Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like success story podcast today will be breaking down how a parking lot gym hit 725 million in sales to drop these value bonds I brought to Devon Klein into EO fire studios Devon a former San Francisco Giants player turned co-founder and visionary of burn boot camp and burn media co has

turned burn into one of the fastest growing franchises in the U.S. and today we'll be talking about eating dirt about how the product is a differentiator will be talking about never giving up and keep on moving and so much more fire nation and a big thank you for sparking today's episode goes to Devon and ours sponsors the hustle daily show hosted by Juliet Bennett Ryla Rob Litchers Ben Berkeley and Mark Dent is brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals

the hustle daily show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent off-beat informative takes on business and tech news like a recent episode on hackers versus casinos where the hosts talk about MGM resorts and Caesars entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks listen to the hustle daily wherever you get your podcasts ever thought about giving a TEDx talk it's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world in four time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from thought leader can help you get there visit thought dash leader dot com slash Fox

fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions Devon say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with what's up fire nation listen I'm a huge fan thank you first of all and I you know when I think about the answer to this question my mind goes to the following that wealthy people keep equity

now it's counterintuitive for a lot of entrepreneurs because you know the nature of a business oftentimes is to build the business to sell the business and I just have a different experience from my perspective and I believe that a long term outlook is if you can hold out during those tough years the long term outlook on doing something that you love that your passion about pace dividends and and wealthy people usually are their buyers they're not sellers fire nation you can tell we've already started the show off

with a bang and I know a lot of you are saying wait a seconds what are we talking about here today a parking lot gym hits seven hundred and twenty five not thousands but million dollars in sales and that's kind of where I want to start Devon because people love the origin store they love understanding how somebody got there and you are able to turn burn boot camp and burn media co into one of the fastest growing franchises in the U.S. tell us that

story what starts when I was a kid grown up in battle Creek Michigan you know my mom left took me from battle Creek Michigan I traveled the west coast living out of a car living out of apartment with her we eventually come back to battle Creek Michigan after a five year a five year run at that and my her my mom and dad get back together well they're like they're like a firecracker inside of a bucket when they get together it is chaos and just to give the listeners an example just so they can I context right it's by the time I was 18 years old

my you know at my house at 84 pleasant avenue and battle Creek Michigan we had 50 plus you know domestic violence charges criminal charges rather consisting of domestic violence and child abuse and you know just pretty pretty much like a hell on earth environment so at 12 years old I had a deep run in with my father where I was ended up that was

the impetus of a child abuse charge and you know I ended up being the brunt of that being 12 years old and realizing your superhero is no longer your superhero is was a tough realization but you know that made me a man that day when that happened and you know I took life into my own hands I remember distinctly sitting on my porch as the police officers were handcuffing my father and taking him on the back of a cop car and I had woken up from being an unconscious state that

you know it was me myself and God and I truly took ownership of my life as a man as an adult as somebody who you know the subsequent years up until I was 18 I really found my entrepreneur spirit Michigan shoveling shoveling driveways we call it 20 minutes no removal contract my buddies to get out there shovel driveways for 20 bucks I'd be knocking on doors trust me I wasn't shoveling any driveways I knew the game even back then and split that 20 bucks right down the middle with them and that then that was my first

4 a into business you know this is all these are all the the makings the DNA that leads me to wear at today and you know that the second thing just quickly that I got into my teenage years I found eBay and we cannot we all know the eBay arbitrage game strong I before I even do it the art word arbitrage man I was buying cars on eBay emailing 500 people to get them to pay a few hundred bucks more flipping cars and ended up getting a baseball scholarship following in my dad's footsteps he's a great athlete

got a baseball scholarship to Central Michigan University the Chippewa's am I right the Chippewa's yeah yeah go fire up chips for any Chippewa's out there and shout out to my roommate my college teammate Jake Sable he's now the head coach there man chasing his crows too so yeah then

ended up getting picked up by the San Francisco Giants and playing a few years with the Giants and got released and was like what am I going to do with my life now

Morgan my wife and I we met when we were 12 years old shoes with me through all those chaotic turbulent years growing up and shoes obviously the first person I call when I got released from the giants in my childhood dreams kind of flew out the window and I said what what are we doing here like my my biggest fear was going backwards right going

backward back to welfare back to poverty back to where my parents picking up where they left off and she said Evan you just got to keep moving like look how far you've come and so we did that together we ended up

starting burn boot camp in a parking lot here in North Carolina Charlotte North Carolina shout out Queen City North Charlotte actually like Norman area back in 2012 we had 600 bucks and no one would give us a lease so we started in a parking lot and you know we can we can talk about the rest of the story

but that was kind of leading up until that point the parking lot days definitely were the formidable days and we grew to five parking lot gyms

very quickly had a thousand members I'm 26 27 years old I looked down on my bank account I got a million dollars and cash sitting in my bank account and I'm scared I'm like what what do I do with this money like I have no idea I didn't expect that

and so what we did is we turned those five gyms into brick and mortars we sold two licenses to people that came to us and one at burn boot camp to be a bigger part of their life

and go into 2015 we had seven gyms seven gyms five that we owned two licensees we ended up flipping three of the five that we owned for cash transactions to help us stand up the business and then fast forward from there 2015 we launched nationally burn boot camp in all 50 states we do 200 we sold 200 we like to say awarded these locations within the first 18 months and you know ended up being one of the fastest growing fitness

franchises in the planet so it's fast forward till now through the pandemic all we can go into all of that but fast forward to now we have 350 gyms open and operating today and Morgan myself my team our VPs we own the company

outright and we're just having so much fun doing it I love that fun aspect of the whole process and Fire Nation loves the journey they love the story and as you know

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