- Alright, what's up elite THENX athletes?
Welcome to the two million subscriber special video.
Now, before we tell you the story on how THENX got started,
we just wanna tell you guys thank you
from the bottom of our hearts for sticking with us
all the way from the beginning, back when we had nothing.
Three years later, here we are, two million subscribers,
and millions of THENX athletes all around the world.
(energetic electronic music)
So I got my brother, Stefan, and my other brother, Bob,
the founders of THENX here, and we're gonna
basically tell you guys how everything came to be.
So the first question I'm pretty sure a lot of you have
which is kind of like the main way that things got started
is how did I meet Bob?
- Well, from my side, I was training in the traditional
method, which is, you know, gym and machines and so on.
So I started asking all these personal trainers in Miami,
the ones that I meet in the gyms and so on,
who is the best, who is the best?
And multiple told me there's a kid named Chris Heria
in Miami Beach, he's the toughest and he's the best.
And I went to visit him,
and it was a very interesting experience.
- Yeah, in Miami Beach, I had a Gym
out there, Calisthenics Academy.
Bob walked in one day, you were on your journey
of transforming your body.
You were ready for the next level.
You came in, and I just remember you lookin' around.
You were just like, "What the hell are all these bars for?"
- That's it.
And then that's when Chris told me, "Look man,
"this is the calisthenics method,
"people are not used to this.
"It's a different training program.
"If we train, we're gonna train body weight,
"go back to the roots."
- [Chris] And I killed this guy.
Three, two, one, perfect!
- That's how we started, and that's when,
you get a reality check when you start calisthenics,
especially with him, a fantastic teacher,
and you know the thing that was so exciting about
working with Chris is that he took
this whole huge journey of calisthenics,
and the different parts of it, and the complexities,
and broke it down into small, little steps
with day in, day out achievements.
It made me really love the sport,
and his method of training was exceptional.
- How did you meet Bob eventually?
'Cause I remember, I told you...
- It was actually the first day
that you were supposed to train Bob you were late.
So you said, can you warm up this guy,
he's easy, he's one of your clients,
and that's when I met Bob.
What you would do is every single morning
you would try and beat your record in pull-ups.
- I loved it, man.
It was the best experience I ever had in fitness.
- We'd see each other almost every single day,
'cause we were training every single day.
I soon found out that you were an entrepreneur,
you had your own businesses, and you were killin' it.
On Forbes Magazine over here, in Saudi.
And I was just trying to, like, pick this guy's brain,
just find out all the knowledge that he knows,
and especially you were super cool.
We video all the time as friends, not just as a trainer
and so forth, and I remember I had my business at the time,
and I was telling you I wanna
take this thing to the next level.
And eventually we talked our way
into doing business together.
- We discussed the idea of going online.
(energetic electronic music)
- Yeah, 'cause I had,
those were the programs that I had already written.
Those long term and short term goals.
I had broken these programs down into basic factors.
And you went through it, so you were definitely a believer.
- I believed it, oh yeah.
- And you were a testimonial.
- Oh yeah, I said, I'm the guinea pig.
I will invest, I believe in it 100%.
- And that's basically how THENX really molded
into what it was today, 'cause when it first
got started it had a bunch of great ideas,
like we had the gym idea, we had certifying athletes idea,
we had of course the online content thing,
and we were putting it all into one.
And meanwhile we had started
the YouTube channel on the side.
And that was more of a means to get people to notice
more what we were doing, the programs we were doing,
and having people become more aware of the THENX discipline.
The THENX mentality, and that kind of took off.
Definitely wouldn't be here without the team,
so it's definitely--
Why don't you give us a little background
of how you got into basically everything?
= Yeah, so as Chris said,
I was a trainer at calisthenics academy.
I basically taught the morning classes
and I did a few personal training lessons.
It was actually Bob and Chris who were originally
talking about creating this new company,
Calisthenics Online LLC,
which would later be known as THENX.
They both actually asked me to be a part of it,
and at the time I was a student studying physical therapy,
and I was able, you know, I can be a part of it.
I don't really need a percentage
because I already have my own career path, I wanna do this.
And Chris and Rob actually said,
"Why don't you take a break from school
"And see where this can go?"
And I'm glad I did, the result is greater
than I could have ever expected.
- When we finally decided to make THENX legit,
we had been talking about it for a while on your balcony.
Actually, THENX was literally created on his balcony.
All the paperwork, everything, was created
on Bob's balcony, that's great.
- The drawings, I remember - The drawings, dude.
- We drew plans for the gym, and when we actually
saw the space and put it together,
we're like, okay, this is not realistic.
- From Calisthenics Academy, I had made
that decision to really start over.
I closed down my old gym and started fresh with Bob,
and when we had first started, we started
with like $42,000, and that was basically
supposed to cover everything, the website, the legal fees.
It sounds like a lot of money,
but honestly when you're trying to create a business,
it's not that much.
Literally we were all working, probably
for the first two years, I would say for free.
So Bob told me one time, he was just like
"You need to stop personal training all these people.
"You're personal training one person for an hour,
"when you could be doing so much more within that hour."
I was crazy booked like all the time,
that I didn't have enough time
to start working on the business.
And the thing is, at the end of the day,
you might see ten people, and it's not much.
You're not covering much in the long term of things.
So that's when I had decided that I wasn't
going to be a personal trainer anymore.
I stopped personal training, I focused completely
on this thing, and at the beginning
everything felt, like impossible.
I was filming all the videos, editing all the videos,
- It took a long time.
- I had to take all the pictures, you know.
The only way I was able to survive, actually,
is because I had two personal clients,
and it was Bob and his son.
We'd been working behind the scenes
for so many months, it felt like almost a year,
before we finally lay out the website.
Eventually things started picking up really slow.
Things were super slow at the beginning.
But I never doubted it, not for one second,
that we weren't gonna make it.
I felt it, even though I would look
at these numbers, and back then the numbers were
really small, we were making like, oh 20 people
just signed up, or 10 people, five people just signed up.
But the fact that I can feel those little numbers
every single day, I knew that, shit, even if
we do it for three years, we'll probably make it somewhere.
That's the moral of this story, just never give up.
Always believe, believe, believe in yourself.
Without a doubt.
So after a couple months of being in the THENX
fitness studio, business definitely started to pick up.
We got a lot more online members on THENX.com,
and I think it was, a lot to be,
like one of the undercurrents that
we had was the YouTube channel.
That was just one of the things that we
were just kind of doing on the side, you know,
but that ended up becoming, like,
slowly moved its way into the main thing,
or the main focus that we ended up doing.
That and just creating content is what I mean.
And using our YouTube channel a lot,
so we started getting a lot of traction
on the YouTube channel, and soon after we hit 100k.
Remember the video for that one.
(Bob laughing)
- [Bob] That was a great video.
- That was crazy, man.
After that we had already hit a couple million
views on some of the videos.
Some of the video, like ten minutes of hell,
that was like a classic.
I think that was the first video
that we ever hit a million views on, honestly.
- We started seeing international countries
coming in and viewing, like, I think it was
like 60 international countries other than the US.
That was very exciting.
- And that was around the time
when we went to the LA Fit Expo.
- We spoke to ask Osvaldo to come.
- Yeah, that's when we were
tracking Osvaldo to come through.
- Before THENX I was working on Telemundo full time.
Any free time that I had
I dedicated to calisthenics, and working out.
Before I actually met Chris I was watching his videos
on YouTube, and one day I got invited
to Calisthenics Evolution,
he said that he was part of it,
and that's how we met and became friends.
Every day I would see him
dedicating his time to calisthenics,
and when he asked for me to start working with him
at THENX, at the beginning I was a little scared,
but honestly right now that was
the best decision of my life.
- Osvaldo is the best.
He feels definitely like one of us.
The THENX team is so tight, we're all like one big family.
That's what I love about everybody that works with us.
- So, back in March I came to Miami
to visit some family friends,
so I get a call from Chris, me and him link up,
I think we did a video that day as well,
and he talked to me about potential joining the team.
I was in New York at that time,
I was doing well working for Equinox and whatnot.
It wasn't an easy move for me,
but it was a no-brainer to join this THENX team.
I've been supporting Chris since 2014,
and I've seen THENX happen.
I used to come to the gym and train with them,
so I seen it all when it started,
and to see where it's at now, it's crazy.
It's unbelievable in my eyes,
'cause the growth has been extremely rapid,
and to be a part of the team now has been a blessing.
- Before THENX, I was living in Gainesville, Florida,
working for a roofing company Monday through Friday.
Being a part of the THENX team
pushes me to become the best version of myself,
and it's a dream come true, because my core values
are to inspire as many people as possible,
and I get that opportunity through working through THENX.
I'm really excited to see what the future has in store,
and I'm excited to see what I can do
to help the company grow even more.
- First time we went to the LA FitExpo,
we had about 100k,
- No one knew us. - yeah, no one knew us,
remember that?
The next time we went to the LA FitExpo,
we came back with one million subscribers.
After we came back from that trip in LA,
things started getting a lot more serious.
We started traveling a lot more.
I feel like we've lived like nine lives, right?
(Bob laughing)
We've been all over the world,
literally, traveling, teaching workshops.
We grew another million subscribers from there, too.
We have over one million subscribers on the THENX app.
- It's incredible.
- It's been quite a journey.
We visited so many countries it was nuts.
And just to go to every single country,
and to be greeted with so much energy.
We can just travel, any day, any place around the world,
and we're gonna see THENX athletes, you know?
And to come from three years ago where this was just
a thought in our heads, and we all grinded so hard.
We all sacrificed so much just for us
to be able to sit here and tell this story,
I just feel like there's nothing else I can do
except work even harder.
Things are still going.
As they're going we're making them happening,
but things are, as you can see, are slowly growing,
but guys this is just the beginning.
We wanna thank you guys so much for tuning in,
sticking with us this whole time.
You guys rock, two million subscribers,
but we're gonna still treat it
like we got 300 subscribers.
Since day one, we're still grinding out here, guys.
Thank you guys so much for watching, peace out!
(energetic music)