So, yeah. So I was really blessed, you know, as far as saving and learning about, you know, how to, how to sound at least and how to do, uh, you know, look for, you know, facility, location and then, uh, not having to take out a loan or borrow money. So I’ve started all just by myself. Let’s talk about this. When you started your first business, um, what kind of, uh, do you remember how much money it costs to, to start your first, uh, fitness location with top Tulsa Personal Training?
Do you remember what it costs and cost on a, on a monthly basis to lease space and how much startup capital it required? Yeah, for sure. Yes. So I remember it. And that was all new to me. I was fresh out of college, you know, I knew exercise science, but I certainly did not know the business. So I was, you know, I have to getting advice from mentors and looking for facilities and learning about like triple net and cam and what, what rent is and sounding, you know, three year, five year leases. But, um, so yeah, we, we had to buy equipment, so it was, um, yeah, I think probably about 30 or $40,000.
And then the, I signed on to, uh, you know, a five-year lease for a space that was a smaller facility. We were doing all private training. Civil is a about 1200 square feet, but still sounding onto a five year lease is, you know, I was fresh out of college, so there was, you know, I didn’t really know what I was doing as far as the business, so it was, uh, you know, there was a lot of, a lot of nurses. Certainly I was taking a big risk, but I just, I had a lot of confidence in myself that I could, I could be successful as Tulsa Personal Training experts. And really I didn’t. Um, I didn’t have any, any, where was this gym located? Was it, was it in a basement somewhere? Was it, uh, uh, at your parents’ house? Was it a, in a shopping center? Where was the first location?
Yeah, so I was in Norman. I was going to college at O U and so we were in Norman, Oklahoma, and, uh, yeah, we were in, you know, the, um, certainly we knew our clientele, our market. So we were in the Northwest Norman that called the Brookhaven area, which is a higher, higher-income area as far as in Norman. And then we went into just a strip center, like a retail space. Now Norman, Oklahoma is a population of 110,000 people that need Tulsa Personal Training.
Uh, is it, uh, for the folks out there who are not familiar with Norman, Oklahoma, which is the home of the Oklahoma university, is it a wealthy area? Is it a, a middle class? How would you describe the population of Norman? Yeah, it’s pretty, I mean, it has its pockets. I mean certainly there’s, there’s welfare, you need any major college towns. So there’s one area anyone that’s familiar with Norman is cut Brookhaven.
That’s kind of the Northwest Norman, which is where most of the, you know, the upper class and the Nostrand neighborhoods. And again, we were doing more high end one-on-one training. So definitely we knew we knew our market. And that’s a big thing. If you’re going to open any business, you definitely, you know, that type of business. We need to know that, you know, it’s, it’s convenient and people are going to come. So you want to, you want to be in the right area of town. How did you, uh, decorate theory with great Tulsa Personal Training?
Did you, do you remember what it looked like inside to some of our listeners out there in that startup mode right now? Um, what did it look like inside? Yeah, so we, uh, and this is all things I had to learn, you know, as far as dealing with contractors. And we found a space, it was basically a, what’s called a white box or a shell with amazing Tulsa Personal Training.
And then we had um, you know, architects, they had to do the blueprint. It was a real basic model. What we were doing then it was the smaller just cut a two room studio. And so we had a small office, a restroom. We didn’t have locker rooms cause this is all just private training, more like this kind of a high end boutique studio. Got it. And then we had two separate rooms. So that was part of our really part of our niche was the fact that it was private training.
It wasn’t like in a co in a health club where people are watching your workout and there’s lots of sweat on equipment and things like that. It was a different environment. So yeah a basic model but it was separated so they were like private individual suites that we called them and minimal equipment, you know, we were doing, you know, dumbbells and basic if you basic pieces of equipment goes through the gear you have in there with top Tulsa Personal Training services.
Well what kind of gear did you have inside that, that though I’m picturing this beautiful start up. What kind of gear did you have in there? Yeah, so it was, it was pretty basic. I mean we had a kind of a universal machine that had, you could do like a cable stack rack where people for me are doing like a lat pull downs and um, you know, you could do like a different chest press and things like what do you call that? What do you, what do you call that machine? Uh, it was, you know, the, the, the company is life fitness life is just like a cable column cable, a cable column from life fitness. Okay. And what other kind of stuff did you have in there? Oh, I had a leg press machine and then we had a, you know, stability ball of course, medicine balls and a really dumbbells.