Student Spotlight: McKenzie Martin, UNC ‘23
Our team at the Family Enterprise Center is checking in with students and family businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic and hope to stay connected as the crisis continues. We are inspired by the work our students are doing with their family businesses and would like to share some of these stories with our network.
The first of our student spotlight series is on McKenzie Martin, a Morehead-Cain scholar and Kenan-Flagler assured admit business student. McKenzie’s Dad, Roger, founded RockBox Fitness (www.rockboxfitness.com) in 2017. RockBox is a fitness franchise that combines boxing, kickboxing, and functional training into high-energy group workouts. We caught up with McKenzie this week to talk about how things are going with the family business.
While quarantining at her home in Davidson, NC, McKenzie has watched her Dad guide the business through these uncertain times. She is helping him with special projects, including the switch to online platforms. All of the RockBox physical locations have shut down due to stay at home orders which has shifted the company to a strictly online platform. McKenzie reflected on this transition when we talked, “The scramble to figure out how things were going to switch to an online platform was definitely stressful but we essentially started live streaming workouts from the Corporate Franchise Facebook account every day which a lot of people have been watching. In addition, almost every location is producing their own content which is helping to satisfy their members.”
The corporate office in Davidson, NC, led by McKenzie’s Dad, has also created an online database full of at home workouts and nutrition plans to make the online membership equitable to what members have with an open gym. McKenzie is proud of her Dad’s determination to get through this pandemic and hopes the company will come out stronger. She is specifically proud of his efforts to keep his employees employed, a decision that many business owners are struggling with.