Living The Red Life - How Two Veterans Built a Gym People Obsess Over

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

What happens when two veterans decide to build a gym that feels more like a mindset movement than a fitness center?In this episode of Living The Red Life, Trevor and Samantha Pellerin share how they transformed an abandoned building into Psychotic Iron Athletic Club, one of the fastest-growing gyms in New Mexico. Drawing from military service, law enforcement, entrepreneurship, bodybuilding, and personal adversity, they reveal the mindset, discipline, and relentless execution required to build a business that members describe as therapy.From PTSD and personal struggles to creating a five-star fitness community, Trevor and Samantha explain why success starts in the mind, how they built a powerful brand through experience-driven design, and why they're now preparing to expand nationwide through franchising.This conversation explores fitness entrepreneurship, gym business growth, mindset development, leadership, personal transformation, and building a brand people genuinely believe in.Key Takeaways• Success begins with mindset long before business growth or physical transformation.• Creating a unique customer experience can outperform larger competitors.• Building a business around passion creates stronger long-term commitment.• Community and relationships drive member retention more than equipment alone.• Taking calculated risks is essential for building a meaningful legacy.Notable Quotes• "This is where people come to fight their demons."• "If you're not going to do it, no one's going to do it for you."• "The whole purpose of you being there is to build a better you."• "Every membership we get gets poured directly back into our facility."• "This isn't a paycheck. This is passion and drive."Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

We are a private style gym. All of our equipment's custom-built manufactured, and our focus is bodybuilding and powerlifting. We've been told by so many people, this is where they come to fight through demons. It feels like they can just let everything go in there and leave everything in there, and that's what they want. And a lot of people call it, we're the psych ward.

Trevor and Samantha Pellerin are veteran entrepreneurs and the founders of Psychotic Iron Athletic Club. Drawing from their commitment to discipline, resilience, and personal growth, they create a community that empowers others to build strength, transform their mind, mindset and become the best version of themselves. We took an awful, horrendous building and did everything ourselves.

It just keeps getting better and better because we keep pouring into it and giving back. New saunas, additional supplements, just upgrade and upgrade and upgrade until there's no other gym that can compete with this. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the Red Life, ditch the Blue Pill, take it. Take the Red Pill, join me in Wonderland, and change your life. Welcome back to another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast, the Red Life edition. For Insight Success, I am Reagan-Tierras. Joining me today is Trevor and Samantha.

Pellerin. Pellarin. What an amazing last thing. And they're both co-founders and co-owners of Psychotic Iron Athletic Club. All right. What happens at this psychotic iron athletic club? Does everyone just kind of like sit around and come by and drop shoes and like lift things over their head?

Sorry, that's like my really weird millennial, like, detecta mord. So, absolutely not, not even close. I'm right. Perfect. And the lifting things over your head, that's one of the things that they do. Absolutely. But we are a private style gym. All of our equipment's custom-built manufacturing,

and our focus is bodybuilding and powerlifting. So the reason we're called psychotic iron athletic club, we have a very dark a aesthetic. Everything is very blacked out. equipment solid black and everything's covered it's just spotlights there's no bright overhead lightings none of that so

it's really fighting your demons dude it's the theater like what's really happening in your head is how my god you've done it I'm so happy like that boy said like gyms are so like oh like who wants to work out of this weird purple device with the bright lights

shine on that there's bright lights but yeah yeah so we have a lot of different like spotlights but also we have a lot of little accents of blue yes so it took us a while trying to figure out which color we wanted to be accents because you can't just have all black for sure you know you got to have a little pop so um yeah our blue floors in the aerobic room those are pretty cool but they have little spotlights everywhere so right on i always walk into like um like a like a like a like a whole foods and they completely tell

like oh they they warm up the room the rooms the different kind of light and they make their products look so much more, I don't know, quality. It's really, it's like, I come from theater and cinema, so it's always about how you let your shot. Yeah. So are you essentially just creating a gym where folks can just be like selfie all day because everything is just lit so

well, or is this really all in the mind, body, and everything. It's already configured for basically influencers because we know fitness influencers are huge these days. Same thing for bodybuilders. You really started as a fitness influencer.

Yeah. And even for bodybuilders that film, because it's important now as like another source of income for them. Yes, sir. But not only that, from a bodybuilding aspect, lighting is everything. Oh, yeah. So how can you critique your muscles whenever you can't see them because they're washed out under bright lights? So whenever you can really see those defining keys, whether it's, you know, shoulders, legs, whatever it might be, you can really get the critiques all the way down. for sure um just by something as small as changing the lighting scheme oh yeah no for sure i it brings me back to

moments where rudi and i were just shooting the first episodes of legacy makers so there was a lot of downtime not anymore of course uh so we'd go and head up the gym but it would be content day so he he would give me the flexes and things and i'd shoot in slowbo and then we were looking around and he go why don't i just build my own gym in my own studio so now his office is a gym and it's all depth out of light so it's this but with gym equipment and it's this private room but it's decked out to just shoot content. Like he is in there. You're really doing the work,

but it's also designed to just go in their shit for the content. Talk about how content and is not just important for marketing to get folks through the door, but it's also good for the mental health because it's all, it's of all mindset when you're working out. It really is. And content plays a big role. How many people do you know that watch a motivational video just to, you know, get them off the couch in the morning?

Dude, yeah. Majority of everybody knows that. I can't tell how many times I've seen even David Goggins speaking on a video. And I'm like, all right, yeah, you know what? I'm going to go to the gym now. Yeah, yeah. Someone yelling me and get angry at me because I'm too mellow right now. Like, no.

Yes. So just things like that, right? And now I'm not. No, Sholes too. And then when we have like stuff like that playing over our speaker systems too. So it's just, it's a motivational place. And we've been told by so many people, this is where they come to fight their demons. And it feels like they can just let everything go in there and leave everything in there.

And that's what they want. And a lot of people call it where the psych ward. That's amazing. Oh my God. I'm like writing this full scene out with for like the Miami. Oh dude. I'm so pumped. Oh my God.

Do you have like matte black everything? Like what's his like walking walk me through this journey? So when you get to the front door, we have the- Jim is all Matt Black, honey. I know, right? So does Batman show up all the time? Sorry. Like, there's a house down the street.

I'm so jealous because I wanted to be the first black everything. And someone did it down the street. And they got the black cyberpunk truck. And aesthetically pleasing, though. I know, dude. So I'm going to go probably all red or all yellow. Sorry to cut you off. You're good.

You're good. I just totally comprehend what you're doing. I'm all in. Yeah. Franchise immediately. It's worth it. It really is. Yeah.

It's franchise immediately. And the best part. So, yeah, like, so walking you through it, right? So you get to the front door, right? You can see our sign from literally probably two or three miles away because we haven't lit with neon running lights going around. We're the only business with that light skiing like that there. But that's all you see. And then you see neon washed out blue lights coming through the tinted windows.

So you just see, you know, just a shadow of blue through the windows. You scan in with your phone. once you open the door, you're straight on the gym floor. You hear the speakers. You just see the spotlights and it's dimly lit. Our two-year-old in the background posing with this shirt off. Oh, man. It's the full, super hero, super hero.

You just see nothing but like just guys, men and women just walking around in their hoodies, hoods up, baggy shit. I can't own my cape. That's my cape. Yeah. I put this on to the ghost team. But I deck out. I'm all taped out.

And it's like everyone, like when everyone's in there, they're, they're just dark. Yeah. That side of them comes out because that's what they're trying to help with. Between that energy, do something. From a psychological aspect, for me personally, though, like, the gym has been the biggest relief for my mental state throughout, you know, the 14 years that I've been doing it. So it's the best therapy you can have. One other better therapy than going to the psych ward. I was just going to say.

It's life changing. It's life changing, life altering, also life. enhancing. It's like you just described for me what a typical night at a nightclub is like when I'm a DJ. It's the it's the same environment. You want to hear that face rattling the wall. So when you're walking by, it's like, it's like, it's coming from you. You just have this neon light. It's like you want the discovery process. Because what you just walked me through was I'm the depressed lonely guy. I'm driving through the darkness. What do I do with myself? What's that signs? It's like you think in whatever state of mind, that sign is meant design for you. So you hit that exit. You get off and you're just hit,

with the moment, I got to be here. Somehow, this is my energy. So many folks that come here and go, having done the work, I'm like, yeah, I'm a Christian soldier, born again, all that fun stuff. But there's this whole paradigm of folks that understand sitting in a black room and sitting in your shadow south is so powerful, but to lead with fire that it's overwhelming. It's just like, I got a thousand voices in my head. I'm clearly crazy. Where do I put this edge in the gym? Because we're not fighting wars. We're not, we're not, we're not hitting shields. We're not doing the fun stuff that we see in movies. We're all doing it in here now or on devices.

So we're to release that energy. Where did this mythos come from? Where did this idea come from? PTSD. Hell yeah. Really? So I've had this idea to build a gym like this for, I guess, quite a while. Because I've always lived in that dark space in my head.

A lot of bodybuilders, that's how they see life. You know, especially whenever you just see the spotlights. the lights that you're standing under. But, and you really just, you know, you're cast behind other people's shadows, all the greats, and you just want to be one of them. But then you step under the spotlights and, you know, you tell yourself through nothing.

You're not going to be good enough. They're never good enough. Like, wait. Ronnie Coleman was one of my first plans. Really? I'm not fucking with you, man. What? I was there when he lost the Olympia.

I filmed it for BUSA. No way. I was in Vegas and felt them lose it. That's all. It was backstage and him with the guy. I'm like, and he's like, and he's like, why are you filming him and running as a film film? Because he would go there, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, leave him breathe. And the moment he would walk backstage and go was class.

You know, he's from Louisiana too, right? Yeah, I know. I know. Like, wait, I love Ronnie. Oh, he's great. He's real estate now. He's retired. But dude, I was there where Color Lost and was like BSN lost or shit.

Like, how do they pivot? Oh, yeah. Like, there's a story there. If you look on Facebook, Ronnie Coleman Lost footage, you're going to see a torpy little dude with the camera with Panasonic. With big curly hair, that's me. I'm not messing with you. B.S. Lossed footage of, there's one dude, because

he's outside his gym. His gym is his cathedral, he's throwing it, and it's a shit show. Nothing fancy about it. It's just like a sweat, grind, build, burn. That was right on. Metro flex. Yes, sir. Yeah, dude. Yeah, it's all black and white, iron grit. So, but you've somehow fancied that up. You've taken it

sort of to like that next level. It's a boogey grungy. Yes, sir. Boogey grungy. And like, you and I are like in the same path because I have my own brand and I'm not going to talk about that now because we're going on a different rant. But it's all about you. But when I look at the Batmans and I look at the villains of the superheroes, I'm like, there's such an amazing story there because that top shelf whiskey is so much nicer.

Because when you start drinking whiskey, you drink that shit, you're going to get angry. Negative energy. You're going to have the hangover and why you drink it. When you start going top shelf, you understand that the energy, the person that put that into that whiskey, there's a story. So you could feel it. The gym is the same thing. The atmosphere is the same thing.

Set and setting, setting, set and setting, a thousand percent. How do you scale that? Do you now do a pink gym, a blue gym to just kind of cue other psychosis, other reactions that will manifest physically? Like, what's the, how do you scale? The scale really is based off the accent tones. So, like we said, the red life. Just the hints of a lighter, a lighter shade are neon blues that we have. Yeah.

Even like we have neon running lights, just in certain areas. And it's just, you know. It took forever to do. It's trying to figure out because... It's just a bright blue light. It's a bright blue light, yeah. And, you know, so you're not just constantly surrounded trying to trap yourself into that dark place. So, and everyone that goes there, they're all there for the same reason, and it's to better themselves.

Yep. And to work. I have something to add. Please, please. So we have children, of course. Right on. One thing that we wanted to add was to let children on the gym floor because there's no... really no other gyms that really do that.

So you're allowed to bring your children. They can be in strollers. They can be in car seats. We have a seating area for older kids. They want to go play on their iPad. Go ahead. Great. That's an interesting.

I can't wait to see this B-roll footage. Or come out and check it out for myself. What's next for all of you? How do you scale? Are you moving on to a bigger facility? Are you looking to do a Miami Beach version? What happens next year? We're looking to expand in franchise.

Right on. We're about to move. Yeah. We're actually in the process of moving to Texas to start expanding out further towards more central America instead of just, you know, out west. This first one was really like, you know, our baby and like our test, I guess you can say to see like, are we doing. Honestly. Are we doing this right? Absolutely.

And. Well, you're on the path, brother. The success that it's brought in just the 10 months that since we've opened doors, it's thriving. at such a exponential rate. And for that simple matter, we're the only gym in New Mexico that has maintained a five-star rating since the day we've opened.

Amazing. It has not gone down. It has not deceased, none of that. And it just keeps getting better and better because we keep pouring into it and giving back. I was going to say the fact

that you have a brick and mortar is amazing because nowadays the number one competitors of the Disney's and Universal Studios is all of y'all. He's now you're creating brick and motors that are experiences that are fine to the unique,

It's like, oh, I'm getting this cool Mario Kart vibe, but at this facility where I'm doing, I'm getting angry like I do watching 300 or movie theater. I can do that in the gym now because the gym looks like a movie theater. Like you see these bars that are like half domed and it looks like it's half the actual in-person experience of the arena. Where like these facilities are no longer brick and mortars. They're this. They have to be sets. They have to be experiences because this device, whatever we put on our phones is I said that at 1.11, sorry. this device

it just it's so much creative especially now with AI so when you have the ability to conjugate actual humans to do something together which is what's something you all did you served you serve we both did

yeah we both served yeah our love story starts in the gym oh wow I actually want to sing that for the episode I want Kofi to have some fun here but that's something that's lost people always ask me I love the broad it's like what's going on with the U.S.

I'm like well the U.S. is the finest sharpest knife and we've got nothing to do. So it's just like, we've turned into a bunch of assholes. And it's okay. Because we're America. And it's just like,

okay, give us something to do, dude. And we're clearly doing it. Like you're grabbing something that could be dark. We could be sitting in our own shadow. But no,

you Bruce wained it up. And you're adding action to it. So God bless you, man. That's both of you. Yeah, the whole purpose of you being there is to build a better you. Yes, sir. So, and where does that start in your mind?

Yep. Oh, yeah. If you can't push past your own boundaries, no one will be able to push you to that limit. So that's what's important. And that's what we make known just in our facility. Not only that, we are also very approachable. Out of all of our 600 members that we have so far. Probably know almost all of them.

And just about all of them, any time they come in, first thing they do is they come stop by our office. Tell us both, hey, tell our kids, hey. Flex with Maddox. Yeah. And then they go. And then next they're locking in and going to work. Wow. And you can tell, like, they just leave everything out, all their angers even throughout life or just throughout the day, whatever it might be, just the stress of, you know, just being human.

That's why that place is there. Do you have like stress chambers, crying chambers? The gym? No. The gym. All there are right there. Take all there right now. Yeah, we want to see it.

Cool. Yeah. Right on. So how can folks sign up, like, find you, discover you? What's the best way to find you? So the best way to find us is really on Instagram and Facebook or Google. Google is. Just type in awesome.

You just come up. Basically, if you really just type in psychotic iron athletic club or just type in gyms in Carlsbad, New Mexico, we are the first gym that pops up. That's amazing. And our phone number is on there, and so is our website and all of our socials. Cool, man. And my wife and I, we run all of them. So as soon as you open it up and press a number or. respond to a DM or anything.

Or message me and spam me. I'll answer. It's you're talking directly to the owners. So amazing. And you know, what better way to be to talk to your community than respond to them by yourself and not, you know, hire somebody and dish it out. So we love being a part of it. We love helping people grow and reach their goals and this is this is how we do it. You are ready to grow and scale to several locations. That's going to be part of it. Yes. So I'll add into that since he started a little finish about it. So we are moving to Houston area. Oh, really? So we're moving more towards like the Conroe area, more up and coming.

I don't want to be a franchise to where you never see the owners. Right on. That's kind of the aspect of it. So if you come into our gym, you should know us. Yeah. We should be the face of it. Yeah. Why the hell is interesting men walking out being a villain because he's raising the visual equity of his brand. Like, I completely got it. Yeah. And that's the problem with, you know, a lot of these franchises is you never know who the owners are. Our franchise is going to be completely different. We will be making appearances, not in, like, a manner of you need to come talk to us. More of like, we're here and we're here to hell. Just come pick my brain, come talk.

If you have any, like, let me, let us get to know you and you get to know us. For sure. You want to jump in a gym session? Let's do it. Yeah, right on. This is really what we love to do. This is truly not, you know, an income for us. This is a paycheck.

This is passion and drive. He still works in the oil field. That's his daytime job. Right on, dude. Yeah, man. Good for you, dude. Yeah, I still, I really worked three jobs right now. Running the gym, my regular oil field, you know, oil and gas, blue collar job and personal training.

And then me, it's, I'm mom all day. I train clients all day. And then we meet up back at the gym and then we're at the gym until we go home. The whole purpose of keeping the full-time job is so that way, it isn't an income for us and we can provide all those members that are giving to us because, you know, they trust that we have a good facility. We're going to make it that way. So we're always expanding and adding equipment.

Every membership we get gets poured directly back into our facility. Very cool. So new equipment every three to six months, new saunas, additional supplements, just upgrade and upgrade until there's no other gym that can compete with this. Man, now that I've got gym owners in front of me, I'm a musician, but I use AI very vividly, and I love it. There's this promo called Sonos V5. They're up to V5. They're essentially like the open AI of music.

I always thought, man, would it be cool if your members basically give a little bit of their data to you? So story, and you can just grab that story, turn into a song and make a custom, a fully produced song for your client that is a 90-minute workout, like a journey of story. but it's like, hey, when you onboard your client, hey, can you just kind of, how do you all board on board at our show? Give us kind of like your background, because now we're going to custom make you a 90-minute playlist to the T of your genre,

via rap country or all of the above. Like, I feel like that would be such a- Someone just yelling in the background. Sure. Even if it's just like, give me 90 minutes of yelling, go, go, go, here's your custom play. Trevor whoever you are, Amanda Jane Jacobson, like, here's, here's, go, Amanda, Jean-Jacupson.

It's 90 minutes of her. Someone would be yelled to your on your iPod. with the commercial breaks, of course. But I don't know. You got to pay for the premium. I was just going to say, like, I was just going to say,

you have a premium VIP experience, you've got your sauna hour with your own music, like folks are just, we'll pay about anything for, for some peace of mind, and yeah, just an experience.

Thank you so much for your time and energy. What can folks, what will folks, give us a preview? What will folks learn about you on your, on your episode of Operation CEO? I think there's two of you,

what do you say, Operation CEO? Operation CEO? Operation CEO? Yeah. Well, there's two of you that's just Operation I. CEOs? C.I. C.I. With the Ness.

Winklevine. Sorry. Owners. Owners. I love it. That's the race fit up. Owners. So what will we learn about Operation CEO? You're going to hear a lot about upbringing and really how we got to where we're at.

Building it from the ground up. Literally. We took a awful, horrendous building and did everything ourselves. On top of, you know, and we weren't born with silver spoons in our mouth. Sure, sure. Building it, blood, sweat, and tears, just dry passion. You're going to cry more? I was pregnant.

Yeah. During half of it. She was. I was up there painting and doing floors and fixing bathrooms, pulling up tile that didn't want to come up. Oh, man. Kofi's so lucky. Because I'd be like, all right, did you have a connection with the Bambinos? This is off of you.

Like, we're all working together. All right. We'll save that for the show. There's definitely going to be a lot of good, a lot of good in the show in the episode. Hopefully a lot of people can take a good bit from it to really see that, you know, your legacy in your life is in your own hands. Right on.

And if you're not going to do it, no one's going to do it for you. You have to take a risk. Risk away, I guess. I don't know how to end that. But yeah, how do people find you? What's a good website or social media again? Psychotic Iron underscore AC. And then Psychotic Iron,

athletic club for Facebook. Rock and roll. All right. This is Trevor and Samantha Perian. Pellarine. Pellarin. That almost sounds like gym equipment. Maybe a new idea.

So Trevor is about the Pellarone and not gym equipment. And founders of psychotic, iconic, iron athletic clubs. Right on. And we are Insight's Success.