“If you want success in any area, hard work is the price of admission.”
Last week, we had the opportunity to go to the MINDBODY BOLD conference where we had three luxurious days to learn about industry trends, business strategies, and how to evolve our business to best meet needs. When you run a fitness facility, there are two types of educational events we go to: One for fitness and movement science, and the other for small business education. This year it was Paden (Jackson), Mercedes, and me.
In preparation for the event, we all looked at the speakers and topics and planned out who would go where. We have a tendency to fan out, hit as many topics as possible and debrief together. All three of us share “Learner” as a Strength Finder trait and so we get energized by knowledge and new information.
When looking through all of the available topics and sitting through most of the lectures, what really struck me was how topics were seemingly selected and chosen based on how likely it was to be the “magic pill” for a business. It’s as if when reading the list of topics, you would think to yourself, “Oh! If I learn that, it’ll be the #1 key to our strategy in 2020!” But as exciting as it was, it can also feel overwhelming when you collectively have 15+ strategies to choose from. The question became which 1-2 of these ideas would be the most impactful. For some reason, this process reminded me of a classic human behavior when it comes to goal achievement: We all seek the magic pill.
It’s certainly common in fitness and nutrition.
How many decades has it been since we’ve known that if you want to lose weight, you need to focus on nutrition and exercise? Plenty.
But if we are being honest, how many times do we still find ourselves googling about Keto diets and new fitness trends, as well as jumping on any trend that seems promising? Probably most of us can relate to doing that at least once. Deep down, we are still hoping that some apple cider vinegar mixed with a special detox product will suddenly make 20 pounds melt off of us in two weeks!
On one hand, our ability to seek the fastest way to accomplish our objectives probably kept us alive long ago. But today, it seems to create a lot of anxiety and stress because we find ourselves in a place of discontent, seeking that magic pill.
So there I was at the conference, drawn to sessions with titles that promised total business transformations. The skeptic in me felt like I was waiting to hear the “catch.” And the very last speech gave it to me.
Rachel Hollis wrapped up the conference by saying, “If you want success in any area, hard work is the price of admission.”
*mic drop*
Obvious as it is… it’s so true.
I recently had the privilege to sit down with a couple looking to build a gym similar to Gymnazo and they wanted to know how we got to where we are. I found myself going back to the years when we didn’t take vacations, the years we worked 12 hour days and I coached most weekends, and each time we moved locations, I did a lot of the tenant improvements myself.
Success of any kind, whether fitness or business, boils down to whether you have the drive and the grit to show up and then to keep showing up for your goals.
My hope is that we commit and stick to it. That we feel inspired by the effort it will take. That we dig in and push through the part of us that wants to sit down and watch a Netflix show on a Thursday evening. That we build habits that keep us focused in our resolve, sustain our energy, and light our hearts on fire to keep going.
Cheers to hard work and to not chasing the futile magic pill!
Leave a Reply