Phil Gilchrist, Founder of ShoreFit Gym

"My name is Phil Gilchrist, Owner of Shore Fit and December 2012 Graduate from the University of Tampa. After graduation, I started working in the corporate world in an Entry Level Sales Position at Custom Built Personal Training. The company contracted out of You Fit Health clubs. I worked only 2 short weeks before being promoted to a General Manger position. I was then in charge of overseeing the whole personal training department and was responsible for giving prospective clients there fitness evaluations. After working 50 hour work weeks for over a month and reaching all quoted sales goals the company set, he was never compensated a dollar and was forced to resign.

It was really heart breaking to be honest, It was my first job out of college and I was doing really well, and to see no reward and not being able to pay rent from all the hard work was definitley a confidence crusher. After going through that, I remember calling my mother to send me home- I was crushed and just ready to give up on the fitness industry. I winded up going home for a long week, got my head back together with the support of my family, and was soon motivated to try and stay in Tampa and make something work before my lease was up.

Upon my return to Tampa, I quickly started the interview process again. During that time, I got a call from my father at 6am in the morning that there was a cheap gym for sale on craigslist not too far away. I woke up out of my sleep and took a ride over to look at it. The gym was empty with not a single sole in there. I made a call later on that day to get a little more information on it. I quickly learned that the facility was losing money and the seller was highly motivated to get it off her hands. I knew the gym had some potential, but I knew I could not do something there with out any help. I called a colleage and friend of mine, Jon Blackmore, to come take a look at it with me. We both were really nervous about taking it on because there was absolutely no business there and it was an existing business for 5 years. With no reassurance, Jon and I decided to step up and take the risk on- and Shore Fit was born in April of 2013.

Jon and I showed up the first day in a vacant gym and we pulled out a marker board and started to brainstorm. We worked side by side for the first couple weeks setting up the system that we were going to use, but then there was the problem of no clientel and no capital for marketing to actually get people in there. We then used the form of guerrilla marketing to get things kicked off. We started off with making social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, and Instagram- basically any form of social marketing that was free. We made business cards at Staples and pamphlets to pass out. We then hit the streets for weeks and started generating one lead at a time. We stepped out of the comforts zone in many situations and were relentless, which then eventually started leading to some success.

The first couple months were slow, but we started to gain some momentum. Having a small base eventually started a buzz and word of mouth started to take over as our main lead generator. We took a lot of pride in what we did, we were always early to our sessions, worked so hard to put together the best workout programs, and most importantly we were trainers not there to just give you a great workout, but to help in anyway we possibly could outside of the gym. There is 24 hours in a day and clients are with us for 30 minutes, so there is a wholenother aspect to concentrate on and we made sure we were doing so.

I was an Exercise Science Major in college and was also the former Captain of the Ice Hockey team at the University Of Tampa. I had worked daily in the human performance lab and lead off-ice conditioning for the team. In the Lab, I assisted with running fitness testing for the Tampa Bay Lightning and even helped published a study on Hockey Performance. With this connection, Shore Fit partnered with The Tampa Bay Lightning Organization in July 2013 and became in charge of all the strength conditioning for the Lightning Community Hockey. This was a big stepping stone for us and it started to really give us some type of credibility working with a professional organization. This then parlayed to a lot of hockey players coming to our facility for Off Ice Training.

Now, over two years later, Jon and I work with over 40 general health personal training clients each on a weekly basis. In 2015, Shore Fit has teamed up with former Lightning player and a first round pick in the 2000 Draft - Nikita Alexeev and 2004 cup winner Dmitry Afansenkov. With having a completely packed out gym, we also continued to work outside of the gym and are involved running private hockey Camps all over the world.

Still to this day its a continuos challenge, as it is not easy when your young and don't have much of a financial foundation. Jon and I still deal with a lot of struggles. Were still the janitors, the handymans, the salesmen, the CFO, the CEO, and the trainers. But, we need to play all of the roles if were ever going to be able to get where we want to be. I am really happy how everything has worked out so far, it feels great seeing where we started and how far we have come going on our 3rd year. We are long ways away from our 10 year goal and as a team we are going to maintain our work ethic and continue to learn and grow what we love to do".

Written by: Phil Gilchrist

Visit: www.shorefittampa.com​​