Hi, my name is Joe Riggio, and this is the story of two meatheads (now four) from Jersey who had a dream of making it in the gym business.

Ever since I can remember, I had a fascination with the iron game. I started working out when I was 10 with an older friend on my block, and as they say, the rest is history—I was hooked!

Fast forward to when I was 19, I trained my first client for money. Even though it was the younger brother of a then-girlfriend, I loved the idea of helping people get stronger and faster.

I started my first training business, Fit Dynamics, the following year, training athletes and their parents in their homes. Ultimately, that landed me in Bergen County, NJ, where I trained in-home clients and worked at various gyms throughout college.

After graduating with my master's, I decided to go all in on training. I was going to make this work! I wanted to run my own business and be an entrepreneur.

The problem? I had no idea how to run a business and had worked for some of the WORST gym owners on earth. I learned a TON about what NOT to do: terrible hours, opening and closing the gym, only getting paid for sessions, no benefits or bonuses, no PTO, and certainly no real employee development plan!

I knew there had to be a better way.

In 2006, a client of mine had a friend with a tiny space he wasn’t using—1,200 sq/ft. If I wanted it, it was mine.

In May of 2006, Varsity House was officially born.

Like most gym owners, I tried to do everything on my own—marketing, sales, programming, finances, and, of course, training 30, 40, sometimes 50 sessions a week.

In my first three years in business, I took a total of 10 days off… But it was all mine.

That first year, in 2006, a then 20-year-old Dan Goodman (meathead #2) walked into the gym. I had no idea at the time that just a few years later, we would start a business partnership that would span nearly two decades.

Dan was a football player who needed my help getting strong, and I needed someone to help spread the word in the community.

Spread the word, he did. Every summer and winter over the next three years, Dan helped me get kids to the gym and made connections with coaches in the area. For anyone who signed up, I would pay him a fee.

Toward the end of college, he told me he wanted to go into the gym business and that we should partner up. I was hesitant at first, but I desperately needed help, and he needed a job.

We were pumped to move into our new space with our first-ever real employee (Big Mike, meathead #3). Like most startups, we were fueled by adrenaline, lots of coffee, and blind ignorance. We just worked our tails off seven days a week.

That first summer of 2009, we were PACKED with athletes, and the word was spreading about this underground gym that was turning average kids into savages! The problem was that they were all fall sport athletes, and in August, when camp started, we were running on fumes financially.

So, what do meatheads do when they almost go out of business and run out of cash? Nothing—they ride it out until December, get busy again for eight months, and almost go out of business again the following year!

But this time, we were down to just a few dollars. If it weren’t for our ONE adult client bringing in a few of his friends, the story of Varsity House would have been over before it started.

THAT’S IT, we said! It was time to get help. We hired our first business coach and realized something very important:

We were great trainers and coaches but had no idea how to run a real business.

After coming back from our first business workshop, we were pumped to get to work and start building a real business that worked for us.

By 2013, we were on fire. Turns out that actually learning how to run a real business works!

We had become the go-to place for athletes and adults to become their best, and we started construction on what would become our 20,000 sq/ft custom-designed headquarters in Orangeburg, NY, which opened the following year.

In 2017, after completing another training certification, some gym friends of ours told us about their struggles—struggles we had already been through ourselves. We had to help them.

This same scenario played out repeatedly. Friends and other gym owners would ask us questions about our business so often that we decided to host a two-day workshop at our gym to show them what we were doing.

The Business of Strength was born out of a desire to help other gym owners in the industry. We thought if we could prevent just one gym from going through what we did, we could improve the industry as a whole.

BETTER GYM OWNERS = BETTER GYMS!

Today, we are still growing our brands and have launched a new small-group personal training model called Varsity House Personal Training with our long-time employee, now partner, Adam Menner (meathead #4). We have plans to open 10 studios in the next five years.

On top of the gyms, the Business of Strength has grown into one of the premier bespoke gym consulting and workshop companies in the country. We’ve hosted over 400 coaches and gym owners from around the world at our events and built a private consulting mastermind with some of the best gym owners on planet earth!

We have no plans on slowing down and, as cliché as it sounds, feel as though we are only getting started.

Our hope is to inspire, educate, and motivate, passing down what’s working and what’s not in real time as we are still, after 20 years…

Living It... Loving It… Growing It!

Not too bad for a couple of meatheads.

- Joe, Dan, Adam, & Big Mike