Mit 23 ein Fitnessstudio gegründet

0:00Okay, so how old are you at this point when you just start your gym and you've signed this 5,000 a month lease? >> 23. Sounds crazy, though. >> Okay. Yeah. And so you said that was the riskiest thing that you've ever like what was going through your mind at the at the time if you can remember for like that cuz that's a pretty big big decision. >> I not not much. Not much, honestly. I It was ignorance. Like It was It was It was It was I mean I I got lucky, you know what I mean? I got lucky that um I didn't know what I didn't know.

0:28I probably wouldn't have advised myself to do that now. Um but I was fortunate that I by chance went to a workshop for I It was a marketing workshop. I didn't even know it Facebook ads wasn't even advertised as the thing cuz no one even knew what they were. They don't even knew what Facebook ads were a thing, yeah. And so I showed up. They're like, "Oh, there's these things you can run on And I didn't I didn't use Facebook. Uh I had one, but I didn't like I wasn't like active on it. I was like very like productive mindset. Like I don't use social media. Like I was very big on that whole thing. But he was like, "Oh, we can run ads on this." So I learned And it was 2 weeks before my gym opened.

0:58If I had not had that, the plan going into the gym was the guy who I I apprenticed under, he just ran Group Ons. And that was how he got So that was my whole plan. I was like, "I'll just run a Group On and I'll just get people in the gym from that and I'll convert them." That was his whole business model. That was what I was sold on. And then I ran a Group On, too, and I didn't get anybody. No one came in. And I ran the same Group On. Because I was in the most competitive part of Southern California. I was in Huntington Beach. I was in Orange County. There's a hundred [ __ ] gyms that are running Group Ons.

1:29And so and he had a I had a more established business. He'd been doing it for 20 years. Like he had you know he had So when he ran a Group On, people all bought it. And he every every every month he was getting like 120 people a month coming in for Group Ons. So he was It was free customer acquisition. It was free. He was getting paid to get these people in the door. I didn't have any of that. And so I by chance went to a workshop 2 weeks beforehand. And that is like honestly it's the only reason I mean who knows? I might have figured I probably would have tried to figure out another way, but it would have been tough.

1:56>> Um you said that quitting your job felt like the riskiest thing. What did that feel like? Because at that point you were making like 4K a month off the the personal training you stuff, weren't you? >> [snorts] >> So, why did quitting your job feel particularly risky? What's going >> didn't feel regular. It didn't feel consistent. I was like, this is one time. I don't know how long this is going to last. You know what I mean? Like it didn't feel like a regular thing. But it wasn't even that cuz that would have been a math decision, which at the time it was not a math decision. It was an emotional decision.

2:22Which for me was I'm leaving the path that I spent the last my basically my entire life leading towards, which is management consulting, business school, like the whole thing. Yeah, and then, you know, Middle Eastern father, same deal. You know, he was like, this is a terrible idea. >> [laughter] >> I strongly disapprove of this. And we didn't talk for a while. You know what I mean? Cuz he's like just throwing it all away. So, that was very tough for me. It was that it was just that. And I mean, at the end of the day, like my my my final decision came down to I mean, I gave you the risk things, which is like I'll have a good story, like blah blah blah blah, but I was I was not really willing to let that be the story cuz I just didn't want him to be right.

3:03And so, I was just going to do anything to not make him have that I told you so moment. I just like I was going to I was going to [ __ ] die. I just wasn't going to do it. And so, um, the final decision came down to a point where I was so miserable at the job that I had cuz I really didn't like the job. Like I was fortunate. I think if I had liked my job, I don't know if I'd even be an entrepreneur. I just really hated the job I was in. And so, I disliked the position, whatever, at least in my day-to-day enough that I said I would either have to die to him or die to myself. And I felt dead inside at the time. And so, I was like, I don't want to continue life living this way. I would rather accept myself and have him reject me than me reject myself and have his approval. And that was ultimately the decision that that allowed me to do it. Now, I was still [ __ ] about it and I drove halfway across country before I called and told him cuz I didn't want him to be able to like tell me to come over to to convince me that I could get come back cuz he did. He was like, "Ah, come over for lunch. We'll talk about it." Cuz he would always just like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure you want to We'll talk about it over lunch." You know what I mean? Then he would always talk me off the cliff off the edge. And I was like, "No, I'm in Ohio."

4:01I was like, "I'm I'm gone." He's like, "What about your condo?" And I was like, "It's there." He was like, "Well, what are you going to do?" I was like, "I'll sell it." He's like, "Well, you're not going to sell it. I'm going to have to do it." I was like, "I'll figure it out." You know, I was like, "I'm I'm gone though. I'm not coming back." >> Damn. How's How's your relationship with your dad >> We're good. We're good. I mean, he's he's proud of me now and he's happy about all that stuff. So, I mean, he's got plenty to be proud of in terms of material success, so he can he can rest easy on that.

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