Starting from Scratch...

Here's what no one tells you about expanding a business:

It's exciting at first... then it SUCKS. It's truly like starting over; but this time, it's all new challenges.

The excitement of new growth feels amazing! Your competitive nature causes you to run towards a new challenge with the same blissful ignorance you had when you started the business.

You run the numbers. Everything checks out. It's a no-brainer, you HAVE to expand!

And the hard part of being the sole owner of an expanding business: no one tells you no.

The new equipment company isn't going to tell you not to buy from them.

The bank doesn't say not to borrow from them.

The people around you see opportunity in it; they won't say no.

Everyone sees the "success" on social media. Family holiday conversations focus in on how far you've come. It honestly feels great.

Isn't this The American Dream? Everyone's rooting for you...

Then, once the excitement fades, you realize that everything just changed.

Overhead is up: rent, payroll, utilities... and that budget you blew wide open to make the expansion happen; you're still on the hook for that.

Expectations are higher: you now have a responsibility to come through on made promises. To investors, to staff, to members. Everyone!

Workload skyrockets: systems change, hours get longer, and down-time seems to only be a memory.

But it's worth it, right?

The numbers checked out, right?

Wrong.

Expanding is essentially like starting over.

But that's fine, because you've done it before. You started the business, you sacrificed the long hours and you learned what needed to get done to be successful. You're not afraid to go through it again.

Only problem is, nothing you faced then is relevant now.

You didn't need systems when you started. You do now. You didn't have a staff that relies on you. You do now.

You didn't have to manage nearly 100 members. You do now.

You didn't have to have a multiple marketing strategies. You do now.

The grind is oddly unfamiliar.

Solutions back then were created to solve problems from back then. You have new problems to solve now.

If this sounds deep, it is.

No one told me about the sacrifices that business expansion would come with.

The consequences are equally as terrifying.

You know the Instagram posts with motivational quotes saying, "If your dreams don't scare you, they aren't big enough?"

Yeah, that's for the birds. (Sorry Ellen Johnson Sirleaf)

In a lot of ways, this was my "bootstraps" moment. That's not to say I didn't have help!

But through the increased overhead and, consequently, missed income, the process of starting over forced a critical re-evaluation of "why" and "what."

Why am I doing this?

What am I doing it for? That's for a future blog post. Hopefully this one reaches a gym owner considering expansion. No one's going to tell you no. Not even me.

Just be ready.