An interview with Cody on building Allegiate and Entrepreneurship

Q: What is Allegiate and what were you trying to build?

We were college athletes and college-trained coaches. When we got out into the real world, nobody trained the way we knew how to train as athletes. We missed our coaches, our teammates, the structure, the intentional programming. That didn't exist unless you were paying for an expensive trainer at Equinox. CrossFit was dingy and grungy. Soul Cycle was mostly cardio. Yoga wasn't it. So we built what we wished existed — a boutique fitness concept that replicates the athlete training experience. We call our coaches coaches, not trainers. Members get a coach, they get a program, they don't have to think about what to do. They just show up.

The bigger picture goal is to build a mainstream fitness brand. To be a legitimate player like SoulCycle, F45, Orangetheory, Barry's — a brand that's known.

Q: You have two business partners. How do you divide things up without stepping on each other's toes?

My partner Tim was the strength and conditioning coach at USC — we played football there together. He runs the product side and coaches the coaches. My other partner Steve is a former teammate who leads finance. I handle marketing, branding, and sales — the website, the funnels, the backend reporting, actually growing the business.

I think that's one of the main reasons we still really love each other and are still in business together. You've got a system — sales, marketing, operations, product, customer service — and the more you can get really good players focused on really important areas, where each person truly owns their lane, the better the business runs. And you actually enjoy each other's company because nobody's stepping on anybody's toes.

Two coaches going into business together and both just wanting to coach? You're going to have philosophy disagreements, and nobody's running the business. Having complementary lanes set from day one was a huge part of why we've gotten as far as we have.

Q: How do you run three locations without a massive staff?

When I first started, each gym had a manager, a bunch of front desk staff underneath them, plus a head coach and associate coaches on the product side. At some point another gym owner told me something I couldn't unhear: "You're not in the fitness business. You're in the HR business." Because in fitness you are constantly hiring and training new people. It's just the nature of it — the pay isn't always sustainable for staff long-term, so you have turnover, and you're always filling gaps.

I looked at the numbers and asked: what if I redesigned this? We let go of our in-person front desk and moved to a virtual front desk that handles communications, contracts, and admin. I brought on one strong regional manager who's my right-hand — she makes sure the trains run on time and takes on bigger projects. That's it.

It was hard. We had to let people go and I care about our people. But running lean means less payroll, less management overhead, less hiring, less training. Between AI, freelancers, and the right small team of star players, you can run a lot of business really effectively if you stay organized.

MARKETING & GROWTH

Q: How did you get your first members?

I tried more things that didn't work than things that did. I knocked on doors, put flyers in mailboxes, printed business cards and put them on cars in competitor gym parking lots, tried social media on my own, hired a couple agencies — not much success with any of it.

Where I landed is paid acquisition through Meta with a direct response approach — you can actually track return on spend and know what's working. Referral programs. And just being in the gym all the time, especially early on.

That last one matters more than people think. When you're a business owner with your ass on the line and a member mentions his girlfriend wants to try the gym, you don't say "tell her to check us out." You say "what's her number, I'll text her the steps right now." Those tiny moments — taken immediately — are how you build a business from nothing.

Our first location took nine months to get to 60 members. When we opened Guilford, we had 65 members before we opened the doors. I wouldn't have been able to do that without learning everything the hard way first.

Q: Who is Allegiate actually for?

The bull's-eye is someone who was an athlete — former college or high school athlete who loved training, who had structure and coaching and misses that. They're going to resonate the most.

But we've learned it's more about psychographics than demographics. How a person thinks, what they aspire to, how they approach their body — that transcends age or income bracket. The person who values real coaching, wants technique, wants to actually get something out of their training — that's our person. We're not a boot camp for people chasing a quick transformation. We're not the $20/month gym. We're not the "crank the music and kind of dance" vibe.

In the beginning we had this pure idea of who the customer was going to be. Reality is you're paying rent and you can't turn away everyone who doesn't perfectly fit the profile. But having a clear picture of who you serve makes your messaging sharper — and over time, it attracts more of the right people and fewer of the wrong ones.

ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Q: What would you tell yourself on day one?

Be prepared for how hard this is going to be.

There's a sexy side to starting a business — owning your destiny, being a founder, talking about the vision. And then there's the reality of not knowing what to do, watching people with more structure get further along faster, losing a key staff member and realizing all the other stuff you had to do didn't go away. You're just wearing both hats now.

What I didn't expect — and what I'd want my younger self to understand — is that the business is building you, not just the other way around. It's forming what you're capable of holding, what you can carry. That's iron sharpens iron stuff that you cannot read about in a book. It's hard earned.

And I think the shift that matters most is going from outcome-oriented to process-oriented. You're always going to move the goalpost. You hit one mountain and you want the next one. So if you're only living for the destination, you're going to spend a lot of time miserable. Learning to be connected to the work right here, right now — stacking good days — that's the paradigm that actually sustains you.