gaps, and so, as we age, we start to lose strength and power and endurance, and so what I do, I typically do a store your strength, your power and endurance, even your balance. That's one of the main things. People, they lose core control. So that's what we do here.
Speaker 2:Perfect. And how did you get into this business? What made you start working in sports and fitness?
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness, Great question. And you know, sometimes we are led into these things blindly because they're just naturally part of who. We are right and you know we set goals as kids to be certain things, but there are certain natural characteristics that lie within us and sometimes those characteristics, those qualities, you know, they start to merge into, you know, the ideas, the things that we want to be right and so and that kind of happened. Naturally I've always been very I'm not a big guy, believe it or not I've always been very athletic, flexible and things like that, and I'm kind of like a silent, a silent leader, you know, um, in sport and then also even in fitness, and so, uh, it just kind of like naturally, the path kind of like went into that direction. You know my parents are into health, uh, great athlete in in high school and and also in college, and then I just randomly said, let let me try coaching. I could get pretty decent results coaching people as well too. So you know it all just naturally like started to develop on its own.
Speaker 2:Wonderful culmination of who you are. So what are some Myths or misconceptions? I think one of the biggest, maybe not the biggest a myth that I have is instantaneous results.
Speaker 3:Instantaneous results, right. So everybody wants results for the things that they do. We want to make a million dollars, we want to have a tighter tummy. We want to have a more beautiful smile, right? So those things don't just come overnight.
Speaker 3:You know, if you want a beautiful smile, you know, god, if you're with great genetics, you're going to have straight teeth, but usually people, they have to do a lot of dental work. Right, with great genetics, you're gonna have straight teeth, but usually people, they have to do a lot of dental work. Right. And so, uh, to keep a great smile, you have to do a lot of dental work throughout your career, your years and your career. Uh, to have a great body, you have to consistently work out, you know, throughout the year of your life to have a great body, to have to have, you know, great nutrition. You know you have to work on having great nutrition. You know, year in and year out, these things don't just happen overnight. These things that you know we have to do over time and then the results start to multiply as you stay consistent with them.
Speaker 2:Makes perfect sense. So who you say? Active adults and athletes are your target customers. How do you attract them? How do you find them? How did they find you?
Speaker 3:Oh, man, in the olden days, you know the guerrilla marketing, and we still do those things today. And so my, my company was lifted off the floor. Believe it or not. The old Craigslist, hello, yeah, craigslist.
Speaker 3:And so when I first I moved to Georgia in 2000 from Illinois and to get my business started, I did some unique things inviting people to come and work out with me for free at 5 am, 6 am, in camps, in parking lots, parks and recreation things like that, anywhere where I can train for free without having to pay any money. And so when I moved here, I trained people for three to six months for free on my back, carried them on my shoulder, got body, got bought, then started posting some of their results, you know. And so then it somehow I just kind of like got a few leads through them. But I also was working in other gyms and the clients wanted to follow me. You know where I was at and so, and that's how I kind of started to to grow my business. But it was like Internet marketing and you know my word of mouth has taken off because of that.
Speaker 2:Kudos to you, because a lot of people don't understand the value of growing an audience like that and doing some things for free in order for a greater gain later on. It's that delayed gratification you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3:So all of these things are tied in absolutely.
Speaker 2:Uh, can you describe a hardship or a life challenge you overcame and how it made you stronger?
Speaker 3:Oh, the pandemic. The pandemic, um, I mean the pandemic uh, really helped to reshape, uh, the fitness industry. A lot of people who thought that you know they had a really great business model. The pandemic exposed it. Business model the pandemic exposed it. So if you didn't really have great clients and consistent clients that want to be with you long-term and have a great word of mouth going on, if you, you know, if your marketing, you know systems, was already kind of key to begin, you know, at some exposed it. And so you know, overcoming, you know, the pandemic. Being a small business still being here to me like that speaks volumes.
Speaker 2:It sure does. So please tell our listeners one thing they should always remember about Marietta Performance Training training, one thing they should remember.
Speaker 3:Oh man, there's so many things, but we get results. I mean, that's it. I mean we do. I mean I I rarely have people that come into my gym as long as they do what I ask them to do, the adults or the athletes. I mean I have five or six national champions and you know from different, different events in the sport of track, even, like you know, body transformations, as long as you come in and you do what I asked you to do, you're going to get results.
Speaker 2:Simple as that Follow directions, get results. Simple as that Follow directions, get results. I love that. So how can our listeners learn more about Marietta Performance Training?
Speaker 3:Well, you can follow me on Instagram at Marietta underscore performance I think. Score Marietta underscore, performance underscore. Think score Marietta underscore, performance underscore. I think that's how you find me. I'm also Niles, the fitness sensei, is slowly starting to build that that side of it. Or you can just Google me. You know, and Google you know, marietta performance training and Marietta, you know I'm going to pop up. I'm the only person that has that that time, so it's easy to find me.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Thank you so much, Niles. I really appreciate your insight. I wish you and your business the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast To nominate your favorite local. I thank you so much.