369. Tonight we close the gym, it’s emotionally hard to do

Chapters

• 1:03 Studio closure announcement
• 2:06 Preparing for the blindside
• 3:16 Managing personal connections
• 5:11 Business vs friendship boundaries
• 5:54 Parallels with past experience
• 6:57 Reality of business ownership struggles

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Good evening. So today is the day Came back from the weekend trip. We wanted to close the studio down in person and unfortunately we had prior plans that superseded that and so, okay, good, I got my keys. So it's Sunday and tonight I'm going in and shutting everything down. So the bank is basically going to start coming in and seizing assets and doing court stuff. Um, and I I'm not. I am not in a spot to allow access for the studio because, uh, it's not my property anymore. So heading in putting off some signs saying, hey, the business is closed. Um, thank you for you, for your patronage. Here's some alternative locations to go.

Speaker 1: 1:20

Then a handful of emails to other people, some to key holders, some to staff, the big email blast to members. And I'll go through my checklist tomorrow, because tonight is just get the business done, but there's a big checklist to make sure, like everything is oh shoot, I forgot a. But there's a big checklist to make sure everything is oh shoot, I forgot a box. There's a big checklist to make sure I don't forget anything. And it's going to be sucky. Except I don't want that mindset that it's going to be sucky. It's just going to be very surprising and very quick. No one is expecting this. No one sees this coming Heck. Even on the drive home today we were getting camera alerts that some instructors are doing training today to prepare for the week ahead, and so the managers and staff like nobody knows, only the bank knows that we're behind and the landlord knows that we're behind. So tonight and tomorrow is going to be a blindside to everyone. Um, which is unfortunate, and I don't want that to be the last thought that people have of the of the studio, but unfortunately that's what's going to be happening. Um, I'll do my checklist tomorrow, cause I don't want to, um, get distracted by that on my way there, but tonight was just making sure, like I have all the admins and permissions to do what needs to happen. I'll be pausing all the groups and freezing everything so that people don't go toxic and crazy and tagging. I'll be deactivating my Facebook because, for whatever reason, people can still tag me. My wife and I tested that and even though I said only I can tag myself on posts, she could still like create a post that tagged me in particular. So that was really surprising. So, for better or worse, I'll just be putting my Facebook on snooze. For a long time. I won't be seeing stuff on there for a while.

Speaker 1: 3:05

People could DM me on Instagram, I guess, but unfriended all the false friendships that I had, and when I say false I mean like hey, I saw you once and I said hi at the studio. So I removed all those Um and there's a few remaining of like legitimate friendships that I think are valid beyond the studio. Um, but I just had to speed, do it quick. It was like 150 people. I think I have like 30 remaining and so, um, yeah, it just feels weird, like it feels very weird.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Um, doing this. I feel like it's um, like I'm doing like a surprise attack on my friends and I remember when I bought the now, the guy that sold it to me said he wished he kept like personal business that barrier more black and white, and I feel like I blurred that a little bit. He blurted a ton Um and I won't go into I don't know if I ever said like well, how he blurred that, but um, that was a barrier that people like came over back and forth on and he did not have that barrier between the two and so people like could text him about their membership, pricing changes and just all sorts of things and so, uh, I feel like I did that a little bit here, but I definitely did not have a black and white barrier. And whenever I see like tv shows where, like bosses do nothing with their subordinates or like their employees, it's tough. Like on one side, it's cool to see like hey, we're gonna have like a barbecue and we're gonna have like an amicable relationship and so like there's something of meaning and purpose beyond just the transaction. But then when something like this happens, like it's very, it's a lot more painful. And on the flip side, like right now, like years ago, I've worked with someone at a house flipping company and he did the exact same thing.

Speaker 1: 5:09

I woke up, my email didn't work on Monday morning, meeting with an investor. I messaged him after like hey, what's going on? Like I have no clue what's going on. He's like, oh, everyone got laid off, like it's just me now. I couldn't keep everyone and I felt personally betrayed. But at the end of the day, like it was his business, it was his livelihood For him, like he and his family, they only they had like one less than a month of cash left between personal and business, where things got shut down Like I don't think they end up going bankrupt, but they had to do something, and so that was very painful and it took me like three weeks to message him back into like I don't know if he knows this, but like I told him like that I was unfairly terminated and like he owned that really well in hindsight, and so I think it's a little different. He laid everyone off or fired everyone, but the business kept going.

Speaker 1: 6:08

In my case, like the business is imploding and so everyone is implicitly laid off from that and so, uh, the business has dying before the employment status is, I guess. So I don't for what it's worth that people think like this is easy. It's not. Folks would say like ceos make millions and billions of dollars. It's 10 people that do and not a literal tent. It's a handful of people, and the folks that get there are a very unique breed, um, and a vast majority of businesses are hanging on by a thread, and it's the folks that are not paying themselves that are working two jobs they don't even tell you about. They try to keep the doors open and if you've