What Living On The Other Side of The World From My Brick and Mortar Business Has Taught Me About Business.

I’ve spoken reasonably openly about how much work was involved in setting up TSF for us to be able to step out for a year. It’s no exaggeration when I say it took us all of 2022. We largely blended two businesses, rebranded one, systemised them both entirely, hired four staff members and trained them in those systems. Like it was a whole thing. (I wrote a bit about that in this article: what it’s taken to spend a year abroad).

Now I’m not dumb and I’m not completely ignorant, but nothing could have prepared me for how hard I found those initial months away from TSF — not being able to control everything, having to have 1000% trust in the team, having things go wrong and being minimally able to do anything about it. TSF business hours were while we slept over here, and so I’d jolt awake in the middle of the night to check my messages and my emails to see if anything went wrong; my heart was in my throat every time I woke up. It was so fucking crippling. (Has control issues — ✅ ).

Anyway, pleased to announce I’ve largely dealt with those and I am tolerable to be around again. I knew this year would be a huge year of growth, but I didn’t quite anticipate the growth I’d move through as a business owner, and as an employer too which is still a reasonably new role for me. So here are a couple of key lessons that have been pretty damn life changing for me.

How do I make this enjoyable and sustainable?

Admittedly I heard this asked on a Youtube video the other day but goddamn it resonated with me. “How do I make my work enjoyable and sustainable?” My work has always been enjoyable for me but sustainable? Questionably so — when there was no real avenue for me to take time off ever and if I was sick, I needed to wake my fiancé at 5am and send him to work for me.

The truth is travel is really important to me, I have no family in Melbourne and 3/4 of my bridal party live 10-20 hours from me. I love my work, but my cup gets drained real quick when those things inaccessible. They’re each pretty life-sustaining.

My work has always been enjoyable. But in setting TSF up for us to step out, we’ve made our work sustainable. It has permitted us to make coaching a career for life; a career that can support and fulfil us through all of life’s stages. How have I learned this from being afar? I’ve learned how fucking important this is to my overall well-being and that I’ll be damned before I ever compromise on that again.

Dependable staff are like oxygen.

We’ve had a couple of moments this year where we’ve had to call on the team and be like “I know this is too much to ask but is there any chance…” and most of the time they’re already half way through the thing we were about to ask them. Our current team is 1000/10. They care about each other, they care about our members, they care about TSF as its own living, breathing thing and (this one twists the dagger in my heart) they care about me and John Paul. We are honest with each other, we tell each other straight when we’ve fucked up, we can deliver criticism to one another and it feels safe to do so, we can ask each other for help and it feels safe to do so. If I send Lizzie an email I can just tick that thing off my to-do list and know she’ll handle it. I don’t need to follow up with her, ever. She can do the same in reverse. I’m a control freak, we’ve established that. But having a reliable team has just helped me release so much of that unrelenting angst. Josh, Jez and Liz are the GOATs, and frankly it would be impossible to take your hands off a business without a team that you trust with every piece of your heart.

People that I really love have moved on, and it’s okay and the world goes on.

A number of people I really love have left their membership at TSF. Honestly at each time that I received those messages I interpreted their departure as a personal failure, that I’d let them down, that I’d abandoned them, that I’d been selfish, and my selfishness was impacting people that I love and care for and that I’d just totally failed myself and them.

Anyway once the hysteria died off, the world rolled on.

Truth is, people move on from TSF, even when I am there; people that I love and people that love me. I could stay at home and devote my life to never upsetting anyone ever; or alternatively I could stop over-inflating my own self-importance and accept that life isn’t static and the people in my life aren’t static and that business isn’t static and the world rolls on.

People I love are doing Pilates and Crossfit and training in other gyms now; and other people have come from Pilates and Crossfit and other gyms to train at TSF. World keeps spinning, people are still lifting, we’re still having an impact, powerlifting still rocks.

Here we have a collection of images of the gym doing just fucking fine without us 🙃

The business is so much more resilient than I’ve historically given credit.

And following on from that, TSF and our online coaching businesses aren’t vulnerable little babies any more. They have seasons and fluctuations, and Winter and Christmas will always have dips, and Spring and January will always have peaks. As long as we continue to provide a stellar training environment and the highest quality coaching, TSF will continue to thrive. I’m not a 19 year old PT with 10 clients anymore; we can quit the scarcity now.

You gain a bit of perspective when you’re this zoomed out and eight hours behind everything.

I’m not sure if this is a lesson or just an astronomical perspective shift. It’s hard to have a clear view of business when you’re in it. Every emotion, every conversation, every movement of every person has for years been a freaking feast for my catastrophic, overthinking brain. From Spain, I can’t see any of that. I rely on reports from the people that are there, that are filtered and delayed. And on top of the delay is that I’ll typically receive them another eight hours later again because the message was sent in the middle of the night when I was sleeping. I’m just rattled less over here now. And it takes more to rattle me.

I’ve said this to John Paul and a number of my friends, kinda for accountability — I want to carry this level of groundedness home with me. How do I simulate this feeling when I am back on the gym floor? How can I maintain this feeling where it takes bigger problems or bigger fluctuations to perturb me?

I’m more grounded and I’m more resilient to challenges now; more washes over me. God I want to keep that.

No one is ever ready to take a step back. No member base and no amount of money makes you feel free.

The business will never be “ready” for the owners to take a break. I think this is true no matter what size or amount of money you’re playing with. I’ve listened to small biz owners, medium biz owners, huge biz owners (these ones I listened to on YT lol), and everyone is trying to free themselves up and such a small percentage ever actually do it. The bigger the business, the more you have to lose. The smaller the business, well you lose less in objective terms but that loss strips you of your entire livelihood 🫠

We built our businesses up for years to a point that we could leave. Then a key staff member resigned and it felt like we were back at square one (I may or may not have cried hysterically and announced that we would be forever shackled by the gym and I would forever have to go without a number of the things that bring me joy — guys 2022 was so tough). But we left the country on a one way ticket six months later and just rolled the fucking dice on it. Things will never be perfect and if they do feel like they’re perfect, well that’ll come crumbling down in a couple of days.

You gotta prepare obviously, like a fucking lot. But at some point you’ve just got to trust in what you’ve created, the team you have around you, the quality and integrity of your product. Because you’ll never feel “ready”; ready will forever feel just an inch away.

I am so much more comfortable with being disliked.

I don’t think I ever consciously faced before this trip how desperately I needed to be liked. I wanted people to think I was nice more than I wanted them to have any other opinion of me. And fuck man that is so exhausting, and it is also just really fucking shackling when you do want to speak up or to advocate for something that is important to you. This is really an outcome of the perspective shift I mentioned earlier — you simply don’t care what someone thinks of you when you are directly on their antipode. I want to carry this home with me. My life is pretty rad, irrespective of whether some dude thinks I’m nice or not.

I’m a much bossier bitch than I give myself credit.

On one morning that I jolted awake and checked my emails at 5am, something actually had gone wrong and fuck did I handle it. Like every single element of my response managed and awaiting John Paul’s approval when he woke up. I’m an emotional human, alright. Like I cry all the time. I stress and I panic and I cry. And on this day where my worst nightmare was realised, I slapped my face a couple of times, poured a coffee, whipped my hair in to a top bun and without a tear or a stress or a panic, I just handled it. And it was such a bossy, self-affirming moment from me. Like yeah, I am an emotional human. But I am also tough, and resilient, and I can find another gear when I need another gear. I’ve questioned so many times whether or not I am actually cut out for the stress, vulnerability and risk of self-employment. And this year I have really just continued to demonstrate to myself that yeah, I fucking am.

(Hey Siri, play Boss Bitch by Doja Cat.)