Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

“Don’t wait un­til you have every­thing fig­ured out. Just jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down.” These in­spir­ing words from Jonathan Dick­er­son, the CEO, founder, and head coach of the gym called New Im­age Fit­ness, per­fect­ly cap­ture the mind­set and at­ti­tude he ap­plies to his ven­ture.

At just 26 years old, Dick­er­son is al­ready liv­ing the en­tre­pre­neur­ial dream many on­ly talk about. A gym that was born not out of a need for mon­ey but from a sim­ple de­sire to have his own space to ex­er­cise. To­day, it’s one of the fastest-grow­ing pri­vate fit­ness spaces in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the jour­ney to this mo­ment has been noth­ing short of trans­for­ma­tion­al.

Dick­er­son’s sto­ry be­gins in child­hood, where sports were his first love. From track and field to bas­ket­ball, ten­nis, and crick­et, he was al­ways the ath­let­ic one in class—though al­so la­belled the class clown.

As an on­ly child, he ad­mit­ted to be­ing a bit of an in­tro­vert at heart. But one per­son who con­sis­tent­ly drew him out of his shell was his fa­ther, the first role mod­el he ever knew.

“My fa­ther shaped my mind­set. He was al­ways lis­ten­ing to mo­ti­va­tion­al con­tent, al­ways push­ing me to be men­tal­ly strong and over­come ad­ver­si­ty. He built him­self up from noth­ing, and that al­ways stuck with me,” Dick­er­son re­flect­ed.

As his pas­sion for fit­ness grew with age, he found new role mod­els in the body­build­ing world—fig­ures like Sime­on Pan­da and Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger—drawn to their dis­ci­pline, strength, and com­mit­ment to self-mas­tery.

To­day, many of his clients are en­tre­pre­neurs who open­ly share their life sto­ries and lessons, be­com­ing new sources of in­spi­ra­tion for him.

But Dick­er­son didn’t al­ways feel con­fi­dent in his own body. He re­called the turn­ing point vivid­ly.

“Hon­est­ly, what got me in­to ex­er­cis­ing–I think it was get­ting roast­ed a lot as a young man, be­ing skin­ny and every­one telling me, ‘You look­ing like you on your last day alive.’ So just con­sis­tent­ly get­ting roast­ed on a dai­ly ba­sis, it kind of woke me up to smell the cof­fee. I sat down, and I locked in from 13 years old and nev­er looked back since,” he said.

The con­cept for New Im­age Fit­ness, lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Mar­ket and Lon­don streets, Arou­ca, came not from a busi­ness plan but from a per­son­al need.

“I just want­ed a place where I could train for free. I had weights at home, and my fa­ther used to have a space where he used to do net­work mar­ket­ing, and even­tu­al­ly, the space kind of got a lit­tle dor­mant. I just asked him if I could put my equip­ment in the space, and he said, ‘Yeah, no prob­lem.’ But when I start­ed, by month’s end he came to col­lect the rent, and I did not know I had to pay rent, so when I was mak­ing up the mon­ey to pay the rent, I got the idea that peo­ple could pay me for my ser­vices,” he said.

So he start­ed of­fer­ing train­ing ses­sions. Peo­ple be­gan see­ing re­sults, word spread, and the gym be­gan to fill. What start­ed as a per­son­al project quick­ly snow­balled in­to some­thing much big­ger. But it wasn’t un­til 2019, dur­ing a cruise trip, that Dick­er­son had his re­al mo­ment of clar­i­ty.

“I was on this cruise, and I saw how life is sup­posed to be lived, com­pared to how I was liv­ing. That ex­pe­ri­ence flipped a switch. From that mo­ment, I took the busi­ness se­ri­ous­ly,” Dick­er­son said.

The name New Im­age Fit­ness came just as or­gan­i­cal­ly. One day, he post­ed a sto­ry on In­sta­gram ask­ing for gym name ideas. Some­one replied with “New Im­age Fit­ness”. It stuck im­me­di­ate­ly.

Then came COVID-19.

Just as he was about to launch a full ex­pan­sion of the gym, Dick­er­son watched then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounce that gyms would be shut down in­def­i­nite­ly. The tim­ing couldn’t have been worse. He had just in­vest­ed his sav­ings in­to the space, ex­pect­ing new clients to walk in the next morn­ing. This forced him to be­come in­no­v­a­tive.

“Dur­ing COVID, I turned in­to a hus­tler, so I was mo­ti­vat­ed, but I did not have the hus­tler spir­it,” he ex­plained.

While brain­storm­ing so­lu­tions to the prob­lem, he de­vel­oped a unique out­door train­ing sys­tem, mak­ing the most of the Gov­ern­ment’s al­lowance for gath­er­ings of up to five peo­ple.

He would train four clients per hour, ro­tate them in eight-hour shifts, and even­tu­al­ly bring on oth­er train­ers to man­age ses­sions. That sys­tem saved his busi­ness and taught him the pow­er of in­no­va­tion un­der pres­sure.

To­day, what keeps him go­ing isn’t just the wins—it’s the fear of start­ing over.

“It’s the fear of fail­ure, of not know­ing what to do next. I feel like at this age we have to fig­ure things out fast. I want to be the ul­ti­mate provider, to set up a fu­ture for my fam­i­ly even be­fore they ex­ist,” Dick­er­son ex­plained.

His next goal? To so­lid­i­fy the gym’s in­ter­nal sys­tems so that cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and re­ten­tion be­come sec­ond na­ture. From there, ex­pan­sion across T&T is the dream. He wants mul­ti­ple branch­es. He wants New Im­age to be­come a na­tion­al brand.

And for those who want to fol­low in his foot­steps, his ad­vice is sim­ple but pow­er­ful.

“Don’t wait un­til you have every­thing fig­ured out. Just jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down,” he said. It’s a mind­set that turned a dream in­to a move­ment—and he’s on­ly just be­gun.

It’s a les­son he’s still liv­ing by—every rep, every client, every leap for­ward.