BIRD WILLIAMS: You're listening to Bird Means Business Episode 9.

Okay, okay, okay. So, I have to start with addressing an area of discomfort for me. So, the title, you know could come off as just a little showy. Like, "Oh, look at me. I'm so cool that this happened." And that does not at all really tie to what I'm trying to get at in this episode. So, my friend, stay tuned because you're gonna really see that I truly believe that the success of my first business had so much to do with things that were beyond me. And I think it'll really help you as you start or grow your business. 

So I want to start by clarifying two things, one around timing and another around revenue. So first I'll say for those of you who don't know, my husband, Terry and I, we own a gym here in Houston, Texas, called The League, and that's the business I'm referring to. We launched it on December 1, 2013, so that ties in with my first point. That was just that first month, and so I'm referring to us reaching six figures that first full calendar year which is 2014. Secondly, we are talking about revenue, not profit. So it's the top number before expenses. And I clarify that because some folks conveniently leave that point out. But I just want to make sure that I'm super clear. We're talking about our revenues were at six figures. And you know, this was still amazing, right? I mean, we were two kids. We had never launched a business. No one in our family had ever launched a business that we knew of. And we were kind of going out there which is pretty incredible to have such success so quickly. But I'm going to talk a little bit about how I think that came about and you'll learn that it's not because we're super talented or super special. I will say there's, there's one thing I want to point out about one of the benefits of owning a business, especially when you're a full-time entrepreneur. And that's that you get to write a lot of things off. So, you can add things to your expenses that will help lower your profit, to help make your tax burden less. I know it sounds crazy but we got to a point in our business very quickly where we were trying to pile on these expenses so that we could write things off to help alleviate our taxes. I say all that to say that we were strategically lowering our profits in a sense. So the first year that our profit, which is the bottom number after expenses, was six figures, was two years later in 2016. Which is still insane to me that you know this was our very first business and we just really had no rubric.

And you're going to kind of see how that came to be. There's not really one answer. It wasn't any one thing. It was a lot of things working together for good. So, I'll give you the top five reasons I think our gym business grew so fast and so strong. 

First, it was because of what we built before the doors were ever opened. It was what we built, what we invested in, what we lasted through before we ever thought about being an entrepreneur or having a gym or anything like that. I mean, well, let me just give you the full story. Terry and I, we met in college. We were college sweethearts. And we did it for three and a half years, and I got ready to move to New York City and he broke up with me. And that's one way to say it, but the truth is, we had spent only four months of that three and a half period together because I was traveling all over the place. He lived in LA first for a summer. Then I was in Italy, in Milan, Italy, studying abroad for six months. And when I came back, he'd moved back to Houston. I'm in school in Austin. And then the next summer when I could have been in Houston, I decided to go to Ghana for a social development project which was amazing. And when I came back, I was going through the interview process to get a job after college. And I had landed three or four, I think, solid job offers in Houston and that was kind of the plan. And, I last minute had an offer for this job in New York on Wall Street as an investment banking analyst. And I looked at it and thought, that's the most challenging of everything. I'm doing that. And tells this guy who's like suffered this long-distance relationship for so long. He was my first boyfriend, so you know, I didn't know the difference, that, "Hey, I'm gonna go to New York instead." And he's just like, "Ah, well like are you planning on coming back after the two-year program?" And, "I don't know. We'll see. I don't know. The sky's the limit." And he was like, "You know what? I don't think this is gonna work." And he broke up with me. But you know that sounds like a really sad story, but obviously, we make guys, so it's okay. But I say all that for a reason, which is that we were separated. We were in our own worlds. I was out there in New York, in this crazy experience that I was being pushed to my limits. I was learning to figure things out. I was literally being stretched in every possible way. I was being challenged, and I was growing as a business person, as a thinker. And Terry in the same time was here in Houston killing it in the fitness game. He started off as a towel boy, like bringing laundry down, you know, at one of these fitness clubs. He really yearned for the day that he'd have his own class and eventually sub for somebody. And then did so great that they gave him his own class and then several classes, to the point that he was a top fitness instructor at these clubs. And not just one, but multiple. He was working all over town. And it was what he did, what we both did in the dark. It was what we did before we ever opened the doors to our gym because what we didn't know then was that we were preparing ourselves, I thought God was preparing us, for what we were going to have in the future. For what our real purpose was. So I say all this to say to you, wherever you are now, it might be a nine to five that you just feel like you are just over, you know. You don't even know what skills you could pick up where you are right now, what training you could receive, what person you can meet, network. You could get money. You could save while you're in that space that will help prepare the next season of your life. So don't be devastated in the dark. Be determined. Be committed. Be excellent. Choose to make the most of every opportunity knowing that it's going to all work together. Good things are coming, good things are ahead. So I just encourage you with that. 

But a lot of what we did, he was giving away free content for years, like on Twitter, while he was building up his fitness presence in Houston. There were people that were following him on Twitter, like, "Man, this is really good." Fitness tips. Nutrition tips. And when it came time for us to launch our gym, on December 1, 2013. There were hundreds of people at our launch party because they had followed him for years. He was giving out a whole bunch of free content. So there were people who drove in from Dallas even, Alabama y'all, who were just like I'm coming to support this guy because for years he's helped me and he's encouraged me and inspired me to be more fit and be more healthy. And that's what I think had a lot to do with our success because our launch was huge. And so we put all that on social media, so people are like, "Oh wow. This is great. I gotta check this gym out. This is poppin'." 

Again what we built before the doors ever opened, what we did in the dark, was so key to us starting so strong. Next was our why, which is loving people well. We were opening up a gym, and we didn't think of it as just a gym. We didn't think of the people who would come through as just gym heads or people who wanted to get fit. Sure we wanted that for them, we wanted them to reach their fitness goals. But we knew that people were more than just their physical bodies. They're humans. They have feelings and needs, and people are yearning for human connection. So for us, it was much more than a gym. It was a community. We wanted people to feel seen, to feel important. And thankfully because of the amazing people who just came to The League, and the amazing team we had that would help push our culture. I mean, people are going out and getting drinks after workouts. People are like, bringing their first date to The League, and now they're married, which is crazy. We were actually at a wedding, I think last year where The League was shouted out in the marriage vows y'all. Yes. Like, it's so much more than just a gym. It's a community. We want to love people well. That was our why. So as you think about your business, think about why you're doing what you're doing, because I promise you money will not sustain you. I promise you, platform #CEO will not sustain you. Those hard moments when it's like, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm gonna go look up jobs online. It's like no because Deborah is over here killing it and she's losing weight and she's feeling more confident and she has this job interview and she's excited about it. And she was afraid to go on this job interview because she didn't know if she'd ever get it cause she didn't have the confidence and now she does because she feels strong. That's what I'm talking about. Your business is so much more than just the functionality of it. It's much more than that. You're impacting people's lives and when you think about it that way, you're able to really do some big things. 

Next is adapting to our market needs. So, I find a lot of times, entrepreneurs, have a great idea, and they have a certain way they want to do it. They feel like this is the way. And a lot of times, that's great and it works. But sometimes it doesn't or doesn't work the exact way they thought. I'll give you an example. We spent so much time working through our training programs, our fitness programming. It was called STAC(K) training. That's what we went out with. We put all of our branding around that. We got intellectual property around that, our trademark. But then a few years in when we got ready to launch our second location. It was like this ST is just not what it is. And we really should replace it with a P, which was power. I'm not going to go into the details of our training format. But it was much better for writing our workouts and what our clients were wanting and we were okay with adapting to that. We were listening, tuning into what our audience, what our people, our tribe needed and wanted. And we were okay with changing something, even though it was going to cost more money and time, and energy, having to kind of rebrand that. But it was important. PAC(K) training is now what we go with and it's huge. That's so much a part of what The League is and I'm so glad we made the change and didn't just like stay stuck in what we thought we needed to do. 

Number four is grit and hustle. So I'm going to read a post that I wrote a couple of years ago, on my personal Instagram which is @ashleymonee. I wrote this on December 1, 2018. Five years ago today, we spent the weekend, cleaning the gym floors by scooping water up with red plastic cups, after a pressure washing situation gone wrong. It was Terry's birthday weekend and we were exhausted and gross. I felt bad and asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday, and with dirt-filled nails, he said, "This." We were down to the wire to meet our launch deadline and we'd gotten financial surprises, equipment surprises, all the surprises making our deadline more pressing. But we just kept going. There was this knowing, it would all work out. On launch day everything was generally in place. We pulled it off. And the turnout was crazy. People had come from other cities to our launch party and the place was packed. After the launch festivities, I looked at the number of signups. A whole six, as in six people. I looked at my budget projections like, hm. The next day was a Monday, our first day of classes. There was only one person in our 5:30 AM class, and he threw up. That first weekend was the beginning of a plethora of tests. This craziness happened on the regular, and we had to just choose over and over again to just keep going. Just wake up. Try again and do what we can with what we have. I can't tell you the number of times I went to bed, feeling so nervous because we had no answer to a really big problem. But then I'd have a dream, or I'd get a call the next day that I'd think, "Wow, that had to be God." In the most dramatic timing, of course. We honestly can't take credit for any of this. It's all so much bigger than Terry and I. 

Which leads me to point number five. A huge part of the success of our business has to do with a supernatural grace, has to do with the grace of God, which has sustained us in moments that I really can't describe in words. Things that we experienced where Terry and I would just look over at each other like, what, how, why? Things that we almost signed up for. Buildings we almost signed leases for that seemed perfect but there was something in us saying, "I don't know.  There's something wrong with this. It looks perfect. Why can't we just go forward?" But there was a pause. There was a lack of peace. And we didn't move forward and then we'd find out, months later, that this building is so not, not leased out, why? Oh wow, there was this huge structural issue that we had no idea of and we would have had no way of knowing before we signed. But we were so close to signing. I mean, I could go on and on and on. But I had to thank God. I had to say, "God, thank you for leading and guiding us. Thank you for showing us what to do, closing doors and opening doors." There were so many moments and so many victories that were just beyond us, and there's just really no other explanation for it. 

So The League did very well, very quickly. And it's not because we were super awesome or super special. I want to also shout out my tribe real quick. In that post when I talked about Terry scooping up dirty water in plastic cups because the pressure washing situation gone wrong. That night, our friend, Sama'an, brought us some food from Mary's. Oh my gosh, it was amazing. If you know about Mary's in Houston, it was everything. We were starving. We hadn't thought about dinner. Our tribe, our friends, our people. My friend, Yasmeen. I remember her helping us build furniture. My mom and my aunt, they've helped with the kids countless times, so we couldn't do this without our tribe, either. 

Another thing we did right was having a business plan. We didn't go into this thinking, "Oh, you know it'll all work out. We have it all in our head. We got this. We'll just kind of see what happens. We're going to just figure it out on the way." No, we were intentional about what we believed this could be. We had vision and we wrote it down. We made it plain so that both of us could run with it. If you want some guidance with your business plan from someone who's done this a couple of times, hit your girl up. This is the last week of the registration for my course “Making Sense of It”, developing a profitable business plan. It's a four-week online course. It's interactive. I'll be engaging with you in our Facebook group, we have a private course community there on Facebook. I'll do a weekly Q & A. I'm also going to be reviewing your business plan at the end of the course to make sure everything ties together and giving you some of that one-on-one attention as well. If you want more information you can check out the link in my bio on Instagram. It's also going to be linked in the episode description for this podcast episode wherever you're tuning in, or you can just go to course.birdwilliamsconsulting.com. As I said registration closes this Friday, so that would be the last time you can join and I am so excited, people are already in the group, giving their introductions of themselves and their business and I am just so excited about getting this thing going. 

So you might have tuned into this because you're like, you know, I want to have a six-figure business early on. Well, I'm going to give you a resource that I did not have when I started. It's called "Ready, Set, Launch". It's the first 10 steps for launching your business. How it looked for us was basically we piecemealed this together, you know, asking our parents, asking other gym owners. But trying to be discreet with it or like not be a nuisance. Like when should I do this, when should I get that. Well, I just went ahead and created the list for you. And it's also in the link in my Instagram bio, it's also at birdwilliams.com/readysetlaunch. It's going to help you a ton. It'll help you not waste money. It'll help you not waste time. It'll help you not waste energy. Like yes and yes and yes. So if you're interested in it, feel free to download it. It's going to just ask you for your email address and they will be able to download it from there. 

So I hope you're liking these episodes. If so, leave me a review, and let me know what you think. And if there are other episodes you'd love to hear, I would seriously love to know. So shoot me a DM on social media and let me know. Thank you so much for following us on Spotify, for subscribing on Apple Podcasts, and for telling your entrepreneur friends about Bird Means Business. Talk to you next week.