Lessons - How the Right Guidance Built a Global Fitness Empire | Peter Taunton - Snap Fitness Founder

In this lessons episode, learn why mindset is everything before jumping into entrepreneurship. Learn how fear and doubt stop most people from ever making the leap. Learn what it really takes to survive the pressure of owning a business and learn why real mentorship must go beyond generic advice to truly help someone grow. What's some other words of wisdom that are caught in mind for you right now? Well, you know what? I think for your audience, if they're if they're interested in getting into business is getting getting into it in the right headspace. I think a lot of times people they want to be their own boss, they want to get into business, but they don't understand the sacrifice and commitment that comes with it and the stress, the sleepless nights, you know, those components, a lot of people underestimate the pressures of running of running a business and meeting payrolls and doing those things. So it's a yeah, you know, it's and I think talking about it before they get into it, so they're kind of they can brace them getting the right headspace. That way when it comes, they can say, you know what, we talked about this. This is what it is, you know, and there's some setting the expectation. You got it. Letting them understand that this is part of the this is part of the journey and rather than ducking from it, embrace it because this is the challenges and these challenges never go away. Okay. It might it might come in a different light, a little different circumstance, but it'll come in multiple times throughout your business career because that's just how being an entrepreneur is. So you you have to embrace it and understand it and not freak out about it, not walk around kicking the garbage can and, you know, screaming around the office, that's not that's not productive, right? Yeah. That's smart. I do like the idea of surviving real conversations about what entrepreneurship is so that people aren't just like completely surprised when shit hits the fan because it will it will repeatedly and I get people too, they can't they can't make it. In fact, in my book Impossible Hill, I talk about the, you know, preparation and the first thing the first step of any change is making a plan just thinking about it. Okay. Where one day you wake up and you say, I'm I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of getting up at nine o'clock on somebody else's time. I'm sick and I'm whatever you're reasoning is. So that's the first step of understanding. I got to make a change. Okay, beautiful. Second part is what do we want to change and do? What's our plan? Like what? All right, well, we we've come to this conclusion. This sucks and I don't like my life anymore doing this. So I'm going to change step one. But then you don't want to step from there to something else that's little different color, but the same headache, right? So thinking about what you want to do. But the third step is the most important. And that is you have to make the jump. And I can't tell you the amount of people that I work with over the years. They do step one. They get to step two. But when it comes to step three, actually making the jump, they don't do it. They go Peter, you know, what? I just had, you know, man, I had some sleepless nights and I just I just wasn't feeling it, you know, I wasn't and you know, and it's and in some people say, well, it's, you know, it's, it's God. It's divine intervention. And I listen to them and I say, look, it's not divine invention. You're you're apprehensive because you're doing something you've never done before. That's a perfectly normal headspace. You know, doubt is is a dream killer. Okay, you're not keeping mind what we talked about here. You're not bending the farm. Okay, you're not bending the farm. You are making a transition and we have planned for this. We have set money aside for this. So when you transition into this job, this money is here to help offset you as you ramp this up, right? So we kind of have to go through those things. But there's a lot of people they can never make the jump. And that's okay. And they just let this apprehension just build up and then it to the point where they say, well, I'm just not going to do it because and then when they when they make the decision, I'm not going to do it. And they just fall right back in their old space. They come to realize, hey, look, maybe the space isn't so bad because here's the benefits of it. You are nine to five because where you're stepping into, it's not nine to five. You want a business. It's 70s a week 24 hours a day. Get your head around that. I'll come on Peter. Nobody works. Hey, I promise you. It's seven days a week 24 hours a day. It never leaves you. It's you think about it a night before you go to bed. You think about it first thing in the morning at seven days a week. If you own the business and if you're going to be, if you're going to be a warrior, if you're going to be a warrior in your business, that's the mindset you got to be because you can't be a quitter. You've got to be a fighter. Okay. And you got to give it whatever it takes because you're going to have those tough moments. And if you cave every time you have a tough moment, you're never going to win. You know, I always say that entrepreneurship is probably not for you. If you cave every time you have a tough moment, yeah, or you know, you're walking in. You know, you can't handle stress. You're crying. You're freaked out. You got to get couch time because you're just a fucking mess, right? Tell him, look, it's not it's what you're contriving in the six inches between your years. You understand it's all it's all it's self fulfilling. You understand that you're you're in your own head. Okay. What you're visualizing here and what you think is happening out there, it's two different things. What is going to happen out there is only going to be the result. If you stay where you're at, you've got to make these change. There's things that you can do that can offset that that can that can deflect some of that risk that's that coming. You're just freaking out and you're not thinking. You got to start thinking. Do you know what I mean? Play offense. Yeah. Quit playing fucking defense all the time. You got to play some offense. People don't get it. It's a tough idea for people to wrap their head around because they get too stuck in their own head. I mean, this is this is why this is why it's important to have mentors, people around you. I mean, even sometimes like Gina, like my my better half when I'm when I'm really spiraling and I've been doing this for a minute and no one's immune because there'll always be points where shit is a fan and you're just like overthinking everything. But having people close you whether or not it's we're not the wife, girlfriend, advisor, mentor, whatever, having somebody can just pull you out of that spiral is also helpful. I mean, it's tough to do it yourself. You got to admit it's tough to do it yourself sometimes. But and just having some having somebody pull you aside and say, okay, let's take a deep breath. Let's get out of that thing. So you almost have to remove yourself from it. Look at it. I have somebody break it down and say, look, this is what we're dealing with. It's not that because we're not going to let it get to there. It's not we're not going to let it get to that point. That's this is what we have. And here's what we need to do, right? And it's just having somebody have that moment that that that voice of reason from historical experience. They've been there, done it. And you know how the story ends and you can help them through it. That's what mentoring is all about. And that's an important point for all of your people out there. If they're going to have somebody who's who's truly a mentor, it's somebody that's truly going to lean in and understand what it is that you're dealing with. You know, sometimes it's easy to take just a broad brush. Oh, well, you need to know this, this, and this. Well, look, you can't, you can't do that because it's a very dynamic business world that we live in today with AI and all these great tools that are there. It's a different dynamic. So you got to make sure who's mentoring you, who you're trusting that they're in and they understand the full context of what what it is that you're going through and what's going on within the dynamics of the business. You can't you can't mentor someone in a business if you're not going to get into the business and understand it because you can't arm chuck quarterback. What's going to happen is you're only going to see the big things as a mentor. You're only going to see the big things. You're not going to see the granular details. You're not going to see the risk, the hidden risk. Why? Because you didn't do your homework as a mentor. You've been there. You've hit one out of the park. You're not really leaning in. You're just kind of doing that. You know what I'm saying. I do. And I think this is why I have I have such an issue with people that mentor at scale when they're dealing with like tons of entrepreneurs at the same time. Yeah. Maybe there's some high level wisdom that you can teach over to 500 different people that are going through your program, but to really make an impact. You do have to you do have to be in the weeds. You got to be there. And then it just like the friend of mine, like I said, my wheelhouse is franchising. Okay. Franchion doesn't matter what it is. Okay. My I built my career. I built my empire in the fitness space, but look in three years. And I'm not with nautical bowls anymore. But in three years, I took that from an idea, no franchise locations to 70, 73 open stores and 170 licenses sold. So that's all franchise model. Right. That's all franchising. It doesn't matter from selling fitness or assayables. Okay. So franchising is my is my wheelhouse, but my one of one of the people who now is a very, very good friend of mine. He has a a home healthcare monitoring business. And I don't that that's not my wheelhouse, but what is my wheelhouse is the block and tackling of creating a business and entity from there all the way through the exit. So how do we position it? Do we do we sell in and right now his his question is do I sell a portion of the company to take some chips off the table? But he's growing this business so fast. I mean, I just said, look, if it were me because the the the the first capital that you sell is going to be the most expensive, you know what I mean? And you and you don't need it. You're spinning off so much cash right now. Take a take a small loan, use it for whatever you need it for. But he's he'll exit this business in the next two to three years. And it'll be literally, you know, at least a half billion dollar company. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.