Podcast Links

 

Organizations to help certify a fitness trainer

• Athletics and fitness Association of America
• National Academy of Sports Medicine
• National council on Strength and Fitness
• American College of Sports Medicine

More resources

• Special Olympics of Arkansas
• David Bazzel
• AIDS.gov information on Excercise and HIV
• HIV and AIDS patients find excercise improves their health
• Little Rock Y.M.C.A. former home is now on the register of historic places
• ARP Wave
• Small Business Administration Loan
• SCORE Little Rock

Publications JP was featured in or wrote for

• Parade Magazine
• Arkansas Business 40 under 40
• Men's Health Better Body Blueprint
• Men's Health TNT Diet
• Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork by Mike Huckabee
• Secrets from America's Best Gyms

Text JP for information about ARP Wave therapy 501-952-5735.

Behind The Scenes

TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE 32

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03.2] TB: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. Be sure to stay tuned till the end of the show to hear how you can get a copy of this program and other helpful documents. 

Now, it's time for Kerry McCoy to get all up in your business.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:17.9] KM: I’m Kerry McCoy and it’s time for me to get all up in your business, by that I mean to say share my business knowledge and wisdom with you, our listener. For the next hour my guest, a fellow entrepreneur, will be discussing how we maneuvered the path of leadership and entrepreneurship in pursuit of our dreams. 

Now, you may be asking yourself, “What qualifies this lady to do this?” The answer is easy; experience. I started my company, Arkansas Flag & Banner, over 40 years ago. During the last four decades Arkansas Flag & Banner has grown and morphed from door-to-door sales, to telemarketing, to mail order and catalog sales and now relies heavily on the internet. Each change in sales strategy required a change in company thinking and procedures. My wisdom, confidence and my company grew. My initial $400 investment now produces nearly four million in annual sales. 

In this next hour you will hear a candid conversation between me and my guest about real world experiences of determination and luck. Today’s topics will be how to open your own gym, choose the best exercise for yourself and relieve pain without surgery or pills. 

Starting and owning a business is like so many things, it takes persistence, perseverance and patience. I worked part-time jobs for nine years before Arkansas Flag & Banner grew enough to support just me. It’s now grown and expanded so much that to operate efficiently we require — Are you ready? A purchasing, manufacturing, graphic, shipping, technology, accounting, marketing sales and customer service department, plus a retail store. 25 people make their living from working at Arkansas Flag & Banner. 

My guest today is personal trainer Jean-Paul Francoeur, a.k.a. JP. He is one of the top fitness authorities in Arkansas and beyond. In 2008 JP sold his thriving high-end health club atop the TCBY Tower Building in downtown Little Rock and recreate it himself when he became the golf performance and functional training specialist at Alotian Golf Club. 

Today, he is a certified ARP wave therapist helping people from all walks of life with their injuries and chronic pain. He’s been featured in Parade Magazine twice as well as in U.S.A. Today. He is a freelance writer for health magazines and websites, having been published in both Men’s Health and Best Life just to name a few. He was a top fitness adviser to former Governor Mike Huckabee’s well-publicized weight loss program, Stop Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork and served as chairman of the Arkansas Governor’s Council on Fitness for eight years. 

It is my pleasure to welcome to the table a man that has dedicated his life to helping others through physical fitness, my friend and once my personal trainer, Jean-Paul Francoeur.   

[0:03:10.5] JPF: Hello.

[0:03:11.9] KM: You are a personal trainer before most people even knew what that job description was. 

[0:03:16.9] JPF: I was kind of an early adopter. First, I just have to say, 40 years? Were you one when you started that business? 

[0:03:23.7] KM: Thank you, JP. 

[0:03:24.6] JPF: I’m serious. My gosh! You have not aged, you know? 

[0:03:27.6] KM: Oh! It’s from personal trainers like you.

[0:03:30.1] JPF: It must be, because I’m amazed.  

[0:03:32.2] KM: Thank you. Can you tell us how you first began your career in the industry? 

[0:03:37.3] JPF: Well, I was actually 19 years old and I was living in Massachusetts at the time and I was taking a year off from college, because I was here at UALR, and my education was actually all in fine arts. I was a classical guitar major, but when I took a year off and I went up to Massachusetts and I kind of job doing, of all things I was a mechanic in a factory making plastic bottles and caps. 

At that time I had — I’ve been an athlete my whole life. I was a wrestler and I ran track. I was a pole-vaulter.

[0:04:05.0] KM: From where? At high school? 

[0:04:06.8] JPF: Upper East Tennessee. Yeah, in high school. I’ve just been in athletics my whole life and so I got a little out of shape that first — My freshmen year. I delivered pizza and kind of little doughy. 19 years old I decided, “You know what? I’m going to do something about this,” and so I went to a gym. I did not know anything about actually weight training, and I started researching it and I found a program that I thought I would like. I’ve found a couple of people in the gym who looked like they knew what they were doing and got some help and started training and got just in ridiculous s good shape. Within two or three months I was so lean. I needed to Q-Tip to clean out the grooves between my abs. Just transformed myself. 

It felt great and I was doing well with it, but I apparently got some attention. This ophthalmologist who worked out at the gym was like, “How did you do that?” I was like, “I did this, this and this.” He’s like, “Can you help me?” I got like some rudimentary certification at the time, probably nothing accredited. I don’t even remember what it was. That was how I started my first personal training and I was 19 and I was charging a whopping $15 an hour. Based on my actual knowledge and experience at the time, I can tell you I was highly overpaid, but I was passionate about it. It really came natural to me and I didn’t realize I was a patient teacher, but when it came to fitness I was always very patient. I could watch somebody and it was kind of a tacit understanding of movement. I could see where they were loading and tell if they were doing it right or not. I started coaching people and started helping people. I ended up with three clients and was making pretty good money on the side doing it. 

When I moved back to Arkansas, I was able to get my scholarship back. When I came back here, my first job was working at a Gold’s Gym for David Basil. That’s how I met David. He and I have known each other since — I guess it was 1987 or 8 and he had just opened up a couple of Gold’s in Little Rock, had some partners. He was a really great sort of mentor, because you can’t help but admire the guy. He’s just got such a great personality and he is just as genuine and sincere a guy as you could ever meet. 

He really kind of took me under his wing, because I guess he saw that I was passionate about it. He helped get me involved in Special Olympics. I started coaching Special Olympics athletes. A couple of my athletes made it to the international games, which apparently is a little more competitive to get into that than you would realize and they actually did well. One of them got a second place and the other one got two third place medals. They did really well.  

[0:06:43.7] KM: People don’t realize how important it is when you’re young to move around and do things, because you never know where it’s going to lead. 

[0:06:54.3] JPF: Even though I didn’t keep that, I have to say that was a very important early experience in my career. First of all, just giving something back, just being sort of community oriented. I wasn’t getting paid to do that, but I loved it. It was just building more experience for me, loved that experience, love working at Gold’s. It was a tough place to sell memberships, because it didn’t have an air-conditioner in the weight room.

[0:07:17.3] KM: What? 

[0:07:18.4] JPF: Yeah. Summer times were a little bleak, but I think I showed early signs of sort of entrepreneurialism at the time, because I was the only person who really took the place seriously. During my shift, that weight room was impeccable. Everything was organized. I liked to present myself professionally, and so it was just little things, but I just made sure that the place was presentable so that when I took people in and I started trying to  help them, that they had a nice professional atmosphere to walk into.

[0:07:43.5] KM: You can almost pick up the entrepreneurs in your life is they’re the person that picks up the piece of paper that’s on the floor and puts it in the trashcan that’s right next to it. You’re like, “Okay. That person is a self-started.” I noticed that when I’m training my employees. The ones that walk past stuff all day long, I’m like, “Hmm, that one’s not going to be the leaders.” 

[0:08:00.1] JPF: If it’s not an urgent job description and they don’t do it. 

[0:08:02.9] KM: But the once that see the issue, just a piece of trash by the trashcan and pick it up and put it in there. There’s something in that personality trait that you had that I see in entrepreneurs all the time. 

[0:08:13.3] JPF: Early on I really loved what I was doing and I was getting a lot of good experience. I was there for many years. I don’t remember how long. I started getting more into — I was researching all kinds of stuff. After that Special Olympics experience I was researching people living with AIDS and I had this theory.  

[0:08:27.5] KM: Was AIDS already a thing? 

[0:08:30.2] JPF: Well, back then it — 

[0:08:32.0] KM: What year was that? 

[0:08:32.2] JPF: We’re talking like 1988, ’89. I read that AIDS was an opportunistic infection. 

[0:08:40.2] KM: What does that mean? 

[0:08:41.0] JPF: It means that people, they were vulnerable to viruses and stuff like that. They can’t — Like a normal virus, their immune system was compromised. 

[0:08:48.8] KM: I got you. 

[0:08:49.7] JPF: If I had this theory that if someone took excellent care of their health, really watched what they ate and really took care of themselves, worked out, obviously, carefully, but worked out and they could actually have a really healthy lifestyle and possibly extend their life expectancy. 

[0:09:05.5] KM: Even if they had AIDS. 

[0:09:06.2] JPF: Even if they had AIDS. Yes. Honestly, I still, to this day, I kind of wonder how I got into some of these situations, because I did not know the first thing about it. Me, I was half-cocked and I just went out there Ryan White Center and asked to speak to some of their nutritionist and doctors and made a presentation to them and they liked it and they said, “Hey, we’d like to purchase your services.” 

They wanted me to train a group of people as kind of a controlled experiment. Training some of these people who had AIDS or HIV, and I thought it was a wonderful opportunity and it was very lucrative. They were like paying me three grand a month, which at that time was a lot of money. 

[0:09:44.0] KM: Some people wouldn’t even want to be around AIDS people at those times back then. 

[0:09:47.4] JPF: Yeah. That’s because they were not educated about it. Actually, this story kind of takes a turn in that direction. I go to the manager and I explained hey, “I’m going to get a corporate membership for these guys. They’re going to pay in advance for about 15 people to have memberships here at the gym,” and it was a good deal for the gym. They were going to bust them in, literally, from Pine Bluff, from the Ryan White Center, three days a week to work with me. They were all fine with it. They were all fine with it. 

My philosophy has always been just one of inclusions, like I don’t care if you’re crippled. I had a guy in a wheelchair that I worked with. I don’t care if you overweight. The training at the time was very ego-driven. It was a lot of bodybuilders, and so trainers were thinking at that time, if you weren’t competing you weren’t legit. This is late 80s and that was laughable, because the last thing I wanted to do was get in the banana hammock and cover myself in barbeque sauce and flex my muscles in front of a bunch of fetishes. Really, it’s just like the bizarre thing in the world to me, and I don’t mean to make fun of bodybuilding. I wouldn’t call it a sport, it’s more of a pageant, but that was the training industry at the time. That was the environment that I was in. I was trying to change it. I was like, “You know, I think that the way fitness really belongs to everyone. Everybody needs to learn how to take care of themselves and be healthy.” 

I didn’t care what your problem was or what your — If you’re an overweight person or if you had a — I wanted everybody to — 

[0:11:21.1] KM: If you had AIDS, you didn’t care. Gold’s gym — I bet you got some pushback from the people at Gold’s Gym. 

[0:11:24.9] JPF: Well, this was the Gold’s in Southwest Little Rock. The thing is the group was sort of odd. We literally had like — Okay, there was a gay couple. One of the guys had such severe neuropathy that he couldn’t take a full step. He was so limited and I’ll say within three months he was able to a full lunge. 

[0:11:48.6] KM: From your working out with him? 

[0:11:49.7] JPF: Mm-hmm. 

[0:11:51.0] KM: That was rewarding. 

[0:11:51.3] JPF: I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was still getting results. A lot of it is just experimentation and stuff like that, trial and error. It was an eclectic group of people to say the least, and I did not care. I welcomed it. I was like, “This is great.” These people come from all walks of life. 

[0:12:09.7] KM: This is life. 

[0:12:10.1] JPF: This is life, yeah.

[0:12:10.6] KM: There’s life.  

[0:12:11.6] JPF: I took them in. They all came in. They met me and I worked them out. I spent a little time kind of talking to them as a group about just lifestyle and really trying to educate them on how to think about taking better care of themselves and not in a preachy sort of make better choices kind of thing, but more in a let’s just figure out how to take better care of your body, take care of your health. 

[0:12:35.2] KM: Did they stay long? 

[0:12:37.5] JPF: Well, it was a year contract. 

[0:12:39.2] KM: Oh, good!

[0:12:40.3] JPF: I started getting blowback from the members. People started to kind of complain and I guess somebody found out, or not that there was — I don’t think we ever tried to conceal it, but it got out among the population that the group that I was training was people living with AIDS. The manager pulled me into the gym into the office one day and he said, “We’re going to fire you.” I was like, “Why?” They didn’t really have a reason. It’s like they’re private gym. They have the right to fire anybody they want, but they were very careful not to say that they’re going to block them. I knew what it was about immediately. I was like, “Okay. Then I’ll be fired and I’ll just buy a membership and I’ll just continue to train these people.” It’s like, “No. We have the right to bar you from buying membership. It’s a private gym. We can have the right to not sell you a membership.” 

Basically, this group that had paid all these money to the gym was cut off, because they weren’t going to go there without me. I kind of protected them a little bit. They were safe while I was there.  

[0:13:45.5] KM: And you were their personal trainer. 

[0:13:46.9] JPF: Right. Of course, the main thing is they were there to train with me, so they fired me from the gym. I just said, “You know what? This is such BS and this is outright discrimination and I’m just going to go open my own place.” I just remember him saying, “You just do that.” I left. I went and got — I started kind of working around. I was working in several gyms. I think I was briefly at Powerhouse. I was at the War Memorial. I just kind of hit a few different fitness centers. I ended up working at the YMCA for a while downtown. While I’m doing all these, I’d left gym. I was the only person who really worked on that place and I didn’t snitched on everybody, but there was a lot of backdoor contracts, cash exchange kind of stuff going on. The place was just destined to fail. 

It was owned by a doctor of all things, and I actually called the doctor about the fact that they were discriminating and I said, “You should be ashamed of yourself. Being a doctor, you should know better. You’re discriminating against people who really need this, and that’s what the whole purpose of having a health club.” He said, “I’m not used to having people talk to me like this.” He was a jerk. 

Anyway, long story short, within a year, I think, maybe a little more than that, I was ready to open up my own club. Again, a lot of these stuff, the problems that I ran into is I’m so sort of passionate about what I do and I’m adamant about what I do that I kind of take over the room. I was sort of stepping on people’s toes everywhere I went, because I had a real clear vision of what I wanted to do. It clashed with people. They had a couple of fitness specialist at the Y who were fresh out of college, just had their wellness degrees and people who were coming to me more and more for the training and or questions. I was teaching a class there. I started teaching a class on nutrition. I started teaching just a kind of a general fitness class, but the trainers in there wanted me out, because they just — I guess, I was stepping on their toes. 

[0:15:54.5] KM: Threatened by you or something. 

[0:15:55.0] JPF: Yeah, they were threatened. I was training a lawyer who’s actually a judge now, you know, Barry Sims. He was a good friend and he was a real motivation to me and he was like, “JP, I think it’s time. You know you’ve been talking about this with me in the gym.” He’s like, “I think it’s time for you to open up your own place.” I was like, “Scary!” He actually gave me a saying that I still use to this day, he said, “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.” I was like, “I love that!” That was my mantra. 

[0:16:27.0] KM: Say that again. 

[0:16:27.8] JPF: Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. I just threw myself into a headlong, I didn’t care. I didn’t know how to write a business plan. I went out and bought a book on writing a business plan, and I wrote a business plan. I started hitting banks and going everywhere I could. I didn’t get much. My first gym was actually in the Lafayette Building, and so I convinced the YMCA to let me stay on till December, which gave me three months to put my business together. I was really operating on a deadline. I couldn’t afford to miss work. I couldn’t afford not to not have a place to train. Literally, Christmas Eve, Christmas day, I was working till 1 in the morning pulling down walls and mudding sheetrock and everything else.  

[0:17:09.9] KM: For your new gym. 

[0:17:10.7] JPF: For my new gym, yeah. 

[0:17:11.7] KM: Let’s take a break now, and when we come back I want to find out how you got the money for the gym and how you started on that. When we come back we’re going to find out how he started the gym, how you could start a gym. What he thinks is the best form of exercise for you, because there’re lots of options, and his new venture he’s doing, which is the ARP Wave, which relieves pain without surgery or pills. We all need that.  

When we were on the break you said, “I haven’t even gotten to the good part of this story. Wait till you hear the comma.” 

[0:17:54.0] JPF: Yeah. There’s a little karmic debt to this story for Gold’s Gym. I’m the process of trying to find equipment, which is extremely expensive. I’m moving forward with this thing. Literally, I have no idea if I’m going to get some of these things. I signed a lease before I even secured money. I was committed. I thoroughly committed myself to this. 

In the process of trying to find equipment for the gym, which I realized very quickly, I probably wasn’t going to be able to afford. It turns out that Gold’s Gym went out of business, unfortunately. 

[0:18:29.7] KM: You got their equipment. 

[0:18:31.0] JPF: I got to go into him and I was like, “Yes, I would like that piece and that piece and that piece because I’m opening — Did I mention I’m opening up my own gym?” Because he was like, “You just go do that.” I did, and I opened up a facility that since it was mine that was completely in line with my philosophy. I had no one else to tell me that I couldn’t have people living with AIDS or I couldn’t have somebody with some sort of disabilities. It seems ridiculous to me that anybody would want to try to block the access to those kinds of facilities to people, but that was what’s going on. I bought all their used equipment. I had a local body shop. I just took it all down there and I had them sanded and sprayed, because I wanted everything a certain color. I kind of had the sort of muted green colors with the big mirrors and everything. I bought all that used equipment and it looked brand new. You remember my facility, it was slick. It looked like a $100,000 club and everybody thought, “Oh! Wow! You’ve really done. You really made it.” 

I did all the work myself, so I think I had like $1,500 on a credit card and I was able to roundup $16,000, and it was an SBA loan.  

[0:19:42.6] KM: Were you still working your other job at the Y?

[0:19:44.7] JPF: Sort of. Yeah. I was working up until like that last week, because I had a small handful of clients. I had like four clients at the time and I was surviving off of that, but for my gym to make it, I had to have 4.8 clients to break even based on my business plan, which isn’t much. Then I gave myself till the end of the year to have 12 clients. That’s just me charging, I think at the time, like 30 to 35 bucks a session. It was really not that much money, but I was doubling what most trainers were charging at the time, because I was trying to do something different. 

[0:20:18.2] KM: You had note to pay.

[0:20:19.4] JPF: Yeah. 

[0:20:21.1] KM: I don’t think there were very many trainers like you. 

[0:20:22.8] JPF: Definitely not at the time. I think there are more now. 

[0:20:25.1] KM: Oh, there’s a lot now. 

[0:20:26.1] JPF: At the time I was definitely the first personal training sort of studio to open up in Little Rock.

[0:20:32.5] KM: You opened up in the Lafayette Building. 

[0:20:33.8] JPF: Yeah, Lafayette Building. 

[0:20:34.2] KM: And that’s where I first met you, because I read about you in the Parade Magazine, which is a national publication. 

[0:20:39.8] JPF: Yeah, they do this thing on entrepreneurs under 30.

[0:20:43.3] KM: You were in there and my neighbor came over and said, “Did you see this guy that’s here in Little Rock that they did an article about in Parade Magazine, this national publication?” She said, “Let’s go down and see if we might want to start training.”

[0:20:56.5] JPF: I remember, yeah. 

[0:20:57.6] KM: Kaye. Remember Kaye Woods? 

[0:20:58.9] JPF: Yeah. 

[0:21:00.1] KM: She quit. She didn’t come very many time, but I started coming and I got my husband to start coming. 

[0:21:05.0] JPF: Yeah, that was a — I trained you and Grady for I don’t know how many years. 

[0:21:10.3] KM: Years. We moved with you to the top of — 

[0:21:13.9] JPF: Yeah, all the way up to when I was in the Metropolitan Tower or the TCPY Tower. 

[0:21:18.4] KM: Which I have to say I thought was a bad idea when you were doing it, because there was no parking and I thought — 

[0:21:23.2] JPF: Yeah. It was a tough spot. 

[0:21:24.0] KM: Let’s just tell the listeners that you were down at the Lafayette Building where you started your gym. I didn’t realize your gym was so new when I started coming there. I thought you were no pro. 

[0:21:32.5] JPF: No. I was good at looking that way. 

[0:21:34.1] KM: You were. You convinced me, and then in this interview I’m finding out more than I even realized. After about a year I think you got a chance to move up to the — 

[0:21:44.9] JPF: The lobby area. Yeah, moved up into the main lobby.

[0:21:47.4] KM: After that you moved up to the — 

[0:21:50.0] JPF: Metropolitan. 

[0:21:51.0] KM: I thought it was TCPY?

[0:21:51.9] JPF: It was TCPY I think at the time, but it turned into the Metropolitan Tower within a year. 

[0:21:55.2] KM: What floor were you on? 

[0:21:56.7] JPF: 29th floor. 

[0:21:57.9] KM: See, I thought that would be too hard for a personal trainer, but it turned out to be really, really good.

[0:22:01.5] JPF: It was nice. It was pretty. 

[0:22:02.6] KM: Talk about how that move happened that you went there all the way — 

[0:22:05.5] JPF: It was more than a year. I was actually — I opened my club in 1992 in the Lafayette Building and I was there until 2000 and then I moved to the Metropolitan Tower in 2000 and then I was there for eight years before I sold it. Honesty, you were talking about advising people on how to open up their own gym. I don’t know that I would ever advice anybody to do that.
 
[0:22:32.0] KM: Why?

[0:22:32.3] JPF: It’s a tough business. Unless you are just like — I can’t do anything else. I’m just wired to do this. I’ve been self-employed since I was 19 and I’ve taken little part-time jobs here and there, but I’ve always sort of worked, if not for myself, then at least in the same spirit of working for myself. Anytime I’m working somewhere I’d put myself fully into it. Reputation is everything. 

[0:22:57.3] KM: It certainly is. Please say that again.

[0:22:59.3] JPF: Reputation is everything. It is everything, and it takes 20 years to build a good reputation and 10 minutes to ruin it. 

[0:23:08.0] KM: You are so right on.

[0:23:10.1] JPF: I was very adamant about following — I had very strict sort of protocols for myself or principles that I have followed, ethical standards that I followed. When it comes to opening a gym, they’re not very profitable. 

[0:23:23.5] KM: You had trainers there. How did you pay trainers there?

[0:23:26.4] JPF: I grew. I remember that first year, I said I needed 12 by the end of the year to be making like — I don’t know. 

[0:23:32.3] KM: You had 12 clients? 

[0:23:33.1] JPF: Yeah. I needed 12 clients to be making sixteen something thousand dollars a year. I was past 12 within the first three weeks, and then Arkansas Times did a big story on me and I had 30 something clients before I knew it. I had to hire trainers. I was like, “I can’t do all these all by myself.” I started hiring more and more trainers. I had a really good crew that stuck with me for a long time when I was in the Lafayette Building. I just kept kind of growing, but some of it was — Thomas Plumber is a guy in my industry. He said something that stuck with me in one of his seminars. He said, “If your business —” This can apply to any business, because said, “If your gym is not growing, it’s dying.” I was like, “You can just say that pretty much about business. If your business is not growing, it’s dying.” 

I just wanted to do what I love to do, which is to help people individually. I like working one on one or with groups. 

[0:24:27.5] KM: You’re service-oriented. 

[0:24:28.5] JPF: And I love to take care of people and I love to help them. I ended up creating a job and I ended up being more of a manager, and I hated that, and I was miserable. 

About the first six something years, I was loving it. I had a blast and it was great. I make great money, and then I started getting kind of burned out. I started doing more management type stuff. I was hiring more trainers. I was spending more time sort of taking care of employees. By the time I got to the Metropolitan Tower I was like — I was going full-on actual business. I actually had a sales staff. I had front desk stuff. I had trainers. I had group fitness instructors. 

[0:25:10.8] KM: Nutritionalist. You had a nutritionalist.  

[0:25:12.9] JPF: I had 20 employees at one time. 

[0:25:14.4] KM: No, you did not. 

[0:25:14.7] JPF: Yes, I did. I’d gotten pretty big, but the irony is, the amount of — I wasn’t making that much more money. My breakeven just was ridiculous. My rent was high. I had insurance. All of the different things, taxes were just killing me. It’s expensive to run a little place and everything just chips away. Everybody wants to take their little tiny piece of your business away and so by the time it was all done, I was like — I wasn’t getting out of it what I was putting in energy-wise. I didn’t feel rewarded and refreshed and replenished. Then in 2008 I went through a divorce unfortunately and it was just kind of like that — It was like that final straw. I just did not have the widgets at that point to continue. I was like, “I got to get out of this thing.”  

I just wanted to do something different. I really thought I was going to get out of fitness. I was just going to leave the industry. For about six months maybe, I was a spine rep. I actually sold implants to surgeons. I was like watching people get spine surgeries, which was actually a really great experience. I loved it. I loved being in the OR and I loved watching surgeries. It was like a good experience for me to kind of learn, A, why I would never want to go under the knife, but B, the people who are having the injuries aren’t these young athletic people. It was people who just never took good care of themselves. 

[0:26:38.1] KM: Why do you never want to go under the knife? 

[0:26:40.1] JPF: Man! It’s invasive surgery. Watching those spinal fusions and stuff, they pull apart the spinous process. They take it all. They cut away the frame and they take these things called a cob and they cob the muscles away from the bone and then they go in there and clear out all the disc space and they put in the cadaver bone or whatever and the bone glue. I remember asking one of the doctors, I’m like, “Does that muscle ever reattach to the bone?” He’s said, “No, but they don’t really need it.” I’m like, “What?” He said, “The only reason they need that is to stabilize that joint and since their bone is going to be fused, they don’t need the muscle to stabilize it.” I was like, “Oh my God!” As the trainer, the trainer in me was freaking out and I thought that was horrible. 

[0:27:28.0] KM: They need that muscle. 

[0:27:29.3] JPF: Yeah, you need that muscle.

[0:27:30.4] KM: I don’t care what you say. You need that muscle. 

[0:27:32.4] JPF: Also, these people were exactly — The people who were getting injured were generally very sedentary and they were overweight and a lot of them were drinkers. Their bone quality was really bad. They might have osteoporosis. Some of these guys — I remember this guy, we were watching his surgery. His bone just broke away like powder. He’s that alcoholic. 

These are the people that typically are needing to go in and get back surgery. It’s not like these guys were exactly healthy, fit active people. They’re not really returning to a healthy fit active lifestyle. 

[0:28:11.5] KM: I want to know, you said you didn’t really want to go back into the gym business, I think you ended up doing what so many people do, is they love what they’re doing, like working people out or making pies or whatever the part of the business they love that they’re good at. Then they start to grow and they don’t get to do that anymore because they end up in the back office. All I do now is human resources. I hire, train and fire people. That’s really all I do. 

[0:28:35.0] JPF: That’s what I ended up doing and I was not happy. 

[0:28:38.5] KM: I’m a teacher. Not really, but I am a teacher, and that’s why I started this radio show, so I can get that fulfillment of me of paying forward. 

[0:28:46.4] JPF: I totally get it. What ended up happening though is I quickly figured out that, okay, there were 52 doctors at the time who used those implements, used those surgical implements and the inserts, the implants that we sold. There were about 90 something reps and there were about 10 in the state who were making all the money. 

It was great, great money if you could even get like a case or two a day or three, four cases a week, you’re making money. It was really hard to get those, because the gatekeepers were very difficult to get past. I kept getting people asking me to come back to training and I was like, “No. No. I’m out of that.” 

I had one particular client, a friend or whatever, that somebody wanted me to train them. Just kept saying, “JP, train me, please.” At the time I left, I was thinking I was charging like 65 bucks a session. I think the average in Little Rock was around 50 bucks. He said, “What would it take for you to train me?” Literally, I just —  

[0:29:46.6] KM: $1 million. 

[0:29:49.1] JPF: No! I was realistic. I really thought about it. What would it take for me to be energized? For the amount of energy and intensity and everything that I put into a client, what would give me enough return to make me feel like I’m getting something out of it to want to come back to this and to bring back that passion that I had for me to really do a great job and show up and be present and really work them and not just phone in it and being burned out? I said, “$150 a session.” I figured it was just ridiculous. I just tripped the usual rate and I was like, “$150 a session.” He said, “Done.” I was like, “Really?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Okay.” 

Within — I don’t know, like a couple of months I had a full clientele at that rate and I was like — It just sort of happened, like weird. It was just really weird. I wasn’t training people in a gym. I had a bunch of equipment that — You can go to the back of my car right now, I still have it. I got bands and sandbags and kettle bells and all that stuff and some of my clients have nice home gyms, but I literally was just going from client to client to their homes and training them. 

[0:30:52.5] KM: With the more stretchy rubber bands and not so.

[0:30:54.8] JPF: The jump stretch, the resistance training bands, yeah.

[0:30:57.7] KM: I like those. 

[0:30:58.7] JPF: Yeah, they’re pretty good. I had them at the gym, because I used to — I remember I used to torture you and Grady with those things. 

[0:31:04.0] KM: Yeah, a little bit. 

[0:31:06.2] JPF: I just trained, people in their homes. 

[0:31:09.8] KM: Let’s take another quick break. We probably got time for one more. When we come back we’re going to learn about — We may not get a chance to talk to JP about what his favorite form or exercise is, because that could be a whole another show, but we do need to talk about his ARP Wave and how he’s relieving pain without surgery and pills. 

Okay, we’re back. We don’t have long. You’re listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. I’m speaking today with Jean-Paul Francoeur, a personal trainer, an ARP Wave therapist and a founder of JP Fitness. I was going to talk to him about the different kinds, this cross-fit craze and aerobics and yoga and Pilates and piyo and zumba and bar and swimming, and my favorite new guy — I wonder if you know this guy, Mark Rippetoe Program? The starting strength — 

[0:32:04.3] JPF: Oh, yeah. I know him well. Yeah. I used a lot of those principles in my training.  

[0:32:09.8] KM: My daughter went down and trained with him in Dallas. 

[0:32:11.9] JPF: No kidding!

[0:32:12.3] KM: Her husband gave her a weekend with him in Dallas, Texas for Christmas. 

[0:32:15.6] JPF: Yeah, great guy. Amazing, amazing trainer. One of the people I truly respect in the industry. 

[0:32:20.5] KM: Listen. I didn’t think at my age, which is 60 years old, that you would be able to build muscle at my age. I thought everything at my age would just be about holding on to what you got, but when she got back from his training camp and she started training me, she’s put muscle on me and she’s repairing things that I thought may be — 

[0:32:41.6] JPF: Just have to live with. 

[0:32:42.3] KM: Plantar fasciitis. You got to live with it. Carpal tunnel from the computers, you just got to live with it. Not if you’d start doing this. He believes in very few repetitions, like five, with maximum weight, which is kind of different form a lot of trainers for older people. They think you should do 15 reps of lightweight. 

[0:33:00.7] JPF: No.

[0:33:01.5] KM: It just wears out your joints. 

[0:33:02.7] JPF: Worse than that. I remember the big trend when I was training was if you’re trying someone who’s older, the senior citizen places, they all do this — They call it super slow training. They try to make people do these 15 second reps and there were 10 second reps. They’re trying to make them go real slow. Also, just to make sure that they don’t do anything, any damage, they don’t hurt them. They make sure they’re sitting on these machines where they’re all strapped in. God forbid, they actually recruit a stabilizing muscle. 

That’s one of the things I like about it. When you’re lifting heavy weights you have to recruit a lot of stabilizing muscles, and that’s the thing, is injury, anytime you have pain you weakness somewhere. You have some muscle that is not doing its job and it’s creating compensations that cause pain. 

[0:33:51.2] KM: He puts a lot of physics behind his weightlifting. 

[0:33:52.4] JPF: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

[0:33:53.1] KM: And where you put your eyes, where you put your hands, how your wrist is bent, where your knees go, where your feet go, because he’s not going to — He wants you to lift this maximum amount of weight, but he wants you to do it perfectly. 

[0:34:03.4] JPF: You may not have realized, I was using some of those concepts when I was training you.  

[0:34:06.2] KM: No. That’s a long time ago. 

[0:34:07.0] JPF: But he was one of my — Yeah, he was somebody I really admired and used his training stuff. 

[0:34:12.7] KM: The other thing that I just learned even though I’ve worked out with you 20 years ago and all that, but I just never put it all together. When you stress a muscle like that, you build cartilage and that a lot of problems with people’s backs, spines, the wrist, their feet, their knees, is their loss of cartilage.  

[0:34:31.7] JPF: Again, it all really comes back to lack of strength. 

[0:34:36.5] KM: It builds your cartilage. I didn’t know you could build cartilage. 

[0:34:38.9] JPF: If you have osteoporosis, your bone density, your cartilage tissue, all that stuff, all your connective tissue is it requires tension on the bone to be healthy. Your bones require a little bit of tension to be healthy. 

[0:34:51.4] KM: I don’t think people realize you can grow your cartilage back. 

[0:34:53.6] JPF: Yeah.  

[0:34:54.3] KM: I didn’t know that. 

[0:34:54.8] JPF: I don’t know about —  

[0:34:57.4] KM: How do you say it? 

[0:34:57.5] JPF: Yeah. It just depends. If you have something torn, you may not necessarily grow it back. Here’s the thing, you also may not necessarily need that. If your muscles know how to fire correctly in the right sequence, they’re just hinges. You really actually don’t necessarily need them. I’ve rehabbed people who’ve had total tear of the meniscus, like total, it’s gone. They are able to golf, play tennis, hunt, everything. 

[0:35:25.2] KM: Yeah. You were training people at Alotian Golf Club.

[0:35:28.0] JPF: Officially, I guess I was the golf performance and functional training specialist, which means basically that I was doing a lot of warming up of golfers. It was a neat experience. I really loved it there. I loved the people. I loved the experience. It was a great course, beautiful place. 

[0:35:45.2] KM: We’ve got 10 minutes left and I know you want to talk about your new passion. ARP Wave is your new passion. What is that? 

[0:35:50.4] JPF: We call it ARP Wave. ARP stands for accelerated recovery performance. In a nutshell it is a system where I use a particular type of electrical current, but it’s not like a stem that you would see like in a physical therapy or a chiropractor’s office. It uses a specific type of electric current. It uses direct current, which is similar to the way our own nervous system works. I can use this to identify the neurological origins of pain. For example, your back hurts, you go to the doctor. The doctor treats your back. They treat the structure that’s causing — Where you feel like you’ve got pain, but that’s not what’s causing the pain, that’s where the pain ended up. 

They go and inject you. They send you to physical therapy and you do all these stuff and your back might start feeling a little better, but the problem keeps kind of creeping back. I use an analogy, I call that starting at the 3rd domino. You’re trying to fix someone’s back, but you’re not looking back far enough. With what I do, I can identify where it started. 

Basically, their problem might have started from a pebble in your shoe and it makes you walk differently and as you’re walking differently you use your hips incorrectly. Then using your hips incorrectly, you load your spine the wrong way and eventually end up with lower back pain. They’re treating you for the back pain. The reason it’s not going to ever go away and stay gone is because you got to go back and pull that pebble out of the shoe. You got to go back to the first domino and figure out what started it all. 

What we do is we go to what started the problem, where that initial neurological disconnect took place. We turn those muscles back on. 

[0:37:31.5] KM: You find it with this machine? 

[0:37:32.9] JPF: It’s a process that I call — We affectionately refer to as search and destroy. 

[0:37:41.0] KM: It sounds like a videogame. 

[0:37:42.1] JPF: It’s sort of an intimidating title. I almost don’t know if I like telling people. I almost feel like I should make up another name just so I don’t scare off people. It really is kind of a good description. 

[0:37:54.0] KM: I want the domino theory. You go back to the beginning. 

[0:37:55.3] JPF: Yeah, we go back to what caused it. 

[0:37:56.7] KM: Is it hard to identify what it is? 

[0:37:58.4] JPF: No. It’s actually quite easy. I’ve got a couple of pads and I’m searching, I’m using one as a ground and I’m searching with the other pad. 

[0:38:05.3] KM: What kind of pad? 

[0:38:06.0] JPF: It’s an electrode. I’m basically lawnmower searching your body. I’ve got a current going through you. I’ve got a pretty high load going into you, but if your muscle tissue is healthy, you just feel kind of a tingling. What it’s doing in essence is eliciting a load to the brain. It’s just sending a signal to the brain that makes your brain think it’s loading it. If a tissue is healthy, it just kind of tingles. Your brain says, “Oh, I’m okay with that,” but if I get on to an area where I move into a spot where your body just really reacts and you’re trying to pull away from it, that tells me — Your brain is trying to protect you. It’s going immediately into a sort of a defensive mode and it basically magnifies your compensation patterns. 

Your back is hurting you and I’m searching you and I find that you jumped off the table when I’m searching your ankles. Your problem wasn’t necessarily starting in your back. I’ll search the back and most of the time — In fact, never have I found the origin of the problem to be where they feel the pain. They’re wanting me to treat where they feel the pain, but the crazy thing is 98% of the time, in the first session that I do with someone, I can eliminate — Just knock their pain in half. In some cases it’s more than that. 

[0:39:19.4] KM: You’ve identified the pain. Now, how do you eliminate it? 

[0:39:22.4] JPF: Okay. Once we identify it, I know where to treat. I basically set them up with the pads in the correct places. I use the second pad to find out what spot is “talking” to the first spot. What spot was shut down as a result of that original neurological disconnect. 

When I find those spots, I coach you through a very basic sort of foundation exercise type thing. If it’s your back, I might have you do a sit and stand in a chair. I’m going to teach you and coach you how to properly sit in a chair and stand back up. You think it’s simple, but people don’t just realize most people lower themselves using their quads. I teach them how to properly sit by pulling themselves into position by using their hamstrings and their gluts and then how to stand up very quickly and stand up without leaning forward and without rocking and without doing all the different things that we do. 

Now, here’s the cool thing, like your back is killing you, and when I’ve got this on the correct hotspots, I go back to a really light load. The output is basically like the load. I’m sending a signal, sort of a motor-learning signal faster than the brain can send it. I can accelerate the motor learning-process. I’m sending it about 250 times faster than the brain can do it, and it’s the correct signal. While I coach you through correct movements, I’m reinforcing those proper postures and I’m turning the right muscles back on. Literally, the very first time you go through this, your pain starts to disappear. 

[0:40:49.9] KM: Is it because you know the physics of how a body works is how you can correct it for them? 

[0:40:53.1] JPF: It’s still taking a lot of training. I’ve been doing this for six years and I’m learning something new every day. I’m a puzzle solver, so I still have challenging cases and I’ve had some that they’re very slow to resolve, but most of the time they’re pretty standard. Somebody comes in to me, they’re a golfer. They have medial epicondylitis or something like that.  

[0:41:13.9] KM: Everybody has plantar fasciitis. How about that one? 

[0:41:16.1] JPF: Yeah. That’s an easy fix. Actually, the first four session in that, I do what’s called a foot bath. Basically, I have you stand on the lead. It’s in a bucket of warm water. It’s kind of like right out of Lethal Weapon, the rusty mattress and the car batteries. No, I’m just kidding.  

[0:41:35.8] KM: Yeah, that’s scary. 

[0:41:36.4] JPF: Yeah. The thing is this signal — It promotes healing. It drives a lot of blood supply into the area. It starts to turn an area back on. When you have an area that it hasn’t been getting adequate blood supply and nerve signal for a long time, because it’s just shut down. The compensation pattern, what’s caused the pain, I’m able to get you moving correctly. 

When you get fixed, not only are you out of pain, but you actually feel this — You’re bursting with energy, because your body is suddenly — 

[0:42:06.3] KM: You don’t just teach people how to stand up correctly. You also do something that actually repairs it using — 

[0:42:11.1] JPF: Yes. Basically, the body is really intelligent. Knows how to fix itself. 

[0:42:16.3] KM: You can repair it with these electric waves. 

[0:42:17.7] JPF: I’m facilitating the body’s ability to heal itself. Yeah. 

[0:42:21.1] KM: That is so cool. Any words of advice on how do people get in touch with you? 

[0:42:24.9] JPF: On my business number, which just happens to be my cellphone. 

[0:42:28.8] KM: Text me! 

[0:42:30.7] JPF: Texting is actually the best method, because I get a lot of calls, spam calls, and if I don’t recognize the number I generally don’t answer it. Texting 501-952-5735. 

[0:42:40.8] KM: Say that again. 

[0:42:41.8] JPF: 501-952-5735, and my email is jp@jpfitness.com.

[0:42:48.5] KM: Same as it’s always been. 

[0:42:49.5] JPF: Yeah, same as it’s always been. 

[0:42:50.1] KM: For 35 years. We’ll put his weights and stuff up there. 

[0:42:53.9] JPF: I’m not that old. Hey!

[0:42:55.5] KM: I think it’s been about that long. 

[0:42:56.8] JPF: Okay, maybe. 

[0:42:57.7] KM: Look, I know you’re a health nut, but birthing all the different businesses you birthed you get a cigar. That came from the Humidor Room in at the Colonial Wine and Spirits at Markham Street in Little Rock, Arkansas. You probably won’t smoke it, but you might give it to someone.  

[0:43:09.2] JPF: Re-gift it. 

[0:43:10.0] KM: You re-gift it. Who’s our guest next week, Tim? 

[0:43:12.2] TB: Next week, it’s going to be Larry Graham from Graham & Associates. 

[0:43:15.4] KM: Oh! He was the secretary treasurer on the Dreamland Ballroom’s board and he’s a nephew of Edwin Brewer, the grandson of Adrian Brewer and they made a lovely art donation that we’re going to be displaying May the 4th and he is going to come and talk about his family legacy. Three generations of Arkansas artists, famous Arkansas artists. 

Thank you, JP, very much. 

[0:43:37.8] JPF: You’re so welcome. Thank you for having me. 

[0:43:38.9] KM: You’re welcome. 

If you have a great entrepreneurial story you would like to share, I would love to hear from you. Send a brief bio and your contact info to questions@upyourbusiness.org and someone will be in touch. 

Finally, to our listeners, thank you for spending time with me. If you think this program has been about you, you’re right, but it’s also about me. Thank you for letting me fulfill my destiny. My hope today is that you’ve heard or learned something that’s been inspiring or enlightening and that it, whatever it is, will help you up your business, your independence or your life. 

I’m Kerry McCoy and I’ll see you next Friday. Until then, be brave and keep it up.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:44:16.3] TB: You’ve been listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. Want to hear today’s program again or want someone else to benefit from it? Jot this down. Next week a podcast will be available flagandbanner.com. Click the tab labeled “Radio Show”, there you’ll find today’s segments with links to resources you heard discussed on this program. Kerry’s goal: to help you live the American Dream.

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