Josh Cherry & Robby Marlow – “Started From A Warehouse And Now 25 Locations Throughout The States”
Josh Cherry and co-founder, Robby Marlow never planned on getting into the fitness industry.
Neither of them had formal PT education but Josh had a little experience. When he was in the Marine Corps, Josh helped train units as a Physical Training Instructor, and he ran a bootcamp in the park for some of the women who lived on the base in Arizona.
When Josh moved to Texas to attend Texas A&M University, his oldest son was in Cub Scouts and some of the moms wanted to workout together. Josh offered to do a free bootcamp in the park – and the women’s only Delta Life Bootcamp grew from there.
Josh’s brother-in-law, Robby, saw what he was doing with the bootcamps and wanted to make a change for himself. Josh taught him about nutrition and exercise, and soon Robbie was getting the results he was looking for – so much that he started to help run the bootcamps in the parks.
At the end of 2013, Josh had to go back to the Marine Corps for seven months, and their bootcamp almost stopped altogether.
But Robby didn’t want to let it die. With just 10 ladies (and two of those were Robby’s mother and cousin), he opened up their first space in a metal building on the side of a highway.
It still wasn’t a business at that point – Robby saw it as a way to make some extra cash to save for a family trip.
When Josh finished his seven months in the Marine Corps, he moved to Florida and opened up a second location in a tiny building in April 2014. Their small business, Delta Life Bootcamp, was making less than $2k per month.
But they started to get serious. They were great with using Facebook and getting people to show up for their classes – after running one Facebook ad for two weeks of free bootcamp classes, Robby had tons of women walking through the door. They still had a long way to go:
“We were just playing business back then. We had no idea of a business model, no mission statement, and no core values.
In mid 2014, Josh saw a Facebook ad for NPE and had a free phone consultation with Senior Success Consultant, Tom Jackobs. Shortly after, Josh’s wife attended an NPE FAST FORWARD™ event in Atlanta, and Tom encouraged them to join the NPE Coaching Program. But Josh said no:
“I told him we couldn’t afford it and that Delta Life as a whole would have to be making $20k a month to do NPE Coaching Program. He said we would be there in no time. We started with the ACCELERATOR™ program and were literally crushing those numbers by the next month.”
With ACCELERATOR™, Josh and Robby were able to grow the gym through sales, marketing and establishing their core values. But with zero business experience, they didn’t know how to train their 33 Delta Life employees or set up systems for them to follow.
Just a few months later, they decided to #RiseUp and join the NPE Coaching Program, which gave them the tools to work out their staffing issues and grow their business even more.
In just one year, Delta Life Bootcamp grew to over a MILLION dollar a year company.
But the growth of Delta Life Bootcamp hasn’t come without challenges. When they decided to raise their rates, they had to justify why to themselves, their clients, and their employees, and they’re just now fully articulating the value that they’re delivering.
“At first we came out and said, ‘Cool, we’ll be the highest price in town.’ But we couldn’t justify it. Through working with our coach and NPE, we would have backed down a long time ago and we would have dropped our prices again. We wouldn’t be here talking about a million dollar company.”
Although Josh and Robby say NPE’s systems, tools and coaching are great, they say community is invaluable. Josh’s time spent building a 21-day challenge is cut in half because he can easily go to the Facebook group and ask for a completed sales page, phone script, pricing sheet, etc. and he’ll have five different people sending him exactly what he needs.
That saved time allows Robby and Josh to focus on other priorities. Josh, who lives in Florida, is currently going through Marine Corps flight school and enjoys having time to go to the beach or Disney with his three kids. Robby is also a family man and lives in Texas working as a draftsman, although he plans to quit soon and focus on the bootcamp business full time.
Although they grew up with the mindset that you work hard for some big organization until you’re 75 and then retire, Josh and Robby have big dreams to explode their business like never before.
Delta Life Bootcamp has grown to five locations: two in southwest Florida and three in southeast Texas with 50 online members and 800 gym clients. They continue to crush their monthly revenue, were recently featured on Fox News and are in the process of opening up another five locations (they’ll have a total of 10 soon!). But Josh and Robby don’t want to stop there.
“NPE allowed us to see our dream happen, have a plan of action, and hold us accountable. We want to open franchises, and NPE gives us the ability to see that actually going to happen. They helped us narrow down our vision and concentrate on what’s important, deal with the head trash and have the confidence moving forward because we’re backed by a company like NPE that teaches us what’s right and what’s wrong. We had zero business experience so having that confidence has been a large role in our success.”
