Ignite Your Fitness: EMS Training Unlocked with Conrad Sanchez

What Happens When a Finance Professional Turns His Passion for EMS Training into a Purpose-Driven Movement?

EMS Training became the catalyst for Conrad Sanchez’s journey—from earning a degree in kinesiology to climbing the ranks in finance—until he ultimately discovered his true calling as a fitness entrepreneur with a heart-first mission.

Conrad shares how discovering EMS (Electrical Muscle Stimulation) training completely transformed his approach to wellness—making it possible to deliver powerful results in just 20 minutes. But this isn’t just about a workout; it’s about building a business that changes lives, adapts through challenges like the pandemic, and leads with purpose.

🎧 Tune in to discover how heart and innovation can fuel your business, why EMS training might be the future of fitness, and how you, too, can turn your calling into impact.

Key Takeaways from this Episode

The transformative journey from finance to fitness
Defining a heart-led business in the fitness realm
The challenges and triumphs of transitioning to entrepreneurship
The magic of EMS Training: A 20-minute solution to fitness and health
Expanding the reach of EMS through education and business consulting

About the Guest

Conrad Sanchez is a trailblazer in fitness innovation, combining a Master’s in Kinesiology, elite certifications, and deep expertise in Whole-Body EMS to deliver powerful results. With years of experience training clients and certifying professionals, he brings a science-backed, results-driven approach to personal fitness, business growth, and professional education.

Additional Resources

Website: www.conrademsfitness.com & https://about.me/conradsanchez
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/conradsanchez
Facebook: www.facebook.com/conradfitness
X: https://x.com/icsfitness
Instagram: www.instagram.com/conradfitness
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/icsfitness

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Explore the Dialogue’s Treasures: Unearth the insights within! Delve into the profound wisdom woven throughout our conversation.

Speaker: 0:01
Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let’s go. Let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs: 0:36
Welcome back to the Heart-Led Business Show where passion meets purpose. And today we have the incredible Conrad Sanchez in the spotlight with a master’s in kinesiology and a treasure trove of certifications. Conrad is not just flexing muscles, he’s shaping hearts and minds. So join us as he shares his journey in the world of W-B-E-M-S and we’ll learn a little bit more about what that means and how his heartlight approach has transformed both clients and trainers alike. So get ready to feel the beat of success. And Conrad, welcome to the show.

Conrad Sancez: 1:10
Thank you so much. That was an amazing introduction. I need to write that down as a slogan. Thank you.

Tom Jackobs: 1:18
I’ll send it over to you. That’s awesome. I’m glad to speak to a fellow trainer and a fitness pro. As everybody knows I was in that industry for 15 years, so it’s always fun to geek out with other trainers. So I’m excited to have you on the show. And the first question, though, I always to ask is, what’s your definition of a heart-led business?

Conrad Sancez: 1:38
It’s a very good question. So to me it’s always been what fulfills me, right? What fills a core wound, what makes me smile? What small victory. So I like to celebrate and I found this in the fitness industry. I wasn’t always in the fitness industry. I was in finance for a little bit. I was an executive assistant to billionaire for a little bit, and. And I always knew I wanted to help people, but, and so I was always driven towards customer service type jobs, but it’s not until I found fitness that I really found a purpose. And then, the hard part comes in when I am able to help someone. Knowingly that they like, it’s one thing to help someone lose five pounds, but it’s very different to help someone lose five pounds and they have diabetes and they have a knee injury, and they have a shoulder impingement and all these other ailments that. Most uneducated trainers would not know how to navigate or stay away from, or and I saw these things as like problems that needed to be solved, just like a little puzzle. There’s nothing wrong with a person. There’s, and and the fulfillment that, that it gave me was incredible to see someone like, I never thought I was gonna be able to do this, and now I can. And so to me it felt my heart to to be in the presence of these things on a daily basis.

Tom Jackobs: 2:58
Yeah. No, that’s awesome. And that’s really, I hear that over and over again on the show too from other business owners that it’s that purpose and that drive, and it’s just fun to wake up in the morning and do work, which, a lot of people don’t get to do that.

Conrad Sancez: 3:14
Yeah, exactly. So the passion there is like you’re get to do something new. Like of course there’s challenges with this industry, with with any job. There’s, there are gonna be challenges, but the actual job that is to train the person. I find that incredibly fulfilling.

Tom Jackobs: 3:31
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah I did too. It was, that was always very fun. The problem solving too. That was my superpower as well. It sounds like that’s your superpower is just get those tough cases where you just want to help that person as much as possible. And, it’s like you have an ankle injury, have a shoulder injury, and it’s okay, what are we gonna do today? And it’s always fun.

Conrad Sancez: 3:51
Exactly. Yeah. And it, and then you, if you’re able to find a solution it is incredibly fulfilling for the other person as well. And so you asked about heart-led like what does it mean to be a heart-led, but there’s my heart, but there’s also the heart of. The clients and the heart of the client gets improved or gets fulfilled as well because they are getting what they want.

Tom Jackobs: 4:10
Yeah. No that, that’s great too. I haven’t heard that from a guest yet. That, that connection heart to heart, with your clients too, and especially in the personal training industry where it is very personal as well, that definitely comes into play. I would love to dive a little bit deeper into your transition from working for other people and working for a company and even the billionaire to owning your own business.’cause that’s quite, quite a shift. So tell me kinda how that happened for you.

Conrad Sancez: 4:38
I mean it was incredibly scary, but but I was but what inspired me actually was when I was working for the billionaire I was an executive assistant, so all professional stuff, and I was working 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM in a hotel room and never saw anything else in a five star hotel room, but it was still a hotel room. But in running into meetings and things like that, I would catch the personal trainer that traveled also with us and the personal trainer was in a bathing suit, just flirting with staff. And I was like, how, where you never work? Sometimes I have to train him and then he brings his wife. I have to train her too. And then maybe her daughter and so your worst day is a three hour day and you’re complaining about it, and I need to be you. And and so that’s what inspired me to be like, oh this is an actual job. Like personal trainer is an actual job. I saw personal trainers at the gym, but like I never thought twice about it. And then I was always athletic. I played basketball in my life and all this stuff. When I met him and I was like. What do I need to do to be a personal trainer? And then I got educated and yeah, and that’s where, how I transitioned. And so then working from working with people working alone, I didn’t initially start as a solo personal trainer. I started working at a gym like traditional trainers typically do. But very quickly the school I went to my instructor at the school or the teacher at the school was forming a small personal training team, and she had a lot of vision but lacked like the follow through and operations side of things and I was pretty good at like scheduling and all these things and so I, I became the manager for the company and then I continued my journey.

Tom Jackobs: 6:17
Nice. So what, how did you prepare to transition from the day to day the nine to five six to 11 job that you had into then your own business. What was that journey like or transition?

Conrad Sancez: 6:31
So it was very brutal. I got laid off from the executive assistant job.

Tom Jackobs: 6:36
Oh, no.

Conrad Sancez: 6:37
I got a I got a severance package even though I had only been there for a year and I used that money to, for personal training school. And the personal training school was three months long.

Tom Jackobs: 6:47
Okay. It

Conrad Sancez: 6:47
was full-time, three months long. In the meantime, I was interviewing for office jobs. I thought personal training is gonna be my weekend, evenings, mornings thing, but I’m still gonna have a nine to five. Like you can’t survive in this country without insurance and all these things. And and I got a job. I got a job as an office manager for a tequila company. Random very high end tequila company. And, after two weeks at sitting at a desk for eight hours, I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I had started personal training on the weekend and I was like this makes me so much happier and I’m standing and I’m active and I’m helping people. And then I went to my job and I was miserable. And so two weeks later I was like. I quit. I quit. And because I already had the, some somewhat of built hours into the gym, I thought, I just need to expand these hours. And and so that was the transition, but it was not an easy choice or anything. Like I was also young and I thought let me just do it. If I’m not gonna do it now, like I’m gonna have back problems. And I started seeing clients and that’s what made me realize you have an office job and you have all these ailments. I cannot go this route.

Tom Jackobs: 7:49
Yeah, that, that’s, we could go day, days of talking about office work and how unhealthy that can be for people. Yeah. So when you made the transition. So that’s a pretty quick transition, like two weeks from, that’s pretty quick. I took a year to me.

Conrad Sancez: 8:08
Yeah. And to, to each their journey. It is, you have to be ready for it or not. And I don’t know if I was ready, but I made the jump.

Tom Jackobs: 8:16
Yeah. So then one, once you started the business, how did that change over time to where you are today?

Conrad Sancez: 8:23
So the company it was based in Brooklyn, in, in New York. And we went to people’s houses and I was I was managing part of the company, like the operations side of it and training people at the same time.

Tom Jackobs: 8:34
Okay.

Conrad Sancez: 8:34
Then after a few years of doing that, I, I was starting to bump heads with the direction of the company. The owner wanted to keep it to, to going to people’s houses and I thought we needed to go into like more of a facility or a space to offer classes and things like that. And so then we split up and took clients and, we negotiated what clients I would take and not and so then I was fully booked and I was pushing actually more corporate wellness, back to the corporations. I was going to a company and staying there for four hours and train like back to back a couple times a week. And but then I decided to get a master’s in kinesiology and I wanted to further my education. And when I enrolled in the master’s degree, that’s when I decided I need to hire people to unload some of my clients. And so I hired two trainers. I, and I started giving them, and so then it became a business and this was in New York. And I was getting my master’s, I was still training people and then I had two trainers also training people. And and then I got involved with a company that operated and design private gyms for commercial buildings. So there was a big push in New York for to, for commercial buildings to create social spaces, so pool tables and this and that, and always had a gym. And so how do you activate this gym? It’s one thing to put equipment and then call it a gym, and it’s a different thing to have a gym with activities and trainers and classes and so on. And so I worked with that company for a while. And then Covid hit. But right before Covid, I met an French investor that had a franchise in Brazil of this W-B-E-M-S, which stands for Whole Body Electro Muscle Stimulation. Short EMS. And he was looking for a trainer for a head trainer to spearhead a little bit the, this franchise to recreate the franchise in the US. And I knew nothing about EMS. I remember Bruce Lee with the electrodes on the movie Enter the Dragon, like he has like electrodes on his abs and he’s like writing his book. He’s I’m doing like 200 pushups right now, and I thought, but this is a gimmick. Like that movie is so old and like this has never entered the mainstream. And he was like, listen, just try it and then let me know what you think. And I tried it. And so what it is you wear a suit, a vest and it has pants and it has electrodes on all the major muscle groups and you go through a 20 minute workout. So it’s very short.

Tom Jackobs: 10:59
Nice.

Conrad Sancez: 11:00
No weights or barely any weights, like three pounds, five pounds. And just to guide the movements it’s a 20 minute workout. And when I did it, at first I thought, I don’t feel much like I am, like this felt like a bit like a warmup, like a long warmup. But then I was, my glutes were sore for five days.

Tom Jackobs: 11:19
Oh my gosh.

Conrad Sancez: 11:19
I was very sore. And I thought, okay, this actually works. And then I started getting more and more educated into EMS and I saw the potential of how it can circumvent a lot of obstacles that a lot of my clients were facing. One, not enough time to, to train injuries, pain, aches. And not being able to move through full ranges of motion. And I thought EMS can get them stronger, faster, not just faster because it’s 20 minutes, but faster because it targets type two muscle fiber, so strength muscle fibers from the first session on. Whereas traditional training, you have to start light reps, light, lightweight, high reps, and then progress to heavier, heavier sets and this to me was like, this is solving so many issues and it is ideal for my clients.

Tom Jackobs: 12:11
Yeah. And are you still going in home for, in, in with your business or do you have a brick and mortar?

Conrad Sancez: 12:17
So during Covid I moved out of New York, and I live now in LA. I go to people’s houses. With the equipment. I only need the suits. Some people have gyms in their houses, some people have some weights but it doesn’t, there’s no requirement to have a lot of equipment.

Tom Jackobs: 12:33
Yeah.

Conrad Sancez: 12:34
I use bands and small accessories, and so I go to people’s houses. Now, ideally this is the easiest way to, to just start, right? Because you can charge a high premium, go to people’s houses, and there’s no overhead. But ideally to scale a business like this you need brick and mortar, but am not going that, that direction either. I am going in the direction of educating other trainers on EMS. There are not a lot of, we’re only a handful of EMS trainers that have been doing this for this long and they have this amount of knowledge, in this niche industry in the entire country. I’m lucky enough to be one of them. And I just want to provide more education and teach other trainers how to properly programmed with EMS, which is a whole thing on its own.

Tom Jackobs: 13:26
Yeah. So when you do the training is there, then you sell the franchise to them as well, or is that business.

Conrad Sancez: 13:34
It’s just a education service. So I train clients and then I can give workshops and then I do also offer a business consulting if a business wanted to get into EMS. Recently there was a Pilates studio. They wanted to add EMS as a service. so where do they start? Where do you get educated? And so I trained their head trainer and give them a workshop and went through a lot of practice in order for them to get going and get clients and so on. So there’s business consulting, there’s the education portion, and then there’s my personal clients.

Tom Jackobs: 14:06
Okay, so any desire to sell the suits or do.

Conrad Sancez: 14:11
No, there’s. No, I’m very good friends with with one of the distributors here in la. Her name is Darcy, and she she’s a great EMS trainer as well. And and so she’s a distributor for the suits that I use. And so we have a good relationship to, to give business to each other.

Tom Jackobs: 14:29
Yeah. Oh, nice. That’s very cool. Yeah, the home training. I had lots of friends that did in-home training and it just, I was always like, oh my gosh, what a hassle to, take the weights or the kettlebells and bring a and a couple dumbbells and we’re good to go. I love it.

Conrad Sancez: 14:46
It circumvent the problem of equipment, right? And because equipment if you do a good job, the person is gonna progress and then they’re gonna need more equipment. Or higher, right? Like you go from 30 pounds to 35, then 40 then, and then you’re gonna, when does it end then you’re forcing your client to basically get a gym in their house. Here the, there’s no necessity.

Tom Jackobs: 15:04
That’s great. And so with your business now as it’s growing, are you still adding more trainers and how’s that working for you?

Conrad Sancez: 15:13
So I mentioned Darcy, the distributor. We’re talking now about potentially creating a team. Because you get referrals and I can, I’m in at the point where I can maybe take maybe one more client, but like that, that, that is it. I’m relying on people being on vacation to be able to fit everybody. And and so as we get more referrals, like she’s in the same position what do we do with these referrals? We’re just giving them away to other trainers and there are um, there’s no business there to be made, and so we’re now thinking that maybe we should create a, another separate company to do in-home training and have trainers, or maybe it’s a, at an office or, because with EMS, you don’t need a full gym, so you could rent just a small office space and have two people train.

Tom Jackobs: 16:02
Yeah. Yeah. That’s so flexible. It’s great. Yeah. I wish I had that instead of my 6,000 square foot facility and the rent that went along with that. Yeah. That’s crazy.

Conrad Sancez: 16:14
You sold your business, right?

Tom Jackobs: 16:15
Yeah, I sold it in 2018. Yeah. And it’s still open and the new owners are doing great with it, which is always fun to see. So how do you balance then the purpose driven business and, the heart-led business and still making a profit and asking for money and doing it on the business side?’Cause a lot of heart-led business owners don’t really like the business side. They like the actual the part where they get to give their heart unto their clients, but it’s a business side that they really struggle with. So how do you balance both of those?

Conrad Sancez: 16:47
Yeah. So luckily I, I came from the business and then went into my heart and so I do have some sense of, I’m gonna call it discipline. I guess of okay, I need to sit down and do my taxes and I need to sit down and organize this and I need to figure out a new scheduling system and all these things. And so that has do it because I know I have to, but also it was also ingrained. It was like a no brainer that you have to do these things. And I didn’t think twice about doing them. But there are challenges. I don’t want to do these things. And so when possible, you can try to out outsource these things. Like the website I did not create on my own. I didn’t wanna try to figure out how to use Webflow and so on. And I hired someone. And so if you’re able to hire like everything’s either time or money. So it’s either gonna cost you money or it’s gonna cost you time. And so it’s a matter of distinguishing between those two things and what can you afford in terms of time or in terms of money and so challenging. But for the most part I was already, I had already some momentum into doing these things on my own.

Tom Jackobs: 17:52
Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Especially coming out of the corporate and the business and going into the, your own business as well. That, that usually helps with the business part and the kinda the running of the business as, as well. Yeah. That’s cool. So how do you, speaking of the business side of the business, are there tasks that you do, that you actually bring you joy that’s part of the business part of it?

Conrad Sancez: 18:17
Yeah, actually so one thing that I started doing is blogging, which I’m not a writer. English is not my first language either, if you can hear in my accent. But, but I started writing, like I, I was always a little creative and I liked drawing and I started writing specifically about EMS, which is something that I am passionate about because I know it has a purpose. Again, back to the heart, right? Like I, I wouldn’t do anything anymore that where my heart is not really in it. And I wanted to doing podcasts, like just the challenge with EMS, I know this is probably a later question, but the challenge with EMS is telling people about it because they don’t know about it.

Tom Jackobs: 18:55
Yeah.

Conrad Sancez: 18:56
And so how do I get, how do I sell service that people have not even heard of? And so that’s the main challenge. And so creatively I thought, okay, I need to blog about it. I need to be on podcasts. I need to just get information out there. And the writing part was fun. It is fun. It is not fun to then have to post it on LinkedIn and this and that. But in creating covers for the blog or so I, I do take pleasure in these things.

Tom Jackobs: 19:23
Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. And that’s nice that, that gives you that creative outsource, the creative outlet as well. Instead just all business all the time. As well. That’s awesome. How are you getting the word out or get educating people about EMS and the benefits of it?

Conrad Sancez: 19:41
Social media it is the sort of like of the portal. I have a website, unless you know what the website is, you won’t find it. And and social media. I started so with the podcast, it’s given me clips that then I can share and so I cut out snippets and what has been happening is that other EMS trainers have been also sharing my clips and so just getting more information. Not every MS trainer is trying to spread the word especially in Europe, EMS is pretty, pretty prevalent. Like people know about it. And there’s EMS studios at every corner and Germany and so on, and it’s you don’t need to explain what yoga is, right? Like you, you see a studio, you can imagine what it is. So EMS in Europe is at that point. Here in the us It is far from that, but it’s starting to trickle down. I’ve been doing it now for six years and now I’m starting to meet people that were like, I heard of it, or I did it once, or so that is starting to happen. But I’ve had the question of if it’s so effective, if it’s so good, blah, blah, blah, like, why isn’t this more mainstream? And the example I always give is that pickleball is successful and is widespread as it is now in the US. The first official tournament was in 1975, it took 50 years to get to this point.

Tom Jackobs: 20:58
Wow. I didn’t even realize pickleball was that old.

Conrad Sancez: 21:02
And it tournament, I’m not saying like when it was created like tournament means,

Tom Jackobs: 21:06
Yeah.

Conrad Sancez: 21:06
Already there were enough people playing it to create a tournament.

Tom Jackobs: 21:09
That’s crazy. Yeah. That’s a great analogy too.’Cause as trends and the fitness industry has always been kinda a ripe for kind of those fatty type of things that come and go. But, the real try and true like real technology that, that’s being advanced, a lot of people just aren’t aware of that. Especially in the states. Yeah. That’s good. I’m glad that you’re getting the word out on that because I think the research that I’ve done and I’ve seen the some of the conferences I went to when I had the gym, there was EMS training and facilities as well. So it, it was always on my radar, but I just never had it in my gym. Quite frequently actually. And my brother lives there oh, there quite often. Cool. So how can people learn more about what you’re doing and get in contact with you, Conrad?

Conrad Sancez: 22:00
Yep. My website and the name of my company, very original name is conrademsfitness.com. So conrademsfitness.com and I’m on social media as at Conrad Fitness.

Tom Jackobs: 22:13
Awesome. Cool. And we’ll link all that up in the show notes so people can get to that very easily as well. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your experience of your heart-led business and how you navigate the business part. I really appreciate it.

Conrad Sancez: 22:28
Thank you for the questions. Very good questions.

Tom Jackobs: 22:31
Awesome. And thank you listeners for listening and watching the show today. I really certainly appreciate that. And please make sure that you’re checking out everything that Conrad is doing. We’re going to put all of those links up into the show notes, so make sure you check that out. And if you could do me a solid favor, and that’s to give the show a rating and review that does help spread the word about the show and helping other entrepreneurs who might want to have their heart-led business out there. Until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2: 23:02
You’ve been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.

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