At least three times in his life Will Bartholomew has had to flip his mindset to overcome difficulties—and the last time he wasn’t alone in the flip, bringing his D1 Training staff and franchisees along with him.
Sometimes, you don’t know where the path to your life’s mission begins until you are already on that path and you look backwards. That seems to be the case with former college football star Will Bartholomew, founder and CEO of D1 Training, an athletic-based training franchise with 64 open locations (all but one of which are franchised locations) and 137 locations in development.
The mission of D1 Training is to inspire and motivate, Bartholomew told Club Industry in an interview in early February. (Watch the full interview in the video above.)
And although the brand counts NFL stars (including Peyton Manning, Tim Tebow and Von Miller) and other professional athletes among its members, investors and franchisees, the brand has a soft spot for young athletes.
And that may be because of Bartholomew’s experience recovering from an ACL injury as an eighth grader.
At that time, a strength coach took him under his wing and helped him see that his injury could be the best thing that ever happened to him, Bartholomew said.
“He really got me to believe that maybe this injury was a sign for you to go work and go work really hard to reach your goal,” he said. “And so he would inspire me and motivate me. He would preach scripture in my ear. He gave me all the motivational quotes and then gave me great technique. And it really sparked a fire in my life that I've committed my life to, which is this mission that I'm on, which is to help athletes reach their goals. And that's really the why behind D1.”
Of course, Bartholomew didn’t know as an eighth grader that the coach had started him on his life’s mission and that the ability to flip his mindset would help him on at least two more occasions in life.
The second occasion came after Bartholomew graduated with a finance degree from the University of Tennessee where he played fullback with Peyton Manning as his quarterback. During a drill with the Denver Broncos, he suffered a knee injury, dashing his dreams of playing in the NFL. He was left to wonder what to do with his life, wanting to do something where he could control his own destiny. On top of that, he returned to his hometown of Nashville as a new dad and couldn’t find a place to rehabilitate like he had in Division 1 and professional sports.
So, he flipped his mindset again.
“I had this vision that I wanted to go out and help athletes reach their goals,” he said.
So in 2001, he started D1 Training, a place that replicates the Division 1 experience he had, including strength coaches, training groups, private training and nutrition guidance.
The first group he took through the training was a group of seventh graders, but the brand developed a following beyond middle schoolers, reaching university athletes and professional athletes as well as non-athletes who wanted to train like athletes.
In 2017, the company began franchising.
In early March 2020, D1 held a conference for franchisees in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where the theme was “Believe.”
The keynote speaker was former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, and both Tebow and Bartholomew addressed the franchisees about how new situations sometimes require new beliefs in your personal life and in your business life.
“I didn't realize at the time what we were saying at that conference we were about to be tested in,” he said.
COVID-19 soon thereafter temporarily closed businesses around the country, including D1 Training locations.
“I was really tested,” he said, noting that everyone was facing fear of the unknown.
He had an all-in owners call on which he asked an executive coach to speak to the group.
The coach noted the theme of the D1 conference had been “Believe.” So he asked the group, “What if you believe that the best thing that ever happened to D1 was COVID?”
There was silence as everyone absorbed that question, Bartholomew said.
“And I was like, it's just a mind flip, right?” Bartholomew said, facing his third mindset shift. “What happened to our system and what happened to me was a deep-down belief that not only did athletes want to come to D1 [but] athletes need D1. And they needed a place of refuge, they need somewhere to go to train during the greatest offseason ever.”
Bartholomew did something he knows wealth managers advise against: he pulled his money out of the market.
“I was like ‘I need tons of cash because I need to be able to tell my franchisees that we got you. We got you. Don't pay us royalties. We’ll figure that out. Keep your people on staff. Take care of your customers,’” he said.
Partially because of the belief that Bartholomew had and that his actions inspired in his franchisees, the company experienced record numbers in 2020 and 2021, despite COVID-19. (Success also occurred due to a top-tier corporate team and franchisees, sharpening of the company's systems, weekly check-ins with franchisees and other initiatives that Bartholomew shares in the video.)
About 70 percent of the D1 system re-opened in May 2020, and by June 2020, that number grew to 90 percent. Both months were record months for the company, he said. By late fall 2020, 100 percent of the system had re-opened.
D1 Training had double digit growth in same-store revenue from 2019 to 2020 including the full month its whole system was shut down, Bartholomew said. Its same-store total revenue increased nearly 70 percent year-over year from 2020 to 2021, according to an article by Cole Arranaga, vice president of sales and operations for D1 Training. The company’s top performing programs are scholastics (up 80 percent year-over-year) and personal training (up 106 percent year-over-year).
In 2021, D1 opened seven new locations, awarded 36 franchises and experienced 48 percent same-store-sales growth year-over-year. In 2021, D1 Training ranked No. 3,208 on the Inc. 5000, was named a top 30 gym in America by Men’s Health Magazine and was endorsed by the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Also in 2021, D1 Training ranked No. 481 on Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500, but it wasn’t ranked on the 2022 list, which came out earlier this year.
“You look back on it, and it's such a mind shift,” Bartholomew said about the success the company had despite the pandemic. “I'm a big believer in the power of the mind.”