Shereen Bienz has been involved in the CrossFit industry after joining a gym in 2010 because she wanted to impress a guy she met in a bar. Shereen ended up marrying that guy two years later, so she guesses it was a good idea. It completely changed her life.She became interested in competing within that first year, snagging a spot on the CrossFit Memphis regional team after the very first CrossFit Open in 2011. Soon after that, Shereen got her L1 and became interested in coaching CrossFit. Between part-time coaching and competing in different local and national events (including Wodapalooza), it was clear that fitness was a passion. Almost 5 years after joining CrossFit Memphis, she took a risk and left her wonderful job at a medical device company (thanks to the support of her husband Jon and the friends that hired her) to join Barbell Shrugged. During this time Shereen also coached at several gyms in the city of Memphis because she just plain loved CrossFit so much.
This past year, after a very rough summer with lots of emotional turbulence, Shereen returned to her previous job in the medical device industry. She found that making her passion the thing she did for money, the thing she did for a living, no longer made it fun for her. Shereen is a person that needs to compartmentalize. When the lines of her life, between her home, family, friends, coworkers, fun (gym), and health blur, she gets overwhelmed and struggled to find an outlet for stress. So she is back, but enjoying my fitness and gym once again. Where at times it had been a source of stress, now it is an outlet. And she is happier and better for it. Shereen doesn’t regret her decisions and she did have a ton of fun, but she also learned that the saying of “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life,” is different for each person. So instead, she works at her work, plays at her gym, and loves in her home. And supports her husband, Jon, in his ventures.
 
Jon Bienz is a 34, almost 35, year old Project Analyst for one of the largest corporations in the world. Now, that’s his day job. His passion, his desired future state of being has more to do with what he does outside of his 8-5.

Jon started a company, Intentional Gym, in 2016. That company is pretty much the embodiment of what he does with most of the time.

Jon started working out when he was 19 in the Navy. Pretty much all bro, all day. He got up to a pretty hefty 220 at one point but kept having recurring injuries with his lower back. Jon won a few powerlifting competitions, whose trophies are circulating somewhere in the CrossFit Memphis box (3 gold plates).

At one time he thought that he would be in the fitness industry, but he fell out of love with it for a bunch of jumbled reasons and went down the corporate route. That was about six years ago.

Distancing from the fitness industry lasted about four years, where he jumped from gym to gym and program to program just staying out of horrible shape but never really being in good shape.

A new friend Jason Leinss was the spark that brought Jon back full-force to the gym. Jon’s “brother-from-another-mother” was a great sounding board and one of the most steadfast people ever to have lived.

Now, where Jason was the tipping point it was Jon’s wife, who led their gym through a tough time and drove the bus for most of 2016, that let all of his aspirations come to fruition.

Jon started by working with gyms and businesses to develop their operations. Helping them to eliminate waste, identify gaps, develop systems of all types from their CRM to the way they manage tasks for their employees.

Jon helped to launch a Nutrition Business called Lifestyle Nutrition with Becca Chilczenkowski and Angelo Sisco. He developed the entire operating system with a great guy in Memphis, Brooks Meadows, for his gym that will be opening in March of 2018.

Jon also completely rebuilt the CrossFit Memphis website and all of its internal operations.

Somewhere along the way Jon became intrigued (some might say obsessed) with Steve Jobs.

Jon started studying how gyms worked from end to end. He also started competing again. He knew he had to use the product to truly understand it. Over the last few years, he has done a range of competitions from Battle of the Barbells, Spartan Races, local events, and in-house comps.

 

This deep dive worked for me.

 

Where once I was focused on just background operations I have transitioned to the entire scope of business functions. My company develops suite as the whole of background needs from contracts for employees, integrates, or brings on new systems that can integrate, all the individual systems such as payment collection, email, google(storage drives), CRM, point of sale systems, and gym management systems, all into one.

 

 

That and we build the website or develop the current site to make all of this possible. We develop the coaches training, identify areas that can improve, launch Challenges, competitions, events, plan and assist with social media, program for gyms.

 

It has truly become an all in one top to bottom integration.

 

It all happened this way because of the true value and ease of use when all of these things work together and have a similar look, feel, and voice.