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Published January 07, 2019

As a participant in the Green Bay Packers Mentor-Protégé program this year, Scotty Smith, owner and founder of Synergy Sports Performance, is practicing what he preaches. 

“We are setting goals to create visibility and awareness of our new facility,” Smith said.  “I’m not a fan of the New Year’s resolution stuff.  Why not set a goal on March 6 or Oct. 2?  We have to be able to make changes at any point in our lives.”

Goal-setting is one of the primary indicators of success, according to Smith. He says that while his target market originally had been young athletes looking to enhance performance, he has found that anyone who wants to compete and has a goal is likely to find success at Synergy (http://synergyfields.com).

Since opening an 18,000-square-foot facility in Hobart in June, he has expanded his target market and services. Participating in the Mentor-Protégé program is part of that growth. He has been paired with Green Bay SCORE mentor Dick Hopfensperger, who has decades of business and marketing experience. 

“At the match event, I found Dick to be very relatable. I was a fan of his teaching background and saw him as someone who could help walk me through things,” Smith said.

As the year begins, they will be taking a detailed look at the business and setting quarterly goals. One of the first goals is to draw clients to the larger facility and promote the new services. Smith has added a 3,000-square-foot sports recovery center that has some of the latest equipment and is designed to help athletes stay healthy and recover faster from intense workouts. 

The center has all of the latest tools, including electrical stimulation, an infrared sauna, recovery pump compression boots, multimodality contrast therapy, kinesiology taping, and vibration therapy. Smith says the benefits are incredible, and he offers a free one-week trial to prove the effectiveness. 

Recovery, combined with intense, individualized training, provides a complete program.  Now, Smith wants to get the word out.

“It is a challenge moving to a new place and expanding what we offer because for so many years we’ve been known as the place that trains young athletes,” Smith said. “We need to do more targeted marketing to reach the new market. I have a vision of what I want this to be.”

That vision is based on top sports performance facilities throughout the country that he has visited. He wants to model that on a smaller, yet equally effective scale through a wide array of services including personal and group training, online coaching, boot camps, camps, and classes. 

The program has developed over the years as Smith gained experience as a trainer at Bellin Health and worked with the Packers organization. 

“I always knew I wanted to do something on my own,” he said. “The health care system is backward because it doesn’t make money on healthy people. I want to make people healthy.”

He started as part of the House of Speed in Ashwaubenon, and as the business grew, so did his space needs. While he realized that competition would be stiff due to the niche sports facilities and those run by major medical providers, Smith wrote a business plan and believed the numbers would work.

So did his lender, and in October 2017, construction on the new facility began. Unlike other sports-specific facilities, Smith is looking for a broader appeal. Every sport is included; it is the programs that are individualized.

“I see the benefits to athletes in every sport," Smith said. "We want to give them things they don’t have access to in school and bring a new cutting edge into training so that they can perform at the college level.”

Adults will also benefit; especially those who are training with a goal in minds such as a marathon or tournament. Smith is currently training a couple who are in their 80s and seeing their success.

“The success rates have been the driving force for us,” he said. “It has been the stories — stories of kids who reach their dreams of playing in college or adults who complete a marathon. We have the right group here. We share their passion and it shows.”

Tina Dettman-Bielefeldt is co-owner of DB Commercial Real Estate in Green Bay and past district director for SCORE, Wisconsin.