With savings of $4,000 in hand eight years ago, Noah Alldredge embarked on an entrepreneurial journey alone that today employs 10 people helping him on the mission to improve health and well-being in the Ozarks.
The registered dietician personally trained individuals in college and took that skill to market. Alldredge started BigTime Results LLC out of his home in mid-2007.
He spent the first six months doing personal training and working 20 hours a week at AIDS Project of the Ozarks.
“After two years of working at APO, I was able to quit and pay myself a salary at BigTime Results,” Alldredge recalls.
Alldredge reinvested the first two years of profits into his venture, and he says it’s paid dividends in the growth years that followed.
“Three years into business, we opened our first brick and mortar location and, two years later, outgrew that location,” he says, noting the current 3343 E. Montclair St. space was twice the size.
Offering personal training, corporate wellness, fitness classes and weight management programs, he’s currently considering another expansion.
“We work together to develop goals as a company and also on the individual staff level,” he says. “We want our clients to be successful, so we want to keep ourselves accountable to personal growth.”
Staff members have been known to serve meals at The Kitchen, ring the Salvation Army bell and man water stations during the MS 150 and Bass Pro Marathon. Alldredge says organized “lift-a-thons” have raised $10,000 for a food pantry and $5,000 for a local baseball coach with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Personally, Alldredge is an active committee member for Rotary, served on the Springfield Executive Breakfast Club board and reviewed teachers’ grant proposals for the Foundation for Springfield Public Schools. On mission trips to Nicaragua and Honduras, Alldredge decided to raise enough money, $2,000, to build a home in an impoverished community.
“The previous year going to Nicaragua, I realized the significance of what a simple home could do for a family,” he says. “By the end of campaigning of friends, family and clients, I had raised over $5,000.”
He’s also served five years as a “big brother” in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.
A few years ago, Alldredge identified a tax snag that threatened the future of his business. He went directly after a solution.
“The Department of Revenue had changed the sales tax code saying fitness studios are now classified as places of entertainment, requiring the collection of sales tax,” he says, noting state auditors were attempting to collect back taxes.
With little awareness by operators and their accountants, Alldredge worked with legislators and DOR officials to reverse the retroactive element of the tax code. But he’s not done yet.
A governor’s veto last year stopped efforts to reverse the DOR ruling, and Alldredge says support of tax code reforms by Sen. Bob Dixon and Rep. Eric Burlison should see it through this year.
“Missouri, unfortunately, is a Top 10 obese state,” he says, “and we do not need another reason to discourage healthy living.”[[In-content Ad]]
