Meet Robert Brown of Nxt Level Fitness

Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Brown.

Hi Robert, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My journey to starting my own personal training and sports performance business started when I was attending Northern Arizona University (NAU). I started off my college career as a mechanical engineering student. I liked working with my hands and creating solutions for problems. After one semester, I quickly realized that I was on a path that I could be successful on, but not one that I was passionate about.

After growing up playing and absolutely loving sports, culminating in playing ice hockey for NAU, I knew that I wanted to be in the fitness industry in some way while also owning my own business. After deep contemplation, I changed my major from engineering to exercise science while adding a minor in business.

After graduating in December of 2012 from NAU, I got a job as a personal trainer for a local gym in Gilbert, AZ. Within 6 months of starting, I became the fitness director of the personal training department while still performing my personal training duties. The gym was very successful and expanded to multiple locations.

I was told by my boss at the time that I would soon become a regional manager of his expanding business. It was a very exciting time that was unfortunately short-lived. After successfully running and growing their personal training department for 2 years, the owner decided to outsource the personal training department to a third-party company, essentially replacing my job as the fitness director and erasing any and all promises of future leadership roles with the company.

I was at a crossroads in my career. I could stay on as a personal trainer and work for the company that just demoted me. I could leave personal training together and try to find something else that I am passionate about. I could also take charge of my life, branch off, and blaze my own trail in the fitness world. I confidently and at the same time nervously chose the latter. I found a small personal training studio down the street from my current location to rent space from, I created Next Level Fitness LLC, and I was off on my own to build my very own personal training, sports performance, and nutrition business.

I was now in full control of my future. I could make my own schedule, charge my own prices, take time off to be with my family whenever I wanted to, and truly start to design a life that I was proud of and dreamed about. I was also in a position to be able to give clients a healthy viewpoint and proper experience of the fitness industry as a whole.

One of my main motivations for how I run my fitness business is to change the narrative and negative stigma surrounding the fitness industry. As a personal trainer and now fitness business owner, I make it my duty to show every new and potential client that there are really good, trusting, and caring personal trainers in the world. I do my best every day to show our clients that they are not just sales numbers in a system and that their health goals and dreams are just as important to us as they are to them.

We know that life is unpredictable, so we do our very best to work together with our clients by allowing fluid scheduling and affordable payment plans so that they can pursue a healthier life without the added stress and headaches that tend to come with most big box gyms. When you come to Nxt Level Fitness with your fitness goals and dreams, we want you to know and feel that you have come to the right place.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Getting to where I am today with Nxt Level Fitness LLC has been a long, tough, and extremely rewarding journey so far. My business was born out of turmoil and necessity. While my wife and I were in the process of getting married and buying our first house, my previous boss was in the process of phasing me out of his business. Something needed to be done, fast. I have seen all sides of the fitness industry throughout my career.

I worked my way through college, maintained good grades, and played ice hockey at the same time. I looked at myself in the mirror and knew that I had the experience and mental strength to overcome any challenge that came my way. Creating my own successful business for the first time was going to be the biggest challenge of my life. It was both highly challenging and significantly freeing. It was now solely up to me to be successful, and I knew I could bet on myself to get the job done.

After leaving the corporate space and 2 successful years of running my own personal training business out of a small studio in Gilbert, my wife, who was pursuing her Doctorate in Psychology at the time, landed an internship in New Jersey. It was again another time to make a huge business decision. Do I stay in Arizona, run my business, and have a long-distance relationship for a year? Or, do I find a way to go with my wife to New Jersey and support her and her dreams? I chose to go!

I came to the conclusion that if I can leave the corporate setting to start my own business and be successful, I can take on this new challenge and opportunity to not only grow my business but grow myself in the process. People across the country need proper health and wellness coaching and I was determined to plant my flag in New Jersey and show them what Nxt Level Fitness is all about.

A few months before we left for New Jersey, I got into online personal training. This again was born out of necessity. It allowed me to continue to coach some of my current Arizona clients online while also opening an entirely new horizon and opportunity for my business in the fitness industry. It also allowed me to maintain a small source of income while I got my business settled across the country. I still use and have grown that online platform today in conjunction with my in-person training.

Just before moving across the country, one of the worst tragedies of my life happened. My best friend and former high school football teammate, Justin Lett, suddenly lost his life. It shook me to my core and still does to this day. It was a terrible and brutal realization of how fragile and short life can be, and that we need to live every day to the fullest. I was and am still determined to make him proud and carry on his legacy.

While in New Jersey, dealing with the loss of one of my best friends, and having to get my business going so that we could live, I had a lot of personal growth to go through. I knew that people everywhere needed health and wellness coaching and I was now on a path to find them. In an effort to do so, I ran free boot camps at a local park, joined a local business networking group, and bounced around from gym to gym hoping to find a home for my business. After months of complete struggle and what seemed like a total failure, I started to gain momentum.

Nxt Level Fitness was back on the rise and growing quickly both in person and online. It helped that I was not only able to lean on my loving and supportive wife, but since I am from New Jersey originally, I had my childhood friends about 70 miles away who I could lean on for love and support.

As winter in the northeast started to roll in, my free boot camps started to slow down and fizzled out fast. I was starting to really worry since I was really using those free boot camps to get my name out to then be hired. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I got a random call from a nice lady who runs a senior center. She saw my advertisement for the free boot camp and was wondering if I would come to perform a couple of free workout sessions for the residents of her senior center. She noted if the residents enjoyed it, the senior center would partner with me and my business.

After four successful free sessions, we had a nice new partnership! That opportunity turned into a huge blessing for me and my family. What started out as a free boot camp in the park turned into 4 workouts per week for two separate retirement centers and 5 one on one personal training clients. It was the exact blessing and breakthrough that my business and my family needed.

As the year in New Jersey came to a close, I was able to transition some of my new clients to my online platform and continue to work with them from Arizona. However, I did not want to leave my other clients, especially the senior centers, without a fitness resource. During my time there, I got connected with an awesome personal trainer by the name of Andrew Roney, who was also trying to grow his own business. He was the perfect person to take over my clientele and he still works with those senior centers today!

It was a huge blessing for his business and for my clients to continue to have the ability to work on their health and fitness. The trip to Jersey was a huge success, and now I was faced with the task of starting all over again once back in Arizona. I took everything that I learned from school, everything I absorbed from my first personal training jobs, as much as I could from the gyms that I explored, and the life experience that I went through on the east coast and went full speed into regrowing Nxt Level Fitness in Arizona.

This time I knew with confidence that if I could pack up my business, move across the country, and be successful, I could do it all again and better. This time, I was not building it from scratch. I was building it from experience. It was time to find a new gym and put Nxt Level Fitness on the map.

Since moving back to Arizona in 2019, Nxt Level Fitness has expanded greatly. In addition to our online presence coaching clients across the state and country, we continue to provide in-person training for both the general population and sports-performance-specific coaching and maintain contracts providing physical fitness as part of clients’ treatment in residential mental healthcare facilities in Phoenix.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Nxt Level Fitness will always be on a mission to teach people the proper principles of health and wellness while also taking any athlete’s game to the next level. We believe that by taking the proper steps to be healthy, you will ultimately unlock a path that will allow you to live a long, strong, and healthy life.

Also, as a tribute to my friend who lost his life, every year we donate a portion of our profit to the Justin Lett ‘Dream Then Do’ memorial scholarship foundation which annually blesses a like-minded Chandler Valley Christian High School student and a Samford University student in Alabama who exemplifies the same internal drive, urgency, and ambition to dream big, dream often, and courageously pursue such dreams through the calling and gifts God has given them.

I believe what sets my business practices apart from the rest is the individuality of our coaching. Every single client is unique and special and should absolutely be treated as such. Each client/athlete is individually evaluated so that we can create a custom path to get them from where they are, and to where they want to be, while also developing the everyday habits to maintain and build on their results once they have graduated from Nxt Level Fitness coaching.

I am proud to be known as a brand that puts the clients first, treats every single one of them with respect, and can help everyone who trusts us with their health and fitness goals to feel safe and secure in their journey.

Networking and finding a mentor can have a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Mentorship and networking have worked very well for me in the past and continue to work well for me and my business. When I first started my business, I reached out to a few personal trainers who were already successful at what I was trying to accomplish. I learned things that worked for them and more importantly, learned what did not work for them. That way I could do my best to avoid those mistakes myself.

I also started a personal development journey, because I knew that if I wanted to grow my business, I first needed to grow myself. I started reading books like “You Win in the Locker Room First” & “The Energy Bus”, by Jon Gordon. I read “Chop Wood Carry Water” by Joshua Medcalf and many other personal and business development books. I also started listening to Podcasts such as “The Quote of the Day Show” by Sean Croxton, “The Cardone Zone” by Grant Cardone, and many others as well.

Lastly, I joined a business networking group called “BNI – Business Network International.” This helped me to network with local business owners weekly, as we worked to build cross-industry relationships and refer businesses back and forth to each other. This not only helped grow my network but also helped me grow as a professional and as a public speaker.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @RobNxtLevelFitness
• Facebook: Facebook.com/RobNxtLevelFitness

Image Credits
Kiran Salih and Scott