Photo: (L-R) Matagi Fa’Avle, Owner Jerred Welt and Patrick Crosby. Photo by Pat Schutte
By Pat Schutte
You’d be hard-pressed to find a better location for a fitness center than the building at 6564 South State Street in Saline, right across the street from Wal-Mart.
Housed within the 32,000-square-foot mixed-use facility are a myriad of athletic-oriented businesses, including a K-12 wrestling club, a baseball training facility, a martial arts studio, and a women’s-oriented aerobic fitness club.
Understanding that many parents from all over the area who drop their kids off to learn/train at these hyper-focused clubs, along with a husband or two that drop their wives off to exercise, have roughly 90 minutes of idle time on their hands, a newly-minted Adrian College Business Management major – 22-year-old Jerred Welt – never figured he’d have quite the captive membership opportunities for his recently opened Anytime Fitness location.
But he did figure on everything else.
When Welt ‘officially’ opened it this past July, he became the all-time youngest franchisee of Anytime Fitness in the history of the company, founded in 2002 in Cambridge, MN.
“I knew when I ended high school and went into college, I wanted to open a gym, even if I didn’t make a lot of money doing so,” said Welt, who wrestled and played football and rugby at Saline. “I would rather do something I love and not make as much as opposed to doing something I hate and making more.”
Welt would parlay an Adrian College marketing class assignment into a research project on the fitness industry, and was most impressed with the Anytime Fitness business plan and accessibility for him (with some help from his parents) to become a franchise owner.
“From there, I did tons and tons of different research on Anytime, and I even did a ton of different work with my professors to figure out how I could do it and how it would make sense,” explained Welt. “From there, my parents helped me secure a loan and helped a ton with the buildout since they own a construction company. So my family and I did a lot of the buildout ourselves.”
The passion for athletics is deep seeded in the Saline community, and Welt was very much a part of that. Developing a love for not only (intense) training himself to compete at a high level in some of the tougher sports (aforementioned wrestling, football & rugby), Welt also found that he, at a young age, was equally motivated to see others succeed in the weight room, at that time his Hornet teammates.
“I grew up playing sports my whole life. I lived in the weight room for a while,” he said, only half joking. “My other passion is helping people and watching them succeed. Throughout my whole life I have helped coach and develop players in different sports or just in the weight room because I loved sharing what I know to help other people succeed.”
Beyond the benefit of the sports clubs that bookend Welt’s Anytime Fitness, when selecting the location he also felt that ‘Paying it forward’ to Saline and the surrounding communities was crucial to his business plan. “Since Saline is my hometown and where I grew up, I’m familiar with the area – making it easier to partner with different businesses and be a part of the community as well. And I’d like people to realize that, even though Anytime Fitness is this big corporate name, it’s me and my team that run it, and that it’s locally owned. I live five minutes down the street and, if there’s ever a problem, I’m right there to see that it’s fixed.”
Centrally located to the Sun Times’ readership area, compared to other fitness centers in the area, Welt appreciates that fact that he was given the ability, by Anytime Fitness, to customize the weights-to-aerobic equipment ratio in a way he deemed fit.
“Probably the biggest thing I found in my research was how many squat racks and free weights gyms had in relationship to treadmills. My biggest pet peeve when I go to a gym is, I walk in and they have 50 treadmills, one set of dumbbells – up to 50 lbs. – and no squat racks. A gym should be for everyone. Treadmills are good and everybody has used them at least one time, but it doesn’t mean you need to limit another part of the gym because of it. I wanted my gym to have every piece of equipment you need to get a good workout, no matter who you are and what your goals are.”
Setting the obvious newness feel to the gym aside, one thing you notice right away is how clean Welt’s Anytime Fitness is – from the floor and equipment to the lockers and bathrooms. Absolutely sparkling, and helped kept that way by the members, who have access to rolled and neatly stacked purple hand towels and bottles of sanitizing spray in multiple areas of the gym. And are encouraged to wipe down equipment after use.
“This is definitely our biggest compliment we get over and over again,” said Welt. “I wouldn’t say it was part of my business plan, but it was another pet peeve I have with other gyms. It’s so easy to keep a gym clean if you have just a little bit of work ethic. When I walk into a gym that isn’t clean it tells me that the owners or staff don’t care about their gym or their members. When a member becomes a part of your gym there is a certain standard I feel like the member is entitled to – and the start of it begins with simply cleaning the toilets.”
An ‘All Hands on Deck’ approach to keeping Welt’s Anytime Fitness sparkling clean includes assistance from his certified fitness coaches, Patrick Crosby and Matagi Fa’Avale. Always on hand for the members, when they’re not running an individual or group fitness session, you can find them rolling purple towels, keeping the high-grade equipment shiny, and/or making sure everything’s picked up and looking in tip-top shape. And from there, Welt’s coaches, along with Welt himself, offer up a comprehensive personal training system – included in your Anytime Fitness membership.
“At Anytime Fitness everyone has a coach, it’s your choice if you want to use them or not,” explained Welt. “With your coach we do a base fitness consultation. With this we start with an Evolt body scan and we can see everything from body fat percentage to how many calories you should be eating a day based on your goals. After this we go over the scan and figure out more of your goals and your routine and then we do a five-minute workout to see if there are any lingering injuries that we need to work on, or if there are things you aren’t able to do.”
Welt continued: “From there, we make a workout program for you and put it right into your app, where you can see videos of the exercise, and you’re able to log and track your results. After this, we do an Evolt scan every four weeks to check progress and make sure we aren’t going backwards or hitting a plateau. And if we are, we will change it up to get more results.”
Members can also choose to work in a small group training program, which is three to five people working towards the same goals in a training session. With both of these services, Welt explained that you also get daily coaching, including nutrition and monthly check-ups regarding your progress.
“I really do love the team I put together,” said Welt. “We have Matagi and Patrick as trainers currently, and they both bring something different. Patrick is a very advanced trainer with more than ten different certifications, and is one of the most personable people I have ever met. Matagi comes from a sports background and has a degree in exercise science and he is also a person that makes you feel heard and will do anything to help you hit your goals. So they both have different things to bring to the table. What I love most about the team is their ability to collaborate; everyone is willing to learn new things and do what’s best for the people in the gym.”
In terms of memberships, Welt said that the Saline Anytime Fitness is rolling along quite well, adding: “The response to our location has been great. We have gotten a ton of people from different communities and we have got a lot of Anytime Fitness members from different gyms in surrounding areas because of our gym culture, community and cleanliness.”
Quick to remind new and potential gym members first meets with a catchy line to remember his name, “It’s Jerred, just like the jeweler,” Welt applies his youthful energy and passion for not only fitness, but seeing his members succeed and reach their personal fitness goals. And he wraps all that into a plan that he’s confident will keep his Anytime Fitness in the forefront of the everchanging and expanding world of personal fitness.
“Every day we try to get recommendations from members to see what else they want at their gym,” said Welt. “A lot of the time they say; ‘This gym is amazing and I am so glad you opened and you don’t need anything else.’ However, we sometimes do get recommendations and, listening closely to those, we have already put in a ton of new equipment based on what people want.
“As we grow, so will our staff. Our staff is also always learning and growing and getting different certifications and specializing in different things so we can help not only current clients, but new clients who have different injuries or needs or are working towards different things. For example, I noticed that a lot of our members like to golf and are already doing exercises to improve their golf game and strength. So now our staff is going to be certified in golf (weight) training by next golf season.”
For more information:
Anytime Fitness Saline
Jerred Welt, Club Owner
6564 South State St., #700
Office 734-977-1101
8123 Main St Suite 200 Dexter, MI 48130
