An impresario of mind-body connectivity

Dean Hartman walks upstairs to his office in Dartmouth. Wearing a suit and tie, he still manages to radiate energy and athleticism. “I’m passionate about sport and athletics,” he says. “Making a buck comes a close second.”

The Montreal native says he leans more toward his father, the “serial entrepreneur,” than his mother, “the organized one,” who was the family accountant. From his father he inherited a love of the game and a taste for risk. Then he quotes his mother: “Dean, you will have no problem making money, but will you know how to manage it?”

A long-time fitness fanatic, Hartman was active in sports at StFX and loved to socialize. He played and coached hockey and baseball and was a competitive squash player. He hitchhiked a lot; one day a man went out of his way to drive him where he wanted to go and took an interest in his future. “No one did this in Montreal,” he says. “I made up my mind right then I wanted to stay in Nova Scotia.” 

After university Hartman took his mother’s advice and worked in a bank, honing his financial skills. Then he opened a sporting-goods store in Dartmouth. After hours he would run, bike, and lift weights on his own. But Hartman missed the team atmosphere, so in 1983 he opened a small gym for his inner circle. Soon he realized his passion was for the gym, not for retail. “The real Dean Hartman started to come out.”

Without his full attention, however, the new business struggled, so he bought out his partners and committed himself to the gym; Nubodys Fitness Centres was on its way. By the end of this year there will be 24 clubs throughout Atlantic Canada, with 800 employees and 50,000 members. 

Hartman knows how fortunate he is. “I spend at least 90% of my time doing what I love,” he says. Still, he has experienced the hard times of a growth-hungry entrepreneur. One turnaround came after his sister took him to see a talk by a Buddhist meditation teacher. “She dragged me, but I found it intriguing and I started to read books on the subject.” He appreciated how the Eastern emphasis on mindfulness could counter the endless distractions and stress of modern life. “I became a little more spiritual, started doing yoga and Pilates, and hired Joe Seiler as my executive coach,” he says. “I still have all the standard fears of the entrepreneur, but I learned how to deal with them.”

As Hartman adopted this new approach, something unexpected began to happen. Nubodys started to grow rapidly, and its partnership with Simply for Life, a nutrition consulting firm, took off too. “We still had growing pains, but I didn’t lie awake at night worrying about them,” he says. “Every day you pick two or three priorities and do them to the best of your ability.”

Modern life makes it hard to focus and live in the moment. Two of the culprits: technology and caffeine. “Young people try to do 15 things at once and can’t stay with any one subject,” says Hartman. For Nubodys’ recent annual meeting, he brought in a consultant to teach mindfulness and one of his trainers led a yoga session. When it is time to talk strategy, the management team will be focused. “It’s about dealing with the mind,” he says. “The company and I are going through a transformation. We are not just whacked-out fitness freaks. The body becomes a vehicle for a long healthy life, and not at the expense of the mind. This is progress.”