Years ago when Justin put in his two weeks at his job as a federal civilian for the Air Force, he got a call down to the office of the wing executive officer. This officer wasn’t directly in Justin’s chain of command, but worked for the general. I had left a similar job in the same wing just two years earlier and had been full time at the gym ever since. I knew this officer well and we had both respected him for his candor over the years. What he told Justin was something we’ll never forget – and you might be surprised to know it was one of the major reasons we started Next Gen.
“Justin, my parents owned a business for years. They never made much money off it, so we grew up poor. They worked all the time, and by the end of their lives, they were burned out with no retirement.”
The exec knew Justin was quitting a very stable full time job with the Air Force to pursue self-employment, and he thought it was a really, really bad idea. He wanted to put out a final warning so Justin knew after his final day, there was no turning back. If the business failed, his former position would likely be filled. We had no back up.
Justin thanked him for his advice and finished his last few days of work.
The exec was looking at business as if the way his parents ran it was the only way it could be done, but Justin and I knew differently.
We knew you could run a business and still spend quality time with your family. In fact, we knew if we set ourselves up right, we could get all the family time we wanted, extended vacations and family outings on our own schedule.
We knew our income would never truly be limited. In our government jobs, the pay rate and the raises were fully systemized. No matter how great you did or how hard you worked, you were getting X raise each year and X step increase each year. The person at the desk next to me could produce half the amount of work as me and make the same or more. That is not how business operates in the real world.
We knew if we put in some time right in the beginning and set our business up for success, we could enjoy the fruits of that labor later in life. We could save for retirement and let our business contribute just like an employer would. All the things you could get from a regular employer minus the headache of a boss were at our fingertips.
But that’s different than what baby boomer and even Gen X entrepreneurs experienced. The business education wasn’t out there. Business coaching wasn’t as prominent. They believed that they had to be the one baking the bread and then selling it every day in the bakery. They had to open the bakery and close the bakery each day. They had to hire the staff, manage the schedules, mop the floors and pass out the flyers. That’s how they’d make their living. They would do all the things themselves to save on labor, and in the end, they’d enjoy the benefits of their own business.
The problem is – most people in those generations never saw the benefits. Instead, they worked themselves into anxiety, constant stress and poor health.
Business does not have to be this way. Your business specifically – does not have to be this way.
Next Gen was formed after we saw business owners giving and receiving terrible advice in other Facebook groups day after day. This advice would have put gym owners out of business eventually. Much of the advice would have left them struggling to get new athletes in the door after tarnished reputations and the “bye felicia” mentality. The advice would have left them opening and closing the gym and teaching every class every day entirely alone as they saw incredible turnover rates among staff.
Frankly, we were tired of bad advice being the prominent voice in cheer. So we did something about it.
We formed Next Gen so owners could operate differently in the next 10 years than they had in the past 10 years. We began teaching gyms how to hire great staff, take good care of them, train them and systemize their gyms. We taught them how to pay themselves consistently (and we even had to teach some gyms why they were losing money if they weren’t taking a paycheck!) We taught them how to run effective Facebook ads and build trial programs, and then we focused on retention.
To date we’ve coached hundreds of gym owners. Some have grown their gyms and sold (and I don’t just mean a few thousand for equipment…they SOLD their businesses because they had a profitable business to sell!) Some passed on a stable business to their children. Others invested into their own buildings. A large portion of our advanced Academy members now own other businesses outside the industry, while others vacation an awful lot.
The way the previous generation ran business is not the only way. The Next Generation has the tools and resources to show our children what true entrepreneurship looks like – freedom, generational wealth and joy.
To learn more about how Next Gen can help you with your business, book a call or learn more about our upcoming conference.
