Six years ago, God blessed me with an amazing opportunity to begin working with Forrest [Walden] and the Iron Tribe brand. In 2011, I got the chance to open up the second-ever Iron Tribe gym on Highway 280 in Birmingham, and then in 2012, Forrest invited me to join him as an equity partner in the entire brand, as we began to open up more of our own gyms and launched the Iron Tribe Franchise partnership opportunity.
I’ve had a ton of fun laboring each day with our team to serve our franchisees and gym members at Iron Tribe locations across America – as our footprint has grown beyond 40 gyms in 15 states, impacting thousands of lives and winning some pretty awesome awards, like the most recent INC. 5000 honor as one of America’s Fastest Growing Companies for the third straight year!
As fun as its been and as thankful as I am, I’ve decided to accept a generous buyout for my ownership in Iron Tribe, and thus, I am stepping down from my role as President. I’m confident that this a great decision for me as an entrepreneur, my family and for the Iron Tribe brand. I’m still as bullish as ever, on the growth ahead for Iron Tribe and extremely excited for Forrest, the Leadership Team and our franchise partners, for what lies ahead.
I will remain a part of our brand as a client here in Birmingham, along with my wife Yazmin, based at the Iron Tribe 150 community. I’ll be at our annual TribeCon Franchise Conference as an attendee, to be there to visit with our franchise community and support our leadership as they take Iron Tribe to its next phase of growth.
As I move on to my next chapter, I reminisce with some of my favorite moments from the past six years;
I’ll never forget the first-ever workout at the first-ever Iron Tribe.
Standing at the freshly built Iron Tribe 280 location. The second-ever Iron Tribe gym!
This was the original Iron Tribe Headquarters – 400 Sq. Ft. of beautiful space! This was some operations training I put together before we opened up our third and fourth Iron Tribe gyms in Birmingham!
Forrest and I traveled to Phoenix for Infusionsoft’s annual conference, as finalists for the Small Business iCon award. On the same day we opened up our fourth gym (Iron Tribe Mountain Brook) and launched the Iron Tribe Franchise model, we won this award as Infusionsoft’s top user in the world!
Especially as our team continued to grow, it became harder to get everyone together, but that much more special when we could. Here is the team from the first four Iron Tribe gyms and our growing corporate team, at one of our awesome annual Christmas parties.
We’ve been blessed with a lot of smart entrepreneurs around us, to help us learn and build systems, tools and solutions to scale Iron Tribe more efficiently. This picture is with Dave Lee and Brad Martineau from Sixth Division, where we built some awesome examples of just that.
I never knew my broadcasting skills from my younger days, could come in handy in business. But our growth at Iron Tribe has given me the incredible opportunity to get on stage in dozens of cities and talk to other entrepreneurs. Something I get really charged up on doing!
Last year, I got to dust off my coaching skills a bit, as I went on a “President’s Tour” and visited Iron Tribe gyms all over the country. I got to coach with our teams at each gym, as well as meet clients and hear their Iron Tribe stories!
Forrest and I were able to do the first visit on our respective CEO/President Road Tour, together. In Tuscaloosa, we were able to lead a team meeting with franchise owner Kevin Gann and his entire team.
We’ve been coached by some amazing experts. Most recently, we spent the last year or so getting coached by Dave Ramsey and the guys at EntreLeadership, who have taught us so much about leading and learning as an entrepreneur.
Rarely did we ever miss a workout while on the road growing the Iron Tribe brand. I think I’ve hiked up Camelback in Phoenix, at least 5 times. The first one was with Forrest in a really tough time in my life (had just lost my mom). I’ll never forget this hike. We dreamt big.
We established our Leadership Team 2.5 years ago. Every week, month, quarter, etc., we get together to work on the things it takes to grow our brand for greater impact. What an amazing team!
The first-ever TribeCon annual franchise conference. This even brings together our brand ambassadors from across the country, every November. I’ll be attending the fourth annual TribeCon this year. Can’t wait to see everyone!
What an amazing opportunity. God has truly blessed me. Iron Tribe is bigger than I, and will continue to grow and impact folks without me as President. I’m so very thankful for the opportunity to have served for the past six years and help this brand get to where it is today. Thank you Forrest, Leadership Team, Franchise Partners and especially our members across the brand; you were why I worked as hard as I could for this brand and I hope I can do so again in my next chapter.
