Chris Ellis Shares The Risky Decision That Turned A Gym Vision Into A Local Landmark

He had four months to secure one of the best pieces of real estate in Santa Cruz, and the only way forward was a bet that could wipe him out. We talk with Chris Ellis, owner of Santa Cruz Athletic Club, about the behind-the-scenes decision to go all in, why he chose to build with Santa Cruz based architects and contractors, and what it takes to create a gym that feels premium without feeling intimidating. If you’ve ever wondered how a local business earns real buzz before the doors even open, this story gets into the uncomfortable, human part of entrepreneurship.

Then it gets even more personal. While the club is still being built, Chris is hit with valley fever and ends up in the ICU. He shares what it’s like to nearly lose everything mid-build, and how Camille steps in to run the operation and keep the vision alive. That experience shapes the club’s core message: recovery is not an add-on, it’s a pillar of performance, health, and long-term progress.

We also dig into the recovery center side of modern fitness, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), contrast therapy with sauna and cold plunge, red light therapy, and vibroacoustic tools that support sleep and stress relief. Finally, we break down what actually makes a gym feel safe and welcoming, especially for women: staff culture, consistent greetings, clear rules, and leadership that backs the team while still delivering great customer service. Subscribe for more real conversations with the people building Santa Cruz, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Meet The Hosts And Guest

SPEAKER_05 0:03

Hello, hello. Welcome back to OTC Podcast. It's Brandy Jones with KW Thrive.

SPEAKER_04 0:08

And to my right is Ryan Buckfold, Cross Country Mortgage, and Jerry Seegers with Seagars Insurance.

SPEAKER_05 0:13

We've got a super duper exceptional, very well fit guest today. He looks like Superman's brother. We have Chris Ellis.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

The money paid off.

SPEAKER_05 0:27

I expect that in hundreds, but he's not. So you well, currently you own the Santa Cruz Athletic Club, which is so popular.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

It's iconic here in town. You went from zero to nine million nine miles an hour.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

We weren't at zero.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 0:46

You put a lot of work into Santa Cruz Power Fitness, right?

SPEAKER_03 0:48

We did, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 0:49

And that was kind of like a niche market, especially in Santa Cruz when you have surfing and things like that. But you couldn't not, you can't not hear about Santa Cruz Athletic Club. You don't have to be in the weightlifting or in the CrossFit world or, you know, mobility or sports. You walk into a restaurant and somebody just went there for the first time they've ever worked out, or they're talking about like your name is on everyone's tongue.

SPEAKER_04 1:13

Well, not only that, it was before it even opened. Exactly. There was a buzz daily, like you gotta see this. I mean, partially because I know Nico, and so he'd be like, Look, these showers I just put in, you know, like, but it was crazy that that somebody took the snow showers. Yeah, he would say, like, you get in there, it's ice cold, just dumped right on your head. You gotta try it. I'm like, yeah, I'm good, you know. But no, it it you nailed the aesthetic and every little aspect that somebody who goes to a gym would want to see, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Thank you. I we did not. I'll be really honest. I was in a meeting yesterday with our architect spuse. So we we we very very intentionally we partnered with Tim Martin. So Tim Martin was was was is is our actual you call him our developer, right? But his guys, Nico and all the different subs, everybody is Santa Cruz oriented. So we chose to to stick with Santa Cruz labor, architects, developers, everything so that the money stayed in Santa Cruz.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Cool. Which that's huge.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Arguably, it's very difficult to find somebody that good in Santa Cruz to do something to that level, right? But fuse, you know, knocked it out of the park. So it's Dan and Dan. Dan and Dan. Dan Gomez, Dan Townsend. Yeah, I love those. So I met with them yesterday. We have something cooking right now. That's cool. It's it it is chilling. It will have multiple of those snow showers.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

But it's really ready for you, Derek.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

But no, thank you. We we really worked hard. And to be really transparent, the concept of the gym in Santa Cruz was really an outlier. It was like we kind of uh it was a YOLO. It was because it's been done in New York, it's it's been done in you know LA, it's been done in Texas, but Santa Cruz is kind of a niche market, and so we didn't really know if that it would really fly. That you know that really kind of tricks button. But making affordable was the key, right?

SPEAKER_05 3:13

And it is, it's extremely important. Absolutely affordable. You guys, if you don't know anything about it, go check it out online. First of all, your video is incredible.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 3:21

You you were walking through the gym in this video, and then you look at the services, and each one of the which you named, each one of those services people would go and pay separately for.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Well, once again, just to just a note on that again, Santa Cruz labor, Santa Cruz businesses, opposite of East and Lost Coast Media.

SPEAKER_05 3:38

They're great too.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Yeah, so Trisha and Neil absolutely murdered this Neil the other day.

SPEAKER_04 3:44

I didn't know you worked with Neil, but I'd love to bring him on. Neil is a straight G. Total brainiac.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

He brought in an Emmy Award-winning producer from Telemundo to make that video.

SPEAKER_05 3:55

Yeah, literally pointing at you because it's so good. I was like, when is a gym video moving? And I was like, wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah, but credit to Trisha also, because Trish has an ability. I think what she is, when it's all said and done, she's an active listener. And so she might not know you, and you bring her in, and I think she does a really good job listening to your ethos, the vision, and then immersing herself in that. You know, because it's one thing to come in and produce something, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

I've said I've referred 10 people, 15 people to Tershad. And the constant threat is always she will know your brand

Building Buzz With Local Craft

SPEAKER_02 4:30

better than you know your brand.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yep, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

And so she'll keep your brand on brand. Yep. So I've thrown 16 different things her way, and we we extract one and a half of them. And we really stay true to the course, tip of the spear. And our brand, if you look at our brand, anywhere you look, it looks like it is a polished product from like, you know, Buddha on the mountaintop.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Totally agree. Totally agree. But don't get too far away from it because I think I just knowing you a little bit is like do like I think you're the first one to elevate everybody around. I think you're one of those people in the world to like hire better people than you all the way around you for sure. But I do want to kind of get back to the core of it because I did meet with you when it was before it was built out, and I know there's the infrastructure of what it was, the vision, all those things, but there's still that quiet moment, like that quiet moment where you have a tipping point of we're gonna fucking do this. And you did it. And the vision of it, like let's go back to that moment real quick. Because I do think no matter how much credit you give, and I want to talk about your employees down the road here, too.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

All 120 of them is really 120 employees.

SPEAKER_05 5:33

Just at the athletic club.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Just at Santa Cruz Athletic Club. Talk about talk about the community. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

You know, being open, what, 17 hours a day? You're open, right? Are you open from 4 a.m. to eleven? 20.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Yeah, uh 19 to 20.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah, it's but I think the thing about it's like and I just uh it's the the point of a podcast is to kind of get a little bit in, but I want to get down to like that that sort of vulnerable moment, which we were talking about on the other one, of like the difference between the other location, this big dream, and the the quiet moments of that. Like what was your, you know, in the in those little I'm sure it was you and Camille kind of just brainstorming.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

You and I, Brian, have talked about this. And it's really I I love to share this part of the story because Camille and I, you know, I was a finance guy and I quit being a finance guy to be a bodybuilder. And so I threw caution to the wind one time and rebuilt my entire life. And Camille quit doing being a hygiene hygienist to be a bodybuilder, right? So we we kind of took risks early, but to to take a brand that was successful in a small town for 34 years and sunset it was ludicrous.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

And I'm gonna be really honest, like I so the Owl family, who is the best family in town, they are so true to Santa Cruz. And they were like, they had Mark Mastroff getting ready to fly in to tell them why they needed to make it a crunch or a planet fitness, or they had all of these corporate, you know, billion-dollar balance sheet companies coming in saying this is our spot. We've been waiting for 10 years to get in here. Ben contacted me and said, Listen, I know you've been wanting to expand on Santa Cruz Power Fitness. We were getting ready to open up a second location in Watsonville originally. Yeah. He's like, I have the spot, you know, you share a wall with Whole Foods, which is arguably the best real estate in town. I'll hold it for four months if you can figure out how to make it happen. Wow. So we worked and I found I could I I had the idea was there. Conceptually, the idea to bring all of these services to a very fit community were here. And really, Santa Cruz only had 1990s iterations of fitness. Yeah. But I had no idea how to build it. I'm not a builder, I'm a businessman. And at the end of the day, I understand finance very, very well. And that I understand the numbers, and I can project something 10 years away. And I can make that, I can hit that within a percentage point. But building it, I mean, I have a hard time with like a screwdriver. So I had been introduced to Tim Martin in maybe a couple of years prior, and and and for some reason I had this really good feeling about him. He I've seen the product that he produced in Santa Cruz, and he was literally the first person I went to with the project. Wow. And I was like, yo, I got and he was super into fitness too. And so I was like, yo, I got this crazy idea. And him and I met two or three or maybe four times. And I was like, you build it. And after like four times of talking to me, he was like, fuck it, I'm in. No way.

SPEAKER_05 8:39

Well, you know, William was on our property and connect these dots for the audience is really cool. And to like hear your passion, and it goes to show sometimes things don't work out and sometimes they do, but having relationships clearly is working out for you.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Well I almost burned that relationship because we had waited three months, 30 days, and 23 and a half hours.

SPEAKER_05 9:07

Okay, I can see where this is going on.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Dude, my the family, you know, the board, everybody is like, and we have this billion dollar balance sheet that's ready to go. And in the last day, the last night, midnight.

SPEAKER_05 9:22

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

We actually I was on my floor in the fetal position crying. Oh no joke. We had to sell our home, we had to sell our portfolios, I had to sell my watch collection, I had to sell everything I owned to do this. And then we also had to YOLO and close Santa Cruz at Power Fitness and all-in moment. My wife literally took my hand and she put it to the paper, and she was like, You have to sign this. Wow. And I was crying, and I'm like, we're literally, this doesn't happen. We have to go back to real work. Yeah. Yeah. Like real work. Real, the real, the real world is not gonna stop. And so we did it. So we put our house on the market, we signed, and Ben was like, This is the best decision you've ever made. Trust me, it's the best decision you've ever made. And because he understands, he's made businesses happen. He's made, he's helped people all the way through COVID. He didn't take he didn't take rent from I think he in all of COVID, the OW family lost

The All In Lease Decision

SPEAKER_02 10:20

one tenant. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

When you think about how many shopping centers they own. Right. That story of the fetal position crying. So, first of all, having a partner that can hack it and push you and be willing, is hardest. The strongest woman you've ever met.

SPEAKER_04 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

With our thing. I know. I'm doing the same thing because I've been in exactly that moment with my wife where I was like, we gotta do this. And she was like, Let's go. I'm like talking, are we gonna do this? She was like, Yep, we're doing this. Yeah. And yeah, that was the day I got my keys to my building. And I was like, okay, are we all in? She was like, she had a party for me, and I'm like standing there in front of 50 people, like, oh shit, now this shit got real. Now I need to really make this happen. And it's like that MM song, I love it, lose you know, lose yourself or something. It's like you get one shot, one opportunity, throw it all in. Yeah, it's yeah, chills from that.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

It's yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm live, I'm reliving it right now with you.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Yeah, it's it's incredible. And passion, when you have the passion, you're gonna make it work.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

There's no doubt.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

Yeah, so awesome. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

You we circle there's no doubt, we circle around in all of these podcasts, these different conversations, and it could be Sean Dollar on a 70-foot wave, you know, but there's the word that comes up in everything, and this could go all the way to the real estate conversation we have, investing, Karina talking earlier on it, and it's commit. And I remember being a little kid in you know, down in Soquel at the skate park and standing on the edge of a bowl. It's one thing to do that, but the other thing is just to let yourself fall down into that bowl on a skateboard. You figure it out. You it's good, and that commitment kind of carries through these different ones. But there are low moments, high moments. But that's a meaningful story because I think you're right, Brandy. There's a connective tissue in there. I could make the same compliment about you know, Stacy, as far as even some of the conversations we had about the other businesses and vibes in particular. I'm like, are we we're gonna do this one again? She's like, This is the one, you know, like and and having that confidence because then you're it kind of buoys you a little bit. You know, and it you know, for me, it's not a it's never a lack of confidence. What it is is like, you know, you know, there's there's that part of it where you know you kind of need to just like break the shackles of your insecurities and kind of see through to the other side. I think you need to see outside of yourself and what your insecurities might be. And actually, the comfort you probably had the same thing I have with vibes is actually looking at the business plan as if I didn't even know Brian Upton. And that's probably what you're getting from Ben a little bit. You know, like a little bit of Ben and a little bit from Camille, which is like, this is here, this is here, because there's an irrational side to that.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Those those beautiful people around you believe in you more than you believe in yourself. That's probably what you said.

SPEAKER_05 13:03

I also think for you gentlemen that have these beautiful wives, because Jerry was talking about his moment as well, is that you need to see that they still love you and be there. Like we got this, so I'm gonna help you sign this because we're doing this together. And in that moment, you're calculating everything that the overwhelm shows up, that it does take that heart-to-heart connection with a little bit of logic, like we got this. I could be wrong, but that's how I go.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

As men, we're like always, you know, we're we're trying to support and we're trying to show that like we can make we got this for you. We got the we got the house over your head. Yes. We got all this, we're gonna make sure that you don't have to do worry about it. Right. And if I went all in and it didn't happen, then I would not be able to do that for her. It's in our family.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

You're highlighting something I just shared with them before you got here was I had a moment like that in my business where, you know, circumstances that I couldn't prevent, you know, I had commission cuts happen and I had to take care of my staff, and I felt exactly that, right? Like that I didn't bring anything to the table for my wife. And how shallow of me, right? Like how shallow of me to think that that's all I bring to the table. Yeah. You know, and she stuck by me, she got me through this time, and but many other times, like other businesses that I've done and we were successful at, but those moments when I was most insecure or feeling like I didn't have the um, you know, the acumen or whatever it is to get through that commitment, yeah, she would hold my feet to the fire. And you know, maybe she doesn't love me in the ways that I want her to love me, but she certainly loves me and she shows it in those ways, right? So that's powerful stuff.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

It really is. I think every single time I've feared or had fear, she has been the one to reassure me otherwise. Yeah. Every the past 12 years. That's crazy. Every single time. And it's funny because we do this, we'll do the same thing for each other. I won't even know I did it. Yeah. And and she will do the same for me without asking, without fail. She'll also never pull me away from something that she knows that I need to do. So she never she she's like, I don't necessarily need to come first, you know. So she's always gonna play either a supportive role or the main character. One of the two, she knows where she needs to fit in.

SPEAKER_04 15:20

How long have you guys been together?

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Twelve, 12 years, going on 13, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:25

There's a book called The Way of the Superior Man, and it honestly, whether you guys have read it or not, I've read it and it you you really like embody it. It's a beautiful book. It's you know, it's about like the divine masculine. And get it if you guys get a chance to read it, even the audience, it's it's really cool. And then there's the the author also wrote one for women, and it really is interesting. Like we all have a masculine side and a feminine side. And so, yes, hormones play a part in this, but we how there's a there's a language, the feminine and the masculine side, whether you're gay or straight, you still have this weaving

Partners Who Push You Forward

SPEAKER_05 16:00

that you need to do, and you have to be a whole person first, and that way you can say, Yeah, maybe today is my day that I carry 80%, and maybe tomorrow I carry 10%. We we do this through our conversation of flowing through these identities of masculine and feminine.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

You want to hear a crazy story about that?

SPEAKER_05 16:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

We only got a couple of minutes. No, we're fine. No, we're we're both we're good. So while we were building Santa Cruz Athletic Club, uh, I came down with uh life idea disease, and it's called valley fever. And I'm not sure if anybody's ever heard of it. It sounds like something you just pick up at the corner and you're done with it in a week. It's not, it'll kill you.

SPEAKER_04 16:35

It's it's got a pretty high respiratory situation.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

It's like a it's like a it's like a uh fungal cancer, right? Right. I ended up getting it the night of our PR tour. And it had been festering in my body for months, and I was slowly getting beat up and beat up to the point where I got home after our PR tour, which we were getting ready to open about three months later. And I got home, I collapsed, I couldn't breathe, and I thought I was having a pulmonary ambulance. I was like, Give me to the hospital, you know. And so she got me to the hospital. They were like, You got something seriously going on inside of you. We need to ambulatory to San Jose. I ended up spending three weeks in the ICU. Oh my god. Wow, right? And lost 50 to two pounds, almost died, had to get, you know, had to get my directive done. Like I was I was in the infectious disease ICU for 10 days because they didn't know what the hell was wrong with me. Long story short, I was able to pull through it and I still have it, and I'll have it forever, and I fight for it still to this day, but she took over. Wow, the build, everything, our business, she took over, and she has no clue what I do. Just ran it. She ran it. Unreal. She ran it. She showed up to my hospital bed every single day. Bro, just with like encouragement and updates and stuff like that, just love and updates. Just posted that? Yeah. I'm just gonna be here today for a couple hours. If you need me, cool. If I don't even talk to you, say a word, cool. I might have a couple of questions for you about running the business. If you can mutter the words, yeah, I'll be here to do it. Wow. Yeah. Heavy. So she was the masculine for three months. Wow. And then I had to learn how to walk again for a whole six weeks after I got home, before just right before we opened up. Yeah, she's a G. She should be sitting in this chair now in this club.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

So I actually want to tie this in because this is a beautiful story. Now you have this athletic club, and look at you now. You would not know that you lost 50 pounds. So you did something to build your body back, and did you through do it through your own business?

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yeah, so so it's great. I'm actually a perfect test study for what we do inside of our space for our recovery center. So Brian's been coming to the recovery center, so is his wife, who's recently gone through surgery. I spent a month in an H-bot hypericoxygen chamber, and the doctors were when I went back to get my my I was getting a CT scan every two weeks. And they were like, What are you doing? You're like three years farther through recovery than anybody else's. And I was like, Well, I'm sprinting, I'm doing H bot therapy. I was doing peptide therapies. I was doing underwater therapy with uh Ricardo Urbinez. I know great guy. So I was doing this apex training, right? Try to figure out how to get more oxygen in my lungs.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

He's a guy who holds his breath for a lot of time.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Yeah, he's a big wave surfer. Yep. Yeah. So we'll go do this underwater training at Soquel High School at like six o'clock in the morning. And and it's all to figure out how to get more oxygen into my body. Oxygen equals recovery. Uh, oxygen is life, right? So I was doing H BOT therapy and then Ricardo's therapy, and the doctors were like, How are you doing this? And so, yeah, everything happened inside of our space. That's cool.

SPEAKER_05 19:56

I think, I mean, talk sorry.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Well, no, I'm just no, I'm just gonna say, because it's right on like you know, keep that in line there. It's like, you know, Stacy had an atypical herniation surgery about eight weeks ago, and it was routine, and she was told that, you know, after about a week or two, she'd feel like she never had that problem before, but I think it was so atypical that she had massive sort of residual nerve damage. And she was having like all the way up to about two weeks ago, she was just having continual nerve pain down all the way down to her foot, upper back of her leg. But she spent, I think, five or six of the last seven days in that hyperbaric, the H bot, and it's all but gone away. And that and that was on no pace to go away. And it's not, it's not magic when the because clearly you get obsessed with it. We go home and go, what is happening here? But when you go home and YouTube it, or you kind of go into the science

Valley Fever And A Hard Reset

SPEAKER_01 20:45

of what's happening inside of her body in that hyperbaric chamber, it all kind of starts to make sense. You see, you wear your little mask in there, and you're basically it's so much oxygen. You know, the deepest parts of your body and that recovery, it's supernatural. And I've just been taking advantage of all the rest of it, the contrast therapy. You know, you can go in there with red light and the sauna, and they've got a 45-degree tank right outside. It's the dream. It really is. And then you have the the uh vibroacoustic, you know, which you have a problem sleeping. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Or yeah. Let's say if someone has a problem sleeping. Let's say the recovery scores, if they've even tracked the recovery scores or the dumps, you can go sit in that vibreacoustic lounge with with a biohacking stack with doing a sound bath and red light canopies and PMF mats to eliminate electromagnetic frequencies in the body, and then the the bed vibrates to the sound bath. It knocks you out in about five minutes, gets you into REM. Wow. In a thirty minute time slot. You get out of it like you had a full night's worth of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

It's trippy because you go in there and you think you almost think that's not gonna happen to me, and then all of a sudden the lights off, and you're like, it's a time warp. You know, you don't even understand it because you you can look all the way back, the red light canopy's got your goggles on, and then it's sort of sort of like some of it's very cinematic. It's very Immersive, yeah. It's very immersive and cinematic because the music is going with it, and like as the as the kind of like the tempo builds, the vibration builds and comes down, and you're gone. And then the light comes off and you realize that's your 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_05 22:13

Well, it's interesting because you were saying like we had in Santa Cruz the 1990s gym that just had newer equipment, but studies show that the recovery is more important than the workout. Do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02 22:23

We we have massive marketing campaigns around it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, they do a great job. You can train two to three days a week as long as you're focusing on recovery and have better results than the person who's training six days a week. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 22:35

So Ryan is currently signing up right now on his behalf.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah, exactly. But I have one I want to touch on because I think, you know, our time will be fairly limited. But there's one part of this where just going to gyms, working in like even in high school and college, working at Cabrillo Fitness, which is now total over there. You know, I think the thing about my experience at the athletic club is the main thing that would keep people away. You're not having a problem keeping people away, and your retention's amazing. But the main thought is like how intimidating a space like that might be. And here the difference there, I've I've got I didn't realize till stationary driving away. The difference in an intimidating health club isn't the layout, it's not the weights, it's not the equipment, it's the staff. It's how you're greedy when you walk in. I didn't realize that till I've because I've worked in clubs. I worked in Living Well Fitness Back East. I worked at Cabrillo Fitness, and we've been members of Club my whole life. And there's a certain different level of a feel when you walk in. And the thing you've mastered there is you've brought something to this town that we've never had, feels like something that, you know, honestly, just got teleported into Santa Cruz. But the welcome when you walk in, the the feel of the the you know the the staff continually just kind of making eye contact, communicating with you, feeling super it's not an intimidating gym. There's much more intimidating gyms that have the big brand names around here because you're just checked in, checked out, you might not even have a conversation. And this dude's always walking around. This dude's dapping everybody up. He's consistently around. 100 knuckles. 100 knuckles a day. 100 knuckles a day. But it but it's but it's real. It's like in he doesn't step away from the gym. He's present, he has his meetings in the pr in the gym or on the benches out front, and so he's kind of consistently present there. Camille the same way. Yeah, but you've and this is gonna be Jerry's lead-in because he always likes this this this part of it. And go ahead and ask your question, Jerry.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

Well, I was just gonna say something different first. Is the other thing I like is you've dealt with the typical gym behavior that's unwanted in a really tactful way. Like you have a place for people to go do selfies, yeah. You have procedure for using certain benches and stuff and not taking up too much time. You keep the traffic going for the bigger.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Have you seen the text message shirts?

SPEAKER_04 24:49

I have, and I've seen like how you guys deal with it on social media. It's brilliant. I mean, it really is. Thanks. Like you're you you guys take a very tactful approach to dealing with bad clientele, not necessarily bad clientele. Little Jim Bro stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's just stuff that like people maybe aren't self-aware, right? And I think that's phenomenal. Shows your your business leadership and how to deal with that stuff and not just let it linger. But yeah, my my go-to is always staff, right? Like I think it's very difficult in Santa Cruz. I think one of the biggest problems that we have is we have a lot of people that move here that like to vacation here full-time, right? And finding people that really want to have a great job and have a boss that's there to support them is difficult to find sometimes. How do you go about finding people that you that buy into the core values of Santa Cruz Athletic Club and your core values?

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Uh this is the constant, right? So you'll have attrition no matter what. The goal is to have the least amount of attrition as possible. So the majority of our staff have been with me five, six, seven years. We pay our management staff close to six figures, if not more. And there's six or seven of them. We we pay a prevailing wage to every staff member, first and foremost. We give bonuses and and raises every single quarter, if not every other uh every six months. So there's the staples that you would think you kind of have to do no matter what, which I just mentioned. That's just standard stuff, which most businesses don't even do, just in general, sure, right? But Santa Cruz has this it's it does there's really no industry here. So you have people who live here as second homes or that have been here for a very long time, and then you have people who are going to college, and that's a constant loop, right? So how do you retain staff? Very, very difficult in Santa Cruz. So it's literally top-down leadership, it's what I call it, top-down leadership. Every single thing that I want

Recovery Tech And Real Results

SPEAKER_02 26:50

them to do, I do first. So if I want anybody to do anything inside of our space, I do it, I do it with them, I show them what the expectations are, I do it with a smile, and then I let them know hey, I would never ask you to do something I'm not willing to do myself. So that's the first part. Then everything has a process and a procedure. There's a document that that's following all of it. But the when it comes to customer service, it is number one for us. However, like just yesterday, I got into an argument with a with a member, and I was like, the customer's not always right. I told that to him to his face. Right. We won't let people walk all over us. I will stand behind my staff 100% of the time if it's appropriate.

SPEAKER_05 27:28

That's like Cole Curry.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

It doesn't matter. Cole's my G, by the way. I no matter what, him and I sit in the sauna, we talk about business every single week. You guys are well so we will not allow people to walk all over our team. Our team comes first.

SPEAKER_05 27:40

And you're giving me chills on that because I think, you know, we are intuitive to a degree, and as we hear it, like when we walk into Suda, you feel that.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

You feel it.

SPEAKER_05 27:49

You feel, and it's not a polarization. It's not a polarization. Like that outfit you're wearing in the gym is not appropriate or whatever. You don't you don't side-eye them or do anything about it. However, you know that as a as a whole, you just emanate that we are all together.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Well, you want everyone to feel like you are on the same level. So when every single person who walks in, every single one gets a greet.

SPEAKER_05 28:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

If if if if my my staff does not greet someone, they get pulled to the side.

unknown 28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:16

And yet again, with respect, like that's just not how we do how to do that. That's not who we are. That's not who we are, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:21

But it is swimming upstream, especially with the demographic and who you're hiring. Yeah, it does take a lot of curation. I saw you, I did over here a little bit when I was walking out on the benches. I'm sure that was a management team. Because I think the only thing I overheard as I was walking by is that you wanted stronger leadership from that group. And I think this is what we're talking about, you know, the kind of like that ethos coming down and disseminating to another 114 employees, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:43

What it what it was was, and this is great that you overheard that snippet. Yeah. Because what it was was a complacency conversation. It was we are one year in and we are wildly successful, but how complacent are we actually?

SPEAKER_05 28:57

So how do you measure that? Oh, sorry, keep going.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

So, so all I there's no benchmark for it. It's we're if you look at some our apparel, there's a saying on the bottom of it. It's that says never let good get in the way of better. And realistically, every time we are doing good, I'm not trying to push the core mentality of like nothing is ever good enough. That's not at all. I'm trying to push the narrative that no matter what we're doing, we can always be doing it better. It doesn't mean necessarily revenue, it just means, you know, we could we can be better.

SPEAKER_05 29:29

It's like your for example, like your perceived exertion in any exercise. Sure. Like you may be so tired one day that your seven your normal 70% is still your hundred percent and that you're better. And in addition to if you're not growing, you're dying. So there's no just city.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yeah, I say that every single day. Right.

SPEAKER_05 29:46

Like so, complacency is like we we get a direct, we have two choices, this direction or that direction. And so I need us to focus that direction. And that's why I was saying, like, how do you measure complacency? Is it that people are like, this is perfect.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Well, there's monetary metrics that that decide. Yeah, there's monetary, so so we don't, we don't up stagnation is uh failing, right? So if we if we're not growing, we're we're we're we're dying to get it.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

So if I identify that we're doing, you know, I I break everything down to out-a-glance spreadsheets, and then everything is siloed, and so everything that we do has a metric to it. And so I can identify what's happening three, four, six months in advance. And so I can identify there is complacency happening at certain points of our business that we can be better at. But the bigger picture was we need it, the top-down leadership, we need to make sure that everybody else has buy-in and that we are starting to train people. We're gonna cross-collaborize our staff so they can do multiple different things within our space so that when what we have what we have is that's cooking happens, we'll be ready for it. Multiply.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:51

Well, well, we're gonna leave it on that note.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

We got a little bit of things that you did say in there was you hired Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz community supports Santa Cruz community. Absolutely. And back in the days of growing up here, it was only if you were local, you supported local. You know what I mean? It was like no value go home, blah, blah, blah. And it was you had to have a rite of passage of being born here. Now it's like, no, if you're great, if you're given back to the community, the community is gonna support you. Yeah. No matter what it is, if you're up to you, you know, if you're doing it 100% with passion, the community is gonna be here.

SPEAKER_05 31:24

Well, to circle back to the beginning, like we were saying, you cannot walk into any establishment in this town and not hear about Santa Cruz Athletic Club. They either went in the morning or they're telling somebody about it. And I am completely interested, just from my own health perspective. We've talked about it on other pieces of the recovery piece. And it's it's a blessing for me that you're here today because now my eyes are more open, even though I've heard it. I've had my busy life. So I hope anybody that's listening, this is an eye-opener for just getting better.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Make time.

SPEAKER_05 31:54

Make time.

Staff Culture And Customer Boundaries

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Take care of number one, right? So we have a rule that all of our staff must take advantage of all different services that we have. We want to make sure that they're all doing good too.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

So and again, not lip service. Like I walk up in the parking lot's the first thing he says to me yesterday. You know, like I was just breaking away kind of impromptu to go in there, and that's the first thing he said was make time for yourself. And that's just reaffirming. And that that's not just on a podcast, like that clearly is just who he is. But do this real quick, because I want to take 60 seconds, and you'll be good at this, because I know I can almost do it right now, just to give the scope of a little bit, like the walk walk we've done, just walk in, kind of blow through, you know, or a little bit and kind of just walk around the gym, just give a scope of it, like that video a little bit, like what's in there. It is rad, but just like give a little audio tour of it, just as if we're walking around real quick.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Just well, imagine all the different cool things that you want to do in Santa Cruz, but you have to have memberships to all of them. You have to have five or six different memberships to all these different things, and there's really no spot that really does the tip of the spirit of any of them, right? In Santa Cruz, like I'll just give a couple of references. No businesses in particular, I don't mean to call anybody out, but you know, there's yoga. Yoga's a big thing in my life. Yeah. But there's not any really kick-ass yoga spots. Now, I'm not please don't take offense to that if you're listening and you're into yoga and you have a spot that you'd like to go to. But group instruction, like there are some decent spots in town, but they're kind of dilapidated. They're a little bit on the older side. Yeah. So our studio, our heated studio, is a million-dollar room. Just a studio, right? It's I it's iconic. It's a trick. Yeah. It's got three separate heating elements to it. So you can do humidified air, you can do a whole house fan, or you can have infrared heating. You can have all three of them. You can choose whether or not you want to have a super dry room or a super wet room. It's a really unique space. And then, of course, you know, let's say you want to do contrast therapy, you want to have experience or exposure to extreme heat, extreme cold. There are places in Santa Cruz that offer this. They're just not tip of the spear. They're not a really cool, trick spot that you can go to and really feel at ease. Right. They're kind of like they're clothing optional, they're a little bit older and dilapidated. Once again, not to throw anybody under the bus because we still have you know operators here that love their businesses. Yeah. We just feel that the demographic in Santa Cruz is changing and they are wanting something that has a little bit nicer touch to it. They're willing to pay a couple of bucks for it, even though we make it very affordable. And then, of course, you know, if let's say you're not into weight training, so to speak, our gym is designed a little bit differently than most gyms. Actually, a lot differently than most gyms. The back gym on the far right hand side, as you're walking, you know, around the entire space, it's louder music. Yep. It's got all of the metal weights, it has platforms. We have we spent a lot of extra money for our deadlifting platforms. You can drop 1,500 pounds on there and not hear it anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

So and the vibration doesn't happen either. It absorbs all the vibrations. So you can have a heated yoga room with people in Savasana on the other side of the gym, and you can drop 1,500 pounds on the other side and you never hear it.

SPEAKER_05 34:57

I wasn't even thinking about that dichotomy. And again, back to the word of polarization where you just boom, boom, and it's like it's metallic sounding. And then you've got this yoga room, and they all are operating at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

At the exact same time. So then you can go from that area in the far right, you can walk forward, and every single row of speakers gets quieter and quieter and quieter as you get to the front of the gym.

SPEAKER_04 35:17

Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

So does our lighting too. All of our lighting is adjusted by Title 24. So there's sensors everywhere. So the more ambient light outdoors dims the lighting inside. So you have everything kind of alive, and it's all very, very intentional. But if you didn't know, you would never understand it. But you'll feel it. When you walk to the front of the gym, there's no metal plates anymore. It's all rubber weights. Oh. It's all pin select equipment. It's no longer free weights. So everything has intention. So if you're more familiarized to like a gentler, softer environment, let's say you're older and you don't want to be intimidated by the guys lifting 1500 pounds in the back, great. It's front, it's quieter.

SPEAKER_05 35:55

There's no so that would work for me, and I know we got to wrap this up because that is one reason I don't enjoy the gyms. It's just it's the sensory overload.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:06

So that's yeah, hook, line, and sinker. You got me.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

No, it does it does not exist there. And then the last one we touched on it, but I just think that I'll throw it out for you is that I I do think the the part that bleeds through a lot too is that you do it very quietly, but that community first thing you're talking about, that's a huge part of your business. And I think a lot of times that's the quietest work, it's the most humble work you can do. I think a lot of people want attention for that and they want some some sort of equity in that. But I think the most organic thing is just doing it. And you do that as good as anybody in town right now, but quietly. And I think it pays great dividends, but you guys are doing an amazing job over there.

SPEAKER_03 36:40

One of the things that Chris told me when in starting the business is I asked him, why rebrand? Why, why go through all of this? And your answer, Chris, was you wanted someplace for a female to feel totally safe.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

So I was like, our tagline was make this space safe and inviting for females to train. I love it. That's it's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

And it feels like that in there. I gotta be honest, it's it's it's from the outside looking in, the branding, the the strong, confident image of it, it's family in there. It really is. You're just as inclined, one of your employees, to be talking about human species and culture, like I was doing with Meg the other day, as you are about a recovery thing. So it's not just lip service.

Audio Tour And Anniversary Offer

SPEAKER_01 37:20

They're connected.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

One last thing before you exit out of here. It is our one-year anniversary this weekend. That's right.

SPEAKER_05 37:26

Well, I wanted you to tell people where to find you.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Oh, yeah. 901 SoCal, next to Whole Foods. One year anniversary. It's actually free to join the gym. We have kind of come to like a critical mass point. We don't do promos anymore. We don't, we're not pushing memberships, we're not trying to, you know, you know, it's not a race to the bottom when it comes to financing for us. We feel the product that we sell is right in line with what the what the community can afford. However, once a year we'll do a blowout special. And so this is our one-year anniversary, and it's free to enter. You don't have to pay anything to come visit the whole weekend. You can come just check it out, keep your foot in the pool, and uh you don't pay until July 5th. So for a month and a half, that's awesome. You can go and experience it.

SPEAKER_05 38:12

So I'm not working on Saturday.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

And we even have heated classes and red room classes, they're all free. So cool. It's just yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah, Instagram, Santa Cruz Athletic Club.

SPEAKER_05 38:22

Yeah, and then your website is santacruz athleticclub.com, and you'll find memberships. So congratulations on one year. Thank you. You can feel it in the room, the coherence of how passionate and the story. So I want to thank you, Chris, for that.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.

SPEAKER_05 38:41

Brandy Jones at KW Thrive, 831 588 5145.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

I'm Ryan Buckholt. I want to be invited to the sauna business strategy session with Cole Kirby. So I'm looking forward to that. 831 818 2339.

SPEAKER_04 38:53

And Jerry Seagraves, Seagraves Insurance, 831 239 9425.