One year ago today I signed my life away for a dream. In the moment part of me wanted to throw a party while the other half of me wanted to throw up. I still remember being at the bank getting a certified check for almost 20k just to get the keys and almost having a panic attack because handing this check over and signing on the dotted line meant there was no turning back. This made it real and I’ll now be on the hook for roughly a quarter million dollars worth of rent and NNN fees and that’s not including the cost of the demo and build out. I was scared to death. I met up with my dad the night before I signed the lease for some reassurance that I was doing the right thing and I’ll never forget what he told me: “if you weren't scared to death I’d be worried. You’re making the right choice.”

All the time I spent grinding in this industry and then all the time I spent trying to find a space, everything I had been through for the past few years to make this dream a reality was finally going to pay off. But there was still so much fear in the unknown. How the hell was I going to bring in enough cash to pay my rent every month? How long was I going to have to go without a paycheck? What if this wasn’t the right choice? What if I honestly have NO IDEA what I’m doing? It was time to take that leap of faith and start the life I’ve always wanted. To say life has completely changed over the past year would be a serious understatement but through it all there’s been one constant and that’s the fact that your worst day working for yourself is still better than your best day working for someone else. Every single morning I get to pull keys out of my pocket to open the door to a gym that I built out, that has my name on it. Every day whether or not I go into the gym (I think there’s been maybe 5 days that I haven’t for the past year) I get to drive by and see our Lyons Den Sports Performance sign off of State Road 56. There’s no better feeling.

BEFORE

AFTER

Lessons Learned

If you’ve frequented this blog then you’ve no doubt heard my testimony. They say you can’t have a testimony until you’ve been tested, and these past few years have tested me in ways I never wanted, but it’s helped me grow as both an entrepreneur and a person. From an unceremonious departure from a facility I really wanted to see succeed and poured my entire life into for four years, to the excitement of the next step of opening my own gym, to a pandemic that halted my life in ways I could never have imagined, to long term relationships ending, to getting a violent shove into sobriety, to feeling completely lost starting a new business, to shipping delays on equipment and flooring, to almost not being able to get our flooring down before our equipment install (we made it by about 56 hours), to some incredibly humbling things in my personal life that I’m not really ready to open up about, to having the state take their sweet time getting us our health studio license (thanks Nikki Fried, you probably should have been spending more time doing your job than running for governor), to getting covid and having to delay our opening another 10 days, to opening almost three months later than planned and having our grand opening on the first day of school at a facility where 90% of our clientele is young athletes who were starting both school and practice that week. Losing the summer created about a 50k swing in the wrong direction for us which COMPLETELY changed EVERYTHING. There’s been no short of setbacks throughout this process but it’s forced me to learn to adapt and pivot when things don’t go as planned, and if this process has taught me anything it’s that things never go as planned so have a back up plan, a back up plan for that back up plan, and a contingency plan for that back up back up plan.

Our first month had me questioning how this was all going to play out. We pulled in a whopping $2,400. Granted our first day being open was August 9th so we lost 1/3 of the month but if you extrapolate that all out and account for that kind of income every day it would have only put us at about $3500. Not super great but hey at least we’re bringing in money, right? We had no real coordinated marketing effort because we had no idea when we’d be able to open, and we ended up cancelling our first grand opening and announcing our second date just 5 days prior to the new one. Then we dumped a decent amount of money into digital marketing that saw almost ZERO return, even though we had our target demographic nailed down. Opening our facility at the time we did is roughly the equivalent of opening a bakery in a town that just banned sugar. There’s almost zero demand in the early fall for sports performance training and I’ve never worked at a facility that did well in August and September. Typically the little bit of revenue facilities like mine make during this time comes from residual members that stick around after the summer (something we didn’t have) and general population training which we had hoped to build up over the summer (which we also didn’t have). This was the absolute LAST place I wanted to be. I’m sitting here with my brand new gym that I’ve been trying to open up for the better part of 2 years, I watched our checking account dwindle down paying bills for a facility we couldn’t generate any revenue in, and I’m fighting an uphill battle to get clientele in while their afternoons are tied up with school, homework and practice. It’s next to impossible to ask someone to add something into their new and incredibly busy schedule if it hasn’t already been part of their weekly routine. We opened at the worst possible time, but I enjoy a challenge so we got to work.

What did all of this teach me?

1. There are people in your life that are worth fighting for and holding onto at all costs. They’re the people that fight for you when you’re too exhausted to fight for yourself. They’re the people who are in your corner who WILL NOT allow you to throw in the towel. They’re your cheerleading section and can give you the energy to keep fighting with a simple text message or a phone call. They are worth every second of time and energy you’ll expend to hold onto them. Do not take them for granted.

2. Don’t ever expect people to do their jobs or care as much as you do. It took me 9 weeks to get our health studio license from the state of Florida when it should have taken 5-10 business days, or 2 weeks. They sure as shit cashed our check three days after we sent our application in, but never bothered to assign our application to anyone. It took four weeks of calling to get someone to finally give our application a look, and another three weeks to approve our contracts and give us our license. Good thing they emailed us a pdf of it because we have still yet to receive our hard copy from them.

3. Sometimes things just work out even when they’re not supposed to. I had lined up a flooring distributor and installer who could supply and get our flooring laid down by the end of April about a week before our large equipment install. Three weeks prior to the date I got completely ghosted. Wouldn’t answer texts, phone calls or emails, nothing. So I figured I would go ahead and order my own through another distributor and pray that I could find someone to lay it down in time. I was even watching instructional videos on how to lay down rubber and turf on my own if push came to shove. A week after I ordered the flooring I received a phone call telling me that the supplier had issue with getting the glue necessary to make our rubber flooring and our new date was pushed back a week, putting us past our install date. I cancelled the flooring installer I had secured due to the fact that I wouldn’t have any flooring for him to put down. Our turf was on its way though, so I made plans to have a couple of buddies help me receive the 600lb roll of turf because as strong as I like to think I am, I’m not “carry a 600lb roll of turf” strong. As I’m waiting around for the turf to be delivered I get a phone call from a trucking company letting me know they were about 30 minutes out which I assumed was my turf. When the truck came in they had three pallets, it was my rubber which was now three weeks early! I called my installer to see if he was still good to go but he had taken another job and was no longer available. About a week and a half went by and a buddy of mine’s dad put me in touch with someone who may be able to install it but was fairly booked in the timeframe that I needed, but was available a week later. It seemed all but hopeless so I called Sorinex (our equipment supplier/installer) to let them know that we would have to push our install back which would have been roughly a month and a half due to the fact that they were also booked out. Before I could call them I got a phone call from my Sorinex rep asking if they could push my install back a week and a half due to some logistical issues they had on their end. It literally lined up as perfect as humanly possible and I scheduled the flooring to be finished roughly 56 hours prior to our install, just enough time to let the glue cure. Sometimes things just work out.

4. If I didn’t reach for a bottle during this time, I was fairly confident that my sobriety was something that I’d be able to hold on to forever, and I’m a lot stronger emotionally than I ever realized I was.

5. Sometimes in the moment you can make rash decisions that will effect you moving forward only to realize later on down the road that it didn’t need to be as big of a deal as you made it in the moment. Always take the time to take a step back and look at the entire picture before making these decisions or you could be paying for them later on.

6. Luck happens. But you’ve gotta be good to get lucky, and you’ve gotta work hard to be good.

Life’s full of lessons and chances to grow as a person. I spent the majority of my life running from these scenarios and drowning my sorrows in booze which is why I firmly believe God decided to throw like a billion at me all at once, to show me that I was capable of a lot more than I ever realized. There’s been a lot of sleepless nights and I’m sure I have many in front of me, but I try to never forget that I GET to have these worries, I don’t HAVE to have them. That mindset is life changing and I implore you to try it out if you’re ever in a rough season in life.

The Sky’s the Limit!

After a rough build out and opening we’ve finally settled in and hit our stride. We really turned a corner back in November and December actually turned into a really busy month to my absolute shock. We’ve grown our reach, we’re starting to create a good recognizable brand, and we’ve developed a loyal customer base. We took on our first intern this month, and we’re hoping to hire our first coach this summer. We grossed more last month, historically one of our industry’s slowest/worst, than I did in any month during the four years I was at my previous place of employment and we’ve only been open for four months. I always knew if someone would just take the handcuffs off me and allow me to do my job that I could bring in business and make something not only profitable, but provide a valuable service in the process. Motivation comes from a lot of places, but competition/revenge/proving people wrong is absolutely one of the biggest motivating factors for myself, it has been my entire life. This process has taught me to stick to my guns and if you do things the right way, the way you know how to, the sky’s the limit for your success. We still face all the issues that every other business deals with, but we’ve got an enormous amount of growth potential sitting in front of us. From filling the gaps in our schedule throughout the day, to the online training space and even consulting there’s an enormous amount of opportunity right in front of us and I’m pumped to see how big we can grow!

To everyone who’s come through our doors over the past couple of months, thank you. From the bottom of my heart I appreciate each and every one of you and I can’t wait to continue helping you all build the life and create the confidence that you deserve so much. Thank you.