Marc Marano Sets Big Goals to Bring Australian Brand F45 to the U.S.

As president of the U.S. expansion at F45 Training - the Australian-born fitness franchise - Marc Marano's job is as much sales as it is strategy. He's here to make Americans fall in love with F45 - and to get more franchisees in the process. And as you'll hear Marano talk through on this week's episode of #WeGotGoals, getting to F45 - the big goal he accomplished - required a giant leap away from his family's legacy business passed down from his grandfather to his father and finally to his cousin and him. As difficult as it was for him to leave the business in property, for Marano, it was even more difficult to watch friend Rob Deutsche. He opened the first F45 in Australia in 2014. “He was former banker, but again like me, decided to hang the tie up for the last time because he needed something better in his life,” Marano recalled. After six months of careful deliberation, Marano made his decision. "That goal was achieved only to walk out of a business that I knew everything about to walk into the fitness world that I had only ever been a consumer," he said. Now the he's in the fitness world, there's no turning back and no slowing down as he chases his next big goal - total market penetration. The franchise is in 22 states in two years. "In the last 24 months, we've awarded over 300 F45 studios in the U.S. We have currently, I would say it's just about to topple over 100 studios that have opened," Marano said. "We are awarding anywhere between 20 and 50 studios across the country a month." How's he doing it? "By traveling wherever I have to go, by speaking to whoever I have to." Uprooting his life on one beach in Australia to another beach in the US, Marano moved to spread F45 to the US from Los Angeles. But he isn't going it alone - he noted that his fiancé Emma Rose - also Australian and known for her time on the Bachelor Australia - has been a steadying presence in his life. A big goal he stated for the future was building a family of six kids. But first he'll have to wait for his life to settle down - he spends more time in the air, traveling to new F45 locations than he does on the ground.   ___   JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Maggie Umberger. MU: Morning, Jeana. CK: Good morning, Jeana. JAC: Hello. MU: Jeana, you spoke with Marc Marano, the head of North American Expansion of F45 training this week. JAC: I did. Marc Morano's whole job is to plant as many F45 franchises across the United States as possible, which is super interesting because it's a fitness franchise that comes from Australia, which Marc, you'll hear say in the interview, is not super common for Australia, it's not a franchise sort of country. It's more of like a one shop family owned kind of country. MU: Well, funnily enough, he also left his family business to do this job. Right? JAC: He did, yeah. It was a a real emotional struggle for mark as he sort of looked at an opportunity to work with F45, which was started by his friend and help grow that company beyond the borders beyond the continent and country of Australia. CK: It's interesting too, right, because he kind of talked about even though he had a love for his family business and it was emotional for him to walk away, he had this sense of freedom in doing something that was a little bit more meaningful to him even though ultimately he was then going to be executing someone else's vision instead of carrying his own family legacy forward. Can you talk about how we kind of sorted through all that? JAC: It was a difficult decision, but at the end of it all, he said that he followed his heart, which is important at the end of the day because you have to get up everyday and do a job. You're spending most of your time at a job and I think what it came down to is he surrounded himself in business originally with family. It was the company that he was working for, it was a multigenerational. Companies started in Australia in real estate that was handed down to him and his cousin by his father and his uncle. He has a big family and family is a huge priority to him. So as he was looking at the business and walking away from it, he did so really respectfully and after some heartfelt conversations because he wanted at that point to follow a passion project and to do something different. He didn't really talk through sort of the idea of legacy, but I would imagine that he had to think long and hard about legacy and about what he was walking away from because he talks about how his father is his, his greatest inspiration and I can only imagine how difficult that must have been. But now mark is on an airplane a lot of the time traveling from city to city in the United States. He's based in L.A. now, he and his Instagram famous slash the Bachelor, Australia famous fiancee, get to travel a lot together and get to do some of this work side by side because her job is really portable and he talked about how having her by his side made it a whole lot less lonely. Because again, I would imagine that going from being surrounded by a support system of your family to sort of striking out on your own is totally different and it's sort of a unique challenge, but here he is doing it and he's built his own sort of family and support system within that business as well. CK: So we're really excited about hearing this interview with Marc and Jeana. JAC: And stick around listener for the end of the episode where you'll hear from real life goal-getters and what they're achieving out there in the real world today. JAC: I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen and I'm here with Marc Marano on the #WeGotGoals podcast. MM: Thanks Jeana, thank you for having me on. JAC: So mark, how do you spend your days? MM: Now, I'm very fortunate to be in a career path that um, and we'll go into that a little bit later, but in something that I really, truly love. I felt that for a long time, even though I was working in a position with family and in a family business and you know, putting on that suit and tie every day that I was a corporate refugee, I use the term corporate refugee because I was not working for the man so to speak, but I was working in a career path that was financially rewarding, but it wasn't giving me any soulful gratification. JAC: That sort of tells me what led you to do what you do every single day, but what you do every single day is F45 and you are in charge of ... MM: I'm the president of the U.S. expansion at F45 training, so I try and bring F45, which is the world's fastest growing fitness franchise, to people around the U.S. JAC: World's fastest growing fitness franchise. That is a big title and a big responsibility for someone who's in charge of bringing it to the United States. Wouldn't you say? MM: Very much so. Very much so. JAC: Is it a, is it a lot of sort of responsibility to continue that growth? MM: Yeah, I mean we're not in any great rush. This has been a very organically grown business. To give you a little bit of the history of F45. We were born in Australia in 2014. One studio, a very good friend of mine, Rob Deutsch, opened up a group training facility. He was former banker, but again like me, decided to hang the tie up for the last time because he needed something better in his life. He opened up a group training facility and kept asking me to come along and try it and I was happy in the existence that I was currently living in both work life and in my exercise life, but to support a friend. I said, OK, I'll come and try it. and was immediately addicted immediately. So much so that fast forward a couple of years I decided to leave my family business to pursue journey of bringing F45 to everyone's life. JAC: And before we get into the big questions, obviously F45 is a big part of your life, but it, it sounds like F45. You two were born in Australia and I've had to transport or transplant yourself from your homeland to the US. So what has that process been like? MM: I think Americans and Australians are, they have a lot of similarities and you know, I'm based predominantly in, and I use that loosely, but I'm based predominantly in Los Angeles where our headquarters is in the U.S. Um, the transformation from Australia, Sydney, Australia, which is a coastal city, beautiful beaches, to Los Angeles, which again is a coastal city, beautiful beaches was not a huge culture shock, you know, and I've had the pleasure now of seeing so many different cities of America, meeting so many great people. Every city almost of America for me is like a different country, you know, you have so many different cultures from east to west, north to south. JAC: We are a hardy stock in Chicago where we are right now filming this or recording this. So I hope that we've been friendly to you. MM: Chicago is definitely in my top three cities of America. JAC: Big thumbs up to that. So let's get into the questions. Marc, can you tell me about a big goal that you've accomplished, why it wa...