Gary Mazakian: Building a Scalable Franchise Culture That Turns Courts Into Community Engines
As Chief Franchising Officer at PickUp USA Fitness, Gary Mazakian brings a rare combination of grassroots operational experience, rigorous development discipline, and a purpose-driven approach to awarding franchises that transform basketball gyms into thriving local businesses and community anchors. Through more than a decade with a brand that evolved from a single gym in Irwindale, California, into a national franchising platform, he helped codify the playbook, train early owners, structure development processes, and now steers franchise selection with a focus on operational excellence, values alignment, and unit economics that stand the test of time. His story is one of patient buildout and consistent standards, where each decision is grounded in data, field learning, and a deep respect for the entrepreneurs who carry the brand into their neighborhoods.
Early Years on the Court
Mazakian’s path began with a personal leap from real estate finance into a single-unit basketball gym that needed a leader who could open at dawn, manage teams, clean courts, and close at night while learning every lever that moves unit economics. Those early tasks informed his view of member experience, operational rhythm, and cost control, and they eventually positioned him to partner with founder Jordan Meinster in blueprinting the operating manual that would become the foundation for franchising. Codifying court rental pricing, youth training curricula, sales processes, and day-to-day workflows created the conditions for scale, not by guesswork, but by precise standards that could be applied from one market to the next.
From Field Coach to Development Strategist
When the franchising arm launched, Mazakian shifted into an operations coach role that required months on the road training the earliest franchisees and helping them land their first members. The work involved payroll budgeting, local partnership building, and live-fire adjustments to sales and service practices based on each market’s nuances and each owner’s capabilities. That period cemented three beliefs that shape his leadership today: every market is unique, every owner brings a different toolkit, and the playbook must be rigid on standards yet flexible in application.
Following operations, he moved into development to help new owners secure financing, negotiate LOIs, and oversee construction, which forced a rigorous translation of vision into square footage and a careful review of rent rolls and occupancy thresholds before ground was ever broken. By approaching site selection through the lens of P&L reality and operating viability, he ensured franchisees started on a footing that supported durable cash flow rather than optimistic scenarios.
The Mandate of a Franchising Chief
As Chief Franchising Officer, Mazakian’s mandate is to identify franchise partners who can execute the model and grow economically strong units while safeguarding brand standards in every club that opens. He treats franchise awarding as a long-term partnership, not a transaction, and prioritizes candidates who match the brand’s culture, are financially prepared, and demonstrate the discipline to run a high-touch operational business. The decision to grant a franchise is, in his language, a trust placed in someone to carry the brand’s playbook and promise to their city, and he does not take that responsibility lightly.
Motivation Anchored in Impact
Mazakian’s motivation comes from measurable community impact, where each club becomes a small business that hires locally, mentors youth, and energizes neighborhoods through basketball. The stories that fuel him are personal and practical, from first jobs for teenagers to families whose trajectories change through entrepreneurship, all brought to life inside a model that turns courts into community hubs. In challenging times, his compass points to process discipline, data visibility, and purpose, allowing tough calls to be made with clarity and consistency.
A Leadership Style That Scales
His leadership evolved from a “do-it-all” operator into a systems builder who still prefers to stay close to the floor of the business through field visits, training calls, and real-time store-level analysis. That proximity keeps his franchise decisions grounded in the realities of staffing, scheduling, membership conversion, and guest experience, ensuring that selected owners are aligned with the daily demands that drive results. The work is hands-on, both at corporate-owned stores and across the network, because credibility and standards are maintained through presence, not proclamations.
Proudest Achievements in the Growth Arc
From one unit to a national system, Mazakian sees his greatest achievements in the moments franchisees move from ambition to operation, such as lease signings, construction milestones, and opening-week member enrollments that validate months of preparation. The transformation from employee to employer, from first-time entrepreneur to community leader, is the heartbeat of his work and a confirmation that selection, training, and support can unlock economic agency for owners and their teams. He views franchisees as the backbone of the brand and credits their success as the true measure of the system’s strength and future potential.
Standards That Define Influence
In Mazakian’s view, influence comes from example, transparency, and reliability, with corporate-operated stores serving as laboratories and proof points for what the system asks franchisees to do. If a strategy underperforms, it is revised rather than defended, and if a commitment is made, it is kept, because trust and consistency are performance multipliers across a network. He believes that honoring timelines and deliverables is not a courtesy but a requirement, because franchisees invest their future and need a leadership team that operates with integrity.
Innovation Through Disciplined Iteration
Innovation at PickUp USA is structured, not sporadic, and framed by a willingness to challenge tradition when the data or the guest experience suggests a better way. The brand gathers ideas from guests and franchisees, pressure-tests them, and converts the best ones into standardized systems with the right tech stack and playbooks to spread improvements quickly and consistently. That approach enables agility without chaos and maintains the stability that owners need to plan, invest, and lead teams confidently.
Tough Decisions and the Bar for Selection
Demand for territories exceeds availability, which means the hardest decisions often involve saying no to strong candidates who do not align perfectly with the model’s demands or a specific market profile. Selection is guided by financial models, territory analytics, and the experiential judgment that comes from operating gyms, training owners, and building clubs from the ground up. There is also a gut element developed through years of pattern recognition, used not to shortcut diligence but to confirm whether a candidate will thrive within the system’s standards and culture.
Balancing Strategic Vision and Daily Execution
The organization uses a Vision to Execution framework that breaks strategic goals into weekly, monthly, and quarterly initiatives with clear ownership and accountability, ensuring that long-term priorities do not float disconnected from frontline deliverables. Communication cadences include daily contact between operations and marketing teams with franchisees, weekly performance reviews at the club level, and monthly updates to strategic roadmaps, keeping leaders close to the ground while moving the business toward larger goals. This rhythm supports agility, alignment, and consistent performance because strategy is only as strong as the daily actions that bring it to life.
Advice for Emerging Leaders
His advice is pragmatic and comprehensive: cultivate self-awareness, master the fundamentals of finance, communication, and technology, seek feedback early and often, think in systems, and anchor leadership in purpose that orients decisions and motivates teams. In franchising, brilliance in sales without cash flow modeling is a trap, so fluency in unit economics sits alongside culture fit as a predictor of sustainable growth. Purpose is not rhetorical for him, since the brand’s commitment is to elevate communities through basketball, and that clarity informs who is selected, how clubs are launched, and how they operate day to day.
A Legacy Defined by Durable Outcomes
Mazakian’s intended legacy is a network of economically strong, community-centric clubs led by owners who feel empowered and supported, with many reaching debt-free status and considering second locations. He wants guests anywhere in the country to step into a club and feel the same energy, professionalism, and love for the game that he experienced sweeping courts in Irwindale, which he views as the cultural essence that must never be diluted as the footprint expands. Internally, he wants the franchising department to be known for integrity in candidate selection, where quality is chosen over speed and partnership is chosen over transactions.
The Culture That Keeps Score
Mazakian’s culture keeps score through conversion rates, deal timelines, and new unit performance, using those data points to adjust playbooks and shape pipeline priorities with a clear eye on outcomes. The feedback loop from corporate-operated stores and franchisee innovation flows into system updates, allowing the brand to move faster than the market while avoiding the noise that can accompany novelty for novelty’s sake. This balance creates a living system where what works is scaled, what stalls is replaced, and what emerges from the field is given a path to adoption when it meets standards and proves results.
Courts That Power Careers
The personal side of Mazakian’s story includes a family raised alongside the brand, with his son playing in the clubs and a shared sense that the business is part of their family legacy, which mirrors the journey of franchisees who build something durable for their children. He describes pride in specific moments like youth leagues launching and local trainers being hired, because those milestones reflect economic vibrancy and community development that endure beyond a ribbon-cutting. Each new club is more than a buildout schedule and a launch calendar, since it becomes a platform for jobs, mentorship, and lifelong love of the game.
A Brand Positioned for the Next Wave
PickUp USA’s national visibility and reputation in the fitness franchise category have grown since franchising began, with industry coverage recognizing its distinctive basketball focus and structured member experience that removes the chaos from pickup play. External profiles and franchise overviews commonly cite the brand’s unique blend of officiated games, youth development, and full-service facilities, which have helped expand awareness among operators and consumers seeking a better way to play. That positioning supports Mazakian’s overarching goal of awarding territories to owners who can turn strong brand equity and a proven operating model into long-term performance in their cities.
What Comes Next
Looking ahead, Mazakian’s focus remains steady on selecting the right partners, launching on disciplined timelines, and protecting the cultural DNA that makes PickUp USA’s clubs feel consistent and inspiring from state to state. He believes growth should track the capacity to support owners with the tools, training, and field presence needed to win early and compound over time, rather than racing to count units without the infrastructure to sustain them. If the next chapter takes the brand to 200 clubs or beyond, he wants guests to recognize the same standards on every court and owners to credit a system that combines high expectations with high support.
The Editor’s View
From the vantage point of The CIO Today, Mazakian exemplifies a modern franchising leader who treats selection as stewardship and operations as the true source of brand power, not just a back-office concern. His approach reflects the leadership principles highlighted across our platform, where transformation, growth, and sustainability are driven by process, data, and purpose that translate into durable enterprises. In a franchise world that can tilt toward speed, his model advances a counter thesis that long-term outcomes come from choosing carefully, launching precisely, and iterating relentlessly with the field as co-authors of the playbook.
In a single sentence, Gary Mazakian’s impact is captured by a simple equation that he lives daily: strong selection plus standardized systems plus field-driven iteration equals clubs that perform, communities that thrive, and a brand that keeps its promise on every court it touches.
Quotes:
“Granting a franchise is a trust to carry the brand’s promise to the city.”
“Every market is unique, every owner brings a different toolkit, and the playbook must stay flexible.”
“Innovation is structured, not sporadic — data and guest experience guide every change.”
“Strong selection plus standardized systems equal clubs that perform and communities that thrive.”
