How I Turned Coaching Into A Career: Part 1

I’ll never forget the sound of my alarm going off at 4:30am. Before I could silence it, a tidal wave of anxiety would come over me. “Do I have enough today?” I’d ask myself every morning. After turning off my alarm, I’d do exactly what you’re not supposed to first thing in the morning…worse than checking social media. 

I’d check my bank account.

On this day in particular (I can still remember it), my account read “$127.32”. The tidal wave of anxiety crashed and about knocked me off my feet. I looked at my calendar and from 5:30am until 7pm, I was working as a personal trainer at Crunch Fitness. 

Yep - I went to school for 4 years and got a degree in kinesiology only to be a trainer at Crunch.

This typical morning started to feel like Groundhog Day.

Wake up. Anxiety. Black coffee. 12 hours of training. Come home too exhausted to talk to my partner. Eat dinner. Shower. And pass out only to do it over the next day. 

Even though I was the top performing trainer at the gym (believe me, this is not a flex), the only path forward was management. I essentially had to give up the part I enjoyed to make a little more. But still be stuck working for a company.

I remember reading a blog from James Altucher talking about the idea of anti-goals. Rather than thinking about what you did want, you’d write down everything you didn’t want in life. It was supposed to be more powerful than setting goals and it seemed to work for me.

It was easy for me to verbalize what terrified me most. It was working for a company, with no control over how much I made, when I worked, and who I worked with.

The exact thing I was doing.

Maybe Unicorns Are Real

After working for months straight with no time off, I finally had a long weekend over Thanksgiving where I’d go home to see my parents. On the drive home, I turned on a podcast of an eccentric gym owner from New York City who was crushing it. His name was Mark Fisher. Not only was he crushing it financially but he was doing it in his own way. He was a former broadway actor turned coach. He called his members “ninjas”. Their mascot is a unicorn. I think you get the gist. 

I don’t remember exactly what it was but during the podcast, a thought - no - a thought doesn’t do it justice. A conviction came down from the muse that I needed to open a gym. My naivety played to my advantage as I didn’t consider any real business possibilities. All I thought was, “I already train clients and people like working with me…I can open a gym too!”

When I got to my parents, the last thing I wanted to do was say hi and talk to them. Mind you, I hadn’t seen them in a few months but I gave them a quick hug and ran upstairs to start looking for equipment and the new home of Ben Miknis Fitness (I was quite creative back then, ehh)

On par with this creativity was my financial literacy. With a little more than a Benjamin in my bank account, I opened a line of credit for what the bank would give me…$3000. It was 12 months, 0% interest so essentially free money. 

When I started looking for spaces, there was a quote from my first business mentor that played in my mind and I’ll paraphrase what he said.

“If your client’s like training with you, they don’t care where it is or what equipment they have.”

I took this to heart and found the smallest and cheapest space I could find. A 400 square foot room subletting inside a dance studio for young girls. It was only $750 per month. 

Next I started looking for equipment and this was my first order:

1. 1 kettlebell from 10-50lbs

2. 1 barbell

3. 1 bumper plate from 10-45lbs

4. Bands

5. A yoga mat

6. 300 square feet of flooring

7. A white board

Yes, I was so broke I only got one bumper plate and used it was a landmine until I could afford more. 

Fast forward from Thanksgiving of 2016 to January 1, 2017 and Ben Miknis Fitness was officially open. 

But the rose-colored world I thought owning a business was going to be turned into gray, hazy colored glasses real fast. 

When I signed the lease, I let my favorite clients at Crunch know that I was going to be opening up my own space. I got 12 verbal “yes’s” of clients who would come. I told them I’d charge them their same rate but me making 100% of the money meant I would start out making $3500 per month. I could cover rent and pay myself a little in profit from day one.

I thought to myself, “This whole gym owner thing wasn’t so hard after all.”

*Record scratch*

Except it didn’t quite happen this way. Out of the 12 who initially said yes, only 5 actually signed-up. Which meant I could still cover rent but with the debt I took on to open it, I could barely feed myself. And the cycle of wake up and be flooded with an immense amount of anxiety about how I was going to make it came rushing right back. 

And that leads to me to what I wanted to talk about next…I don’t want this to just be a story about me, I want it to provide some real value from my past flukes and failures. There were a few things that cost me a lot of time and money right off the bat that I had no idea about when I first started the gym.

Number 1 was not having a marketing strategy. 

This might sound like the most insane thing you’ve ever heard but outside of the 12 verbal “yes’s”, I never considered anything outside of those 12 people. The same muse that spoke to me on my drive home for Thanksgiving never thought to even drop a hint of, “hey, you know you’re going to need more than 12 people to be successful, right?”

Another rookie business mistake was calculating how much I’d make based on revenue. Yes, I was a law-abiding citizen before and made sure to pay my fair share to Uncle Sam. But when I was starting the gym, I didn’t take into account expenses and taxes. Meaning that the $3500 I thought I’d make off the bat was actually going to be closer to half of that. 

One of the other costly mistakes I made was training clients 1-on-1. At that time, I was charging $100 per hour and training 30 minute sessions so I was making $50 per training session. It wasn’t until I realized I could coach 6 people at the same time and deliver a similar level of attention that business started going in the right direction. 

But even with all of these costly mistakes, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Because If I would’ve known these things before opening the gym, there’s a good chance I never would’ve started. And making these mistakes taught me the most important business lesson of all.

‘Insert Cliche Maya Angelou Quote Here’

Without a clear marketing strategy and way to attract new members, the only leverage I had was who I was already working with. I knew I had to treat them as if they were paying me not $300 per month but $3000 per month. And do such a good job that they couldn’t help but tell their friends. 

I would take notes on their spouses and kids name, their favorite restaurant, when there birthday was. And when the time came, I’d ask them about how their family was. I’d get them gift cards to their favorite restaurants for their birthday (even when my accountant would’ve said I couldn't afford it). Whatever I could do to provide the best service possible, I’d do it. And of course, getting them results was paramount, as well. 

Fast forwarding some time, I eventually partnered with my business mentor and I was an owner of that gym for the next 5 years. We survived through the pandemic and in October of 2020, reopened in a new space, 3x the size of our previous. 

That was one of the few moments in my life so far where I’ve been able to take a look back at what I’ve done and give myself praise. But little did I know at the time that in a few short months, I would have just about nothing to show for my work over the last 5 years. And would be starting from the bottom - even worse off than when I opened my first gym…

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this story coming next week.

I appreciate you,

Ben