When I opened a gym in ’14, I thought the trainers or owners who did the best were the ones who were the fittest, could do all the skills and who knew the most.
It wasn’t a conscious thing, but I put the strongest, most flexible and knowledgeable people on a pedestal. I figured naturally that their businesses would be going through the roof, right alongside their feats of strength.
So naturally, I was deep into my own training. I had to catch up.
Sometimes I did sales calls, sometimes I did marketing, occasionally team meetings…
I always trained. 6 days per week, usually twice-a-day.
I was getting there. I could do a lot of the things. I built the strength and the flexibility.
But even still, nobody was paying attention, the reward of the progress was fleeting, and I realised it. The burnout hit.
My health went through the floor, again (this had happened back in the triathlon days). I denied it – I was a health practitioner after all right? I was flat. Depressed. Pretty sure I was a shitty husband (and brother, friend, boss…) at times.
I threw responsibilities as far away from me as I could, craving more “space,” trying to take the burden off. It just made it worse.
So here I was, a gym owner, and for a while, barely training a couple times per week.
Instead, I’d walk along the Melbourne river-banks in the low winter sun.
I got back into my meditation practice because I had so much time again, and ended up enrolling in a long teacher training course nearby.
I started to do retreats again. Solo-silent trips away. Somehow these reminded me of the ocean sailing passages we used to do when I was younger. Sitting in silence for 10 days somehow brought similar insights to slamming into headwinds on the Pacific.
I figured the biz would die, because I wasn’t doing as much as all the other trainers and gym owners. I went off social media.
I started to talk about what I was learning around stress, food, meditation, and this other stuff that was on my mind more now.
By now I figured, well – nobody really cares anyway, you may as well just do whatever you feel is right. My energy started to creep back.
All of a sudden people started coming out of the woodwork.
I got flooded with individual training clients. People wanted to come on retreats that I ran. I had started a little blog, and people actually wanted to read it.
I realised something.
The knowledge, strength, or flexibility I had as a trainer or coach didn’t mean anything. After a certain level, nobody cared, because it was commoditised. It’s run of the mill.
People care about the story.
The service and transformation, is essential, but deep down we want to hang around people who are living into their truths.
We don’t buy information or the things you can do, we buy into your story, and the way it makes us feel.
