We settled in New Port Richey, on the west coast of the state, and my father and uncle opened a delicatessen. My first job, at 14, was as a counter boy, serving customers. Three years later, my parents decided to sell the business so that my father could have more family time. He then went to work for the Postal Service as a letter carrier.

My dad lifted weights, and that gave me an interest in fitness. I was hired as a lifeguard at a local health club but was also responsible for maintenance and cleaning. I worked there after school on the days reserved for men: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The alternate weekdays were designated for women.

When I graduated from high school in 1975, I went to St. Joseph’s College in Indiana on a football scholarship, but I sustained a serious injury in the first season and returned home to recuperate. Several months later, I enrolled at a community college and returned to my job at the local health club.

In 1979, I married my high school sweetheart, April, and we moved to Panama City, Fla., where I had been hired to build a new health club. But the area was not for us, so we returned to New Port Richey. That same year, 1981, we decided to move to New York, staying with family in Brooklyn while we looked for work. I got a job selling memberships for Town Squash, which rented squash courts in three clubs in New York and one in Washington. It was a low-paying position, but it got me back into the work force.

It was difficult to make the squash game business thrive, so we started converting squash courts into fitness facilities. That helped to increase membership, and in 1983 we started to acquire other clubs. By 1995, we had expanded to 28 clubs in New York and three other cities.

In the meantime, my wife and I moved to Edison, N.J., and our daughters, Allison and Jennifer, were born. We love to hike, swim and bike together. My youngest daughter is at Rutgers, and the oldest, who graduated from Rutgers, is studying to become a personal trainer and Pilates instructor, but we never pushed either of them into this field.

I moved up to chief operating officer in 1992, after holding nearly every company position and in 2002 became C.E.O. We expanded to 150 clubs — with 500,000 members — and went public in 2006. By that time, we were named Town Sports International, the umbrella group for New York Sports Clubs, Boston Sports Clubs, Philadelphia Sports Clubs and Washington Sports Clubs.

At the end of 2007, I was having some health problems and decided to leave the company. Two years later, I decided to get back in the work force and took a job at JTL Enterprises, a medical and surgical instrument company in Clearwater, Fla., which also allowed me to be near my father.

In March 2010, I was contacted by the Town Sports board. The company had been struggling because memberships were declining in the bad economy, and the board asked me to come back and help to turn it around.

Even though I oversee the largest number of health clubs in the Northeast, I find it hard to find workout time, just as everyone else does. So I have a piece of exercise equipment in my office — right now, it’s an Arc Trainer, which combines running, climbing and hiking — and I slip in a workout each day. Every three months, I change the equipment, so I can try out the newest machine on the market before it goes into any of our clubs.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ba266cafeac1c3fdf77cdbf299bac688