Take your business to the next level

ARE YOU A HILLTAKER?

If you’ve ever desired to create your own business or you’ve started your journey as an entrepreneur and especially if you’ve created momentum building a company.

You already know how difficult yet very important it is to remain motivated, develop emotional resilience and lead a team with integrity.

In fact, most business owners never grow a business beyond regional success and 85% fail within the first two years.

In 1985, Peter Taunton bootstrapped his fitness career by turning around a failing health club on a $16,000/year salary. He is the visionary and founder of Snap Fitness & Lift Brands which today has over 6,000 locations or licenses in 28 countries.

Peter Taunton grew up from humble beginnings in a small midwestern town in Willmar, Minnesota. He (and his twin brother) are the youngest of seven children, he attended a two-room schoolhouse and began his entrepreneurial journey at 8 years old by selling popcorn in front of his father’s grocery store.

Peter Taunton’s business accomplishments have been well-recognized by the business community. In 2000, Peter Taunton was named Ernst and Young “Entrepreneur of the Year.” His companies have been featured in many business and industry publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur 500, Inc 5000, Top Global and Franchise 500. Most recently, Peter Taunton became a Forbes Certified Master-class instructor, tasked with educating the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Hear straight from Peter Taunton himself:

“Starting a business you are passionate about is so essential because the progress never ends. Some people assume that once your business is successful, you can sit back and count your money. Most don’t realize that while getting started is the key, the progress never ends. Once famously, Steve Jobs said that if you wanted to go into business for yourself, you had to be a little crazy. Why would you ever want to work so hard for so long and still have a 90%+ chance of failure? Many businesses fail because they didn’t set the right expectations, and they weren’t passionate about what they were doing. Even Steve Jobs, who became one of the most iconic innovators of our lifetime, didn’t get to fully see his vision to the end before he passed. Apple was over 40 years in the making and still continues to innovate towards its original North star.

It is easy to chase the idea of money. Everyone wants to make money, but that chase is elusive. Money is too fast to chase, and if you chase it, you will find yourself burnt out and exhausted because you started for the wrong reasons. Instead, start with your passion because you will be committed to chasing down your dream for the rest of your life. That is the idea of infinite progress.

In the health space, I wasn’t thinking about multi-million dollar exits. Instead, I became obsessed with improving our process for our members. Every day I was studying the latest trends, ideas, and trade publications, to make sure I was educated on what our members wanted now and in the future. My job was to make sure my product was always relevant and consistent with my customers’ expectations. I was providing the best product for our customers as times as the industry evolved.

Infinite progress is about understanding the long road ahead and setting the right expectations to navigate that road. Even after Snap Fitness reached more than 1000 locations, we still hadn’t officially made it. Companies like Blockbuster, who had over 9,000 locations, and Dominos with over 17,000, both learned quickly that business never stops. One company rested on their success and they no longer exist. The other admitted they were failing and made drastic changes to fix it.

As the industry and consumer behavior changed, we needed to evolve as well. Once we hit 1000 locations, we had to pivot and set the market again. We added heart rate-based training, added group fitness, functional training, and created fitness challenges throughout the year. The industry and customers’ expectations changed. The consumer was becoming much more knowledgeable about exercise and what it takes to get fit. We had to evolve and adapt accordingly to deliver on our customer experience.

You must be on fire and fall in love with your business, otherwise, someone with more fire will come along and put you out of business. It’s a painful lesson that most people learn the hard way because they were in it for the wrong reasons.

Before you start that next idea, ask yourself if you would do that every day for the rest of your life, even if you didn’t get paid. Don’t get me wrong; money is significant. You can help a lot more people with money than you can without it. But you must be prepared to work day in and day out towards your North star, or you will end up like Blockbuster. Blockbuster thought that success would last forever. At its peak in the late 90’s, Blockbuster owned over 9,000 video-rental stores in the United States, employed 84,000 people worldwide, and had 65 million registered customers. Blockbuster was valued as a $3 billion company and earned as much as $800 million on late fees alone.

The owner of Blockbuster became complacent in their market place and thought it was an everlasting profit machine. Instead of focusing on embracing technology and staying relevant to consumers’ expectations, they were slow to react to the competitive landscape. Very quickly, their product became obsolete. Blockbuster was focused on what worked for them in the past instead of looking towards the digital future of streaming.

This is why vision is such an important component of success. Blockbuster should have seen what the future had in store and acquired Netflix for 50 million when they had the opportunity. Instead, they let their ego get in the way, and eventually, Blockbuster was gone. I remember to this day, buying Blockbuster locations for Snap Fitness, swearing I would never let this happen to me.”