This Was Never Just About Fitness
One of the things I hear most often when I talk about HUMN is that people think I am building a gym and I understand why. From the outside, that’s the easiest way to categorize it. But the more time I spend building this, the more I realize something important… it was never just about fitness.
Where It Started
Long before HUMN existed, I was trying to solve a problem in my own life. I cared deeply about my career and wanted to perform at a high level, but I also knew that my health played a direct role in that performance. The challenge was that those two parts of my life did not feel connected. Work lived in one place. Fitness lived in another. Community lived somewhere else. Each part required time, coordination, and energy just to maintain. Over time, that fragmentation started to feel inefficient. I would literally get to the end of the day or the last thing and just be drained. Not because I didn’t value any of those things, but because the system was not designed for how I was actually living.
The Missing Piece
What I was really looking for was not just a place to work out. I was looking for an environment that brought everything together. A place where you could take care of your health, focus on your work, and connect with people who are on a similar path. Not as separate activities but as part of a single experience. That idea stayed with me for years. It showed up when I was teaching classes at night, when I was training for races, and when I was sitting behind a laptop during the day. I did not have the full vision at the time but I knew something was missing.
A Reflection of Life
When I look at HUMN today, I don’t just see a business. I see a reflection of my life over the last fifteen years. Health and wellness became a foundation for how I show up every day. Work became a platform for growth and impact. Relationships became the thread that connected everything together. Those three elements are not separate in my life and they shouldn’t be separate in the environments we create. HUMN is built around that belief.
Not Replacing What Exists
There is a place in the market for traditional gyms. There is a place for coworking spaces. There is a place for clinics, studios, and specialized services. Each of those models serves a purpose and provides value to the people they are designed for and HUMN isn’t trying to replace those models.
It’s built for a different type of person. Someone who is looking for integration instead of fragmentation. Someone who wants an environment that supports how they live, not one that forces them to adjust their life to fit into it and that distinction matters.
Building a Different Experience
At its core, HUMN is about creating an experience. An experience where someone can start their day with a workout, transition into focused work, have a conversation with someone new, and leave feeling better than when they walked in. Not just physically, but mentally and socially as well. It’s about creating a space that people can rely on. A place that feels like a home away from home and that’s what I am building.
Reflection
When I think about where HUMN came from, it becomes clear that this idea didn’t appear overnight. It was shaped over years of trying to balance different parts of my life that never quite felt connected. Fitness was part of it but it was never the full picture. This has always been about something bigger. It’s about how people live, how they work, how they take care of themselves, and how they connect with others. Fitness is simply one piece of that system and what I am building is the space where all of those pieces come together.
