In this article series, I discuss how I left my old job to pursue a career in fitness full-time.  

In part 1, I give you a glimpse into my personal journey into the fitness industry.  

In part 2 of this article, I discussed 5 tips for starting your own successful business.  

Now, in part 3, I will give you 5 more tips for starting your own sucessful business, in the fitness industry, or any other industry.

6. Don’t be afraid to turn clients away.

Along the same lines as the advice given in tip number 5, if you differentiate yourself from your competition, you’ll attract a lot of potential clients.  Not every one of them will be a good fit for you.  And that’s OK. 

I still struggle with this idea of wanting to sign up everyone who walks in our door.  Jim, on the other hand, is fantastic at turning people away if they don’t buy into what we do (see tip number 2!).  The fact that he can do this well is fantastic and saves all parties involved a lot of time and headache.

You read the advice we give our clients, and it may have sounded strange to you.  Many potential clients don’t understand this philosophy at first, and that’s fine.  But once you start building a culture that encompasses what’s important to you, it will catch on quickly, and you’ll attract the kind of clients you want.

We only pursue clients who buy into our philosophy and trust our expertise. Otherwise it’s a waste of time and energy for everyone involved.

7.  Be the BEST in your area.

This should be a no-brainer, but if you love what you do, you should try and be the absolute best at it!  If you’re the best at what you do, and have good systems in place for your business, you should be a success.  Never stop learning.  Use what is useful and discard what is not.  Always be honing and refining your skills.

If you’re running group classes or bootcamps (or you want to!), one way to be the best at what you do is to check out Bootcamp in a Box, a product I created with Jim Laird (my business partner) and Mike Robertson.  It allows you to get inside our brain and figure out exactly how we program for our group classes, and how we keep our clients healthy while giving them an awesome workout.  We’ve sold hundreds of copies so far, and it’s catching on like crazy.  If you don’t start implementing this programming soon, your competitors will, and you’ll be too late.

Don’t fall behind the curve. You should always be learning and always honing your craft.

 8. Invest in a coach to help you.

This should probably be number one on the list because it’s so, so important.  Even though I have a Master’s Degree in Business, nothing I did in school could have prepared me for running my own (just like any other school vs. practical experience). 

 Lucky for us, we have resources like Pat Rigsby and Nick Berry of Fitness Consulting Group, and Debra Locker of Locker PR to help us.  We are Fitness Revolution franchisees (Pat and Nick own/run FR), and we have been able to implement the business systems they offer through the franchise to help make sure everything in our business runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible.  Debra is fantastic at helping us with local PR like TV spots, magazine articles, etc.  And we recently hired an amazing woman to be our General Manager at the gym.  She *technically* works for us, but let’s be honest, she is the BOSS.  And it works out perfectly.

You see, in every business you need a technician, an entrepreneur, and a manager. 

Jim is an amazing technician, and has some fantastic ideas for growing the business.

I am more of an entrepreneur, and am becoming a better technician every day.

Neither of us can manage anything to save our lives. =)

So we hired Joann as our GM and it’s been the best thing we’ve done for our business. 

Invest in people who can teach you how to grow your business (Pat and Nick), so that you have the time to do the public relations activities that will get your face seen in your community (thank you Debra), and hire someone who can take care of the administrative and managerial things so you don’t have to (we love you Joann!!). 

It’s worth every penny.

9. Barter services whenever it makes sense.

Bartering services is a fantastic way for both parties to get a ton of value from a relationship, as long as it makes sense.  For example, we barter with a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, a web designer, and a woman who cooks delicious Paleo-approved food for us!

 We have also bartered for PR work, spa and skincare services, and more.  Since we run a lot of group classes and semi-private sessions, adding one more person to class or a semi-private session adds very little to our workload and virtually nothing to our schedule in terms of time.  Since we are already training clients during that hour anyway, it’s convenient for us, and we get the benefit of the services listed above.  Obviously if you do a lot of one-on-one training, bartering might not make as much sense.

Always make sure you have a contract or written statement from each party about the services being exchanged so things don’t get confusing or messy.  (i.e. Jane Doe will provide (2) 60 minutes massages each calendar month in exchange for 3 group training classes a week).  This will ensure both parties are receiving exactly what they expect, with minimal potential for misunderstanding.

 10. “Don’t give up.  Don’t ever give up.”  – Jimmy Valvano

 It’s a very cliché statement, but most clichés exist for a reason. 

In part 2 of this article, I discussed how Jim lived in our old, dingy gym for months so that we could put more money into the business.  I talked about how I worked at a bar, often until 4 am, to support myself while we tried to make the gym successful. 

It took a LONG time for us to find and secure this building, and even longer before we could get approved to move in!

We encountered numerous setbacks from having to leave one of our buildings almost overnight, to having several buildings fall through completely, to having to close down for longer than expected because of zoning and city permit issues, and me having to take a leave of absence because of the unexpected loss of my Father, leaving Jim to run the gym by himself for a while.

We could have given up. 

We could have decided that it was too hard. 

We could have decided that it took too much work, too much time, too much effort.

We could have determined that the odds were stacked against us.

We could have used the excuse that, “most small businesses fail.”

We could have surrendered to that fear of failure.

We could have spent more time worrying about failing, that being committed to succeeding.

But we didn’t.

We decided that success was our ONLY option, and it was.  And here we are.

We aren’t “out of the woods” just yet, of course.  We still have a long way to go.  I have no doubt it will be a long, bumpy ride with dozens of unexpected twists and turns.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

BONUS TIP # 11:  Be slow to hire, but once you hire well, take good care of them.  

We were lucky enough to meet Lucy Hendricks a few years ago when she did an internship with Jim.  We couldn’t hire her immediately because we couldn’t afford it, so she trained at another gym to get experience, but she was totally miserable.  During that time, she was willing to shadow us (pretty much for free) to get experience and learn our training methods.  She was so intent on working for us that she waited for 6+ months until we could bring her on board, and she started off with just a few hours and a few classes a week.  It wasn’t easy, but she stuck with it.  She even got a second job so she could afford to work for us.

We LOOOOVE Lucy!

Now that things have taken off, we do everything we can to take great care of Lucy.  We constantly ask for her input, ask her what her short and long-term goals are, and do whatever we can to help her reach them.  We have set up a pay scale where she is rewarded handsomely for performing well (which, of course, she always does!), and it’s our intention that she loves working for us so much, and is compensated so well, that she never wants to leave. 

Find amazing employees, and take great care of them.  Period. 

Do you agree? Disagree?  Did I leave anything out?  Let me know below! 

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed how I took the leap into concentrating on my fitness career full-time.

In this article, I want to give you some information on what we did wrong, what we did right, and how you can take the leap for yourself.  I have 10 tips to give you, but I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I’ll give you 5 today, and 5 more tomorrow!

Enjoy.

1. Start small and lean.

A lot of new businesses want to invest a ton of money up front to have state-of-the-art everything.  This is rarely a good idea, unless you have an unlimited source of money and/or you want to bring on some heavy duty investors who will own a lot of your business and who will want to have a lot of say in what you do.

We started our renting space from another gym on a percentage basis.  If starting a gym is what you want to do, I’d recommend this route almost every time.  Tons of places are looking for an additional revenue stream during their off-hours (think dance and yoga studios, churches, etc.).  We also had minimal equipment (some bands and a few kettlebells).  Start with the absolute basics and build from there.

Even when we moved into our own space, it was small and not exactly state-of-the-art, but we wanted to be frugal.  (Notice the duct tape holding the carpet in place?)

2. Have a good partner.

Jim Laird is my business partner and I think we both agree, we could have never, EVER done this alone.  Having someone else to lean on, someone else to rely on, and someone else who is strong where you are weak is absolutely essential!  Do your best to find someone who complements you, and make sure you pick wisely.  Owning a business together is very similar to a marriage, and you want to make sure they are in it for the long haul!

You’ll fight, you’ll laugh, you’ll want to kill one another. But you HAVE to learn how to make it work.

3. Make sacrifices.

In part 1 of this article I discussed foregoing a “grown-up” job so I could have more time to focus on my own businesses.  In the meantime, I supported myself with a job as a cocktail waitress.  Yes, it was an awesome job for me during that time, and I will forever be grateful for it.  But I was an MBA grad who was waiting tables at a bar.

I always head my held high because I knew I was doing what was best for me in the long haul, but I’ll admit, it was a bit embarrassing at times.  Please understand I am not saying there is anything wrong with that profession.  I did it for almost 7 years and have the utmost respect for those that do it.  I just never thought that I’d be a 27 year old with a Master’s degree asking if people wanted a side of ranch with their Chicken Nachos.

And try explaining to people why you’re working at a bar 2 nights/week if you’re actually a really good trainer and coach.  It was tough.

As for my partner Jim, he made the sacrifice and lived in our old gym for a while so we could put more money back into the business.  He had a tiny little room with a bed on the floor.  It wasn’t exactly a great place to live.  But he did it because he knew he had to.

4. Pick a do-or-die date.

Several times over the last few years, I told myself that I would stop working at the bar, “once X, Y, and Z happened.”  I was waiting for the “right time” to quit.

Guess what?  There is NEVER a “right time.”  If you wait until all of the stars have aligned and everything is perfect, you’ll never take the plunge. You MUST have that sense of urgency… that “Holy crap!  If this doesn’t work, there is no other option.”  It’s at that point, that your survival mechanism kicks in and you get shit done.

I remember feeling like I was on a bungee cord plummeting towards the ground, and I didn’t know how long or how scary my fall would be… all I knew is that somehow, some way… my cord would catch me before I hit the ground.  I can’t explain how I knew.  I just knew.

5. Differentiate yourself.

No matter what field you are in, it’s imperative that you differentiate yourself from the crowd.

What makes you special?  What makes you different?

For us, it was telling our clients to exercise LESS.  To leave a “quarter in the tank.”  To choose sleep over exercise if they are lacking sleep.  To eat real food.  To walk for leisure, not exercise.  To not overdo it or push themselves too hard.

When the current trends include P90X, Insanity, CrossFit, Spinning, Cranking, and other activities that are very intense and hard on the body, you better believe we were able to differentiate ourselves with the advice above!

I have no doubt that one of the reasons you want your own business because you think you can do it better than your competition.  So be different.  Do it better.  And tell everybody about it.

Tune in tomorrow where I’ll follow up with 5 more tips for you!

“Hey Molly! I just wanted to write and say that I am a huge fan of what you do, both on your personal blog, and with Girls Gone Strong.  I currently have a full-time job that is not in the fitness industry, but fitness is my passion and I was to do that full-time instead.  I would love to do what you do.  How did you get started?” – Amanda C.

Hey Amanda!

Thanks so much for this question!  I get this question very often, so instead of replying to you directly, I wanted to write a post about it so everyone can benefit!

I guess the best place to start is my background.  My Bachelor’s degree is actually a double major in Finance and Marketing, and my Master’s is in Business (MBA).  I fell in love with strength training and nutrition around 2004 (my junior year of college), but I was not about to switch majors after almost 3 full years of college.  Plus, I still never thought I’d end up with a career in fitness!  I’ve loved numbers and business for as long as I can remember.

Heck…at 7 years old, I was charging my family members interest on any money they borrowed from me!  I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but I figured if they had my money, and I didn’t… I deserved to be compensated for that. =)

I didn’t quite understand “compound interest” at the time… but I was still a “businesswoman” from a very young age.

When I finished undergrad in 2006 (I took 5 years to get my Bachelor’s because I switched my major 3 times before settling on Finance and Marketing), I decided to immediately get my MBA. Around this time I met a young man that I would go on to date for the next 6 years.  He introduced me to an idea for a piece of software he wanted to have built that would automatically build meal plans for customers based on certain information about themselves (height, weight, goals, etc.).  I loved his idea and was convinced that it would make us rich.

When I finished grad school in the summer of 2007, because I wanted to work on Red Point as much as possible, I decided to forgo getting a “grown-up” job and keep my cocktail waitress job at the swanky piano bar where I worked during undergrad and grad school.

Yes.  I was a cocktail waitress with an MBA for many, many years.

By day I was reading everything I could get my hands on related to nutrition and training, working on Red Point, blowing up the forums on T-Nation and the now-defunct Figure Athlete, training for figure competitions, and completely and totally immersed in all things “fitness.”

After spending two full years having the software built, in April of 2008 Red Point Fitness launched.

From a Red Point photo shoot…

We just knew, “If we built it…they would come.”

Seriously.  That was our marketing plan. No seriously.

Quit laughing.

Wait…did you just snort?  I thought so.

:::::tapping my foot:::::

Are you going to keep laughing or are you done yet?

Anyway, yes, we thought if we built it, they would come.  And, well, some people came.  And they really liked it.  But we didn’t know enough about user experience or customer satisfaction and anytime we got feedback about what customers didn’t like, we just got mad and justified why our way was better, and we didn’t change much of anything.  Ask me how well that worked out…? (Hint: it didn’t.)

After a frustrating year or two of hanging out in limbo, training some clients here and there, and spending more and more time with my good buddy Jim Laird, I knew that I wanted to be in the fitness industry, I just didn’t know in what capacity.  I was embarrassed that Red Point hadn’t done as well as we’d hoped, I felt like I didn’t have many options in terms of where I could train clients (my commercial gym was saturated with trainers, and I didn’t want to train at a Globo-Gym), and I felt very stuck and discouraged.

Hanging with some of my faves… Mike Robertson and Bill Hartman of IFAST

In January of 2010, I started training with Mike Robertson of IFAST, and so did Jim.  We both quickly realized that there was a whole world of training to which we hadn’t been exposed.

Don’t get me wrong… at this point Jim had been getting people moving and feeling better and getting them extremely strong for over a decade, and he was damn good at it.  But integrating what he learned from Mike with what he already knew about training clients, allowed him to get results at lightning speed.

After a major life transition, and spending times at other gyms in our area, Jim decided that he wanted to help as many people as possible by giving them what they really needed, and that was an intelligent exercise program, and solid nutrition and recovery information.  So he started a group class, and asked for my help.  The initial plan was, I would help coach 1-2 nights a week, and that was it.

A couple of weeks after he started classes, we both attended a “Bootcamp Blueprint” event held by Pat Rigsby and Nick Berry.  I was hooked, and after a brief chat and a handshake, J&M Strength and Conditioning was born (well, we were under a different name then, but the concept was born).

We jumped in with two feet, and no idea what we were getting ourselves into!

We started out renting space from a local CrossFit gym.  We didn’t have any money, so we agreed to pay them 25% of what we brought in each month, that way if we didn’t make anything, we wouldn’t owe anything.  The plans were to continue renting space from them and grow our business within their building.  Unfortunately, they had to move into a smaller building with very little parking, and between their CrossFit classes, on-ramp classes, bootcamp classes, and our group personal training classes, it was way too confusing and cramped.  So in May of 2011, we moved into our own space.

It was small.

It was dingy.

It reeked of cigarette smoke.

It was an old adult video store. <—- NOT KIDDING!

But it was OURS and we were thrilled!

Fancy, huh? Notice the umm…very dark windows. =)

At that point, we had about 50 clients in our classes, plus Jim’s personal training clients, so we couldn’t afford much and because had to find space quickly, we had to take what we could get.  We stayed there for 18 months, despite almost bursting at the seams with new clients after 4-5 months!  We were locked into our lease for a year, but even after the year was up, buildings kept falling through over and over again.  Every time we got our hopes up, another building would fall through.  It was frustrating and discouraging, and our clients thought we would never move!  In fact, they started joking that our “new building” was like a mermaid riding atop a unicorn frolicking over a rainbow (i.e. they thought it was just a myth!)

During this time, I was still waiting tables 1-2 nights a week as a safety net in case something didn’t work out with the gym.  Now this may not seem like a job that would be scary to leave.  After all, it’s just waiting tables, right?  WRONG.  I had been with this company for almost 7 years and was able to make my own super flexible schedule, work as much or as little as I wanted, and in 2 nights a week I was making more than most of my MBA classmates at their “grown-up” jobs.  Yeah, it was a freakin’ sweet deal.  And SUPER hard to walk away from.

In the end, it wasn’t what I loved, and I knew it had a shelf life.  I wanted to build something where I wouldn’t have to trade hours for dollars.  I wanted to help people.  I wanted to be my own boss and have a ton of freedom!

In March of 2012 I called it quits for good.  It was absolutely terrifying, but looking back, it was the best decision I ever made. It was do or die time, baby!

Finally, after months upon months of searching, Jim found us a fantastic space, and in November of 2012, we moved in!  It’s 7,500 square feet and in a fantastic location.

Just a small part of our new building!

When we moved in, we had well over 110 class clients, plus our private and semi-private clients.  Within a few short months of moving in, we added another 80 clients to our roster, and we are already looking to add more space!

SUMMARY

June 2010: renting space from a local gym, 20 clients in class, 2 classes/week

March 2013: leasing 7,500 square feet and looking to expand, ~175 class clients, 50 private/semi-private clients, 24 classes/week

In addition to J&M, I have been fortunate enough to hook up with the likes of Neghar Fonooni and Alli McKee to form Girls Gone Strong.

****(The four other original co-founders, Julia Ladewski, Jen Comas Keck, Nia Shanks, and Marianne Kane all stepped away to focus on other projects and they are all rocking out in the industry in their own ways!  Be sure to check them out when you get a chance!)

Starting GGS was one of the most exciting and important things I’ve ever done!

I also have my personal blog (which you’re reading right now), and I’ve got much more in the works, so please sign up for my newsletter so you can stay tuned to what I have going on!

So here I am!  After all of the twists and turns and failures and things that fell through… I am still here and still busting my butt every day to make things happen.  I am nowehere close to being where I want to be, and all of my businesses are still in their infancy, so every day I take a huge *risk* by continuing to do what I do.

(I say *risk* because I believe it’s a much bigger risk to shy away from what you are passionate about, what lights you up from the inside out, what makes you tick… I believe the “safe” route of finding a “good job” and plugging away up the corporate ladder for 30-40 years is much more terrifying than chasing my dreams.  But then again, I am a little crazy…)

Keep your eyes peeled for Part 2 where I give my top tips on how to transition into fitness full-time. (HINT: LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!)