‘In New York, it doesn’t matter what you know, it’s who you know’

The American dream could easily have ended as a nightmare for Seamus Keane had he not found inner strength when the initial months he spent there proved tough. Ten years on, he is settled and happy, has fulfilled an ambition of setting up a gym business with his business partner and is building a long-term future in the Big Apple with his fiancee Mairead.
Keane, who was born in 1989, hails from the small town of Louisburgh in Co Mayo. Following an engineering degree at UCG and a Masters in Finance, he worked for Bank of Ireland in Dublin for a year before moving to New York. The high pressure sales job he found in the city’s financial district was, “straight out of The Wolf Of Wall Street and was quite foreign to me”, he says.
“The only previous experience I had of sales was that in May – you had a fair in our small town where you sold your sheep or your cattle to your neighbour. I was no good at this. I was thinking about going home but I decided to push on for a few months.
“I got retrained. The first people who had trained me were very American but then I shadowed a girl from Spain and a guy from China and their style was so much better than the Jersey boys. They were much more into building deeper relationships and they were the top performers They would meet fewer people but sell more and get more referrals.
“I could relate more to that and within a few months I was one of the best performing salespeople in the company.”
Keane’s real passion lay elsewhere, however. He harboured an ambition to work as a gym instructor and personal trainer and when the opportunity arose to work with a friend of a friend who agreed to sign off on his visa if he worked for free for the first few months, he quit the sales job.
He returned to Ireland for a spell when his father became ill to help look after him as he recovered and also used the time to gain his personal training certification.
Armed with his new expertise, he returned to New York and built up his experience before deciding to launch a venture in 2021 with Roscommon native John Collins, called Clann Health.
“We started the business in a snowstorm on a cold February night. We had no premises and there were seven people with us outside, surrounded by eight inches of snow,” he says.
[ Primark’s Irish man in Spain: ‘We sell roughly the same number of coats in Madrid as we do in Dublin’Opens in new window ]
The business operated outdoors at first and then started using another business’s gyms early in the morning before they took the plunge and got their own premises.
“It’s difficult getting the right space in New York. We looked at some dirty and smelly places and a lot of landlords were not willing to take a chance on us. Eventually we found an agreeable landlord though it did involve putting down a substantial deposit.”
The gym, called Trinity NYC, opened in February this year in the Long Island City district, a redeveloped industrial area along the East River in Queens, which Keane says is an “up and coming area of New York”. Its melting pot of residents has helped attract a range of members from different nationalities, and has also swollen the ex-pat Irish base of the gym.
The 1,500 sq ft premises is on the fifth floor of a block, which creates its own challenges. “Because it’s not on the ground floor, it means we have had to work that bit harder on marketing, which is a good thing. We use Facebook and Instagram and we’ve been getting a lot of traction with that lately.”
Keane says Collins and himself have built a community culture and also take a personalised approach to training.
“Many other gyms in New York will put you into a class with around 30 other people. You may have experience or not and that can lead to a bad impression or even an injury.
[ ‘I have a great friend here and his name is Santiago O’Reilly, which always makes me smile’Opens in new window ]
“We meet with everyone and have a conversation about their goals. We do one-to-one training, and our group classes have a maximum ratio of six to one. Everyone works off their own individual programme and results are guaranteed, as long as you follow the programme.”
While the business is focused on consumers, Keane and Collins have also tapped the corporate market, offering wellness programmes for businesses, an area where they see significant potential.
Keane enjoys the buzz of New York and has also tapped into the vibrant Irish community there.
“It’s a great city to be in especially when you are in your 20s and 30s. It’s a big help here if you know what you want and it’s a great city for opportunity. Irish people are also very good at helping you out. In Ireland people will certainly help you but here Irish people will go out of their way to help you.”
Building a network is important, he says, and he recalls a good piece of advice he got when he first moved here.
“A guy said to me that here it doesn’t matter what you know, it’s who you know, and you can either embrace that or get bitter about it.”
The Mayo man returns to Ireland three or four times a year to catch up with family and to enjoy the beautiful beaches around Louisburgh. While New York is home now he still has a hankering for aspects of Ireland.
“I miss my dad’s lamb stew dinner and Kelly’s Black Pudding from Newport. I also miss watching Mayo football live. It’s not the same shouting at the television over here when they are losing to last-minute points.”