Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrea Werner.
Hi Andrea, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My business partner, Cheri Mooney, and I opened our business in May of 2012. We started our business as CrossFit FeRRUM in a 1500 sqft store front. By 2014, we expanded into the bay next to us to become 3250 sqft. Through the years, we soaked up as much education as we could, striving to help people more. About 8 years in, we were starting to get frustrated because no matter how hard we tried, people kept getting injured. So we set out to educate ourselves, and our staff, to make our business safer.
The process of learning more, brought us an eye opening realization. It was not our job to make CrossFit different. While we were thankful for the platform that got us started, and helped us build, we were being pulled into a different direction. So in 2022, 2 years after starting our education journey, we officially unaffiliated from CrossFit.
As we rebranded into FeRRUM Athletic Company, Strength and Longevity Gym, we were also in the process of building our own building. This was by far the hardest thing we had ever done in our business. Not everyone saw our vision, regardless of how much trust we had built with our clients. So as we parted ways with CrossFit, and took on a huge construction project with a new mortgage, we were losing members to a new CrossFit gym at a scary pace.
However, Cheri and I believed, with every fiber of our being, that we were making the best decision for our business. We saw a bigger, and different, picture of what fitness and exercise could be. We saw a gym that would be viewed as a preventative healthcare clinic. This gym would have fitness professionals that would be educated enough to sit at the table with medical professionals, and speak the language, while applying intentional strength training, and health education, to each client that walked in the door.
We educated ourselves on what the most important aspects of living a longer, and stronger, life would need. Then we applied it to our strength and fitness programs.
Today, we are an 8,000 sqft facility that is partnered with medical providers to help bring longevity training to the community of Jacksonville. This looks like detailed consultations, full-body joint assessments, intentional strength training, muscle building that is safe and also affective for building connective tissue, bringing in medical providers when the situation calls for it, offering bloodwork in house, and helping our clients solve deeper problems to live longer, stronger lives.
We have 9 full time fitness professionals that have made this their career. We believe that educated professionals are the difference for discussing metabolic dysfunction, pain, hormone related issues, proper movement patterns, and dosed intensity.
Cheri and I started this business with very little equipment and a belief that we could make a difference in peoples lives. Fourteen years later, our business is becoming everything that we had hoped for, and so much more!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been anything but smooth. We knew nothing about starting a business and learned so many things the hard way. Our LLC had expired and we were never told to renew it. The woman that registered it, put all of her contact info in, and shortly after that, she passed away, sadly. Thankfully, nobody had taken our name yet.
Our landlord billed us $12,000 because he didn’t know he was suppose to pay sales tax and said we owed him. After getting legal advice, we ended up having to pay it.
We had neighbors complaining about our noise, our running, our parking. So we decided to buy land and build our own building.
In 2020, we closed on the land and gained a mortgage payment, on top of our rent. The next month, the world shut down. Our business was closed for 2 months. We flipped our business to an online model and let our clients take home all of our equipment, in exchange for keeping their memberships to help us stay in business. We provided 4 different versions of our workouts, filmed videos for all of it, and delivered products to peoples front doors, just to pay the bills.
All of this happened while we are trying to get our construction project going. When the bank went out to appraise the property with the construction project, they under appraised it, saying that the building we were trying to build would be of no use to anyone but us, even though it was a warehouse. Our bank stopped talking to us. In the fall of 2020, while CrossFit HQ was having issues that affected our business, we were also on the search for a new bank. Because we were called a “high risk investment” as a result of covid, we had to basically sell the new bank on why we were different, and safer, than a traditional gym.
Once the new bank approved us, our contractor informed us that the price of everything went through the roof. We had to switch from a metal building to a concrete block building because it was cheaper, even though it was still more expensive than the original drawings. Because of all of this, we had to redraw the whole thing, making it more of a retail space, built out of concrete block. We also had to cut out so many things to try and get the price down, within budget.
What started in the fall of 2019, would actually begin being built in the spring of 2022. In December of 2022, the building that we were currently occupying, was purchased by another fitness business. We had to move out on December 31st. I had flown home to Indiana to spend a few days with family for Christmas. On Christmas day, my dad and I drove back down to start prepping the new gym for our big move.
When we arrived on site on December 26th, my dad looked at me and said, “you guys are no where close! They have lied to you.” We had no parking lot, the drywall wasn’t finished, the floors were trashed, plumbing wasn’t done, he was right. However, we still had to move out. So we prepped for moving, while contractors were finishing the build. We were basically closed the entire month of January, due to not having a building. We ran classes out of the old parking lot, thanks to the kindness of the new owners, and trained 1:1 clients out of garages, all while moving equipment, putting down floors, and cleaning non-stop.
And then, the hardest news yet, we needed a water meter. While the process was daunting, the price tag threw us a huge curveball. “$24,692 is the correct price. You have to pay it up front, and in full, in order for us to put in your water meter. And no, you cannot open until you have water,” said the JEA operator. “No, it’s not in the contract and you haven’t paid for it,” said our contractor. So as I sat in my car, in tears and feeling defeated, I made a call to the bank. Thankfully, we were able to use our extra funds built into the loan. However, I had to tell Cheri that all of the extra money that we had for new equipment, was now gone. We made it all work and opened to clients on Feb 1 of 2023 using pot-a-potties with the permission of the city. We received our official CO on March 3rd of 2023.
The second hardest part of building this business has been building a professional staff. All of it has been a hard fought process that we are extremely blessed to have been through. We are definitely stronger on this side of it.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I started as a personal trainer in 2008. My journey began as an off season job during my golfing career. I played professional golf for 6 years and decided one year that I really wanted to start personal training people when I came home. This became a full time role for me in 2010, when I retired from golf. In 2010, I went from personal training to being a CrossFit coach. I worked really hard during that time to be very detail orientated.
When Cheri and I opened our gym in 2012, we wanted to separate ourselves by being the place that focused on the “how and why” as opposed to just telling people to do things. That level of attention to detail has served us well, especially moving into the space we are in now, which is longevity and muscle orientated.
We specialize in helping people solve deeper problems. We saw a large percentage of the population that NEEDED to go to the gym for their health, however, they have been let down by traditional fitness because they have either been injured, or didn’t see results. Those same people have reached out to the medical world for help, and not found it their either. So we have worked hard to bridge that gap. We work to serve the people that need the gym the most in order to be healthier, and stronger, for the rest of their lives.
Our assessment process, and attention to movement detail, paired with deeper conversations, really sets us apart from any other gym in Jacksonville.
We are most proud of the fact that we have faced the hardest of hard things that a business can face, and we have come back from the ashes. At one point, someone wrote us an email and said “you are destroying our community and ruining everything that you have built.” To stand here today, with 9 full time employees, a gym full of clients that value us, and a building that we own, we are beyond thankful!
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
We highly recommend having a business coach and getting involved in a networking group. We have both.
Find a coach that is willing to listen to your goals, learn your concerns, and see your business the way you want it. We had a mentor that guided us based on what HE wanted our business to be, not us. That ended poorly. The coach we have now not only works with us, but also works with our staff to help us all see the bigger vision. Having an outside perspective is so valuable and can end up saving you a ton of frustration, and money!
Because what we do is so hard for people to understand, we decided to join a BNI chapter. It was the best decision we could have made because not only did we get a 60 person “sales force” looking out for us everyday, we also became connected to so many professionals around Jacksonville. This coming May will be 2 years since we joined and it has grown our business faster than any paid advertising ever could.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ferrumathleticco.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ferrumathleticco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FerrumAthleticCo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ferrumathleticcompany
