How To Open Your Own Warehouse Gym: Part 3 by Elliott Hulse
How I Turned My Van Into A Cash Machine (well, kinda.)
In Part 2 of How To Open A Warehouse Gym you learned of my struggles as a budding entrepreneur, moving from location to location in order to find a home to training my clients. Ultimately, I ended up using my father’s used van as a vehicle for transportation as well as to drive profits into my pockets!
To this day I still drive the old, beat up, dirty, windowless, ugly conversion van that my dad gave me after my car blew up on the way to training some pretentious housewives at a “health club” that I hated. My friends and family are always asking me, “Elliott, why don’t you get rid of that ugly piece of shit and get yourself a new, respectable car?”
Well, besides the fact that it has less than 75,000 miles on it, drives perfectly and I would rather join the circus as a human cannon ball than enslave myself to a new car payment… it’s got some sentimental value to me. You see, if it weren’t for my van I may still be a slave to some corporate whore’s every whim and desire. I would MUCH rather drive my ugly van and be free, than to trade it in and join the ranks of emotional infants who still drool and suckle at the cold, corportate teat.
On the fated day I was approached by one of my favorite clients to start an outdoors “strength training” program for men, I immediately began collecting and filling my van with used equipment and trash for training my camp members with. Since I didn’t yet have a gym and my “equipment budget” was nonexistent I was forced to be very creative and resourceful when collecting tools for training.
My trusty van and I took a tour of the more obscure, outer limits of St. Petersburg in order to collect used tires, cinder blocks, logs, sandbags, tractor tires, wheel barrels and empty beer kegs from abandoned buildings and junk yards. I don’t think there had ever been a happier garbage man than I on that 97 degree day in Tampa Bay. We stopped and collected anything that could be lifted, flipped, pushed, pulled or dragged.
When I got home that evening I begun unloading most of this trash in my narrow driveway. My wife came home to find me grinning, ear to ear, amongst a pile of garbage in front of our new home. In her typical way, she simply sighed and shook her head as she navigated around the used tires and bricks carrying the groceries inside. I must say, she has ALWAYS been supportive of my crazy ideas and always confidant of my ability to provide for our family… even when the mortgage it over due and I’m running around the city sifting through dumpsters.
Within a few short days I was running my very first “Strength Camp” (I first named it “Primal Strength Camp”… but then dropped the ‘Primal’) at a local park. The class was filled with a few of my male clients along with their brothers, friends and neighbors. We only met on Saturday’s and I charged $15 per class. After a few weeks of dragging tires, carrying sandbags and pushing my van a few of the guys appoached me to open my class up durring a few weekdays as well. I happily accepted their proposal to pay me $99 per month to train their class 3x per week at the park.
The following Tuesday I hauled my van full of hundreds of pounds of trash across town to train my new weekday class. I pulled up at the park and sat in my van waiting for the gentlemen to show up at our designated time… 6:30 PM. As the clock neared 6:45 I began to feel like I had been stood up, no one was going to show up for my first offical “Strength Camp” class. At about 7:00 one of the guys shows up and remains in his car talking on his cell phone for another 7 minutes and then walks over to my van. He approached me with a warm smile, shoved a $100 bill into my hand and said, “Let’s get started!”
In the back of my mind, I was SO pissed off! The truth is that I just wanted to hand him back his money and go home to cry in my wife’s lap. But I didn’t… I trained him “one-on-one” (at a boot camp price) that day and the following day, and for a full month with none of the other guys ever showing up for my Strength Camp class. At the conclusion of that month, knowing that it was not prudent for me to continue training him he suggested that we discontinue the class… it was at this moment that I had to make a BIG decision. I could simply chalk this up as a failed experiment, or I could MAKE it work.
I also knew that if I did MAKE it work, that there was only one way to guarantee it would!
STAY TUNED FOR PART 4 where you’ll learn exactly how I MADE Strength Camp work… and the exact tool I used to do it!
Elliott Hulse is a Pro Strongman and Strength Coach that trains athletes to get super strong and fast in his warehouse gym with less than $1000 worth of equipment.
Learn how you can escape the clutches of the Fake Fitness Facade and rebel with your very own Warehouse Gym like Elliott did ==> http://www.WarehouseGymBusiness.com
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The following Tuesday I hauled my van full of hundreds of pounds of trash across town to train my new weekday class. I pulled up at the park and sat in my van waiting for the gentlemen to show up at our designated time… 6:30 PM. As the clock neared 6:45 I began to feel like I had been stood up, no one was going to show up for my first offical “Strength Camp” class. At about 7:00 one of the guys shows up and remains in his car talking on his cell phone for another 7 minutes and then walks over to my van. He approached me with a warm smile, shoved a $100 bill into my hand and said, “Let’s get started!”
