Leisa: Hello, I’m Leisa Holland-Nelson and welcome to another edition of Women Mean Business, where we’re going to take you up close and personal with extraordinary women doing extraordinary things. My guest today is Ellen Latham, the Founder of Orangetheory Fitness, Ellen welcome to Women Mean Business.

Ellen: Thank you so much, excited to be here.

Leisa: Well me too, and to be here live in an Orangetheory studio, wow.

Ellen: This is it; this is our home.

Leisa: Very cool. So tell us about Orangetheory.

Ellen: Well Orange theory is a 5 zone heart rate training program. It’s basically for a person who’s looking – I’ve only got 1 hour of time, I want to metabolically charge my body, I want to burn fat and calories at the highest level, I want to age gracefully; what do I do? Orangetheory Fitness. It’s all within 1 hour, it’s for all different levels; we have a walker category, a jogger and a runner. So I can have someone who might feel the workout’s too hard for me, I don’t think I can do it; come in and be successful. The most important thing is I want you successful when you leave our front door.

Leisa: How old is this company?

Ellen: Well I actually created the original workout about 8 years ago and it was re-branded as Orangetheory Fitness in 2010. So I was approached by a few individuals who were thinking of doing a franchise concept and they heard about what I was doing over at my studio and we decided to open up a pilot studio over in Fort Lauderdale and give it a shot. And people were just getting results at such a rapid pace that another studio opened, another studio, and they were very successful. And for the 3,000sq foot space that these studios are with memberships of 600 -1200 members, most large gyms don’t have that.

Leisa: That’s fantastic. So how many Orangetheorys are there today?

Ellen: Well we have 400 studios open, we have 800 licenses sold; we’re going to be in 12 countries soon – we just met with Tokyo in Japan which is very bizarre to me. We’ve got all of their little Japanese people teaching Orangetheory Fitness love it; very excited. So yes, we’re rapidly growing.

Leisa: Well thank you so much for being here with us today.

Ellen: Thank you.

Leisa: There you have it, another extraordinary woman doing extraordinary things. I’m Leisa Holland-Nelson, President and Co-founder of ContentActive, Houston’s leading web and mobile technology company. You can find me at ContactActive.com or follow me on Twitter @LHNelson. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of Women Mean Business.