Meet Jason, a former college football player turned entrepreneur on a remarkable journey. His passion for health and fitness propelled him to create a thriving regional fitness brand in the Midwest. In 2015, he founded Premier RE Holdings, a real estate company managing commercial and multifamily properties.
With over two decades of experience, Jason serves as a board member for the Illinois Fitness Alliance. Today, he enjoys guiding fellow investors into franchise ownership and real estate success. As a multifaceted professional—commercial real estate broker, founder of Fit For Your Franchising, and CEO of Fitness Premier 24/7 Clubs—he is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals.
Join us in the way of learning how culture and values can make a difference in a company. Today, Jason finds gratification in guiding fellow investors as they transition into franchise ownership or real estate ventures, tech, and fitness helping them uncover opportunities aligned with their aspirations.
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In this show, we have the absolute pleasure of learning from thought leaders in business, franchising, and high-performance personal development. Our guest in this episode most certainly goes without exception. We have the Founder and CEO of Fitness Premier 24/7 Clubs Jason Markowicz. Welcome to the show.
Thanks, Nick. I appreciate you having me. It’s good to be here.
The more I’ve learned about you, the more I’ve been impressed. I’m honored to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I’m looking forward to sharing your story of success because you have impacted so many people through entrepreneurship. As we all know, entrepreneurship is the American dream and you are living the American dream.
Jason, congrats on all of your success, and congrats on pioneering within the franchise space. I know that you are pretty good at a few things and that is franchising, real estate, and fitness. Without further ado, let’s jump in. I would love to hear the founding story. How did you start this incredible company and where did you start down this path?
Growing up, I was an active kid with sports like many of us. I was playing football, basketball, and baseball. I was blessed to do all that. Those skills you learn as young athletes help in the business world tremendously. I played some college football and long story short, I had a football teammate of mine that had a family member that was opening up a fitness facility in the Chicago landmark where I live.
Out of school as a 22-year-old kid, I got a degree in business. I had no idea what I wanted to do beyond that. I love fitness, working out, and being active. I got a job at this fitness center at 22 years old. It was a unique opportunity because of the founder of that concept. It was a unique model to where he was out of state. He was on the West Coast. He would finance it and invest in it, but he wanted operating partners to run it and he was willing to split it 49/51 or 50/50 and place people to run the business.
I helped him open up a few locations early on. I got some good experience. After about eighteen months or so, I was fortunate to have a great relationship with him and we owned our first store at 23 years old right out of college. I worked for them for about a year to learn the business and from there, we dove in headfirst. At 23, we had our first fitness facility that we owned and had a business partner across the US.
It was tremendously on us to execute, make sure it was profitable, and get it going. It’s some good hands-on experience early on and thankful for that. As you fast forward and you go through that, we had some good success because back then in our industry. There was nobody doing what we were doing. We were the first ones to do EFT recurring billing back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. It was only the insurance companies that were doing it then.
We brought fitness in before a lot of competitors did. For the first 5 or 6 years, it was easy. We were very successful. We were able to get 3,000 members in an 8,000-square-foot facility and do very well in a very simple operation. Looking back, it would’ve been cool to franchise that concept but the timing when it happened because nobody else was doing it. Planet wasn’t around yet. There are a lot of the competitors that you hear now that didn’t exist back then. We were fortunate to get ownership in about twelve stores throughout the Midwest and Mid-South. We opened up some locations then in various states.
I lived in the Chicago suburbs. We opened stores in Tennessee and Nebraska. We were in Arkansas. We went to New York. We were spread all over the place. We learned a ton of valuable lessons going through that experience. It wasn’t all easy. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. We went through the school of hard knocks, we’d like to say, and learned some tough lessons but that gave us some grit. We love the business.
We were able to persevere through all that and create a lot of the systems that make us successful now. As you fast forward through those tough times, probably in 2010, ’11, or ’12 is when we started consolidating and we sold off a lot of the locations that we had in the Mid-South and up in New York to our partners or competitors. We regionalized our focus in our backyard going back about ten years ago. We started building locations, placing operating partners, and giving them the same opportunity that I got as a 22 or 23-year-old kid.
A lot of people who are in our company now are former athletes, the people who are excited about fitness and have a passion for people, but they’re also excited to work for themselves, be entrepreneurs, create jobs for others, and build teams. That’s one of the things that gets us excited and going here at our headquarters is teaming up with those types of people and creating opportunities for other people.
That operator model is incredible. Everybody wins. There’s a lot of upside and it’s mutually beneficial.
You bet. We find that the magic happens, especially in our business at the unit level with the experience, how customers are treated, the sales process, and the culture of the facility. All that secret sauce is driven by that general manager, that franchisee, or whoever is running the day-to-day operations for that store. That’s where all the synergy happens. We try to place a tremendous amount of focus there on making sure the right people are in the right seats now and developing them to deliver the best experience they can.
Do you feel like your training has gotten so much more dialed in over the years?
Yeah, for sure. When we had locations all throughout the US, we didn’t have the infrastructure that we do now. You have to go through and understand where you have the gaps in the processes to efficiently build them out and make them as efficient as you can. Now, we spend a ton of time and resources on developing people. Not only on the fitness side but also on the people side. Making sure their personal goals are met and we’re doing a good job of fostering those types of discussions for them and for their team members.
We’ll do things. We’ll have consistent weekly training sessions. We have monthly masterminds that we host at the office that focus on personal and professional development. We do quarterly and annual summits. We try to have some fun along the way and do some retreat-style stuff with the team where we’re traveling together. At the end of the day, working hard and having a little bit of fun together while we’re doing it.
You mentioned something that I want to have you elaborate a little bit further on, which is the school of hard knocks. What did you mean by that? Can you give some context?
It’s a real school that’s out there for those entrepreneurs tuning in. I’m sure if you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve gone through a cycle or some tough times where it hasn’t been easy. Probably looking back to that 2006 and 2010 area or going back about 16, 17, or 18 years when we were young, hungry, and ambitious, we ended up opening six locations in three different states all in the same year. Those are corporate stores.
We weren’t franchising back then. They were our stores. We ended up scattered throughout the US at the same time and not every market was as ready as we thought. We had some competition moving on us at the same time. It was a little bit slower projected than we anticipated. The amount of working capital we have in that. We were at a point in my young career where I was making a little money over here and reinvesting it all over here at a very quick rate, at a rapid pace.
I was the operating partner at the time. I was the guy traveling, flying around, staffing GMs, and training them up. You lose a guy and then you got to find a guy. That cycle was tough. It made us think about, “There has to be a more efficient way.” We burned through a couple of million dollars of money we didn’t have with a couple of partners and learned what the school of hard knocks is about and what business can look like.
I’m blessed to say that the partnership group that we had through that cycle, we’re all still great friends. We’re all still partners in a lot of ways. Informally, in business, and with friendships. That’s probably the biggest thing I’m most proud of. It wasn’t easy. It was the toughest time probably of our business career for sure. I think we’re tremendously wiser and more experienced for it. Now, we know what to look for. We know what a personal guarantee is on a ten-year lease. You don’t want to be out there for ten years.
We had to negotiate a lot of stuff like that. The way you learn is by doing it sometimes. Here we are many years later and looking back, you wouldn’t change a thing. As you’re going through it, it feels so hard but I think at the end of every storm, there’s a light at the end of that tunnel. There are breakthroughs beyond it and I think that’s where a lot of our systems and our model came from. It was born out of that tough time.
Going through it gives you the blueprint. Also, the peace of mind while you’re going through those different paths, they’re not as unknown and there’s a blueprint so it makes executing that much more dialed in.
It’s almost like fitness. You go to the gym or fitness center and you’re building muscle. We were building that business muscle back then and we didn’t even know it.
Also, building the business model.
It made us shift to that point real quick to major metro markets. Fitness is competitive. There are a lot of concepts out there. There’s a pretty limited barrier to entry. Anybody who loves to work out can buy some equipment and open a gym. We’ve been selective in the markets we go to. We focus on tertiary like your small-town USA markets in a lot of ways. A lot of times we find those are underserved with a very loyal customer base.
Once you’re there and you’re doing a good job, they stay forever. You can also build the community around it. We’ve been able to scale up and down the size of the facilities to fit the towns that we operate in. We’ve been able to build good performance. Our franchisees have success and it’s a win-win relationship. That’s an exciting thing for us and that’s where our focus tends to go if we look at growing and scaling throughout the Midwest and the Mid-South.
Your sophistication around pro formas, annual planning, and the data, did you notice a pretty big jump in the business when your sophistication around that leveled up?
Yeah. Early on, when times are easy you’re not spending every month looking at the P&L sometimes. When you look back at how we got started, you’re looking at your bank account. “There’s money in the bank. We’re making money.” You’re moving on. When times get tough and things tighten up is when you get those disciplined financial practices to understand a true P&L, how to manage a budget, and do some of those things.
As we went through some of those cycles, it forced us to be disciplined and educated when it comes to making those types of projections and performance. Also, banking relationships and finance partners. All that stuff stacks up to how effectively you can grow and balance the business. It all comes in experience. I didn’t get my MBA. I don’t have a PhD in Finance. We’ve been through the school of hard knocks and now we understand definitely how our business functions, what to look for, and how to look for it. Also, how to be resourceful, and find partners and the resources we need to ultimately be successful.
That’s the key to your business. Dialing in the pro forma, the breakeven, the margins, and understanding those leading indicators and how they influence the numbers. Also, being obsessed about that day in and day out more so being proactive as opposed to reactive. That’s the scorecard in business. Talking about all of this business mastery in entrepreneurship, I would like to dive back into that. I want to take a pit stop. What is driving you and fueling you through periods of ups and downs, hard knocks, high performance, and success? Ultimately, what is fueling that entrepreneurial life that you’re living? What do you think is your why? Where is it coming from?
It’s a great question. It’s a question we should all ask ourselves often. I have a beautiful wife. I have two great kids. They’re at the cornerstone of why I get out of bed, provide for them, and make life great. Also, give them things that maybe I didn’t have as a child and create those types of opportunities. In addition to that, it’s the team we’ve built. We have a couple hundred employees. We have some great franchisees. We have a great corporate team.
It’s continuing to think and provide opportunities for them. A lot of them are partners within ancillary and supportive businesses. I’m a guy who likes to operate out of pressure. I find myself creating chaos a lot of times and putting myself in pressure situations because I think that’s where I tend to focus the best and thrive. That happens pretty often in our company.
That’s why we have a bunch of stuff going on all the time and we’re pretty entrepreneurial in nature. We like to move and get things done but I think the way for me is all around other people. My family’s a big cornerstone. Also, the team that we have. Also, doing things for others and that whole team mindset of sports. I think growing up, instilled in me the sacrifice of doing it for your teammate before you do it for yourself. We try to operate that way.
That’s probably my favorite part of entrepreneurship. It’s that cultural component or the people piece. Everything else flows from that but when you live that out, there’s a lot of fulfillment. That’s a life of service. You’re committing your focus and your attention to people.
It’s so much more fun too. Doing it by yourself is a lonely venture. I find there’s a lot more fulfillment and enjoyment out of it. I think the money comes and goes. There are wins and losses all through business but the people and the relationships are what drives me.
That is always consistent. That is often lost in entrepreneurship. Many times, it’s about the bottom line or being transactional. Business is treated differently or at least the people in business that you interact with are treated differently than how you treat them in your personal life. I’ve always thought that was interesting.
If you look at success consistently, success is represented by amazing culture. Frankly, a lot of organizations don’t even realize that they have an amazing culture. Whether you’re intentional about it or you’re not intentional about it, you have culture. It’s being defined. As the old business cliché goes, culture is going to kick strategies’ butt all day.
We find that it’s the right norm. It’s the way things are done around here. It’s how you treat each other, how you interface, and how you lead your team. Cultures happen minute by minute and day by day in all of our companies. I agree with you 100%. Being intentional in the way you approach it and defining it. We try to define them around our core values and make sure we’re aligned, have the right people in the right seats on a bus, and are doing the right things from that perspective. We try to have some fun too while we do it. Culture should drive some fun, and relationships, and make it enjoyable.
Getting the right people on the bus, getting them in the right seats, and maybe moving them around because they’re being promoted, they’re being empowered, and not having very many exits on the bus is critical. You’re doing that across six different companies within your headquarters. Can you share a little bit about what that environment looks like? What those companies are and shed some light on being the CEO of these six companies?
We have our parent company, our franchising, and corporate support entities. They are staying up the top. They are the overarching support of our fitness operations. From there, we’ve developed a few companies that we’ve invested in. One is a tech company that handles all the tech needs for all our facilities and other clients. That’s one thing. We have a president of that. It’s a franchisee of ours in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Kyle does a great job with that. That’s an investment we made two years ago.
We have a vertically integrated approach. It’s where we see opportunity and making it more efficient, more affordable, and having control over it that supports their core business. We like those opportunities. With that, it also led us down to commercial real estate. In a decent amount and with the locations we have, we are also the landlord on the backside. We own the real estate and have leases in place with franchisees or ourselves and corporate stores.
We own and manage those directly. That prompted us to say, “We have these buildings now. We got to keep them up-to-date.” We have a construction company that handles the maintenance, remodels, and renovations for our commercial and multi-family portfolio internally. That led us to need a property management team that could help effectively manage the tenants and the things that come with that. Those are the six entities that we operate on a daily basis. We have great leaders in charge of many of those companies. I’m blessed to be surrounded by great people who share a similar vision who are willing to work hard and ultimately, enjoy other people and doing what they do.
The execution across the teams and the project management side, do you feel like that falls on operations or the president? Are you looking for the VP of Ops to do that or the President? How do you like that structure? I’m thinking across these different verticals. It’s totally different industries, but creating a consistent result. It’s all process and execution. It’s very operations-focused. I’m curious about who you ultimately assign as the team lead for these different companies and if there’s much more to it than that. Purely from the operations standpoint, I’m curious. Are you leaning on ops or more of a president for that?
We have a good Ops team. We run on EOS, the Entrepreneurs Operating System. We try to do our best job and it’s always evolving. We have an accountability chart for each company that spells out what a president might be doing and what the Ops team might be doing. That’s as clear as we can make at that time. We revisit that quarterly across all companies and that helps create some alignments.
Also, consistent cadence of communication in our weekly L10s that drives a lot of consistent behavior and communication. We can keep track of things because it is a lot of moving parts. You don’t want to miss anything. You want to take advantage of opportunities. I think making sure those roles are clearly defined is an important piece of that for us.
We have some verticals where we have maybe one person running that whole division or company. All the operations fall on them and then we have a couple that have a little bit more business coming in and they have a little bit more depth on their org chart to where they have a support staff and an ops team to lean on a little more heavily. It depends on the company, but EOS has been a good structure to implement and carry it through all the way downstream.
Did you hire an implementer from EOS when you first started implementing it?
I’m in a few groups and I know many other entrepreneurs that have done it both ways. We’ve done it both ways. We self-implemented initially for the first couple of years. We thought we were smart enough to read Traction, the book, and do it on our own. We did it probably somewhat successfully for a couple of years and we find ourselves getting a little bit loose and undisciplined with some of the cornerstone things.
A few years ago, we made the investment to get an implementer for about two years. We engaged him to clean up and standardize especially multiple businesses and how that would all function together. It was a huge help for us to have Sean help us implement and clean up our act a little bit. It’s been probably a year and a half since we’ve worked with Sean. Now, we’re back off on our own and we’re pretty disciplined the way we do it with our core companies. The tools are great. It’s like anything. It’s the discipline of doing it. We try to stay focused there. It’s not perfect, but right now it’s working well for us.
Do you use Ninety.io the software for EOS?
I don’t. There are a couple of guys in my EO group that do use it and they spoke highly of it. We have all internal stuff like Google Sheets and a lot of manual stuff that we use for it. Have you used that before?
I’ve tried to duplicate our project management platform to do what Ninety.io does. I haven’t used Ninety.io but I know it’s awesome.
The guys and gals in my group that use it speak highly of it.
It’s an out-of-the-box solution. That’s what you want to do. The EOS implementer, you were saying his name is Sean. It sounds like he did a great job.
Yeah, he did do a great job. We’ve given him a couple of referrals since. He’s out of Chicago. His name is Sean McDermott from the Traction group. He is a great guy.
You definitely want to give him a shout-out because a good implementer is critical when you’re laying the foundation of implementing an operating system like EOS. Have you looked into the Rocket Fuel stuff with EOS?
That was oneof the books he gave us when he did it. It’s the V/I meetings, the visionary and integrator. We have a weekly cadence for that. That has been helpful because I think like any company, you want to grow at scale. Having the visionary and the integrator aligned on core stuff and communicating it effectively and consistently is a big piece of it. I’m blessed to have a great COO partner who partners with us in a business that can do a lot of the block and tackle when it’s necessary to operate to free me up to the bigger ticket items or the projects or the visionary stuff so that we can continue to see what’s coming around the corner.
You are wearing the visionary hat.
I am in many companies. I enjoy the V/I piece. I find myself getting back in there at times and then they’ll kick me back up and say, “Get out of here. Go do what you do.”
“Stop fiddling around with stuff. You’re getting in the way.”
“Go do your thing.” It seems to be a good balance and a good rhythm for us.
That visionary and integrator combination is what Gino Wickman calls Rocket Fuel. It’s rocket fuel for an organization because so many times the entrepreneur, the founder is doing both and there’s not a structure around meetings. That founder is pulling the company or the leadership team that they have from here to there. EOS is beautiful because it comes in and streamlines the company. It turns it into data and makes sure that you have the right folks on the bus. In addition to EOS, do you have any personality programs that you use within your company?
You bet. We’ve used a couple over the years. Now, we’re pretty in love with Culture Index. We used The Predictive Index way back in the day. We used to have some Massage Envy spa franchises that we own. We’ve partnered with Massage Envy. Now, we’re on the Culture Index. We’re big fans. We built out. We have a great implementer in Samit out of Memphis, Tennessee who helps consult with us on a consistent basis to make sure we’re understanding the graphs. When we do our quarterly meetings, we’re reviewing the graphs.
We just got done for our corporate team where people are sitting on their view of the job and making sure you got the right people in the right seats. For us, that’s been a blessing. We’re a few years into that program. That’s something we invest in at the franchisor level. We also give access to all the franchise locations and that’s a tool that we train on. We carry it down so we can help them find the right people for the right seats because it’ll make their location that much more successful and efficient.
Those two things are two cornerstone pieces that make us probably a little unique in the fitness franchising space as we coach our franchisees and our managers to operate under EOS and use that as a cadence to manage their facility. It’s because we feel like it frees up a lot of time and energy. Also, it makes it more efficient. Also, use the Culture Index as a hiring tool to make sure you don’t make those hiring mistakes that we’ve all made over the years.
Are you an enterpriser?
I am. You nailed it.
Culture Index tests against nineteen profiles. Enterpriser is one of them. Do you want to take a stab at what I am?
You might be a socialist and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re an enterpriser as well. I know you got a few things going. Am I close?
I am a technical expert.
You have that detail in you.
I love the visionary and the integrator piece. That’s the tech expert in me. When I started working with my integrator, I had to work on letting go of the vine because I love the ops as well. I love the integration.
It’s the process of letting go of that stuff. You have to think that the relationship you have with your integrator is the most valuable part of the company probably. Being able to let go and let them run free.
Getting the right integrator is paramount. It’s important to be able to test against different profiles like the Culture Index, understand who you are, and who you work best with, and be able to map that out and march toward that ideal partner. When you start getting granular around the organization, it’s pretty incredible the results that you get. It’s making it as objective as possible.
EOS and Culture Index is a killer combination. Also, getting your organization to the point where you have rocket fuel. You can sit in the visionary hat or you can sit in the integrator hat, but regardless, your organization is running objectively and that is key. Thank you for shedding some light on some of your strategies and tips for success.
I am most certainly leveled up in this episode. I’m inspired. I’m ready to finish the week hot. We still have a lot of days ahead of us. I know you’re a busy man. I appreciate you taking the time and being on the show and giving us a glimpse into your world. If anybody would like to get in touch with you or learn more about your organization and your franchise opportunity, how can they do that?
It’s as simple as going to our website at FitnessPremierClubs.com. You can find us there. We’d love to connect. Nick, I appreciate you having me on. It’s been great. You’re doing great work. Keep it up.
Thank you. This is an amazing organization. You can see it has tremendous leadership and in all of those companies is not easy to run additional organizations and you’re doing that. Your team is doing that. You’re doing that to make more impact and create more efficiencies. I love that you’re even partnering with your franchise owners on some of those endeavors. Folks, smash the like button on this episode, drop somhave an amazing culturee comments down below, contribute to the conversation, and as always level up.
He is an entrepreneur who loves partnering with passionate investors and professionals. After playing college football, he had a great passion for health and fitness. He was fortunate to get involved in the fitness industry immediately after school. With some luck and hard work, he created a fitness concept that has grown to become a great regional brand in the Midwest.
Premier RE Holdings is our real estate company founded in 2015 that owns and operates commercial and multifamily properties in the Midwest. We are actively looking to grow and expand our 3 verticals- real estate holdings, property management services, and construction. He has also been fortunate to be involved in other great wellness brands as an Area Developer and Franchisee. Throughout the past 20 years, he has done all of the development work on all our commercial real estate leases and purchases throughout the Midwest.
Currently, he is also serving as a member of the board on the Illinois Fitness Alliance. Now, he finds great enjoyment from helping other investors transition into franchise ownership or real estate by helping them find the right opportunity for them. Real Estate Investing, Brokerage, & Management are his passions that he enjoys today as a commercial real estate broker with the McColly Bennett Commercial Advantage team.
Today I’m:
-Multifamily Real Estate Investor|Commercial Broker
-Founder of Fit For Your Franchising
-CEO of Fitness Premier 24/7 Clubs
-Football Fan
-Husband & Dad
-Passionate about helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals