CNY Executive: A chat with Eric Hinman, a serial Syracuse entrepreneur

In this issue, I speak with Eric Hitman, a serial entrepreneur and competive endurance athlete. His passion for health and wellness led him to co-found two Syracuse–based businesses — Urban Life Athletics (a CrossFit gym, indoor cycling studio, and high-intensity training studio) and Original Grain (a healthy, fast-casual restaurant). Hinman is also an investor in several New York City–based wellness businesses — WellWell, SWERVE Fitness, and Fitner Media. He also represents the athletic clothing company lululemon as a brand ambassador.

KNAUSS: Tell me a little bit about your background and how your career started.

HINMAN: I attended SUNY Geneseo from 1998 to 2002, majoring in business management. I grew up working for my father, who was the president of a small insurance company in Parish, called Oswego County Mutual Insurance Co. I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do after college. I didn’t go there with a certain mission that I’m going to be this when I grow up. I just wanted to get a broad spectrum of education, marketing, finance, accounting, and then kind of figure out how to apply it. So, my dad gave me an opportunity right out of college to work for him and sell property and casualty insurance. The timing was favorable because it was during what was called the hard market in insurance, meaning insurance prices were going up and I picked certain niches, mainly campgrounds and marinas that were experiencing just tremendous increases in their premiums. They were eager to shop for better prices.

The first seven or eight years of my professional career were spent selling property and casualty insurance, driving around New York state, soliciting these niche businesses and selling them policies. I learned early on that it’s best to focus on a niche rather than try to be a jack of all trades because then word spreads rapidly in that vertical market that you’re an expert, and you become the go-to person in that industry. So, that was one of the first things I learned in building a successful business. I worked directly for my father for two years, building up my book of business and then I went off on my own and started my own insurance agency and started licensing sub-brokers to sell insurance underneath me, soliciting very similar markets. I built that from 2002 until about 2009.

KNAUSS: What came next?

HINMAN: Then in 2009, I started stepping away a little bit from the day-to-day management and got involved in software.

I started a company called AppFury. Over a two-year period, from 2009 to 2011, I hired an employee who started managing the insurance business for me; up until then, I was hands-on. I was the guy who would go on vacation and would take every single phone call, just stay glued to my Blackberry at that time. I realized then that you don’t have to do everything. Instead focus on the things that only you can do that you’re most valuable at being involved in and delegate those other things. Building a business and building a team is so important. Having great people around you is critical to building successful businesses. As I delegated more, I realized that’s how you succeed and that’s how you become a serial entrepreneur. You just put a great team in place and then you can go on and pursue other things.

After I put a great team in place in the insurance business, I started working on software, building mobile applications, and web applications for clients. I partnered with a friend, Steve Von Deak, and we were in the Tech Garden in Syracuse. While being in the Tech Garden, we met the crew at Rounded and ended up merging with them in 2012. That’s really when we started firing on all cylinders and started doing great work and growing rapidly. I was involved there until 2014 and at the same time, I was training competitively for Ironman triathlons. It was just becoming very difficult to manage all the different things I was involved in. Around the same time, I also invested in a startup, Urban Life Crossfit and slowly got sucked more and more into the day-to-day of helping build the brand and grow that business. In 2014, I sold my shares in Rounded and focused entirely on training for triathlons and then growing the business and the brand at Urban Life.

KNAUSS: How did that go?

HINMAN: So, from 2013 through now, 2016, Urban Life has grown from a small CrossFit gym to a CrossFit gym, indoor cycling studio, and a high-intensity training studio. It has become a great brand here in Syracuse that I’m really passionate about and I love the community that we have built. In unison with that and in my travels, I’ve always been passionate about food and have seen a major trend toward healthy, fast casual restaurants in major cities. More people are becoming cognizant of what they put in their bodies and how that affects not only the way they appear, but also their physical performance and mental performance. I wanted to bring a concept like that here and develop a friendship and partnership with Chris Bily and Matt Goddard. Bily was one of the initial founders of Modern Malt and Goddard is owner of Café Kubal. Together, we conceptualized this healthy, fast-casual restaurant, called Original Grain. A great space just landed in our lap — the old Tim Horton’s location at the corner of South Salina and West Fayette Streets. In the past three or four months, we’ve been building up that space. It has been about a year in the works of conceptualizing everything and figuring out exactly what we wanted it to be. The next project for me is helping to build that business and brand, but not being involved intimately in operations. That means I’ll be just on the backend, helping with promotions.

KNAUSS: What do you think it was that drove you to get involved with so many diverse businesses?

HINMAN: Everything I’ve done since the insurance business has involved passion projects. But it was more than just passion that led me to each project; it’s something that I wanted to create to not only help me, but also to help other people. So, AppFury was that. Steve Von Deak and I were in New York City and we were walking around in Soho trying to find all the different shops, hotels, and restaurants. We were both passionate about our iPhones and saw this app ecosystem exploding in 2009. We built an app that helped tourists get around in Soho and then our plans were to scale that to every trendy section of every major city. We rolled one out in Midtown and then we had plans to roll one out in the meat packing district, then Aspen, Colorado, and California. But we soon realized that the way we were doing it wasn’t scalable, and at the same time, we were getting a lot of calls from people that wanted us to build apps for them. So, we transitioned into being more of a service-based business.

As for the gym — you know, essentially I’m solving my own problem — cool place to work out with a great community. In my travels, I saw how boutique fitness is exploding in major cities and wanted to bring that here. Same thing with the healthy, fast casual concepts in a hip restaurant with fun music playing. These are places I go to when I travel and I wanted to bring that here and allow other people to be able to experience it. So, I’ve just followed my passions and more so lately, everything has been kind of in the health and wellness space.

KNAUSS: How do you hire a new, great team member?

HINMAN: I seek people that are coachable. I like people that are into self-improvement because I feel like if they are into that, then they are going to want to continue to get better at whatever they’re involved in. They’ll not only improve themselves, but also better the business for which they work. I like people that are lifelong learners, read a lot, and have personality — all of that matters more than education. I feel like that brings more to the table than just a fancy education. I certainly don’t want people that are just there for a paycheck. I want people that are there because they feel like they share that same passion you do and they want to do something for the greater good.

KNAUSS: How do you guide culture in a growing organization?

HINMAN: I don’t know how much this goes for culture, but certainly living by example is important. Rather than just dictating, showcase the behaviors and the way that you conduct yourself, so that people follow suit. Culture involves just making people feel like they are part of something and that they’re not there just to make money for the business. They are there because they are building something great that’s helping people that they are passionate about and doing a lot of internal and external fun events with everyone. Creating a community with everyone in the organization is important, so doing fun things at the office and fun things outside of the office is key. The other thing is empowerment. I’ve never been a dictator-type leader. Letting people make their own decisions and allowing people to have authority in doing things is my approach.

KNAUSS: What is a major piece of advice you would give to somebody that’s interested in starting their own business?

HINMAN: Just do it. It’s difficult to tell someone who has a secure paycheck, a family, and has a big mortgage to just go off and start their own business. But if you’re passionate about something, start building it — whether it’s a website or a service-based business. Just do it in your off time and it shouldn’t feel like work. It should be fun. It shouldn’t be like, “Oh, I’m going to my job and then I have to do this, too.” It should be something that you look forward to doing and if you’re passionate enough about it and you can figure out how to monetize it, as soon as you start getting customers or making revenue, then it’s time to make that hard decision about whether to jump ship. I mean, so much of life is being happy. I realize that you need money to be happy, but you should also do something that you love. So, a big component of that is to just check in with yourself monthly and ask yourself, “If this is my last day, did I do everything that I would want to do today?” If the answer is no, then why are you doing what you’re doing?

KNAUSS: It seems like you travel a lot and you see a lot of different things, and it seems like that inspires you in deciding which businesses to get involved in. Why do you stay here in Syracuse?

HINMAN: It’s home base. I grew up here. My family is here and I certainly have a lot of friends here. I enjoy the things that I’ve helped build here and it’s a low cost of living. It’s a great place to start a business and run a business. You have inexpensive labor, inexpensive leases, and the risk isn’t as great as going to a major city and doing these things. It’s a nice hub and it gives me the flexibility, so that I can travel to the places that I enjoy being in. But there are not a lot of places that I go where I would want to be there full time. I enjoy going for one or two weeks at a time to different places, but I always like coming back here to the home base.

About the author: Jeff Knauss is managing partner & president of a digital-marketing firm, DigitalHyve.com, and has always been interested in hearing successful executive’s stories. He lives in Camillus with his wife Heta and son Max. For more, check out his blog at www.CnyCeo.org