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Jonathon’s Key Move: Location, Location, Location

We all know about the “daring young man.” But it takes even more guts to start a business based on the flying trapeze. And when he took his leap of faith, Jonathon Conant didn’t even have a safety net.

Jonathon had enjoyed a varied career as a stunt man, dancer, musician and coffee house entrepreneur -- but he was overweight and unhappy. Then some friends took him to a ClubMed in Mexico where, of all things, there was a class in how to perform the old circus act.

“Something clicked when I saw the flying trapeze,” he recalls. “I knew this was going to be my path: helping people build their self-esteem, being outdoors and being very physical and making people happy.”

To get the rush that it gave him, Jonathan realized right away that learning to fly the trapeze required a kind of cathartic “letting go” that could be very therapeutic. It’s “archetypal flying,” he says, that “terrifies people.” Not only that, but it’s done outdoors, where everyone can see it.

“The environment that most effectively changes people is one that overwhelms all the patterns in the body that are meant to keep things in place,” he explains. “Then if someone is there to implant a new idea, or an event happens that changes your attitude about yourself, that’s when new behavior and understandings about life take root.”

Best of all, he figured, people would be willing to pay for this experience! And no one on the East Coast was offering them the opportunity. So Jonathon sold his house and his business, took advantage of his training in physical and human development, and started Trapeze School in upstate New York . In 2001, Dave and Anne Brown joined him as partners, and the trio moved Trapeze School to New York City .

Trapeze School charges a $20 registration fee and then around $50 or so for a two-hour initiation on the bar as part of a class of around 10 people. Students learn everything from the importance of trust to how to perform a back-flip dismount – all over a net, of course. “We have customers who come in three to four times a week,” Jonathon says.

In fact, flying lessons got so popular, so fast, on the Atlantic Seaboard that Trapeze School already has opened locations in Boston and Baltimore . After netting (pun intended) about $600,000 in just four months of business at his first New York City site, Jonathon now is looking at generating annual revenues of $3 million to $5 million in a completely roofed, year-round facility that will be opening soon.

Jonathon’s Key Move: Location, Location, Location.

Trapeze School started with a very powerful idea, but Jonathon’s prospects were limited as long as his business was physically located outside of the limelight. So in early 2001, he was contemplating a move to the Big Apple.

“It was something New York City didn’t have: aerial arts, a whole new form of movement and dance and exercise and a new way of thinking,” he says. “And it wasn’t there. Imagine that. I said, ‘I’ll change that.’”

Then September 11, 2001 , happened -- to Jonathon and the rest of New York City . Yet the tragedy actually confirmed his instinct to move Trapeze School literally into an outdoor plot in the shadow of Ground Zero. And that’s what he and the Browns did in July 2002.

“We turned out to be a bit of perfect tonic for that situation,” he says. “The city needed something to believe in, especially in that area. People were looking for acknowledgement that it was OK to be alive again. We were there, and it was very powerful.”

In addition to the obvious advantages of foot traffic, Trapeze School ’s new outdoor location brought it tremendous visibility even though, at this point, it’s still basically a summer business. “Right there we get millions of dollars of what amounts to advertising exposure every day, and tremendous exposure to the media,” he says.

Sure enough: Trapeze School showed up in an episode of Sex in the City and has been “filmed by every major TV [news] show that you can imagine,” Jonathon crows. “And we’re starting to get offers to be in movies. We’ve become a staple of New York City .”

Trapeze School ’s profile is only soaring higher as the company constructs a new, year-round, $1-million tent on Pier 40 at the base of the Hudson Street Pier. The three-story-high structure is being covered by the same tensile-fabric company that constructs tents for Cirque du Soleil.

“It’ll be,” Jonathon promises, “one of the most amazing-looking buildings in New York City .”

Jonathon’s Bonus Insight:

It’s easy to see parallels between Trapeze School and the TV show Fear Factor. But Jonathon insists that what the reality show offers is a cheap, in-your-face experience by comparison. “They’re viscerally very different,” he explains. “In Fear Factor, people are egging you on; they give you a task and then say, ‘Do it.’ But we’re encouraging you and letting you know we’re there for you the whole time.”