Hidden Gems: Meet Nate & Jourdan Bran

Nate & Jourdan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I (Nate) was managing the personal training department in a big, well-known corporate gym. I basically got tired of working so hard for other people and told myself, “If I’m going to work hard, I might as well work hard for myself.”

I always wanted to start my own company, so I pursued it. I asked around, researched so much, and went to my bank I had been with for several years.

I applied for a loan and the loan officer shortly came back and said they couldn’t loan me anything. I asked if I could pull a personal loan (my credit was great) and she said no to that. SWING AND A MISS

Eventually had a client offered to invest in me. I was so stoked! I signed the lease to the 3,000 sq/ft space and later asked my client how to go about this investment, and he replied, “Yeah, I can’t do it anymore. But you don’t need me, you’ll be fine.” Another SWING AND A MISS

I was devastated. At the time, my mindset was, “I can’t do this without him.” Shortly after that let-down, my mom then offered to pull her equity on her house to help me out financially. The loan officer (at a different bank) was certain I was going to get approved for it because of my income, my credit, etc. It was almost a done deal.

Few days later, the loan officer called and asked I go in person to see her. She was almost in tears as she told me that they couldn’t approve the equity deal because my address on my w2 didn’t match my mom’s house address. Another SWING AND A MISS.

I was so beaten, there I was feeling defeated, having been told NO so many times, I already just signed a five years lease and didn’t have much money.

Shortly after, the loan officer mentioned that her bank was doing small business credit cards and I got approved for that! The amount I got approved for wasn’t anywhere what I was hoping to get, but it helped significantly….but at a horrible interest rate, but I had no choice than to take the deal.

In 2018, I met my wife Jourdan and we’ve worked together ever since. After having the business succeed and debts paid off, Jourdan and I were driving to see my family Father’s Day 2021 and we just started talking about the business and our plans. We were like, “why don’t we look into opening a second spot?”

So we went that Sunday and immediately started looking up locations in the Heights. We spoke to a broker that following Monday and Tuesday, we’re looking at spaces.

We signed the lease in August of 2021, canceled our wedding reception, and had planned to open in November.

Due to the supply chain, covid issues, and so many other things, we didn’t open until May of 2022.

It was one of the most stressful experiences We had endured in business because there we were, paying rent for an empty gym, bleeding our accounts waiting for our equipment to arrive.

By the grace of God and our hard work and consistent efforts, we were able to open the doors May 2, 2022!

Jourdan and I always envisioned and had faith that we would build something special, but we never imagined how special illuminate Heights would become for hundreds of members in such a short period of time.

We reached our six months goal in 90 days! We are growing every day, and receiving such good feedback from members as well as people who do day passes! We never thought it would grow at the rate it has!

Our mission is to continue delivering phenomenal service and making every member in our fitness community feel special. We not only want to provide a gym but most importantly want to deliver an experience!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Not smooth at all.

We had to pay five months rent out of pocket because our machines would never get delivered. We almost looked like scammers or business owners that had no idea what they were doing because we had to constantly communicate that our opening date kept getting pushed back.

Our mag lock on our front door gave us issues, where we had to spend some nights here until close to 10pm while having to be in the next day at 5 am.

Internet gave us constant issues, we had four technicians come one week!

Our software to check people in had given us issues so at one point, several members’ fobs didn’t work.

Our manufacturer that we used for most of our equipment was awful at communicating, sent us some machines that we didn’t ask for, therefore we had some machines when we first opened that weren’t to our standards, so we had to get rid of them, return them, search for new machines to replace them with, and spend more money in all the process.