Today we’d like to introduce you to David Tilly.
David, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’ve been involved in fitness for over 10 years now in various capacities. For me, it started in the Marine Corps when I served from 2007 – 2012 and ran PT and body composition programs for the various units I was assigned to. After leaving the Corps I knew fitness was something I wanted to pursue in the civilian world. I wanted the opportunity to help, educate, and encourage people and simply make their lives better. I began working with clients as a Personal Trainer in Sandy Springs in 2012 and worked for a large fitness company for 4 years. When I left in 2016 to open my gym I had been managing a training staff of 30 for their largest location in the metro Atlanta area.
On a personal side, I found CrossFit in 2013 at a tough time in my life. I was sitting at home one night flipping through channels on TV and stumbling upon re-runs of the Games from the previous year, and I remember thinking it was pretty cool watching these people who could do pretty much anything. I started looking into the program, learning more about it and fell in love with it. I’ve been doing it myself ever since and knew one day I would open my own box. After a few years, it happened and we opened our doors at One Degree Elevated in April 2017.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As with anything, there’s been ups and downs, but this has been one of the best experiences of my life. Starting a new business, especially your first one, there’s a lot to learn and things you just don’t know. Our biggest challenge was a delay in opening due to some building issues and construction. We were set to open on January 1st of this year and weren’t able to until four months later in mid-April. In the fitness world, the beginning of the year is one of our busiest times and we missed out on that in 2017.
Please tell us about One Degree Elevated.
The simple answer is we help people live better, healthier, happier lives. We educate them, we encourage them to grow a little each day, and we support them with an awesome community of friends and coaches who are here to help and genuinely want to see everybody succeed.
Specifically, we specialize in group functional fitness training, CrossFit, one-on-one Personal Training, and customized fitness programming for our members. We offer group training classes as well as individualized training for all fitness levels and abilities.
I’m actually most proud of our members and the changes I’ve seen in them. As an example we have one who was in a car accident a few years ago. She has had several surgeries, has bones fused and plates and screws in a couple joints. She was told she’ll basically spend the rest of her life having trouble walking and never be able to do simple tasks again like picking things up off the ground or squatting down to a low shelf. She joined us when we opened and started taking CrossFit classes with us, and now she squats, runs, lifts weights, and does everything she wants to without pain or injury.
We help people significantly change their lives for the better and it’s an amazing feeling to see somebody light up with excitement when they do something they were told they’d never be able to again. I guess that’s the long way of saying I’ll always be most proud of what we’re able to help people accomplish in their lives.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to pick one thing I would say it would be reaching out more to others around the country who have taken this leap before and opened their own gyms to pick their brains and see what’s worked for them. There’s an awesome community of box owners that I’m involved with now, but I wish I would have linked up with them sooner and relied on their experiences more at the beginning. I feel like that could have helped avoid a lot of the “trial and error” that comes with starting a new venture.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3400 Clairmont Road NE
Brookhaven, GA 30319 - Website: www.one-degree-elevated.com
- Phone:404-698-1333
- Email:contact@one-degree-elevated.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/1degreeelevated/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/1DegreeElevated
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