Click HERE to watch/listen to an overview of this update
Table of Contents
🙌 Asks
✍️ Thoughts
👍 Highlights
- We opened our new West Hollywood location on April 1, 2023. We took over a former MMA gym, remodeled the space (bathroom overhaul, new flooring, removed the drop ceiling and a separation wall, and assembled new equipment), and opened 4 weeks after receiving the keys.
- We’ve carefully selected the top scientifically advanced equipment to build the dream home for independent physical therapists, athletic trainers, and personal trainers. Christian researched countless hours, and we flew across the country, attending multiple equipment trade shows and other fitness facilities over the past two years. We installed air under our floor to power our main line of machines from Keiser (pneumatic air system instead of traditional plate-loaded weights), and we have multiple pieces of equipment that are the first in Los Angeles. Take a deeper look at the equipment HERE.
- Our physical therapists and trainers renting space from us have told us that their clients feel like professional athletes when they walk through our doors, and they don’t want to train anywhere else (including Olympian and world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone).
- We’ve signed up 16 paying physical therapists and trainers, and their skill sets have blown us away. We didn’t anticipate signing up this caliber of professionals so early on. We’ve signed up our customers all by word-of-mouth referrals, in-person educational workshops, and networking (NBA Summer League, DPT conference in Vegas, etc.). Our state-of-the-art equipment piques their interest and our community of high-quality professionals ➕ our added services to help them scale (more below) compels them to move their business to Maverick. Examples of some of our happy customers:
- Lauren Clark – Doctor of Physical Therapy
- Kristina Kam – Doctor of Physical Therapy
- Bill Kwiek - Athletic Trainer
- Derek Millender – Head strength and conditioning coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers
- Malachi Davis – Olympian, Sports Performance Specialist training multiple world champions at Maverick
- Keith Hodges – Personal trainer with a bachelor's in Kinesiology, specializing in functional strength & conditioning.
- The best way to attract and retain top physical therapist and trainer professionals is by offering tools that allow them to do their jobs better (see equipment above) and by carefully curating who is invited to train at the facility. Christian has done an incredible job identifying and befriending the right successful people (successful = busy + growth mindset + professionally trained/schooled + pillars of their community). We’re not for the ordinary physical therapist or trainer. We’re going after and attracting the top 1%. The secret sauce to this business is building a network/community of these top professionals, something no one else has done.
And, most importantly, our customers have been equally blown away by Maverick as we’ve finally built something specifically for them… the top professionals in the fitness & health space. We’ve heard so much positive praise – we’re onto something big as we’re creating a ton of value for our customers! Read this text that one of our customers recently sent to Christian. We’re helping exceptional people!
“I think I will be telling you and Michael thank you forever. Not only for showing gratitude for changing my life but also for giving the people I love and respect the most a space to change theirs and their businesses. I’m elated to see [us] thrive in this space and [how we] can take [our] skill set and expertise to unimaginable heights. Also, for allowing us to all work together 😊 It’s a dream 🫶”
- We’re more than just a space for physical therapists and trainers to run their businesses and train clients. We help our customers improve their lives, offer better services to their clients, and scale their businesses by providing brand partnerships and setting up a system to scale their in-person businesses.
- Brand partnership opportunities include adidas (free clothing), Momentous ($175/mo in free supplements), FOUNT (blood testing + custom supplements), Sollis Health (24/7 concierge healthcare provider), and NeuFit (free $2k certification).
- We developed a mentor-based certification program to help our fully booked customers scale their in-person businesses. Over the last 6-weeks, we helped Dr. Lauren Clark hire two mentee Physical Therapists that she will train and pass down clients to when they’re ready. Lauren benefits by scaling her business, Maverick benefits from the increase in sessions, and the mentees benefit from intimate access and employment from a top physical therapist in their desired field. Read more about the program HERE.
- We only need ~3 busy customers looking to scale per location to be wildly successful.
📚 Learnings
- We’ve quickly discovered that physical therapists are our best customers. I’m talking about cash-taking, performance-based physical therapists focused on treating active and informed clients who have longevity and preventative measures on their minds (think Peter Attia medicine 3.0). Quick bullets on why performance physical therapists are our best customers:
- They are educated professionals who’ve spent at least 7 years in school. Most have debt and not only need to make money but are thinking about scaling beyond trading time for money. They don’t take insurance and are charging $120-$250 / client session.
- They have a consistent and trusted referral network from doctors (ex: orthopedics, internists, physicians, psychiatrists) whose clients are always in pain.
- Population trends will lead to more physical therapy visits: 1) Baby boomers are aging and have the highest net worth, and 2) Younger generations are focusing on living a healthier life, longer, which means spending time and money on preventative health efforts so they can be active into their 80s. These people require performance physical therapists combining the gym and the table.
- Clients are conditioned to go in person to a physical therapy appointment to treat pain (vs. personal training at home).
- They have a growth mindset and take advantage of our high-end equipment. Performance physical therapists are at the top of the totem pole compared to other professionals working on the body (performance physical therapists are personal trainers on steroids… not literally).
- There are a lot of cross-sale and value-add opportunities with having physical therapists and personal trainers in the same space as they’re both referring to each other constantly. Injury ➡️ Physical Therapist ➡️ Healed / Back to playing sports ➡️ Working out with a trainer who is connected to and following protocol from a physical therapist.
- Physical therapists and trainers in the same space blurs the lines between health and fitness, which widens the market size and makes for a much better and stickier business.
- The physical therapy industry is large and booming in the US, and focusing on the top therapists and trainers will result in a big business opportunity.
- $50B industry and forecasted to grow to $73B by 2029.
- Physical therapist median pay: $95K
- 122K physical therapy businesses with 504K physical therapists employed.
- Maverick is going after the top-performance physical therapists, and there are enough of them to build a big business. Quick numbers:
- 500K therapists ➡️ top 1% = 5,000 therapists. Each Maverick location requires 3-5 busy therapists ➡️ room for > 1,000 locations (and… this doesn’t consider the 1M trainers in the US).
- All our customers have come from referrals from existing customers. We’re finding that all the best physical therapists and trainers know each other, and we’re providing such unique and personalized service to our best customers that they want to help us by spreading the word (example HERE). It’s also interesting that our best new customers that have joined from referrals were not even on our prospect list… the most talented and busy professionals are mostly not promoting themselves heavily online.
- This business will get easier as we open new locations, and we plan to take advantage of our growing network by opening locations close to one another, starting in Southern California, as opposed to opening in large cities such as NYC, Miami, etc. (the local competitive advantage Walmart approach vs. the Target approach).
- NOTE: Organic word-of-mouth referrals are the strongest way to build a sustainable business, and they’ve allowed us to build an authentic brand that attracts the most talented community of professional physical therapists and trainers without advertising and pushy selling.
- We’re pioneering a new industry by providing space for independent cash-taking performance physical therapists. This business model successfully exists for businesses across many different industries: hair stylists (Sola Salon with 600+ locations), warehousing services (Saltbox), real estate brokerage (Radius, Compass), office space (Industrious), etc. We believe in this model as the top professionals want to work for themselves and make more money without taking on the additional risks involved with starting your own business (~$200-500K risk to open your own physical therapy practice + the headache of hiring and managing employees). Our Maverick model not only attracts top professionals but also retains them, which has traditionally been the toughest part of physical therapy clinics and gyms. Additionally, a traditional clinic hiring physical therapists as employees would never be able to afford the top talent that works out of a Maverick, which will always give our facilities a supreme advantage.
- Our biggest challenge is getting busy physical therapists and trainers to move from their current locations because they’re already successful at their existing space(s). Like any B2B business, customer acquisition takes longer, but once we get customers on board, they will not leave. We’re building a strong captive customer business by layering feature after feature to keep our best customers happy. We’re more than just a landlord to our customers. We’re their agent/manager/partner, helping them improve their lives and helping them offer their clients better service. Here is what the ideal Maverick customer journey looks like from first hearing about us to moving their entire book of business to our facility:
- They hear about our facility from one of their physical therapist/trainer colleagues.
- They tour the facility and are immediately impressed with the high-tech equipment that they can’t access in other facilities because independents aren’t allowed to train their own clients at professional sports team facilities.
- They apply to join the community to start training their clients at Maverick. They witness how we quickly screen each potential member and get a feel for the professional nature of the existing community members.
- If accepted and approved by our member committee, they go through a two-hour in-person onboarding where we discuss our trainer guidelines and equipment training.
- They receive a full head-to-toe adidas package, a $2,000 training credit to NeuFit certification, and will get access to other partnership opportunities as they train more sessions at Maverick ➡️
- 10 sessions/week gets them $175/month to Momentous protein + supplements, 20 sessions/weeks gets them access to FOUNT blood testing + custom supplements, and 30 sessions/week gets them access to Sollis Health premium health care service.
- They receive access to free educational workshops to help them improve their skill sets and network with our community.
- Once they fully book their schedule (30+ hours/week), we help set up a mentee/mentor system for them to train + hire employees or independent contractors so that they can scale their business (discussed above with Dr. Lauren Clark).
- They will earn equity in Maverick’s mothership company if they are in the top 15% of the community training with the greatest number of sessions (at their specific location). Learn more HERE.
🏃 Next Moves
- Achieving break-even (we’re almost there) and helping our existing busy customers scale.
- Our locations are at break-even with ~25 sessions/day (ex: 5 customers training 5 clients each or 3 customers training ~8 clients each), and we can achieve 30% EBITDA with 40 sessions/day.
- Reminder: we currently have 16 members. If our 16 members averaged 5 sessions/day, we’d be at 90 sessions/day.
- In the next few months we’ll be looking to raise $1.25M to build 2 more facilities in Los Angeles, prepare for franchising opportunities, and build low cost custom software (with this team) to help us more efficiently operate our locations.
- Each location costs ~$350-450K, and we can get an equipment loan per location. We expect the cash outlay for each facility to be $150K with 6 months to break-even and 18 months to return the initial investment.
- We will keep our team extremely light - the facilities are managed by <1 employee, and we don’t anticipate hiring any employees on the corporate side.
- We’re not looking for traditional VC money. It is our goal to build a sustainable business with immediate positive cash flow, so we don’t need to be constantly fundraising.
- We’re focused on generating a large return on investor capital.
- Our buildout is affordable, we have high margins, and our payback time on each location is 1-2 years.
- There is a real network effect to this business and this fundraise will help us grow Maverick faster.
- The more facilities we launch, the more our network of physical therapists and trainers grows.
- The more our network grows, the more our brand awareness grows, and the more physical therapists and trainers will be attracted to us (as well as our awareness to end clients as Maverick will become known as a place with the top physical therapists and trainers).
- The more facilities we launch, the quicker we can get to breakeven while keeping our outreach to pure organic word of mouth and local partnerships.
- Additionally, the more locations we have, the more helpful we can be to our members as they can attack different customers in additional zip codes to grow their businesses.
🙌 Asks
- Warm intros to professional physical therapists, athletic trainers, professional sports strength trainers, performance specialists, and personal trainers.
- Heads up on any game-changing pieces of equipment that we should be looking at.
- Warm intros to doctors that could give client referrals to our DPTs and PTs (orthopedics, internists, physicians, psychiatrists, etc.).
- Warm intros to any sports agencies.
- Connections to professors at any local Los Angeles physical therapy doctorate programs.
- Connections to landlords in Los Angeles who have space in the following areas - Santa Monica, Venice, Brentwood, Culver City, Century City, Sherman Oaks, Studio City.
- Forward this update to your friends in the fitness, health, or wellness space who you think would be interested in reading.
🙏 Gratitude
- Our customers – Kris, Lauren, Keith, Vic, Shannon, Eric, Hunter, Amber, Ashley, Alex, Malachi, Jamaar, Anthony, Derek, Dustin, Julia, Ralph, Jason, and Bill – we’re building this business for YOU – thank you for trust and partnership!!
- Our contractor, Rony, and his team for staying day and night to revamp our West Hollywood space, including demoing, painting, replacing fixtures, updating electrical, etc. Reach out to me for Rony’s contact info if you need work done at your house or business.
- Steve LePore for giving constant encouragement, advice, proof reading, and for pushing forward on Maverick Forward.
- Jeff, Jordan, Roxanne, Andy, Mike, Anne, and James for being all in as investors and using the space and bringing business to the physical therapists and trainers in our space.
- Rory Cordial for your space planning and equipment wisdom, and for being a great friend.
- Tim and Darcy from RX Fitness for your help procuring fitness equipment and space planning.
- Marissa at UNI for helping supply us with the best-smelling shampoo, body wash, conditioner, and soap. And, thank you, Jasmine, for this intro!
- CanDo bars for making excellent products – these are the best tasting, healthy bars we’ve found and they’re the best-selling item in our vending machine
- Harry, Spela, and Sascha at the OwnCo team for your help setting up our shared ownership plan. And Sean Mahsoul at Presidio Legal for double-checking all our docs.
- Gary and Gabe at the Keiser team for supplying us with the best equipment, educating us on how to use it best, and helping us attend trade shows for free.
- Craig at CoolMitt for building a revolutionary product and for your partnership. Your workshop was excellent!
- Chris and Jeremy at Reaxing for building a game-changing product and for your time and effort putting on the workshop. The Reax board is one of our most used machines.
- Brandon and Marcellus for making intros and helping to spread the Maverick word.
- Henry Miller for taking excellent photos at our new facility!
- James at Essex for helping us easily move into the Huxley.
- Jay DeCoons, Russ Farscht, and Michael Rasmussen for the visit and the kind words.
- Jason Glushon and Joey at Glushon Sports Management for visiting our facility and making introductions.
- Academy and OpenPath for making our front door easy to open remotely.
- Jim at The SageHouse for our weekly calls and your constant wisdom and intros to other helpful people in the fitness space. Thank you to Jason as well for our brainstorm session!
- Alex Alimanestianu for our quarterly check-in calls – I always learn from you!
- Danny Matta for your book F*ck Insurance – I enjoyed listening to this and learned a lot about the DPT space from you.
- Alex and Xan at Beta Agency for helping us secure our West Hollywood location.
- Sam, Justin, Samira, Caley at the Proteus team for your excellent product, helpful customer service, and fun workshop!
- John Myers at Meriwether for helping to spread the Maverick word.
- The two Davids at OHM run for creating an incredible product.
- Freddy at 818 Printing – if you’re in LA and need large decals or stickers, then Freddy is your guy!
- Hayden at ExerFly for your partnership and help to spread the Maverick word.
- Star Sage at Hyperice for the partnership. Our members and their clients love your product!
- Gonzalo, Travis, and Otto at Amalgama for helping us think through custom software options.
- Ty, Jesse, Kyle, and the team at Players Health insurance for your wisdom. Looking forward to working with you all for a long time to come.
- Jeff Kreil at Moorpark College for visiting our facility and sharing your experience.
- Joey Gonzalez at Barry’s for being willing to talk to me about your incredible Barry’s journey.
- Garrett at NeuFit for your partnership, especially for coming to Los Angeles for our first workshop. Our members love the Neubie, a game-changing product, and we look forward to getting more!
- Chaz Branham (thank you Garrett for the intro!) for the brainstorm. Hope to work with you in the future!
- Amira at Struct Club for constantly making connections and being a helpful friend.
- Andre Riley for helping spread the word and being a good friend.
- CJ and Ben at Sollis Health for your partnership and friendship. We can’t wait for our members to start enjoying your 24/7 doctor care and concierge services.
- Julia at adidas for hooking up all our members with head-to-toe adidas welcome packages and for being a great friend!
- Austen Cohen at FlexIt for being a good friend and teaching me about the industry.
- Andrew Herr at Fount for your partnership. Our members can’t wait to explore Fount’s custom performance and health solutions and to start referring your services.
- Momentous for your partnership. Our members love your product!
- Dom at Somble for making great NYC intros and pointing me in the right direction for gyms and clinics to check out.
- Alex Zimmerman for spending time at our facility and sharing wisdom from your years growing training at Equinox and Myodetox.
- Ryhs at Ghost in Brooklyn for making intros and touring me around his new gym – congrats!
- Bryan Bullock @ Solace for welcoming me to his gym in NYC – great space!
- Jodie and Steve Fishman for your constant encouragement and belief!
- Alexa and Narges for always believing in us!
✍️ Thoughts
In-Person Fitness Professionals > Content Creating Fit Pros 
Maximum Service at Minimum CostTake a Simple Idea and Take It Seriously -Charlie MungerChallenges of Building in Public We appreciate your support. Please reach out via text, call, or email if you want to discuss further.
Michael & Christian
818.577.0592