I really didn't have a choice. You know, I got the lease. Like I got no other option. Like NFL guys are working in here and doing these same things. Like it can work at the highest level. To see their growth and be able to provide that.
It's definitely been a driving force for me. Did you think 10 years ago, you know, you'd still be building Genesis 10 years later. From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between, this is Get In, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Big news from my friends over at Hope Plumbing. Now, Hope Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling.
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That's a deal you can't miss out on. Call Hook Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling, and start saving today. Today, I'm joined by Graham Wilkerson, founder of Genesis Sports Performance, a powerhouse training facility helping Indiana athletes unlock their full potential. Graham was a stud on the football team at Bishop Chitaard and at Depal University, my proud alma mater. Uh, and then he took his passion for sports and turned it into a scienceback coaching career. Today we're going to be covering the roots of Genesis back in the old days.
I still call it the Grit Factory from the beginning. Uh, we're going to get inside the weight room, talk about the the locations they've grown here in Indiana and how they're expanding nationally. Uh, and we'll just wrap up talking about Indiana roots, the community, and the entrepreneurship that uh that Graham all the endeavors he has going on. Graham, welcome to Get In. Hey, thanks for having me on. I am pumped for this one.
So, backstory for all the listeners out there. I first met Graham. It would have been 2017 time frame. I was still coming back. It was right before my junior year at Depa. I was still on the football team.
I always say I I did not play college football. I was on a college football team. But at that point, I was still giving it my best. And and we trained all summer. Me and some of the boys, Matt Levis, Kate Jones, Brooks, and I'd been in and about. And that's how my initially got plugged into not only the Genesis community but the Chitaard community as well because you came up through played football at Chitaard and then at Depal.
I believe it was medical sales. Is that kind of what you started your career at? Yeah. Yeah. I was doing med sales for a year right out of college and then uh that's when I launched Genesis. Gave up the career, right?
You I think you were one of the big trauma right? Was it trauma implant? Working for um we were a distributor for Acimemed. So, trauma implant sales, all sorts of, you know, like distal radius, elbows, all of it. A very like like if you do the grind, a very lucrative career down the road, right? It's like you can you can make a really good living selling med device.
Yeah. Similar to like striker, right? Like that's kind of the position I was in. And then you decide to give that up and start coaching. Did you do it on the side to start or is it just like nope, I'm done with that. I'm going all in on this.
you know, I had always had a passion for the the strength conditioning, the sports performance side of things. I was doing the medical device sales, you know, about a year in um recently graduated from college and I decided I'm going to pursue what I've always wanted to do. Like I've been a part of kind of like a smaller startup company. I kind of had seen how it worked and it's like, hey, if I'm going to if I'm gonna go at it and work this hard, I want to I want to do it for myself doing something I love. And then Yeah. Right.
You start a gym and all of a sudden you have hundreds of members and everyone's there. Like that's just how it goes, right? You left day one and and all of a sudden your place is packed, right? No, I I didn't take out a loan or anything, but I I had fortunately saved enough money with the medical device sales to rent a spot. Did you start with a location? Like when you first started training, you had a spot?
I started renting out of a out of a CrossFit gym. Oh, so like you were sharing space with the CrossFit gym? Yep. I was just on the side. I had a couple of my my friends honestly. Um, Kyle Dietrich, right?
Sean O'Connor, those guys. They were paying you. They were paying me. Heck yeah. All right. So, um, they were paying me.
I had like a few other clients, but I probably had six people, right? I reached out to my old football coach at the time, Vince Lorenzano, was like, "Hey, let's get you into the weight room." So, I started training the chitard athletes at the same time. And then, you know, George Dury, one of my one of my mentors, guy, he helped me find a spot. He did it for free for me. You know, I had no money in the bank.
And I remember I walked in like there's lights hanging from the ceiling. It's carpeted. It was an old law office, 1500 square feet, I think, on Tacoma. Yeah. Behind the Aldi, right? That was the That was the spot.
It was the spot. And I remember, you know, I talked to my parents about it. They're like, I had to sign the personal guarantee. There's, hey, like, you know, we support you, but if you fail, like you're going. How long was And this was precoid time when like now I feel like commercial real estate leases are a little bit different. Like what was that first lease that you signed?
It was it so this was in 2014. It was a three-year lease, right? Which is still like three years that that's a that's probably one of the shortest term commercial leases that they did at the time. But like I feel like a lot of those were like five and 10 year like anchor tenants, you know, things like that. So you're signed in three years. What was rent at Tacoma year in 2014?
Probably around three grand. So you're two or three grand. three two three great like you extrapolate that you're like damn that's like a $100,000 investment and how old were you at the time? 24 24 and you're like you know you you know you're you're training Chitaard like you're in the in the weight room there. I'm in the weight room there. So you have like a little bit of like okay there's some stability like a little bit coming from the school I'm assuming.
Yeah. I mean, I think at the time, right, it's 2014, so I'm making like $15 an hour doing that. And I'm, man, I'm hyped, right? Like, hey, I got a little bit of guaranteed income coming in and then everything else I got to, you know, eat what I kill. Right. So, so you sign the lease on the place and you have to turn a law office into a weight into a gym.
Yep. On a shoestring budget. Yes. On a shoestring budget. I remember Kyle and I are in there like, you know, taping up the there's there's holes in the cement. We're trying to plug them like and I had so much like just help amongst the community along the way.
The Babcocks, right? They own the electrical company. I cut a deal there. So, it's like I'll train your son to help me with the lights. And so, you know, I was just going to auctions picking up the equipment like that. just, you know, balling on on a budget as well I mean to put it in perspective like now you operate two facilities but you help out and and have like worked with over 19 facilities across the country.
So like it's it's a the impact that you've had from 24 in in a decade. You spent a decade chasing your passion like you're making an outsized impact far beyond central Indiana now but it all started on that in the the 1500 square feet in Tacoma. What was the first class you you opened up? Like what was the first workout that you were coaching through and and how many people showed up? You know, like I said, I had a couple of my my adult clients. I remember like, hey, I need to I want to get into sports performance.
I need to be able to convert some of these athletes from Shitard over into the gym. So, I reach out to the Hannins, right? I reach I'm like, "Hey, David, like you should come in and try this out." It was David and I still remember Jimmy Boso, two chitaard boys. I had a tire, a rack, and a barbell. That's it.
One rack, one barbell. Where do you even like go buy weights? Just like Facebook market. No, Facebook Marketplace wasn't even a thing yet, right? At the time, I was going to auctions and trying to just get equipment for cheap, right? And so I remember, you know, it was like, all right, punch the tire back and forth, you know, we'll do some squats and some bench.
Like that's all I had. There was no turf. We'll do some sprints on the rubber and uh then or out in the parking lot. Yeah. and then like walk farmers walks in the parking lot, right? Dude, summer at the Tacoma Genesis was just Tiff because the doors would be wide open.
We'd be blaring music that would make the freaking paint peel off the off the walls. And uh I think and that's that was three years later. So by the time I got there, you were already semi-established. So you get a few chitard athletes to start coming in. Did you still have those adjustable dumbbells? Remember those?
Yeah, those were my those were my dumbbells. Those are still lurking around. Heck yeah. I love it. time of year because, you know, when they're in season, they're probably not doing much with you because they're working out with at with the football team and all stuff. So, you get them in the offseason.
I I didn't know what I was doing at the start, right? I didn't even really recognize that there was seasonality to it. So, I remember I got to pay my rent. I got to be able to, you know, afford my, you know, rent for my house. And I'm basically like my diet was like, hey, I'm going to grab like some protein bars and some ground turkey. So, I remember thinking like, hey, as long as I'm paying my rent, I'm living the dream.
I love it. And then, uh, football season started. All I had was like basically football players. And I like lost, you know, at the time I was probably doing 7K a month and I think I probably lost 6K at a, right? And, uh, just then you facing the harsh reality like, hey, like, all right, this is this is a business. How are you gonna how are you going to fill people in the door?
how you going to deal with seasonality? Like what's the next step to make this thing go? But it was good that I really didn't have a choice, you know? It's like I got the lease. Like I I got no other option. Yeah.
And that's the thing when I mean cuz you see a lot of people do personal fitness coaching on the side. They're not for like they could get like two, three, five clients, you know, and maybe there's like a jacked man or woman that's like, "Oh, I'm going to teach you how to get jacked." And it's like, but there's not that much pressure on it. like you don't have to build the best systems. You don't have to like produce athlete results because that's one thing, right? Where it's like the like you're now the way I look at it super scientific and analytical like we're going to put implement these training structures to get you faster in the 40 yard dash which is going to get you on a college team or we're going to get you your vertical jump.
I feel like they're always testing vert they're always testing like 20 yard like they're doing all the fun stuff and I'm over there like you know oh and and yeah going to Genesis being a member and all the stuff. uh like I'm doing, you know, curls or whatever and they're like jumping 36 inches and I'm like those guys are crazy. But back in the day that's that's what you wanted to do, right? You had to show these results. I was no we never got over 30. Come on.
Let's be honest. Everything kind of dries up when football season comes around. You probably have a few adults that are still coming in. You're forced to make a decision. You're forced to figure it out. Where does your mind go?
What do you start doing? backed uh everything I didn't know and just how kind of young and dumb I dumb I was and how how much better I could have fasttracked it. I tried to change it to gin fit one off season like try to go after the general population clientele which I got away from my roots which was sports performance. So that was a mistake. Then I started realizing like hey you got to get other sports in. I think nowadays when we think of sports performance like getting helping develop high school and college athletes is like a no-brainer.
Yeah, of course that is. But was that popular in 2014? Like uh sports specific or not even sports specific, but sports being the focus of gyms or were a lot of them like CrossFit gyms? Like where were these kids training? What was the competitor? It was a little bit less crowded back then than it is now, right?
Because you could you could say, "Hey, Genesis, we're going to help you with strength, speed, power, agility. We're do it all. It's sports performance." Now, you know, you have all these great coh strength coaches, right? a lot of them are getting it done at school and then there's so much skill training going on, right? So, I'm competing with the schools, the skill training and the fact that all these kids are on travel teams like the seasons are longer.
They never stop. Like our our best wrestlers never stop doing the art of wrestling. Like I feel like I was I played three sports and it was like, okay, you had a specific season and in the summer you kind of mixed a little bit of them together. But it's like now I think a lot of times these it's like you're a baseball player like this the the rise of specialization in sport all they're doing is just playing baseball and pitching or doing whatever and like doing drills for pitching or like like I don't know if they're bench pressing that often or whatever you know. So so as this was like coming up were you seeing this trend and like hey I need to get in on like sports is the thing. Yes I'm I'm I'm seeing this is happening.
I'm seeing I mean it was probably three or four years ago I'm starting to see like we're getting pushed out a little bit because I mean if you're a parent you're going to buy the result right so if I'm a baseball skill coach I'm like hey I'm going to get your son's exit VO up by whatever like I'm going to do that over oh I'm going to go to this more generalized training market where he's going to get him stronger faster whatever. So, we had to completely kind of switch the brand up a little bit uh to more like, hey, this is speed training. Speed is a skill. Every athlete needs to improve their speed. We have a mile per hour uh guarantee. A mile per hour guarantee.
Mile per hour guarantee. And that's that's kind of what we've been able to sell and kind of make our name around the speed. And I felt like at first it was like predominantly football even into year three. Like most of the the crew that was working out were football players. And then you started to get some additional ones in there. When when was the first moment where you really like got into maybe a different sport other than football and uh and things started rolling.
Year three, year four, we started to get, you know, female athletes, which was awesome. We started to get lacrosse, rugby, some wrestlers. That's when I realized like, hey, you can't you can't make your gym dependent on one school. put in perspective, she has 17 state titles, so like they know what they're doing when it comes to football. And I remember you had some elite level football players that were coming through the gym, right? Like I think in the early year like NFL caliber, right?
Yeah, we had the Martins. Um, you know, Zach played I played football with Zack. So I remember he came back, it was like his first year with the Cowboys and I trained him in the offseason which was awesome. And like was that a hard sell of like, hey man, like I'm this is what I do. Like I know a thing or two. Let me train you.
No, I think he just reached out. Oh, no way. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty sure that's how it went. He just was like, hey man, I'm back in the I'm back for the offseason. I want to He was coming in the CrossFit gym. Zach was like he was when you were renting the space in the CrossFit gym.
Yeah. If you go look at my Instagram, like one of the very kind of first picks back in the day, like Zach's off season was done in the CrossFit gym. What what does the CrossFit guys say? You you walk an NFL player in there and he's like, "What the hell is this guy doing?" Yeah. And you know, remember like he just started so no one he wasn't the pro bowler that he is like no one really no one really knew, right?
And then Zach got obviously younger brother Nick so I would train them. Ted Carris Cathedral he came in and trained with them for the offseason. Then we got Jason Spriggs from Concord. So then we had a nice group of Indiana offensive linemen training. the O lineman. Yeah, the cornfed boys.
I love that. That's so sick. And that's like a a little bit of one good for your skills of like how cuz you have to know what you're talking about if you're going to train a top tier athlete, you know, like you got to be doing research. I remember you going through like all the the testing and credential side of things too to like know that what you're saying is going to work at the highest level and how you're training with them. And clearly, you know, a little like I mean you obviously they have, you know, a lot of genetics and they were awesome hardworking individuals too, but like a little bit of that slice comes from working out in that summer in the offseason with Genesis and then you go back to the football team or you go back to these high school athletes like yeah we're training like NFL guys are working here and doing these same things like it can work at the highest level. Absolutely.
And then you the kids that you work with on the high school level, they they start getting results get all state or get a scholarship. And that's kind of how the word of mouth. Do you do you have any of those early stories where someone kind of came into the sports performance program and just like flipped their career around or like really maybe not even flipped their career, but took took their career to the next level? We have a a kid. He's a cathedral kid. Very fast.
Was gifted and you know by doing some extra speed, plyometric strength training. He's like one of the fastest kids in the nation. So he ran in the nation. He ran a 62560 yard dash in baseball. I think it was second in the nation. Got a scholarship at West Point to play.
Uh he ran track and set a school record in the 60 meter first year running track. Now he's a baseball kid. Yeah, baseball kid. So is he gonna do outdoor track or is he like no I'm playing baseball? Yeah. You know, we'll have to see.
But then all of a sudden like now schools are looking at him from track. Talked about the Hannons. I remember Tommy, which like you know they're they're a fan and a good family and and like his transformation into just being like a muscle powerhouse speed dude like is I mean attributed to his work ethic and what he did but he grinded like not many high school kids are willing to wake up at 5 whatever AM to be in the gym at 6 and that dude was in there a lot. Uh, and it totally like I mean he was an elite football player, an elite nationally acclaimed like rugby player playing at IU now and then a state qualifier wrestler. I mean just like and I remember seeing him at Genesis all the time grinding and it just like flipped not flipped but elevated his uh high school athletic career. You know Wyatt Shrader would bring him in when I think Tommy was a sophomore junior.
They'd be going in every morning and they did it in the Eden season too. So, they're playing football while they're doing it. And then, you know, Tommy actually just texted me the other day. He sent me an inbody of like whatever four years of progress and it was insane, obviously. And he's like, "Uh, I've never done anybody else's workouts but yours." So, like he go he's at IU and he uses Train Heroic and he's still doing our No way to prep.
That's sick. Uh, he talk about all time good dudes. He's a he's a competitor like no other. But just and we're not just going to talk about all these high school like uh athlete stories and we're going to get into the meat because uh I think that at some point during your your entrepreneurship career here, you realize that just being the strength coach like wasn't going to totally like be your destiny. Like you didn't just want to coach at one gym for 35 years and and the entrepreneurship bug I guess kind of started to take over. When when was the moment where you started to think about expansion and growing what your business could be?
You know, it was probably COVID and after did you have two locations before CO or you had just moved into the new location at 65th? Yeah, we we had just one location. Man, we were paying people 1099. So, it's like, hey, the trainers that we had like we weren't able to pay them, we had to shut down. That was no fun. I saw the power in systemizing things because I think we did a good job like having a lot of client communication, lending out our equipment, like trying to stay in front of people so that we didn't just, you know, we were shut down for three months, lose all of our auto auto renewing revenue because we had to still pay all of our How big of a drop did you see from that?
30K in topline revenue during those months, right? It was it was bad. But kudos to the ones that stick stuck around. Oh, yeah. We our our community was amazing and a lot of them, you know, they they're like, "Hey, just leave it on. We want to support you guys."
Which was which was awesome. You know, I saw that and then probably the when I knew like, "Hey, I got to systemize this thing. I gotta turn this up." Would be one, you know, I met my wife. Uh I was training nonstop like like these are like mornings like you get a little bit of afternoon time, but maybe you're doing some one-on-one stuff with some of the NFL guys or whoever, and then it's like evenings are swamped. Yeah.
I mean, you're you're you're getting up at 4:30, 5:00 a. m. and you're not getting home till 8. Like, I was a zombie, right? And I'm like, and I was working on Saturdays and Sundays to try to get the one ones in. So, I was like, I don't I don't know that I want this to be my my life forever.
Like, you I knew we wanted to have a family. I don't think that was very sustainable. And so, then I brought my my I had brought my I had met my wife. I had brought my trainers on and I wanted to pay them more. I they they were so bought in. I'm like, man, I want to create a a career for them, too.
And then that's when I kind of realized like, let's turn up the gas on this. Some of the things I'm the most proud of, like Kendrick, he's our general manager. For those that don't know him, he started dusting the dumbbells for me for like 10 bucks an hour. Then all the only money I could pay him at one point was $20,000 salary. and now he's a partner in it. He's the director of operations.
He He's got a baby. He's got a wife. He can afford a house. He's got a great makes a great living. Derek was driving from West Lafayette and opening the gym at 5:40 every morning. That's a two-hour drive.
He's getting up at 3:30 a. m. working three jobs. And now Derek's our adult director. He's got a full-time salary. Devin came in as an intern, like not making anything.
He's got a full-time salary. like to see their growth and be able to provide that. It's definitely been a driving force for me and it's it's been amazing because when you flip from 1099 where it's like, hey, they know that it's not like uh it's it's not guaranteed for it's just like you're you're a contractor. You're you're helping out build this thing, but you're not like on the inside of it. And when you turn them into W2s and like starts talking about salary, it's like, well, shoot, dude. It's not just for you and your career and you know your family.
It's like everyone's family. Like they rely on you to pay to sign the paychecks, right? Right. You know, Caleb, he was delivering pizzas before. He's a GM now. I look at I always say this to him all the time in our staff meeting.
I'm like, we got three babies to support, right? And there's probably more babies to come. So, like, we all got to we all got to make sure. And I remember, dude, Caleb was grinding at the gym while he was going through IU uh at the time. Well, Uppy at the time, RIP, IU indie. Uh he was like, but he would be like the only college kid like he's in there at 5:40 in the morning.
I got dude, no chance in college I was waking up at 5:00 in the morning to go to a job. Yes. But like he knew and like all the time we were we like kind of knew he was hopefully going to do something with you, but it wasn't like set in stone. It wasn't like, oh yeah, this is going to be my career. And now he's at the Northwest location. Yeah, he's the general manager of the Northwest location.
I mean, he does an amazing job. He's come a long way. I mean, he had no experience when he started. That was his first job. And now he's I mean he runs that thing and he does he does an awesome job. I'm so proud of that.
That's you also realize so you think of these iterations right from you're coaching only football to now you have to do all the sports now you're coaching all the time okay you need to like build these systems and have employees and build this thing bigger to then you realize that being a gym owner and operator of of you know specific locations in central Indiana there's even more you can add on to this right and I know that that you expanded down to Madison I remember and like had tested some stuff out and like what what people don't know is like sometimes like you do some tests and they don't always work the way that you intended for them to. Uh, and then so from that experience and you come back and then you start working on licensing and so take take me through like what you're doing there. I went down to Madison um didn't work out, was able to sell that to the guy that was running it but learned a ton, right?
Learned from my mistake, lick my wounds, get better. Some individuals be like, "Okay, you tried that like didn't work. Cool. Not the move. Just like stay happy with what you have." Right.
Right. And then so then we opened up the Caramel location shortly after. So there was a small period of time when I had three gyms and then we sold off the Madison. We had the two um and then I just focused on developing the heck out of my people, my staff, getting these systems in line. And when we really started to experience a lot of growth, I mean we've seen 20 30 40% like some years year-over-year growth, right? I felt like, hey, I got something I can help other gym owners with.
And so I started this licensing program where I basically install our systems at Genesis into these other gyms and help them grow sports performance gyms that were like me on Tacoma. So it's cool to give back and help them kind of do it a little faster than what it took me. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Roots Reality Co. the absolute best real estate team here in central Indiana. Listen, if you're looking to buy, sell, or invest in real estate, you need people who actually care about our Indiana community. That's Tyler and Max over at Roots Reality.
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Let's get back into it. you have to like make all the mistakes and try all the things where it's like yeah oh we tried that promo or we tried this or something that worked or didn't work right was like I think uh one of the cool things you did was like you realize that it was seasonal and the college kids would come back from the summer so it was like the summer special or whatever it's like hey it's going to be 500 bucks or whatever and you get eight weeks or nine weeks whatever the thing is and so you can then like say oh we did that we tried it and it didn't work or it did work and then implement it into these the grit factories to help them you know accelerate their growth a little You know, I was looking at Northwest, right? It took us two years to do what it took us six years to do at Flagship. These systems work, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So, then take us through like you go find someone like what are where are the locations that you're working with currently? Like what where where are the gyms at? Oh, they're all over the the US. So, there's actually one in Canada, too. No way.
So, Genesis International, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Illinois, Tennessee, Florida, Texas. No way. Ohio, all over the place.
And how are they finding you or how are you finding them? I'm fortunate enough to have great mentors. So, in one of my mentorship groups, uh there's a guy named Pat Riggsby. He's also partnered with me on the licensed side. He, you know, has a good following of sports performance gym owners. So, that was one way.
I'm a Midwest Speed Lab director for the Universal Speed Rating. People that aren't involved in sports performance, you're not going to know what that is. But if you are, you know, it's a pretty recognized brand. So I help them and I've I did a business course for them and people are finding me through that as well. Ah okay. And so are there stories of like hey okay so you did it in six years at your flagship location two years uh at the Northwest location.
Someone new comes on. How how big of an impact are you making in their business? Are they taking action or not? Right. Like I I got a a young kid in Florida. reminds me of honestly me when I started.
He, you know, was below 10K in revenue and he's about to hit 15 in less than a month, right? Um, and like what are the quick things that you like implement where it's like, hey dude, do this, this, this, and it's going to like make an impact. Yeah. One, like plug into your gym internal marketing, right? Ask your members for reviews, ask your members for referrals, reactivate former members. Like that right there probably pick up 20 leads a month, right?
create like front-end offers and and do email campaigns. I do a lot of email marketing. Go uh go into sport like I know you do this because I see you in these when I go in there Facebook groups. Yeah, I see your I see you in there from the uh softball. Yeah, from Bad Hats for sure. I still get so much stuff and like at first people are like Facebook groups use people especially parents if I feel like once you become a parent then you're like stop questioning if people are in Facebook groups or not.
And then the older you get, the more groups that you're in. Like someone's someone's like 70-year-old grandma is probably in like every group. So now I'm in like, dude, I get info. Well, not only the softball and baseball stuff from bats, but I also see the like you grew up in Seymour, Indiana. Like what's going on in Madison? What's up Fort Wayne?
Like South B. I know what's going on. And that's where you get the real like where people are really engaged and asking questions and they're like in fact I don't know if you're on Reddit that's probably another place where you see people that are like my son loves baseball but he has no chance of making the varsity like what do we need to do to like help get him ready to make the varsity team and you can go in there and be like an expert and answer those questions. So you're grinding in Facebook groups. I love it. That's a hustle.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean these guys they don't have the money to do paid marketing yet. And you don't need to at that level. Like there's no reason to go spend two, three grand on Facebook ads when you're making 10K a month. There's no reason.
I mean, we got up to probably 60K without ever paying for like any sort of ads, right? 60K a month just and just being like a good community steward, right? And like being invested and and I think that um reputation is a lot there. And it's like you talk about like the miles the MPH guarantee. Yes. Yeah.
And it's a lot of people I think with Jim's right. It's like I'm sure I don't know. you guys have the sigler like uh you're not really like adult fitness isn't like your bread and butter, but it's like they come in in January, they don't have results in February, and they're gone in March, right? Like the New Year's resolution crew. And so like being able to say, "Hey, we're going to get you these guarantees." And from like a coaching perspective, getting the athletes bought in and like delivering them to not only the MPH, but like scholarships and varsity spots and, you know, just better seasons overall.
I think it's, you know, just making sure that you're so serviceoriented and you have that down with the coaching protocols. And I think with the youth athletes, we do a lot of that. Like huge for us, build that self-confidence, that self-concept, that self-worth. That's all I have procedures to kind of inherently build that within the gym. Like what what age do kids start coming to you? Seven year olds.
But they're not like in there like hitting heavy squad. Seven. No, no, no. Like speed and agility stuff. Speed, agility. When does a kid get into a squat rack or like start to bench press?
Yeah. I mean, I think it it depends on the kid, right? Like where they are in like the maturity cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Do they are they, you know, able to do the foundational movement patterns with perfect form and then we can start loading it.
You know, there is the old wives tail like lifting stunts your growth. That has no basis. The research is completely opposite of that. It's actually good to do some resistance training. It's not even near the forces that these kids are going to experience in their sport. Um, you know, our youth kids, we want to we we kid it, right?
Like we want to make sure that we're building a great foundation, they have all the movement patterns done correctly before we're really trying to mess with a lot of external load, right? So, so what changes in the training mentality from when you're let's say an eighth grader, a senior in high school, a senior in college versus pro? like you've trained at all these levels and it's like what are the traits or what are you trying to instill into these kids and and like what I don't know what like take me through the progression of that of like well does one day you just get stronger or is it I don't know take me through that that progression through there the basics are the basics for a reason so like stuff that I'll do with youth kids I'm probably doing with NFL guys too right like hey can can this athlete create an appropriate amount of force in a fast amount of time in the directions that they play their sport in to theoretically improve their performance, right?
And so, you know, at the youth level, if we want to get into a little bit of the science behind it, right? Force precedes power. It precedes velocity. So, you can't really develop like a a powerful fast kid if there's not a foundation of force. So, you know, there is some basic just strength training. the more that the more force an athlete can like put into the ground in relation to their body weight, the faster they're going to be.
How are you measuring force? So, there's I mean there's thousands of ways to to measure we have force plates. Uh we could look at it as like a uh is that like the little like string that goes to the barbell. That's measuring velocity. So, that goes into it. You can look at just like a relative strength number uh for the athlete like a relative strength index.
So once the athlete gets strong, then we want to layer in the pios and the speed work. And that's where most people will live most of the time. You got to continue to get stronger, raise the ceiling so that we can, you know, keep doing more power and speed stuff. It's pretty crazy in like 10 years how different the convers like I think everyone thinks back to like their old like 90s strength coach or whatever. It was like do more curls and do more push-ups or whatever. and they have like technology and innovation within sports and training and all this stuff like Whoop bands like that didn't exist when you like I I don't know if I mean maybe Whoop had just started but it wasn't like people were training on recovery and all this stuff like it's nuts it really doesn't matter until the athletes more advanced I would say but then you'll look at like hey is this athlete like force deficient or velocity deficient so if there is a force deficiency like I'm going to do more weighted sprints I'm going to do longer ground contact jumping I'm going to do more force production in the weight room, heavier lifting.
Right? If there's a velocity deficient, I'm going to lift weights faster with that VBT. I'm going to do more elastic plyometrics. I'm going to change the way that I'm doing the sprinting. So, it's more unloaded top end type speed stuff. And we have an ability to do that through our assessment, right?
So, we get a kid on a force plate. We can look at, you know, a countermovement jump and RSI and then put them on this the lasers for their sprints and we can kind of see, yeah, where are they lacking and it gives us a little bit more of a targeted approach than back in the day when it was just like, you know, let's let's let's condition them and get them strong. Let's let's condition and let's put heavy ass weight on the on the bar and move that around. There was just like a a special it'll always hold a special place in my heart of just like like 15 shirtless college football players playing like heavy metal and just like putting as many plates as we could on the bar. I it was it was a fun time. Yeah.
I mean there's something to be said about but then like now it's like yeah train a little train hard but also train smart you know like I love it and it's been fun to see this iterations and like the growth of you not only as a coach with staff and as an entrepreneur. I mean, it's uh it's been a remarkable decade, 11 years, like a year over a decade. Like, that's crazy. Did you think 10 years ago that, you know, you'd still be building Genesis 10 years later? I mean, I I had done it with the expectation like this is what I'm going to do. I didn't really have a backup plan.
I definitely got into it thinking, you know, I'm do I I love coaching. I want to work with athletes. That's what I probably thought I'd be doing for the rest of my life. I didn't know I' I'd have this kind of shift to the uh business development piece. It's a skill I've really enjoyed like honing and working on. And um well, it's a competition a lot of it, right?
It's like you got to go out there and compete against the other gyms, the other coaches. You want to have the most knowledge. Like you get to go out there and you know, it's not quite football, but it's you know, it's like the adult version of it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm I'm someone that I got to have another goal and another goal and it's got to be grander and grander and grander whether that's you know good or bad but that's that's how I there uh I think a healthy dose of ambition is not a bad thing.
Yeah. My wife is literally like how many businesses do you have now and what are you doing like when are you opening up the new facil like she's just like can't even believe. So, as you look forward then, right, so you've been doing this 11 years, you know, you're licensing, you're you're working with other gym owners, you're growing your two locations. Uh, what can we see coming down the pipeline from Genesis Sports Performance in Indiana, right? Indianapolis, this kind of central Indiana area. Like, I'm always going to have my owner operated facilities, my staff.
I want to continue to, you know, help them grow, take care of them, create more opportunities for them. So, I expect to have more facilities throughout the throughout the area. I've always wanted to have kind of the shape of a star, about five facilities. Okay. Wait, what what what spots are you eyeing? Where So, it' be like where you're at currently on that's kind of that's that'll be the middle, right?
We're inside the loop. Then we got one on the northwest side. I need to get one more kind of northeast. I'd like to go south at some point, you know. I I think that's going to eventually come to f fruition. But then on the license side, probably by the end of the year, that that's going to be a franchise.
So that's where a lot of my time has been spent as of late. Um, so someone that wants to start a gym or maybe owns a gym comes to you and says like, "Man, I want to take this thing to the next level may become a franchisee of Genesis Across the Country." Yep. Yep. Exactly. We're going to take more of a conversion model.
So, it's not, hey, Nate Spangle, who has no idea how to run a gym, wants to invest in a Genesis, so I'm going to go charge him retail space in a 7,000 foot facility, try to run this playbook. It's going to be, hey, you're you're a current gym owner. You need some help on the business side. We'll come in, we'll do a conversion, and you'll be a part of the Genesis franchise. Yeah, I think that makes sense too because you get people they have ownership, right? And they have experience too like getting from like I mean the hardest part I don't know I mean as you might differ now but like zero to one like getting something going is really hard.
Like a lot of people talk about wanting to be and and making the trans transition from part-time like I help a few people train to get stronger and lose some weight versus like I do this full-time. It is my job. Uh, I think I feel like that's a So when you find the people that are doing that and have made that leap, it's like, well, great. Helping them get from one to two and two to 10 isn't crazy. It takes a lot of work, but it's not as um scary, I feel like, as the zero to one. Yeah.
You would be amazed by the amount of gym owners I encounter in a day that I talk to. I'm a one person operation. I have no staff. I'm paying my bills, but that's about it. And I'm training 40 hours a week. Well, how long have you been doing this?
15 years. So, it's like in my mind, like if you're willing to play in the dirt that long, I can give you some systems. You're hopefully able to execute because you're I mean, that takes some toughness, right, dude? Yeah. You just got to be gritty, like relentless. It's like, yeah, I'm going to do that.
Like, and you got to love coaching, which that's a piece of it, too. I think people go out and buy franchises whether it's freaking donuts to gyms to whatever it is and it's like oh they see it as just a money-making opportunity like oh yeah sports performance like parents are you know kind of crazy and spend a lot of money on sports performance like I want to do this because I want to make money. I think one of the special parts especially early on and even now like Kendrick still shows up to sporting events all across the north side of Indianapolis like he's at the state game for Chitaard he's coming to wrest like we have wrestlers that train there and he's like he's coming to wrestling matches like if you just cared about the money you'd say uh-uh ain't doing that stuff right and being able to actually invest in kids and care about the idea of coaching cuz it's not like a g you're not just a gym owner you're a coach right and I I think that part is hard to teach.
Yeah, 100%. And that's why it's so fun to work with these people, right? Because they all started not because and they're in the position they are in, not because they're a, you know, business owner that got in in it for the investment. They all started because of the passion of coaching. And when I speak with them, I just see, you know, my my former self in them. They got families.
They got young kids. They are giving it all to the the clients that come into the gym, but they're also like, man, they're burning at both ends. They're working 60 hours a week. They can't they can't coach their kid because they have to coach everybody else's, right? And being able to like give them an opportunity to like, hey, still we're still going to take everything that makes it great about the about the facility. We're going to keep all that.
That's what makes makes you good. But we're gonna institute some systems to help you, you know, make more money for your your family, for your lifestyle because a lot of a lot of them do not, right? That's just the nature of coaching. It's monthtomonth, right? Oh, yeah. Like if you wanted to be rich, you would not get into coaching.
Yeah. And then, you know, we're going to we're going to give you more financial freedom, but then we're als we're also going to give you the ability to serve more people, right? Like we'll expand your brand. you can help more of the kids that you care about and you're not going to be on the floor 60 hours a week. Yeah. Was that a hard transition for you?
Obviously easy transition because you get more time back, but like you got into the love of coaching and now I've been I'm sure the more the years go on, the less you coach. Yeah. I mean, I don't do much coaching on the sports performance side. It's now I'm coaching the other business business owners, coaching staff. you're coaching your staff to distill because that was the piece that like when you took a Graham class it was like dude you're this is Genesis you know and then over the years you've done a really good job of like now it's like Kendrick is the guy or Dererick is the guy it was really it was really hard and I don't know that it was as hard to develop the systems and train those guys like they were always competent but there was it was like hard on me mentally because like I I almost felt like, oh, I'm letting these people down because I'm not in there. Uh, and it took like a lot of a mind shift.
It took coaching from my mentors to kind of talk me through that headsp space because I was like, I got to be there. I'm the guy. I would feel guilty like maybe I worked a whatever 50 hour week and I got home to take my wife out to a date or something. I'd be looking at the Genesis story, texting Kendrick, is everything okay? Like I was guilty for a long time. It probably took me I probably could have grown faster if I didn't feel that way.
It was probably I probably could have gotten into more of this side of things two years earlier than I did. But I don't I don't regret it. Like it was still having Kendrick and Caleb at my side to see it all really helped them and it empowers them to take more ownership. Like no one wants to be like micromanaged about everything and it's like and you got to let them grow and fail. Like I'm sure like I I feel like uh I want to ask about this. Was there ever like a person you know obviously we're not going to name names but it's like you sold this person like they came in the door, you sold them and then someone else within your staff coaches them and then they leave and you're like damn like that would be hard.
Yeah. I mean, I had kids texting me at the time like, "Well, when are you going to be in? When are you like, I don't want to come in unless you're coming." Yeah. And so, yeah, that was hard. But, you know, I think the way that I kind of had to shift my mind frame was like, if I want the whole operation, if I want my staff to grow, like I'm doing a disservice to Kendrick if I'm on the floor coaching, I'm doing a disservice to Caleb if I'm on the floor coaching because I'm not growing and creating more opportunities for all of them.
Yeah. And like the best is like you coach your coaches, right? and like help them become better, right? That is like being a a really good strength condition is like something you can hone and like they can work on their craft and yeah, you coming in and taking all like the best athletes or whatever is like not giving them the opportunity to grow and like giving you the chance to like learn grow as a leader too, right? Man, that is Yeah. Being able to take your hands off the wheel and say like, "Hey, we got to we got to get this thing rolling."
I think it's easier when you see it too. Like I see Kendrick's success. That would not have happened if I was in there all the time. I look at Cody, he's another one of my full-time guys. Him and his wife, they have two kids. They moved from Kansas.
Um, you know, they were working at a previous gym. That gym, uh, you know, had some financial issues, so he got let go and like I had to I didn't necessarily have it in the budget to, you know, support more trainers full-time. we created this ad agency, right? And now that's getting going and that's gonna be, you know, fulfill a lot of his salary and I won't be able to do that if I'm just on the floor all day. If you're like instructing my bench press, right? Like uh and it's like you take the risk of like shortterm it might dip a little bit, you know, but then it's your job to coach it back up to be even higher because you you only have so many hours in a day.
Yeah. And you know, Kendrick and Caleb, like they're amazing at it. I I I look I'm like man you guys are probably better than I was right. I walk in there I actually they are better than I was. I walk in there and like K Kendrick Caleb they got those things dialed in. If I do need to coach like let's say someone's out or I want to go in and just you know get my get my fill again.
Kids are like oh Kendrick told me to do this or like dude now you're like now you don't matter. I'm like man I told Kendrick to say that like weird. Yeah. like, uh, dude, I love it. It's been awesome to see the journey and I'm excited to see, uh, the more more growth coming out of you guys and and all the cool stuff you're going to do from the licensing program to more central Indiana locations. We're kind of wrapping up the show here.
I have a few fun segments to hit on. So, the first one's our younger year segment. It's brought to you by our friends at OR Fellowship. They're a great organization here in Indiana helping develop young business leaders across the state. So, Graham, what advice would you give to your 22-year-old self? You know, stay the course.
like you're not going to know uh the answers to everything. It's going to be hard. It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would be doing it. If you're an action taker, like you'll figure it out. Continue to take action and you'll figure it out.
Amen. That's really good advice. Uh I think that is uh is powerful. Action like just be actionoriented and stay the course. Like I think a lot of people, you know, like you said, six years. It was like it took you but you've been doing this for 11 now and it's like every it starts to accelerate but if a lot of people don't make it long enough to see it accelerate and because I don't know I I think that's just really really impactful.
Next question. You have had a lot of lot of guys go to Waw Bash. You're obviously a Depal um how how does your alliance lie on Mon Bell game? Oh, I mean obviously I'm Tigers through and through, but all all the kids that go to Wab Bash that we've trained, like I'm watching them just as much as I'm watching the Depal guys. I'm I'm rooting for their success. It's uh let me tell you, if we lose, the victory hurts a little less because at least, you know, I know my my guys are celebrating on the other side.
Yeah. It's like on both sides there. It's like you see those dudes and it's like, ah man, I liked you. And it's like I root for them. I always say I root for you 364 days a year. Yeah.
Like I'm all and I'm like rooting for maybe you individually like you know have an all right game or whatever. But at every other game I I'll root for him. Right. What was the pullup record that you attempted? You know it was pull-ups for 12 hours. 6 a.
m. to 6 p. m. I was just trying to go for the record. I don't even remember what it was. I think I got 3,000 something.
Right. He did three How were your hands? Were your hands like My hands were completely shredded. I I'm pretty sure I had rabdo. Like I got sick bad after it. I remember the next day I couldn't open doorork knobs or put my socks on, but I was cramping in between each set.
So Kyle Dedric, I'd come off the bar, he'd roll me out, and then I'd get back up on the bar. I mean, I always I always joke with my wife. We were like, you know, just started dating. And like that's the first time she met my family. Like that's like the first time she met your family was when you were attempting to break the 12-hour B. Tell her like, "Hey, that's what that's what won you over, right?
Yeah. Yeah. 3,000 pull-ups and not being able to put on your socks. Yeah. She had to She had to put them on for me the next day. That's when I knew I'm like, I got to marry this guy.
Yeah. Right. Someone who's willing to put on your socks when you can't touch your toes. That's uh I still remember that and I remember coming in there and and I was just like, wow. And the next day, your hands were just toasted. Then now you've kind of switched.
You're like jiu-jitsu has become the thing recently, right? U tell me about like what encouraged you to go get into jiu-jitsu. Cher Champlain, I love him. He opened up right off 71st in Benford. So, it was right by the gym and I drive that way. I'm always seeing it.
I had been doing uh some strongman training. I just was like wanting to get back into something competitive. Like I don't golf. Like that's not really my thing. And I you know the the jiu-jitsu seemed cool. So I I I went in there.
I fell in love with it. I I when I first started I had to get a surgery but I kept going back. Right. Yeah. Right. Like did you like mess up your elbow or I tore my LCL.
But uh man, I got uh Caleb in there, Kendrick in there, Derek in there. It's amazing because, you know, it's a nice little work bonding thing. And Yeah. They tick you off. He's like choking with their ghee. Yeah.
But I think it's good like, hey, go in and like just be awful at something and suck at something for two, three years. And you know, I'm compared to black belts and stuff, I'm still awful. We're all still awful. I think it's a great exercise for these guys because you just you get used to just like losing. Dude, I went in with one with you and it's like I mean I have a wrestling background. I was like, "Okay, yeah, what?
I'll figure this out." And like it is a humbling experience to get choked out by a grown man and you're like, "Yeah, dude. There's there's bigger dogs in the in the park." I take it as like you're you're never going to be afraid to like get a sale turned down, right? like you're used to just getting Amen, dude. I love it.
Uh final final part here. We ask these questions everyone that sits in the chair uh all throughout the state of Indiana. So Graham, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana? It's filled with humble, supportive people that are that are rooting for one another. You know, that's been my experience. Like I want everybody in my community to win and I've seen that favorite returned.
Amen. What is a hidden gem in Indiana? Yeah, I'll go with 20 tap. right in the neighborhood. We always go out there. We take our daughter there.
Service is awesome. Waitresses, waiters are always awesome. And great spot for us to just go like grab quick dinner, grab a beer, and walk. They have really good food. The French breakfast. Have you had the burger?
No. Unreal. You got to try. French breakfast. What is it? Some sort of really good cheese on it.
Don't Don't quote me on exactly what it is. And then it's got like a blueberry or something salsa. So, it's got like the sweet and savory component. It's good. Yeah. The French breakfast burger.
French breakfast burger. You have to try that. See, that's a hidden gem. So like 20 tap, everyone's gonna be like 20 time, but it was like the French breakfast burger. The sweet and savory. That's the hidden gem.
That is the hidden gem. That is my favorite burger in Indianapolis. Wow. Final question of the day. Need to share the love. This also helps us uh find other guests to bring on the pod.
Who is a Hoosier that we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things? I'm going to go with uh Drew Champlain with Champlain Jiu-Jitsu. um another entrepreneur that you know started recently. He's having great success. Like a lot of people are transforming their fitness and their lives through through it.
And um yeah, I' I'd say him. He's a good one to follow. Yeah. I think the piece about like combat sports and the whole thing there is there is just as much if not more mental growth stacked on this like very difficult physical challenge. Like you go scrap jiu-jitsu for an hour, 60 minutes or whatever. Like one, you're going to walk out of there tired, but mentally you're going to be challenged as well.
From jiu-jitsu to the gym to even like going and picking up piano or taking like music classes or something, like the idea of sucking at something as an adult is something that people steer away from. They try their hardest not to ever suck at anything. And it's like the more time I spend like getting to do like I did uh like a piano class and a guitar class and some other stuff and it's like I like it's like learning and it's like oh I'm going to have to practice and try to get better and and it's just like so much growth and development happens there. Yeah. I think it keeps you younger too and like I'm sure there's science out there that I'm not going to go into but like you know new neural pathways and all that like if you if you continue to challenge yourself with new hobbies like I really have a theory you're not going to age as fast. That's that's the theory.
And it's like Yeah. And like a hobby that's not just like, you know, as much as I love hanging out and drinking beer and chilling out, but it's like fun to go try something new and like get over the the fear of failure kind of thing that we have. Uh so I love that. Uh Champlain jiu-jitsu. Champlain jiu-jitsu. Yeah.
Yeah. I love it, man. Well, hey, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing the story of Genesis. I've obviously been a fan for a long time, but it's uh it's fun to hear it all together and your plans for the future. Thanks for being an awesome member of of the Indiana community and all the great stuff you're doing.
And thanks Nate. I appreciate you having me on and um I'm excited to continue growing with you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Get. And if you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all of my gear recommendations at sweetwater.
com. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok @ Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being part of what makes the Hoosier State great. We'll see you next time here on Get
