Last week I shared with you the first five lessons I’ve learned from being in business for 10 years.
For those of you who didn’t read it:
* How dare you! * The Fort is turning 10 years old this month and there are some lessons I learned in a decade of business that I wanted to share with you.
The response has been overwhelming.
Telegrams have poured in from all over the world. The New York Times, Forbes and Inc. all reached out to do a feature. Alan Greenspan rose up from his grave to ask me for economic advice.
Clearly, none of this is true. Which leads me perfectly into the next lesson.
Lesson 6: Not everyone will see it.
When you create, craft and work on something for long enough you see the brilliance in it (you also see the holes, but that’s another lesson, entirely). Therefore, you think everyone else will unquestionably see it, feel it and shout your praises from the rooftops.
But that isn’t what happens. It’s actually quite the opposite.
Sure, you’ll have early supporters who love you. But you are also the equivalent of a business fawn. You are on new, shaky legs and you have almost no idea how the world works.
And this will lead to sessions that run 20 minutes over or somehow get overbooked. You’ll be so sleep deprived that you accidentally nail a Hollywood actress in the face with a medicine ball at 5AM which, in turn, leads to your first bad Yelp! review.
You’ll make the mistake of going on Reddit to see if anyone is talking about the gym only to be met with “who do these assholes think they are?” threads.
And it will bother you. No matter how many “fuck the haters” t-shirts you wear, it will get under your skin.
Which is good. Because you will then learn and make adjustments and if you can keep the lights on for long enough you will actually create something that a community of people will love.
But you are going to go through some pain first. This is unavoidable.
So when people don’t get it right away, don’t panic. Just keep going. Vision always shows up before validation.
Lesson 7: That pain comes back.
You will solve the problems. You will have fans who shout your name from the rooftops. They will bring in referrals. You will feel very grateful and fortunate and like you finally have things solved.
But things are never solved. Because you will change and grow and expand and that will bring new problems and challenges and that pain relief will fade faster than that Tylenol you took for a raging hangover.
If you are someone who is motivated by finish lines, owning a small business is not for you. This is an infinite game until you either give up (never!) or sell (which I think happens to about 1% of small businesses).
So appreciate the moments where it feels like things are going well. Get some sleep. Breath. Maybe even smile for a moment. But just know that the next hurdle is only a step or two away. And it will probably cost you more money than before.
Lesson 8: The music never gets better.
I mean that quite literally. The music in the gyms never gets better.
One day you are listening to “Def Leppard Radio” on Spotify, truly convinced that there is no better playlist for lifting weights when, suddenly, you are pummeled with Drake or Reggaeton or the type of EDM that reminds you of shopping at Club Monaco.
Listen, I get that I am the old man in the room. But you aren’t going to convince me that I am wrong here.
Luckily for us, unlike large group fitness classes, the music isn’t the star of the show in our gyms. And, when you are fortunate enough to have a diverse training population, it’s an impossible thing to get right for everyone.
But the greater lesson here is that there are some things in your business that will be absolute non-negotiables and some things that will benefit from the influence of others. But after a decade of never feeling like we’ve gotten the music right, I’m not sure where we land.
Maybe that’s the real takeaway — some things you can fix, some things you just have to turn down a little and keep lifting.
Lesson 9: You know what you guys should do…
In a community-based business like ours that is located in the heart of New York City, you end up fortunate enough to be surrounded by very smart and very successful people from all walks of life and all types of industries.
And as you gain success, these people will want to start advising you on what you should do moving forward.
For example, at least a dozen of you will now tell me what we should do about the music based on the previous section. Others will tell us where our next location should be or that, “this concept would absolutely kill in Des Moines” because twice per year they go to Des Moines to visit their mother-in-law and would love a place to escape for a couple of hours.
You can and should learn a lot from your clients. They see and experience things in ways that you never will. But when it comes to your business plan and, particularly, your product, they are there to enjoy it and benefit from it, not dictate it.
In a service-based business, people are seeking out your passion, experience and expertise. They may have read an interesting article but you live and breathe this stuff. So stick to what works and what you want to bring into the world.
You can take advice from everyone. But you should take direction from yourself.
Lesson 10: Lead with gratitude.
If you’ve gotten through all ten of these lessons you might be left with the impression that running a small business is mostly a drag. And, as I’ve documented here, it is an uphill battle with a lot of challenges.
While it is perhaps human nature to focus on or overemphasize the difficulties, the right frame is to approach each day with gratitude. I believe the statistics around the new business failure rate are exaggerated, but even with that being said, the chances of keeping a small business running for 10 years (with a crippling, 2 year long pandemic smack dab in the middle of it, no less) are relatively low. So it’s never lost on me that, not only have we beat the odds, we’ve had thousands of people put their fitness in our hands in the past decade.
And the heart-filling gratitude I have for that far outweighs the discomfort of the challenges.
We’ve tried to make you healthier and stronger and fitter. We’ve worked on improving your confidence and finding some friends and hopefully convinced you that you are capable of more than you could ever have imagined.
Our goal has always been to believe in you more than you might have even believed in yourself. And that you walked out of the gym every time rightfully feeling proud of what you’ve accomplished.
Being in business for 10 years isn’t easy. But persisting with this type of training for an hour or 6 months of 10 years isn’t easy either.
So it only seems fitting to end this by thanking you. It may be obvious but it’s still worth saying, our dream wouldn’t be possible without you.