As a child growing up in the mid-1960s, Heavin dreamed of becoming a doctor. After graduating from Sam Houston High School in Arlington, Texas, Heavin worked a variety of odd jobs--a roughneck on oil rigs, longshoreman, waiter, truck driver--while taking premed classes in colleges. His dream ended around the same time he ran out of money to continue his studies. Fortunately, his brother David had a proposal: Would Gary like to manage a fitness center he was planning to purchase in Houston? With little to lose, Heavin went for it.
He was 20 years old and knew nothing about business, and the first year of running the gym was often terrifying. Heavin struggled to find money to pay the gym's electricity bill and often spent his nights on the floor of the facility's daycare center. But in the process, he learned a few things about himself. First, he loved the fitness business. Plus, he was a good salesperson, particularly when it came to dealing with women. He soon limited the gym's membership to women only and named it Women's World of Fitness.
Within a year, the club was doing well enough that the brothers decided to open another location. Over the next six years, they opened another six more throughout south Texas. "By the time I was 26, I had a $1 million financial statement," says Heavin. By the time he was 30, Women's World of Fitness had 14 locations and 50,000 members. Heavin got a pilot's license and flew himself from location to location, keeping an eye on his growing empire. Then things started to fall apart.
In retrospect, the problems were simple. "I let my overhead increase beyond the capacity of the market," Heavin says. Women's World of Fitness clubs were big, which meant high rents. They also offered swimming pools, tanning beds, and kids' programs. Such costly amenities require a large membership base, but aside from Houston, the gyms were mostly in smaller towns. Desperate to bring in more money, Heavin decided to open his clubs to men. "It was logical, but it destroyed my women's business," he says. Indeed, it didn't take long for female customers to grow uncomfortable with the meat-market aspect of a coed gym and drift away. As the business faltered, Heavin's managers grew restless. "I spent all my time flying from club to club trying to keep people disciplined and motivated," Heavin says.
In 1986, about three years after opening its 14th location, Women's World of Fitness was bankrupt. Heavin lost his house, his airplane, and his cars, and was some $5 million dollars in debt. His wife divorced him. Heavin lacked the money to pay alimony and in short order went from being a jet-setting entrepreneur to just another broke guy serving a three-month term in Cameron County Jail in Brownsville. As often happens when people hit bottom, Heavin turned to the Bible for solace. He described the moment he became born again during a 2003 interview on Pat Robertson's The 700 Club. "I finally got on my knees and said, 'God, I lived the first half of my life by my will, and it's a mess. I'm going to turn the rest of my life over to you." His religious beliefs gave him a new way to look at his mistakes--not as failures, but as mere bumps on the road leading to the Lord's larger plan for Gary Heavin.
Heavin began putting his life back together. He found work selling fitness equipment and consulting with gym owners and settled into life with a new wife. Heavin met Diane Piller during the waning days of his gym business. Diane, who had model-perfect features and the physique of a lifelong fitness fanatic, worked in newspaper advertising. Women's World of Fitness was not only one of her accounts, it was also the place she went to get her aerobics fix. The relationship grew as the business collapsed, and in 1990, the couple married, just before Gary went to jail. "It's kind of a neat thing that we married then because he knew I really loved him," she says. "He didn't have a lot of material things."
The couple soon began plotting their return to the fitness business. Their new gym would be different. Overhead would be kept as low as possible. Rather than investing in every manner of workout machine, the gym would offer a simple fitness circuit that would be quick and easy for members to complete. Instead of operating as close to 24-7 as possible, a common practice in the industry, the gym would close early. Showers, de rigueur at most gyms, were also deemed expendable. And most important of all: It would be women only. Diane came up with the name--Curves--and sketched out a cursive logo on a piece of paper.
If everything worked out, the Heavins figured they'd be able to earn about $100,000 a year. With $10,000 they'd managed to scrape together, they opened the first Curves in 1992 in Harlingen, Texas, where they lived, with Diane as manager. It was immediately clear that the simple formula would work. The couple had estimated it would take 90 days to sell 100 memberships--the amount they'd need to break even. Diane sold that amount in the first week alone. In 1994, they opened a second club in McAllen, and it also did gangbusters. To Heavin, still fired up from his jailhouse religious awakening, the newfound success made perfect sense. "It's kind of like Moses in the Bible," he says. "I spent 10 years in Egypt, which was the old health club business. And then I spent 10 years in the desert; I was a consultant, I was in the equipment business, I traveled around. And then at age 40, it all just came together. Everything we tried, worked. We entered into the Promised Land."
By 1995, the Heavins had far exceeded their wildest dreams. "We had two Curves, a brand-new baby, and we were earning a quarter of a million a year," says Gary. "We were going to live happily ever after." Then he had an epiphany.
Heavin was giving a talk on weight management to a group of women when he realized he'd been scanning the crowd for the face of his mother, who had died when he was 13. "She had just turned 40 and died in her sleep," he says. "My two little brothers and I found her. It was a real traumatic experience." Doris Joy Heavin had suffered from obesity, high blood pressure, and depression, all of which were treated with medication rather than the recommendation that she get more exercise. Heavin grew furious when he thought about it. Perhaps this explained why he wanted to be a doctor, why he enjoyed the fitness business so much. "I had the epiphany that what my life had been about was healing women because of my mother," he says. "And that was what my destiny was going to be."
