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.
Dominos pizza was facing the same destiny if they didn’t make drastic changes. Dominos built a pizza empire and a world recognized brand, but they also built a reputation during the early 2000’s as the worst pizza chain (by real consumer reports). Instead of brushing that reputation under the rug, they had to reinvent themselves. They could have done what their competitors did and said they had improved their ingredients, but instead, they took the hilltaker method to heart.
Dominos started by acknowledging that their pizza quality no longer met their expectations. They even ran commercials telling customers they knew their pizza was terrible, and they were committed to upgrading it. They started a wave of transparency in their marketing and even showed the public how they took pictures to make the pizza look better. Beyond that, Dominos fans had no reason to be excited about the product. They just liked the fast, affordable pizza.
Dominos took massive action to change their business. They changed their ingredients, their messaging, and remodeled their stores. At one point, they even decided to start filling potholes to make sure their customers’ pizzas arrived intact. Dominos began to focus on solving problems, not growing profits.
Domino’s Pizza is now acclaimed as one of the best rebrands over the last ten years. From 2009 to 2016, they went from a 9% to 15% share in the pizza restaurant market. They knew that competitors were coming for them, and they had to make drastic changes to survive. At the beginning of 2020, the results speak for themselves. They have over 17,000 retail locations in 90 countries and estimated global retail sales to be $14.3 billion in 2019.
The concept of infinite progress doesn’t mean that you don’t take time to appreciate how far you’ve come. In fact, it’s necessary to celebrate those milestones along the way. Take a moment and appreciate your accomplishments and all of the people you have helped. Be careful not to let that appreciation turn into complacency. Once you climb to the top of one mountain, start looking for your next mountain to climb.
It’s also critical that you share the success of the company with your people. Once per quarter, I would share the progress of our company, give accolades to top performers, set new goals, and ask where we can get better. It’s essential to recognize your success to keep yourself, and your team inspired, but always set new goals aimed towards your North star. A leader can bring vision, ambition, passion, and motivation, but you can’t achieve your vision by yourself. When your team does a great job, make sure to celebrate those milestones and start climbing your next mountain. The journey and progress never ends.
Even with great people around you, it will require consistent, concentrated focus, one step, and one day at a time. If you wanted to boil a pot of water, that pot must reach and sustain 212 degrees. If you leave the pot on the fire, it boils. You can’t turn the stove on and off. This is why it’s so important not to spread yourself thin or dilute your attention as you go. This is why leadership is so vital for the continued success of your business. In order to grow, you have to be willing to lead with action and get people to walk on fire for you. The book, The E-Myth shares the key to why most small businesses fail. Most people think that because they are good at the skill they perform at their job, they are automatically qualified to run a business. The fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work. Your job is to set clear expectations, discipline based on your North star, hold people accountable to those expectations, and be able to measure your progress. Remember, progress never ends.
If you are doing every task in your business, or if your business solely relies on you, then you don’t have a business; you have a job. It will also be challenging, if not impossible, to sell your business to a successor, especially if it requires you to be in it to operate.
Here are the four steps to creating a process and bringing others with you:
- Setting expectations/Creating process: Some people think they should be applauded just for showing up. I set the expectation right away that although I am the CEO, I will shovel the walk, I will clean the bathrooms, and I am above no person and no task. That level of gratitude sets the expectation for everyone else in the organization. Your job is to bring everyone else with you, not to tell them where to go. The core values of your company must be indoctrinated into every person, starting with you. I was creating a culture that supports a good work ethic, personal accountability, and good teamwork. Additionally, creating standardized processes and procedures with input from your organization will help with that teamwork and understanding of each person’s responsibilities. How you show up will create a trickle-down effect throughout your entire organization.
- North star navigation: Once you know your North star, your job is to uphold your expectations while focusing on every decision to move you closer to your North star. Your ability to grow your company will depend on how well you transfer your skill sets to your team and how well you discipline the standard you set for yourself and your company. Remember, your people will only show up based on the standards to uphold in your company. It starts with how you show up both personally and professionally. If you teach people what you know, and they know that you care about them, they will walk on fire for you
- Accountability to a higher standard: When you bring someone into your organization, make sure they are upholding the core values that you set. In future chapters, we will discuss the levels of discipline. If you set your standards high and indoctrinate those standards within the culture of your company, people will uphold them. If they don’t, it’s up to you to hold them accountable. If you do this the right way while building your culture, you won’t ever have to fire someone. They will either raise their own standards, or they will opt out and find somewhere else to work. Remember, don’t pull people up; bring them with you.
- Tracking & Measuring: What you track, you can measure. In the early stages of your business, you must track where every dollar is being spent and how your business is growing. It’s nearly impossible to scale your business without a complete understanding of costs vs. revenue. If your business is growing, understand why and if that growth is sustainable. If your business isn’t growing, find out what is keeping the company stagnant. Are their outside factors affecting your growth? Competitors? An event that shifted the market place? I knew exactly what all of my competitors were doing. I knew how many flyers I needed to hand out to bring in a new member prospect and knew what my operating expenses were in granular detail. Don’t allow yourself to become reactive in your business. Be accountable to your numbers, so you know exactly what is growing your bottom line and where you are wasting valuable resources.
It took me over eight years to make good on my promise of buying that first health club. It took one day at a time, knowing that my North star was to one day own their facility and, God willing, expand it to multiple locations, I knew that small decisions each day would compound into reaching my goals. Every extra penny I made, I invested in purchasing the club. Most people spend a few weeks or months working on a dream before deciding it’s not worth it. That is the myth of entrepreneurship. Real success takes concentrated, compounded effort for years at a time. In the next chapter, we will talk about those hill fakers that have sold you a lie.
Eight years might sound like a long time, but it set me up for future success. I wasn’t over-leveraged with debt, and after I sold my first club, I was looking for my next hill to climb. I leveraged my first club with a bank to secure a loan to build a second club. After paying off the second club, I repeated the process on the third club. Twenty years after saying yes to the opportunity to turn around my first club, I had seven clubs total before selling them all. After 20 years of hard work, commitment, and sacrifice, I had $3 million to my name. My journey was only beginning.
That’s what Infinite progress is all about. Your journey never stops. You just set your North star towards a bigger impossible hill and start climbing. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. At this point, I was left wondering what I would do next. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I had a wife, along with three young children. Still, there was another hill to climb.
A former employee came to me and shared that he didn’t like whom I sold the clubs to. He asked me if I would build a different concept for him. Instead of a full traditional health club, what if we created a concept that had everything someone would need to get fit while removing the extras. We took out the swimming pools, childcare, racquetball courts, and aerobics classes. We reduced the size of the club from 40,000 sq feet to 4,000, and instead of appealing to 100% of people, we were now appealing to 70%. Sure, there were people that wouldn’t come because we didn’t have the extra amenities, but the smaller club allowed us to be nimble and convenient.
We built the first club in an urban market, and in 90 days, it was cash-flow positive. I built a second one in a mid-level market and, again, cash flow positive in 90 days. Finally, I decided to build one in a small town to see if this success would duplicate. It was a success, and at that moment I knew I had a tiger by the tail.
This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and I had to go for it. The entire time I’m solidifying my decision and creating self- evidence because it was working. Every location we built was successful, and my confidence grew that a franchise model would be possible.
In future chapters, we will discuss the myth of scale. I could have raised money to open those clubs or brought on investors, but I didn’t need to. I was in complete control of the direction of the company, and now I had market validation. The dogs were eating the dog food. Every location we built, no matter the market, was cash flowing within the first 90 days. I could have gone to investors or banks to raise capital. The longer you can go without taking outside money, the more control you have to build your company. I knew we had something big that could be franchised all over the world, but we had to move quickly.
Remember the hilltaker method, one of the most important parts is enrolling the people in your life. I was 100% committed to my North star, and I had to make sure my wife and three kids knew where we were going. I had just spent the last 20 years working to build a great life. I just sold my company, and I was going right back into battle. They needed to know why I was starting Snap Fitness and that we would all have to make sacrifices to set our family up forever.
I sat down with my wife and children, who were 1, 3, and 5 at the time. They had watched how hard I was working, and I shared my vision with them. I asked them for a 5-year window to go all-in for our family. Not just for our family, but for the next generations to come. I shared that it would require hard work, discipline, and sacrifice not only from me, but from them as well. There would be days I would need to work long hours and times I would have to travel as we were building.
This was my moment, similar to when my father sat us down and said we were moving to Willmar, Minnesota. I was setting the table for my family that I was going into battle, and failure was not an option. With my family in support, I set off to build my empire.
My decision was already solidified, and I had full confidence that Snap Fitness would be successful. It was already working, and we were gaining momentum. The momentum wasn’t going to stop as long as we kept pushing forward. Once my vision was clear, and my family supported me, we were full steam ahead. Our obstacles at this time were the racquetball courts, swimming pools, aerobic studios, and childcare. We removed all of the overhead and set ourselves up to scale with speed.
Our process was refined. Every employee and franchisee knew what our North star was. Every one of our clubs was opened with a punch list of items. I knew, in chronological order, the exact process to open each store. From the real estate to customer retention, I knew where each location was and what stage it was at. Understanding every detail allowed us to scale at speed with very few setbacks. Many companies scale too quickly and fail because they forget to solidify a simple, can’t fail process. We ensured that any franchisee would be successful as long as they went through our process and worked hard,
Even as Snap Fitness scaled nationally to over 1000 locations, I knew that we would have to pivot with the market. Infinite progress never ends. Markets shift, technology evolves, and consumers want change constantly. I knew as our model continued to gain momentum, there would be competitors
coming to market to share in our success. Initially, it was enough to lean on our core differences.
- Snap Fitness was open 24-hours
- No contract, no obligation: we had to earn your business and your trust every day,
- State of the art equipment
- Reciprocity: If you’re a member at one club, you have access to all clubs worldwide.
Ten years later, we had to grow our footprint to be more accessible. We saw the success of boutique functional training studios, discount players, and numerous brands that focused on group fitness. We didn’t want to become the next Blockbuster. We focused on adding group fitness classes and functional training because that’s what the market was telling us. We noticed that heart rate training was becoming more popular, so we introduced heart monitors so our members could stay accountable to their workout goals. We increased our staffed hours. We educated our staff on nutrition, diet, and effort to help articulate what’s necessary to reach your wellness goals.
That’s what the market told us they wanted, and it forced us to pivot to meet that demand. This is why this chapter is called infinite progress and why it’s so important to find a category you are passionate about. The progress never ends, and neither will the competition. There will always be someone trying to take what you have built. If you are entering new territory and you are successful, be prepared to constantly innovate because your competitors will be coming after your marketplace advantage. You should always be adjusting your vision and goal every time you reach it. The greatest companies do that, while many sit and rest on their success. It’s up to you to focus your attention and efforts on infinite progress as you continue to evolve your product offering and your brand.