3 Things I Learned From Starting the First CrossFit Affiliate Gym In Indonesia

Owning your own business is about knowing your self. It is about sticking up to what you want, saying no to offers you don’t need and staying with what feels right even if it keeps you up at night.

3,2,1 … Go!

This was my good morning, good afternoon and good evening every day at the workplace. I traded my laptop for a barbell, my business casual attire with tshirts and shorts and decided to spend 8 hours of my day talking to people instead of talking to people through skype. That last part actually was the best trade off I could have made in my life.

I was a CrossFit coach in 2011. In case you didn’t know what that looked like, well we were training people in our garages using equipment that we made ourselves. We brought heavy weight equipment to the garage floor (which all cracked and bent) and we ran on the road, outside in the sun, and sometimes in the rain. It was military training for soccer moms, and professionals too tired of the globo gyms.

Business was hard, but working out was so fun that it didn’t feel like work. That’s what passion feels like. Many understands but much still is trying to figure out how to make passion pay for your rent. It’s tough, but it is not impossible.

Entrepreneurship can be a tough unicorn. There are a lot of coaches, resources and schools that can teach you about how to be a great entrepreneur (or plan to be one) but I can tell you that the best teacher will be … you. Owning your own business is about knowing your self. It is about sticking up to what you want, saying no to offers (and people) you don’t need and staying with what feels right even if it keeps you up at night. A good entrepreneur is courageous and contagious . You must be passionate to inspire your clients. And you must have courage to be passionate.

Here are the three things I have learned from owning CrossFit Equator, the 1st CrossFit Affiliate Gym in Indonesia:

Be authentic

As a coach that started before I was ready, I felt constantly judged when I didn’t know about something. This required me to over plan everything to make sure that I didn’t say something wrong or could not answer a question in which may lose me a membership. This was really tiring. And completely unnecessary. It is so much easier to say “Hey, I don’t know the answer to that, but let’s look into it together on your next session.” Here’s what you are really telling your client.

• Bringing your client / your friend into investigation mode together promotes collaboration. If your client doesn’t want to collaborate with you, you may want to reconsider having him / her as a member.
• Being honest to your client is the same as being honest to yourself. Being honest to yourself will only make you happier.

Surround yourself with people that align with you

When your business relies on how many members you have, in the early stages, this will be the hardest decision you need to make. Saying no to members / employees / partners that do not align with you. The ones who makes you feel uncomfortable, suspicious and question yourself. Your body is the best barometer for alignment. You can write pros and cons about each and every person but the way you feel about the people you are with is always going to be 100% accurate. Besides, you are building a community right?

Talk to your family about your business

Be vulnerable and share all of your deepest fears, concerns, doubts with the closest people in your life. I am a family man and being a man sometimes means having the opportunity to lead your family as a team. It can be difficult for me to share my struggles with my wife about my business, especially when the struggle is money related. You may feel less of a man, of a husband or father. But when you are not willing to be vulnerable to share it, then you are also being fearful. I am still working on being better at this and I can tell you that the moment I share something with my family, I always find a solution. And it feels great to be on the same side of the team again.

If you are reading this and you are planning to open your own business, I commend you for being brave and for having passion in your heart. I want to tell you that I support you, when you succeed and when you fail. Whichever part of the mountain you are in, believe it when I tell you that you are right where you need to be.

What am I doing about it now?

In the workplace, I maintain authenticity by sharing my thoughts positively across my co-workers, leads and managers. When I don’t know something, I will be first to say, “That’s a good question. I don’t know (haha)”. I laugh a lot at work. I find it releases tension, even if it’s only for me. I am also the first to speak up when I make a mistake. Well, maybe not the first, but in the vicinity of a few minutes, I will reach out to my lead to tell him that I made a mistake. I find that when I start my sentence with “Hey [Manager’s name], I made a mistake …” and continue with what you did. It shows courage, integrity but most importantly, it releases your guilt out into the universe, and you move forward.

It can be difficult to avoid people in the workplace that may not be aligned with you. What I do for this, is I ask them something else besides work. It may be a weird strategy but when I see them, I ask them about things that we can relate to each other about, like kids (if they have kids), the game (if they like sports), but in general it is a movement towards getting to know them better. And before you know it, you may have a new friend.

I am proud to announce that I talk to my family about work when I have a bad day AND when I have a good day. It really is not about the day that I had, but it is the opportunity to share it with the people that is closest to you. The trick is to not expect a particular response from them but just be happy that they are listening to you. If they are not, then maybe your timing is off (it happens) so try a different time. But the point to make here is that they are your team members, just like your co-workers are your team members. So if you are reporting your status to your team consistently throughout the day, why wouldn’t you do the same to the team at home.

I hope these life lessons I have shared will be useful for you. I decided to open up my heart to you through this blog because you deserve to hear it. Whether we hit it off in Equator, or if we have never met before, I wish you well and I hope we can continue to be connected.