Want to get fit? Like History and all things Geek?
Then you need to meet Mike, self confessed Nerd and one of the Tees Valleys newest Gym owners.
When I left school I knew I had three passions I could pursue. I had always loved, ancient history, sport and acting.
With top grades and being highest in my class for ancient history, my teacher was devastated when I didn’t choose to take it as the subject for my degree.
Sport was always a love alongside Ancient History, and that was what I ultimately chose as my career.
Luckily when I named my business Odyssey Health and Wellness, I got to combine two of the things I loved.
Odysseus angered Poseidon, who then prevented him from getting home for years, instead creating constant challenges for him.
That’s what the gym in essence is, a place to overcome challenges, improving your health & fitness & ultimately coming out the other side feeling amazing.
Odyssey was started during the back end of Covid, in 2020. I had been working as a PT in a local hotel gym but I wanted to create something for myself. Thats why I took the leap and left that job to start my own business, right after a pandemic had both good and bad elements to it.
I was really lucky that a client saw potential in me and the business and invested in me to purchase gym gear and help me get started.
The good was that Odyssey were getting contracts to deliver staff wellbeing support programmes that included exercise classes / 1:1 support / wellbeing sessions/ nutrition e-books etc.
The downside was that the premises I had taken on had restrictions in place for the first six months of starting the business, so no gym clients were allowed in the building.
This meant that for the first few months of running my own business, I was delivering all training online from my home. I guess you could say the business was literally started from the kitchen table!
Moving into the new premises a few months ago has meant there has been a shift in focus for the gym. We are still working with organisations to support the wellbeing of their staff, thats both online physical sessions and nutritional programs for them, But one of the biggest pushes is to get people into the gym (TitanFit), especially into our awesome Fitcamp.
Companies that were seeing a down turn in staff productivity and a growth in staff sick days are starting to invest in group training which can be here at the gym in Stockton on a schedule that works for the company.
I have huge plans for the growth of the company.
Our Fitcamp is the big focus and something I absolutely love.
Creating a space where people can enjoy exercise in a variety of challenging & sometimes gamified formats, feel so supported by myself and the other heroes (clients) & have organised group activities such as quiz nights, walks & our own Odyssey events like Hero-Fit & Odlympics coming up.
The whole purpose being the experience and journey promotes a strong relationship with fitness & health, building self belief & being part of a community that has a positive and feel good culture that you won’t get anywhere else.
I want to grow the fitcamp community, with scope of adding a variety of other classes & services in the near future.
We offer monthly subscriptions with various flexibility on what suits them best at excellent value for money.
The gym continues to grow in numbers every month, and thats mainly down to word of mouth. So many members bring their friends because of the relaxed and friendly approach we have to the sessions.
After we hit max capacity in this gym, the next step would be for us to have a dedicated space for group classes as well as a gym in its own area for people that would like to come in and work out on a membership basis.
If I could give advice to anyone wanting to start their own business when things don’t go to plan, which I bet a lot of the time it won’t.
The important thing is that you need to keep moving forward.
There might be trials along the way, some things might work and some things might not, but don’t take that to heart.
