You’ll Never Get Ahead If You Don’t Do This

Most of us are more concerned with what others think than we’d like to admit.

The reality is if we live like everyone else we’re going to get what everyone gets.

I remember early on when I was first married I assumed I had to have a certain house, drive certain cars, and take certain vacations. After all, that was what “normal” people do.

I soon realized many of the “normal” people weren’t so normal. They were drowning in debt and often struggling in their marriages and other relationships.

It wasn’t easy but it wasn’t until we stopped worrying about what everyone else was doing that we really started making progress.

At that point we went “all in.” Nobody else was going to live our lives for us. They had their lives to live and choices to make and we had ours. Again, it wasn’t always easy but we kept our eyes on the goal and soon realized it was actually more enjoyable to be different. We found more contentment and joy in the simple things. Less really was more.

We’re celebrating 10 years in business this month and this principle applies here just the same. It’s easy to see all of the fancy gyms on Instagram and feel like we need to go bigger to keep up.

We started and grew as cash allowed. With an extremely negative net worth, we didn’t have many options starting out. We decided to compete not with a beautiful facility but with the magic that happened inside. We doubled down on customer service and people happily paid competitive rates. We improved things over time and our members enjoyed being a part of that. The ironic thing is that one of the things our members say they like about our clubs is that they can come and be themselves. They don’t need to get dolled up to go to the gym. I think our simple atmosphere lends itself to that.

When my almost 9 year old daughter saw this picture of our first facility she said, “Dad it looked like you really didn’t have much.” I told her we didn’t and worked with what we had.

If you have a goal you want to reach, go all in and don’t worry what other people think or say. I have people in my life who used to rag on me for not taking a vacation I couldn’t afford who now see how we are able to enjoy much more freedom as a result of those earlier choices.