Meet Chris Busby | Personal Trainer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Chris Busby and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Chris, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
We have two guiding values for everything we do at Live Oak Fitness:

1. Honesty and integrity in all that we do.

2. A Team of Fitness Professionals dedicated to changing people’s lives.

At Live Oak Fitness, our staff has worked to provide honest information with the highest integrity to all of the clients we get to serve. There is no shortage of fitness and health information for people to consume. Most of it is poor to bad information that is often targeted to prey on people’s fears and insecurities. We work to provide fact based information for clients and give them the most up-to-date exercise science we can so each session at Live Oak Fitness is as effective as it can be.

We also want to create the best fitness experience we can for each training session. I tell new coaches and clients that we do the opposite of what everyone else does. If most gyms work to get people in a contract, we do not have contracts at our studios. Many gyms are not very clean, ours is one of the cleanest and best kept facilities you will find. If most coaches only want to train athletes, our target market is 45 and older individuals.

Second, I wanted to create a place where people feel welcomed and are not intimidated. It’s hard to take that first step to begin a training and exercise program, especially if it has been a while or you have an injury. That begins with having quality people for all of our coaches. Our company has worked to hire highly qualified and honest coaches who have a client first mentality in everything they do. Personal training is not a difficult profession to get into, but there are not many people who have what it takes to make it a true profession. You have to wear many different hats in addition to your core profession as a fitness professional. We continuously work with our coaches to help them grow in their ability to problem solve for client challenges, effectively market their strengths as a coach, communicate as a sales person to meet client needs, and actively listen so we can truly help people live their best lives.

These two key values have helped us grow from a 1,000 square foot location in St. Simons Island to two facilities and over 7,500 square feet of training space in the last 10 years. Our goal is to continue to grow into new markets and help as many clients as we can build better lives through health and fitness.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I graduated from Reinhardt College in May of 2002 with a degree in Sport Information. From there, I knew my career path would be in sport broadcasting or collegiate athletics. That didn’t really take off. I breifly worked in college athletics at Presbyterian College and the University of North Georgia. I also got a masters degree from the University of Georgia. But I never had a goal of becoming a business owner until I began to work with a personal training company in Dahlonega. The company, Richard’s Private Fitness, is based out of Clarkesville and there I learned the formula for how I run my business. The owner, Richard Windham, was very client focused in his approach to training and much of my success today I can thank him for.

The biggest lesson I have learned over the last 20 years is to never stop learning. I thought I knew a lot about everything when I was 24 and fresh out of grad school. Quickly I had a hard lesson that I knew very little and was fired from my first job at 26. This forced me to realize how little I knew and how much more I could grow. With each job, challenge, and opportunity I have tried to learn something new that I can apply to my business today. I try to go into any new situation with the prism that I know nothing about it and I need to listen and learn as much as I can. You also go in with from a place of humility and grace when you go in ready to learn.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Even though I live in the Golden Isles, I am an Atlanta native. Once you get over the traffic and into the city, Atlanta is one of the most unique cities in the world. I love how you can take a turn off of any major road and find yourself in a forested neighborhood. I always recommend people stay ITP in one of wonderful neighborhoods. I have fond memories of visiting my sister in Virginia Highlands and walking through Piedmont Park.

With that as a starting point, my top places to visit start with Zoo Atlanta, Fernbank Museum, Centennial Olympic Park, and the College Football Hall of Fame. For those wanting to get outdoors and enjoy the city you have to hit up the Botanical Gardens, the Belt Line to Ponce City Market, Stone Mountain, and a hike to the Old Roswell Mill. Depending on the season, you have to take in a game with the Braves, Falcons, or Hawks and if you prefer college sports you can’t go wrong watching any of the great college teams in Atlanta. Lastly, for food and drinks I love finding any new or old spot in Atlanta that’s in the heart of the neighborhoods. I recently found Universal Joint in Oakhurst as well as enjoying a great meal at Murphy’s in Virginia Highland. I love getting a beer at 3 Tavern’s and Monday Night Brewing as well as a slice at Mellow Mushroom. And a late night stop at Waffle House.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My wife Cassie is my Shoutout for sure. We have been married for 19 years and she has been my biggest cheerleader and encourager. Born in Florida, she wanted to move back to the beach and in 2013 we made the jump from Dahlonega to St. Simons Island. When I said I wanted to start a new business, with all of our life savings, in a place we had only lived in for 8 months, with a saturated market, and no guarantee for success, she said go for it!

Cassie is also an amazing mother to our three kids. I would work all day, but she makes sure we go on all our fun trips and helps keep our house running every day. She is a high special education teacher at Glynn Academy and has a huge heart for her students. Cassie has created programs to help students with special needs transition from high school into post school life, she is the cheerleading coach, orchestrates a prom for special needs students in the county, and her classroom is a haven for everyone who walks in the door.

Website: www.liveoakfitness.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liveoakfitdecatur

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-busby-9202715/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liveoakfitdecatur/