The 20 Something Year Old Entrepreneur

There’s a saying that as a business owner or entrepreneur you have to be willing to take risk and fail.  Sometimes you’ll fail often but with each failure comes a learning experience.

I would love to say that my first year in business ran smoothly but contrary to what many people (my friends included) think, I just barely squeaked by.  If it weren’t for a few social media consulting gigs and government bonds, I would not have made it out of my first year.  But that was the past and I’ve made changes to my business and my thought process which I’m positive will help me to thrive.

Recently, I’ve been watching two reality TV shows (well one to be exact because it seems like the other show got canceled) Bar Rescue and the Turnaround King in which an industry professional is called in to help save a struggling business.

Now, before watching these shows, I had already decided that I was going to move Sports Yoga Hawaii to a different location and focus on personal yoga training sessions.  I did a good month of soul searching and discovered what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do to make Sports Yoga Hawaii the company I envisioned.

Grant Cardone’s Turnaround King was the first show I stumbled upon and was instantly drawn to the show because they were covering a Gold’s Gym that was in serious trouble.  Watching the show I saw some of the same problems that I had and drew an instant connection.

Grant’s specialty is sales.  He’s known for customizing sales programs for organizations of all sizes.

Bar Rescue, is similar to the Turnaround King but the biggest difference is Jon Taffer is an expert on turning failing bars into a thriving one.

You may be thinking “how can a bar be similar to a fitness facility?”  Well…that’s a good question but here’s the take-a-way I got from both shows:

• Location is very important.  You need to know the demographics around your area and you need to offer those people something that fits their lifestyle.
• Focus on a few little things that truly make your business unique and sell people hard on it.
• Every business needs a sales process.  Whether it’s having people pump some iron and taking before pictures or creating a social atmosphere that keeps people there longer, there needs to be a process in place that allows you to make more money.
• Mind set!  Watching these shows, every business owner starts the company with so much passion and a big vision.  But as things go south, the passion goes and negativity starts to take over everything.

Everything starts with your mind set!  My mind set was very negative for a while.  I was constantly focusing on what I couldn’t do and I was stressing out that people weren’t coming in.  Focusing on all that negativity drained me both physically and mentally.  This led me to go off course and changed my whole business model.

After a while I came to the realization that I was focusing on all the wrong things.  Instead of looking at what I couldn’t do, I started focusing on what I could do and looked at all the positives.  This ultimately led me to part ways with what I was doing in the past and start a new.

I realized how important location was.  Initially parking was my most important concern when it came to the location but I realized that the surrounding community was even more important than that.  The Kahala space was nice, but the surrounding community was a little too old for what I had to offer and many people weren’t willing to drive to my studio.  Thus, I started to look for a space that was closer in town, that was near the major high schools.

The next step was to get my business back to what I had envisioned.  I got off track and started to offer all these different types of yoga classes just to get people to come in so I could pay the rent.  My branding was terrible.

It was right then and there that I made a commitment to myself that I was going to stick with what I had originally had planned and really focus on going after athletes.

This led me to change the logo to reflect something that was a little more athletic.

Along with the logo change I decided it would be more beneficial to focus on doing private sessions versus group sessions and put in place a sales process to help convert people.

All-in-all my first year was a good learning experience and what I’ve learned from these two TV shows is that I am on the right track.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and it’s going to take time for me to build my business but it’s reassuring to me that I’m heading in the right direction.

Tags: david onoue, fitness, marketing, mindset, sales, Sports Yoga Hawaii