Jolie Glassman believes in the power of leading by example. In 1998, after years as a fitness enthusiast she became involved in boxing. She fell in love with the training of the sport and decided to invest as much time and energy as possible into training like a professional fighter.
“I started reading tons of books and watched tons of fights,” she explained. “I practiced the sport as if I was actually going to be a professional fighter. I made sure I walked the walk and talked the talk.”
Glassman used here leadership to help create South Florida Boxing with her ex-husband. “A boxing gym was an awesome idea to me, being that I had an extremely extensive background in the fitness industry,” she said. “They [the city] had torn down the old 5th St. Gym about 10 years prior to our opening.” Glassman added that a lot of famous fighters had once trained at 5th St. Gym, including Muhammad Ali.
Glassman’s ex-husband had trained at 5th St. Gym and was extremely disappointed when it was torn down. They wanted to be the rebirth of a boxing gym in South Florida — but they wanted to bring it to the fitness world. “We were going to be boxing and fitness for everyone,” Glassman explained. “We started with barely any money and had no a/c. Every day after school I’d come to the gym and help out. About two years into it, my ex-husband told me I needed to quit teaching to come run the South Beach gym because he wanted it to be a huge family business and he wanted to go open up many other gyms.”
Glassman had been a school teacher at lock-down facilities, detention centers and prisons when her and her ex-husband met in 1997, the year prior to South Florida Boxing opening.
“I fully took over the operations of the South Florida Boxing and he went on to open one in Pembroke Pines and Aventura,” Glassman said. “I ate, slept and breathed my gym. My passion is branding and people, and making a difference in people’s lives at every interaction. South Florida Boxing has been branded all over the world and we’re extremely well known and many places have tried to copy our concept — I say ‘often copied, never duplicated.’”
South Florida Boxing had been successfully branded as a family-style gym, where the employees knew every member’s name. “I own the gym and we’re all very personal. Everyone gets individual attention here. We have membership referral programs, we send ‘thank you’ cards, birthday cards, and we constantly do events and get-togethers. We allow people to have their birthday parties here. My gym is basically a safe place to share!”
Glassman’s purpose is a motivator. “I specialize in motivating people and getting them to achieve their maximum potential. I’m a great leader and I put people where they’re good to maximize on their strengths. As for my gym, we specialize in performance training and I just trademarked a concept called R.I.T.E. Fitness, which is an acronym for Routine Is The Enemy. Everything we do here is never the same, always different, yet always geared toward strength training and skill building. We’re all about results, getting stronger, faster, better, harder, for longer periods of time — always having tons of fun all at the same time.”
South Florida Boxing attempts to supply members with anything their heart desires, creating a standard for customer service. They have an original boxing-style gym, but incorporate weight training, cardio machines as well as many other fighting techniques — kickboxing, Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu. The club also has incorporated bootcamps, R.I.T.E. Fitness, sparring and contact classes, core power classes and CrossFit.
“We’re the only facility here that has CrossFit in it, in addition to so many other disciplines whereas all other CrossFit facilities are only CrossFit.”
Glassman said that South Florida Boxing differs from most gyms in that her members don’t get bored. “They don’t need private training and they get tons of individual attention,” she said. “Most gyms people go to they either hire a trainer or they don’t end up going because they don’t know what they’re doing, or they’re just bored. People come here, they’re learning a skill and getting pushed past their limits; seeing insane results quickly and they love it.” -CS
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