February 2017 | Business View Magazine

98 99 IRON TRIBE FITNESS six locations in Birmingham, and I purchased the rights to be a master franchisee in three states: Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina, eventually growing to 55 locations. That concept was pri- marily focused on one-on-one personal training in private rooms. I started to see the industry shift more towards group training with everything from Boot Camp classes to the CrossFit explosion to Orangetheory– all these things starting to merge. I really wanted to create a group model, and Fitness Together wanted to stay focused on their core offering of one-on-one personal train- ing. So, they bought my territory back and I set about creating the Iron Tribe business model. I wanted to create a community-based, workout program with group fitness workouts for custom- ers who increasingly live in a fragmented world and don’t have a gathering place, anymore.We wanted to be that place between home and work, and thought there was no better tool than fitness to be able to accomplish that.” “When I created the Iron Tribe model, it wasn’t just to open a gym in Birmingham, it was to franchise it and scale it, from the very beginning,” Walden continues. “Because I had no prototype, I obviously had to create the first location and prove that we could execute it and build a pro- totype that worked. I knew from my past experi- ence with Fitness Together, most investors don’t get excited about one, single location. They want something that they can scale and reap all the