I stopped sleeping.
The ‘no’s’ had gotten to me.
As the expenses and pressure and the amount of people relying on me grew, my ability to handle it all shrank.
I’ve said it thousands of times. I left advertising and got into fitness because I got tired of selling things to people they didn’t need and wanted to give them something they so desperately did.
But as my role shifted from full-time coach to business owner, I learned really quickly that if I was going to make it I had to learn a truly important skill. Sales.
And the number one trait of an elite sales person (I was quickly finding out) is the ability to handle rejection.
And I was terrible at it.
There were (and sometimes still are) two big reasons for this failure.
Number one is that I have a bit of a hero complex. When people are relying on me it’s wildly important that I come through. And when you have dozens of staff members, partners and investors who count on you to keep the wheel turning, the concept of coming through gets dialed up to eleven.
The second was that the rejection felt I was failing at my mission.
I know that plenty of business owners will pay lip service to their core values when, truly, their only goal is to run a successful business. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But that isn’t me.
I actually believe that our gym can change who you are for the better. That if you are surrounded by the right people in the right environment doing the right things you will enhance every part of your life.
It’s an incredible value. An unimaginable offer.
So why the fuck can’t everyone see it?
Turns out, there are lots of reasons. But that is not the subject of this post.
No, what I want to talk about is how I learned to handle this rejection. It turns out - not surprisingly at all if you are a long-time fan of this blog (and, honestly, who isn’t?!?) - that it has a lot of parallels with training.
But first, a confession.
Every week, I typically get 800 words. Eight hundred words is about the limit to keep your attention. And in those 800 words I need to make my point, tie that point back to some mundane story in my life that I make grandiose (which is, essentially my brand statement), somehow tie it all back to training and, most importantly, make a few pop culture jokes along the way.
So as sure as Taylor Swift is going to include some thinly veiled beat down to an ex-lover on her next album, the story typically gets shortened and some details are left out.
And as much as you’d love to hear the intimate details of my high school yearbook photoshoot or how I begged my Mom to buy me a Rolling Stones album in the hallways of the Sunrise Mall when I was 10 years old (the same album that my wife got me for Hanukkah this year!), I realize that you have shit to do.
All of this is to say that it might come across here that I have completely solved my insecurities over rejection completely and that is just not true.
As Kyle can attest, I always have a mental Rolodex of about 8 or so clients who I spoke to on the phone or came in for trials and decided not to train with us for whatever reason and I just can't let go of them. My mind spins with how they would be great for our community and the gym would be perfect for them.
But, I digress. The solution to handling rejection, it turns out, is simply to face a lot of rejection.
However, to be successful at handling rejection (and get more than 6 hours of sleep per week) I had to reframe this rejection in my mind. So when I shifted the goal from getting a “yes” to “finding one yes in a sea of one hundred ‘no’s’” - that was a game changer for me.
Because our gym (just like most businesses) is probably not right for everyone. It may not even be right for most. But when I thought about the fact that it is so right for certain people, it truly made the search for those people through the herd of “not right now” and “you charge WHAT?” and “I need to get in shape before coming to you guys” all worthwhile.
Training is very much the same. You will face a lot of disappointment and experience the inability to hit your goals often. Particularly if you are aiming high enough.
And the only real solution for this is reps.
The people who are the best at training aren’t the ones who are genetically gifted or follow some top secret Bulgarian training model or even lift the heaviest weights.
Nope, they are the ones who get under the bar the most often, hone their technique, fail often and show up to do it over and over and over again.
I nearly titled this blog “Failure Is The Goal” but like an 8 year-old kid who can’t resist writing his name on his toys, neither could I resist putting my name in the title.
But failure is the goal. It’s the only way to succeed.
For me, it was the only way to build this community. To help people find strength and courage and belief. To find success in my mission that had me leave advertising all those years ago.
It was the only way to find you.