It was back in 2004. I had just found out that my business partner had been ripping me off so after buying him out, I was left with around
50 students paying
£35 per month, a half built 5,500sq ft facility and
no idea on how to run a business. In fact, I was still working a 9-5 job
and then teaching 6 days a week.
After getting a loan of £45,000 to finish off the building work of my dojo, I quickly found out that it came with a free dose of anxiety on how to pay it all back (complete with many sleepless nights) and although my school was slowly growing, it wasn’t fast enough for me to pay all the bills.
I was fast on the road to burnout when I was approached by a business coach to teach me exactly how to run a business. Although the £850 per month price tag seemed steep, I was fed up of only being able to afford to eat pasta for lunch and the cold remains of it for dinner on an evening, so after him showing me how I could make that money back and then generate an infinite return on my investment a credit card payment later meant that I was on the road to building a genuine business that could support myself and my new family.
Since 2007, I have realised the power of coaching and spent over £200,000 on my own education from the best people I could find to learn how to go from £3,500 months to £28,000 months and learnt how to build a full team to teach the 360 students that trained at our school, meaning that I didn’t even have to be there anymore for it to run without me, giving me total freedom.
