It was early 1970’s. I had to be about 7 or 8. It was in the basement of my Aunt’s, dirt floor, homemade plates made by the local foundry, and a wooden bench made by my Uncle.My brother Jimmy stood in the middle of the room in a cloud of dust from the jump rope. He was great at it. I stood there and I watched. Then I would watch him work out with a vigorous effort. That’s probably the first time I was ever exposed to any type of weight training or fitness. And I have to give my brother credit for that. He was the first one to expose me to that. Now by the time I was in seventh or eighth grade, he had given me a couple basic workouts that I did all the time. I even went around to the kids in the neighborhood to see if they had any old plastic weights and cement weights laying around, gather them up, and I made a gym in the bottom of my basement. And they would come over periodically to work out and it was never consistent, but I always was. I never missed a workout by this time. Now going into my junior year in high school, I tore up my knee pretty good and that threw me into the gym even harder, to rehab my knee, get it stronger, get myself big. So I kept on going with that, playing baseball and football, and excelling in both of them. Now when I graduated high school,  I went to my first public gym, and it was in the basement of a church, and I did think I was in heaven. I was there with true gym rats, watching every move they made, watching them bench, squat, whatever. I was keeping an eye on everything and it was straight up old school. Pictures of Swartzeneggar, Franco Columbu, Lou Ferrigno all over the wall, posters everywhere. And this time, I have to give credit to my best friend, Tom Lavendar who inspired me to do this for a living.  He was in the service stationed over in Hawaii, lucky dog, and he came back home and he was jacked. I mean he had gained a good fifteen pounds of muscle, and he was willing to let me know how he did it and I was eager to listen and learn. So we hit the gym hard. We were workout partners and he showed me different reps, different weights, different methods, different exercises, different combinations, and it goes on and on and on. And we were hooked! We were straight up gym rats at this point in time. And we were probably about mid-twenties, somewhere right around there and my two boys came along. I got married and I had two boys, two beautiful boys, Zack and Dylan. And that took up a lot of my time, but I never missed a workout. Still working out hard. Working at the local foundry, got laid off there, would go to machine shop, would go to have a job here or there, it didn’t matter, but my mind was always on weight training, always on my workout and what I was going to do at the end of the day with my workout. So now I’m in my late twenties, still working in the local foundry, and a small gym opened up in my hometown. So I went and checked it out and I joined immediately. The owner of the gym was named Vicky Fowler, and I have to give credit to her on taking me to that next level and getting me involved into personal training. She asked me if I wanted to put in some part time work there on the weekends and I told her I would let her know. And I went back to work that next Monday and they laid me off. So needless to say, I immediately called her up after work and started working that week putting some part time hours in.  Then one thing led to another, I started working more and more, she asked me if I wanted to run the gym and obviously I jumped right on that. I started to sell supplements out of there and I started hearing more and more about this personal training.  I’m scratching my head. I’m like, personal training, they’re going to pay somebody money to lay out a workout. I’m like, really? So I went and got a minor certification and I started doing some. Well I kept on getting busier and busier and busier. We added onto the gym a couple of times. And then I went and got a more reputable certification. We kept on getting busier and busier. I raised my rates and kept on getting busier and busier. I became a member of IDEA Fitness for my continued education. I put myself in front of the best in the nation.  I kept on getting busier and busier and busier. And then finally, she asked if I wanted to take the gym over, and I said sure. I dove right into it, added onto the gym two more times and kept on training and kept on training. By the time 2004-2005 rolled around, I kept on hearing these personal training facilities opening up where it’s just one on one training. It’s very private. I raised an eyebrow. So I started looking around. I still had the gym, and I found this little spot here in Poland. And I put a little place together, nothing fancy, and I went for it. I had an open house, I sent out mailers, mass-mailers, 10,000 mailers to three miles out, four miles out. And I knew I needed about ten sessions a week to survive. I still had the gym, but ten sessions a week to break even in the personal training facility. After that first day of open house, I had twenty and it started to snowball. Now you see, I was only there Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and I was at the gym Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So I could only fill my schedule so much, so I had to hire a trainer to come in. So I hired a trainer and I bounced back and forth, but I wasn’t able to manage both places, the right way anyhow at that point in time. So, I sold the gym and I was full time at Fine Tune Fitness. One thing led to another, I hired a great team of trainers now. We’re a team of five. I added on and renovated one time, added on about 2,000 square feet, and I went from doing sixty sessions a month now doing up to 500 sometimes 600 sessions a month. So that’s my story and that’s how I got started.