About - Billy Borja

In The Beginning

Billy grew up the youngest of six kids in southern California. With a difficult childhood, he had no dreams or aspiration of who he wanted to become or what he wanted to do with his life. In his early twenties struggling with addiction to drugs, he found himself at a church where he gave his life to Jesus Christ, and for the first time felt he had a real chance at doing something significant with his life. Now a born-again Christian, Billy’s faith became the foundation by which he would attribute his accomplishments, achievements, and successes.

The Entrepreneurship Inside

With no direction of who he wanted to become or do with his life, Billy always wanted to train martial arts. In his early twenties, he signed up for his first class at a martial arts studio he knew about from some friends in high school. This single act would open the doors to develop him to becoming the entrepreneur, business owner, and speaker he is today. Billy’s martial arts training helped him overcome a stuttering problem he had from a young age and gave him the confidence he never had. He excelled with his training and today is an accomplished martial artist holding a 3rd degree blackbelt in the Korean combat art of Tang Soo Do.

The Entrepreneurship Inside

In 1995, he opened a martial arts studio, first designed to be an after school program for kids became an 8-year journey of a full-time studio where he impacted hundreds of students. He was a regular speaker at schools on child safety and bullying and was regularly featured as an expert on child safety and self-defense on local television affiliates for FOX, ABC, NBC, KSWB and KUSI News in San Diego, California. He became a personal trainer to supplement his income with his studio. Billy’s journey as a black belt martial artist laid the foundation for what came next in his life…as it helped to develop the entrepreneur and speaker in him.

Major Setback

In 2003, Billy sold his martial arts studio to enter his second business venture and started what was to be a video production company Big On Kids Entertainment, Inc. As founder and CEO of the company his vision was to create a video series about a character he created and developed, Kid Billy. With his passion to helping kids his plan was to duplicate his efforts in his martial arts studio and the community and produce a children’s live-action video series around the Kid Billy character in hopes of having a positive and lasting impact on the lives of kids everywhere. A noble and worthwhile venture turned out to become a major setback in his life. With little to no experience in video or film production he and his four partners struggled to get distribution and the company was dissolved in 2005. This single experience set in motion a series of events that would cause Billy to drain all his savings, lose his home to foreclosure, file bankruptcy, and subsequently lead to he and his wife of sixteen years with two young children to end their marriage in divorce. This was the most painful and difficult thing he had ever had to deal with to this point in his life. In 2008-2009 he found himself broke and broken.

Breakthrough

Broke and broken and living with his sister, Billy reignited his faith and made a commitment to surrender his loss and misfortunes to God and start over. He came up with a phrase that would become sort of a mantra for his life, “setbacks are part of life, but they don’t have to keep you back.” In three years following losing everything that mattered in his life, he found himself working three jobs. He opened a small personal-training studio, was recruited as Director and Head Instructor for a martial arts studio, and taught group-fitness and kickboxing classes in the evening. He was on the road to rebuilding and knew that he had to do everything he could to support his two children and their mom. During this time of rebuilding his life, in 2012, he was introduced to a business opportunity with a fitness franchise that he had never heard of, Orangetheory Fitness, an emerging group-fitness company based out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Billy raised $600,000.00 and opened the first Orangetheory fitness studio in La Jolla, California, and only the second location in the state with the only other location at the time in Newport Beach, California. As a multi-unit franchisee, he would open three locations in San Diego. Billy spent eight years building and developing the three franchises to becoming multi-million-dollar businesses before selling in 2021. During his time as owner and operator of his fitness studios he had 50 employees and a leadership team of 12 managers and head coaches. In business cashflow and sales is the lifeblood of any business; in sales ABC stands for Always Be Closing. In leadership, Billy says “ABC stands for Always Be Coaching.” Billy trained and developed his leadership team and mentored and coached them to become top producers with the company.

Visionary and Pioneer

In 2018 with no other licenses available to open additional Orangetheory studios, Billy’s desire to have a positive, meaningful, and lasting impact on the lives of others, he sought to creating ways to continue with this passion and he came up with a concept in the yoga space that had never been done before. He realized that the yoga industry was wide open for something new and great, and he was willing to step out in faith and take his idea and years of experience as an entrepreneur and business owner and bring his new yoga concept to life. With a million dollars of investment he created a revolutionary new yoga practice, VibeFlow® Yoga. This yoga concept was the first of its kind anywhere in the industry as a technology-based practice that utilized whole body vertical vibration (WBV) which has tremendous health benefits, and he incorporated an audio-immersion headphone system which has created an experience unlike anything in the fitness and wellness industry. Billy is the Founder and CEO of VibeFlow®, he and VibeFlow® have been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and KUSI News in San Diego. In 2019 USA Today said “VibeFlow Yoga is one of the top 10 fitness trends to check out in 2020.”

Public and Motivational Speaker

Aside from being an entrepreneur and building his businesses, Billy enjoys public speaking as a motivational speaker and sharing his expertise through important topics such as, leadership, business startups, and entrepreneurship,

Billy’s signature messages, Lead Like a Black Belt and Succeed Like a Black Belt comes from his over 20 years of experience as a martial artist, where he shares 7 steps to personal leadership and 6 steps to personal and professional success and achievement. These steps have been instrumental in helping him achieve the success that he has enjoyed for over a decade. Other titles for Billy’s messages include, Love and Leadership, Climb Your Mountain and Change Your Lens.

Billy is passionate about helping others fulfill their own calling and achieve the goals and attain the success they desire. His powerful and compelling messages, and motivational style will empower and invigorate you to act and apply his proven perspectives, philosophy and principles to yourself and organization.

In addition to his martial arts training, Billy enjoys fitness training, surfing, writing, mentoring, volunteering, and spending time with his wife Lisa, sons Aiden, Christian, and daughter Alexis, plus his two grandchildren, Dean and Brody.