How one Filipino-American boxing studio founder is going against the grain

I came into college really unsure of what I wanted to do. My parents kind of were trying to push me towards more of a medical route, especially as an Asian American immigrant. You know, they really value those types of degrees in the medical field. I honestly didn’t have any desire to do that. So going into college, you know, just to kind of, you know, make my parents happy, I tried to jump into, you know, something in biology or nursing, which a lot of, you know, Filipino Americans do. My name is Jose Benedicto the 4th. I’m the founder, owner, head trainer, hooked Boxing and Fitness in Neptune City, NJ. Originally, you know, I had plans of going to physical therapy, a route that would have, you know, my parents pushed me to go into more of a a Graduate School route. But I think along the way I just found what I was more passionate about. That was training clients and, you know, training athletes. When you have immigrant parents, Asian American parents who know they all want to talk about where does your kid go to school or what’s your kids studying. But you know, when I told them I didn’t really want to do that anymore and I wanted to, you know, focus on my dreams and become a personal trainer and get into strength conditioning work with athletes. They definitely didn’t like that. They definitely didn’t believe that that was even a a job. If they’re not laughing at your dreams, your dreams aren’t big enough, right? But I think it’s OK to go against the grain. My fitness journey pretty much began right after high school. Going into college, I was done with sports. I was trying to figure out what, you know, I wanted to do to keep me in shape, you know? So going into college, I got really into exercise and learning about the body, learning about anatomy. As I got into bodybuilding learning, I just became fascinated about exercise and and just learning, you know, learning how to build and develop a physique. What I liked about it was every little aspect of your life, every detail your life plays a role into your physique. Throughout the years I’ve worked with several different types of athletes, but boxing is the one that I really had a passion about. I think the way the gym came about was this really a combination of different aspects of my life. I know how to help people get the body of their dreams right, so why not put it all together? Our studio combines the elements of fitness training, old school, traditional boxing and you know, just the group atmosphere and nice studio atmosphere of working out together as a group. It was very important for me to keep a smaller group because we wanted to have that personal feel to it. So I could easily Max it out to do like a big group class, like a lot of how how a lot of gyms do. But I think the way I do it with a smaller group, the way we construct the classes, it gives them more of a personal feel. And I think people come out of here, they really feel like, oh, they really helped impact my life. It’s not just about what we’re doing here. Like I’ve mentioned before with what got me into exercise and boxing is all those variables that you do outside of here help you get to your end goal. A lot of people just want to jump into the industry because they like to exercise, but you should jump into industry more because you want to help people. It’s very easy to be sidetracked and hear from people amongst your peers telling you you don’t know any Filipinos that do that. You know, how many Filipinos do, you know, become personal trainers and make a career out of it? How many Asian Americans do, you know, jump to a business where it’s very, you know, where you’re the minority? I think I’m changing the narrative because doing something completely different. You know you don’t really see that many Asian American or Asian entrepreneurs other than the traditional fields of, you know, rent owning stores and retail or convenience stores. So it’s very easy to see when you when you reach those hiccups along the road, you can just be like I’m just going to go you do what I do with my major, go back to grad school, I’m the first entrepreneur in my family. So it’s it was really tough because you don’t have a lot of people to ask advice from you know my my parents went to engineering school. My brother it it works in tech. My sister is a computer science major. You know so there’s really no one I could have a conversation with you know. So I that’s why I got a lot of inspiration from a lot of the clients that I train guys that have been in the game guys have ran businesses before. So those guys are really the ones I was able to ask and I I think it was another thing that put pressure on me is being the first one in my family to have their own business and have a successful business and you know, make sure that, you know, they can make a sufficient income out of it. So I think there was a lot of pressure with that just to show that someone from our family can do it and someone from our country can do it. I want to be a good example and a good role model to a lot of other Asian Americans who are brought up, you know, the way I was brought up to where it’s like we have to stick with the same route. We have to do what works. We have to do, you know, what is safe, what’s going to get you successful. I like to help out every anybody that was in a situation where I was at one point where I couldn’t get any help, I didn’t know who to ask. So I want to be that guy for the for the younger crowd. I had to learn it on my own, you know. So it’s tough. And I take pride in the fact that I did it all on my own. You know, nobody really told me what to do. I had to figure it out from picking paint, from picking equipment. One thing that I did learn and the journey was to be patient. You know, not everything is going to go according to plan, you know, So Mike Tyson’s quote, you know, everybody’s got a plan until they get hit. There’s bumps along the way. Look, you know, all right, this is part of the journey. You know, they say, you know, every L you take is really just a lesson. Everybody says they want to be an entrepreneur. Everybody puts boss on their bio, Everybody puts business owner. But what’s what’s your main goal, right? My ambition was to be a great trainer, was to give a good experience to my clients. I think without ambition you don’t become a great entrepreneur.