How Barry's Bootcamp Found Its Perfect Company Mantra The CEO of Barry's Bootcamp shares how a piece of artwork at a garage sale helped shape the company's mission.
By Joey Gonzalez •
This story appears in the March 2018 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
My husband and I live in the historic neighborhood of Hancock Park in Los Angeles, and we love to spend our Sundays walking around -- there's always plenty going on. About three years ago, I found something at a garage sale that I just had to have. It was a simple painting, based on the work of artist Anthony Burrill, of a simple phrase: "Work hard & be nice to people."
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I pulled it from a pile of artwork and held it up to show my husband. "Don't you feel like this explains the meaning of life in seven words?" I remember asking. We're both entrepreneurs, and as we built our careers, it always mattered to us that we treated the people who worked around us and for us with respect. Whether we were at the bottom of the barrel or slowly rising to success, we wanted to feel proud of how we treated others. And so the painting came home with us.
