Innovision Fall 2018

FALL 2018 | 23 What are some of your daily responsibilities? At my facility, I train clients every day and I am very hands on with our day-to-day training. I am now trying to scale the business around the trainers that work for me and I have taken on a true operations and management role. I do everything from lead generation, sales, new client on-boarding, financial management, business development to personal training, sports performance training and more. What qualities do you think are most important to succeed at your position? Patience. That is a quality you must have. Owning a small business is difficult. You have to be willing to accept the fact that not all businesses will be a great success overnight. You must be relentless. If you aren’t relentlessly chasing your dreams and goals, then why are you doing it? You have to be willing to work as hard as possible to reach success. Trust. You must “trust the process.” Have a plan and stick to it. If it doesn’t work, move on to the next one and trust that it will work. No plan is perfect, but if you don’t trust it then it will never work. What led you into your field? What about it motivates and inspires you? Various different experiences at a young age, both the bad and the good, led me to want to help people improve their athletic performance/health and fitness. I was lucky enough to have some great work experiences at a young age, (internships in college) to help me decide what path I wanted to take. Success motivates me. I have a desire to get better and better until I am at the top of my field. But what inspires me are my clients; people that come in everyday work their hardest to achieve a desired result. Can you briefly describe your career path from being a student at KU up until now? At KU, I studied Sports Management with a specialization in Health & Fitness. During that time, I held internship positions at Fordham University, Iona College, Velocity Sports Performance and founded Raw Fitness (the original ABTsolute Training Systems LLC). After college, I worked with UCONN Football for six months and then got hired to be the Assistant Strength & Conditioning coach at Iona College. After one year at Iona College, I had the opportunity to open my own space, which has expanded from 2500 sq.ft . to 8000 sq.ft . in the last 3.5 years and I now have five employees. I also recently founded TEAM Fitness with my partner Nicholas Flamini, who is also a Kutztown grad.TeamFitness is a comprehensive training solution for commercial and private training facilities. We develop training protocols as well as sales and marketing strategies for each gym. What are your plans for the future? Aside from growing my company and expanding my business to other locations, I do have a true passion for real estate and I would like to begin to make some real estate investments in the next few years. What advice would you offer an undergraduate getting ready to enter the workforce? Be humble. When you get your first job, soak in everything, be a sponge and learn as much as you can. Humility is a great characteristic, you can always learn something new. Keep an open mind and take it all in. Network! I cannot emphasize this enough. Your network is everything you never know who you will meet or connect with. It may lead to a job, business deal, etc. The bigger your network is the more likely you are to succeed! ANDREWABT ‘14 Andrew Abt graduated Kutztown University with a BSBA in Sports Management with a specialization in Health & Fitness in 2014. He is the owner of ABTsolute Training Systems, Co-Founder Team Fitness and Owner of CrossFit Result