A Successful Business has Nothing to do with Luck!

My family…my why…

If you haven’t heard Healthy Horizons has just been awarded a Gold Quality award from Fitness Australia. We are understandably over the moon with our achievement! It is also our 3rd birthday this week and so it has certainly got me reflecting on the roller coaster of the last few years.

As anyone who has owned a business knows, starting out is tricky and if you haven’t got plenty of staying power it will possibly drain the life force out of you. HH has been no different and there were times I started so early and finished so late sleeping on the massage table seemed like a reasonable solution!! I missed many nights kissing my kids good night, that’s hard to swallow when you kids are young.

So I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane, pre HH…warning this gets a little personal!

Believe it or not there was a time in my life that the smile on my face was fake – was I depressed? Maybe…possibly, some undiagnosed post-natal depression. I certainly know I wasn’t happy. My kids were young, we didn’t have family around. I was definitely lonely. I know I was exhausted and sleep deprived as any parent with young kids can relate to. I can remember feeling hopeless when Jamie went on night shift and having to get 2 kids under 2 to sleep on my own. One night I slumped down the wall with both screaming in their bedrooms trying to work out which one to settle first. Not a proud Mummy moment…

I was in a stressful position at work and found myself dealing with many negative people. I can remember one Sunday night sitting in the lounge “relaxing” when my heart rate went through the roof…I now know it was a panic attack…God, it is really hard to write that (it’s hard when people see you as someone who has always got their shit sorted) and it still puts a lump in my throat.

But it was at that moment my hubby knew something had to change…something was making me sick, my body was starting to tell me and I needed to change it up. For me I needed a change in career – I’d been teaching since I was 21 years old – it was time to move on.

Easier said than done…

But what about the holidays? The retirement benefits? The security? The salary? (it’s alright but seriously teachers deserve more!) My parents – what would they think? (ha,ha, why did I worry when I was way past seeking their approval!)

So the journey of HH begun as just a few classes at Dodges Ferry Primary – fit ball and boxing. At that time I was still teaching at the school and taking fitness classes was just a bit of fun on the side. Pretty quickly it expanded to 4 classes, 6…10…15 (at 15 classes a week I got another trainer to help) but it kept growing. I “retired” from teaching.  We started more classes, more personal training, more instructors and before I knew it I had created a monster that was consuming my family home!

We had to make a decision to pull back, reduce numbers or go bigger…

And that’s when we started the transformation of the local mechanics shed to build HH.

The building of HH was probably the most stress we have ever placed on our marriage. I guess a more fragile relationship would have fallen apart. For basically 6 months Jamie was out of the family picture; he didn’t sleep (watching info commercials and replays of the 6 million dollar man at all hours was a regular occurrence) – I was hoping we could re-build him! He didn’t do any of the things he loves to do, like paddling. His diet pretty much consisted of pies from the bakery (pretty funny really considering we were building a fitness centre).  I was still running the business from home and it was nuts.  We were probably doing a pretty shit job of parenting to be honest. Luckily for us, our kids are pretty resilient.  Now, when we have precious family holidays together we look back at that time and feel blessed.

Inside the “shed” which has now transformed to our fabulous group fitness room.

Sometimes it was just easier to hide in a box than do any work.

We hit another wall when ran out of money to finish building HH and we were nowhere near finished. The bank saw us as too risky so we couldn’t borrow anymore dollars. I  came up with the idea of selling Early Bird memberships one month out from opening – we sold 50! I still to this day am indebted to those members who trusted us and gave us the finance to open our doors.

Well, anyone who has opened a business knows the real test comes when those doors open and for 18 months I think I had about 4 weekends off! 80 hours was a normal working week and I never got paid! Jamie was firefighting (that’s his full time career) and working every other day at HH. In that first year I can remember paying my staff from my credit card on a couple of occasions. There were many things I stopped doing well because I slipped into survival mode. It wasn’t all sunshine and lollypops but in all that time I always believed we’d find our feet, ok, I lie, maybe once or twice I had my doubts.

One night it became too much and I broke down in my office. I sobbed and sobbed! I sobbed so much a staff member escorted me out of the gym so nobody could see. I got home and sobbed some more and explained to Jamie ‘I didn’t think it would be this hard!” Well, I would like to tell you he put his arms around me and told me “everything will be alright Babe” – but he didn’t. At that moment in time he wasn’t my husband he was my business partner and I’ll never forget what he said “Of course you knew it would be this hard, go to bed, get some sleep and get back at it tomorrow.” I think I cried myself to sleep…

Fast forward to this week and I feel like the luckiest person in the world. I’ve really found a work, life balance.  I love the people who I work with – they are passionate, caring and positive. Our members are supportive and thankful for what we do. HH is going from strength to strength with innovative programs not seen anywhere else in Tasmania. In our exclusive FIRE program we have six personal trainers and one Exercise Physiologist enrolled to train with us (other trainers see the value and quality) and our Fitness Australia Gold Quality award is a wonderful recognition of the services we provide.

Do I think we can do better? Of course, that’s what growing a business is all about.

Our reception staff…

I’ve realised a successful business (however you choose to describe success) has nothing to do with luck but has everything to do planning, strategy, integrity and with who you surround yourself with. I have a wonderful team of people who, both near and far inspire me. I have a wonderful support group from the MP Level 4 community and a great business coach and mentor in Paul Cribb, Metabolic Precision founder. We now have the systems in place to offer wonderful programs without sending me to an early grave.

So if I’ve inspired just one person to create change in their lives that’s exactly what I hope to do with this blog. It won’t be easy at times but if you have passion it will be worth every moment. I’ll leave with one of my favourite quotes:

“A successful life is not random or accidental and we don’t deserve it. We create it!” Craig Harper

PS I asked Jamie to read this before posting so he was happy with what I was sharing. He said it was too hard for him to read – I guess things are still a little raw…