25 Mar 2024
Entrepreneurs share secrets of building a fitness business at PerformX
BY Kath Hudson
Enjoy building your business because the journey can be as good or better than the destination was one takeaway of the industry titans’ panel on empire building, comprised of three industry entrepreneurs.
Remedy Place founder, Dr Jonathan Leary, has worked 100 hour weeks for years, but he stresses the one thing you can’t sacrifice while building a business is your health. He has multiple daily rituals to maintain his own physical health: exercise, intermittent fasting, cold showers, breathwork, visualisation and manifestation and seven to eight hours’ sleep, wearing mouth tape to breathe nasally.
Both Myzone founder, Dave Wright and entrepreneur and investor, Lara Morgan (formerly Pacific Direct, Yogi-Bare, Kitbrix, Scentered, Betterspace) said the journey was better than the destination at times and that building their respective businesses was more enjoyable than reaping the rewards of the riches, given their passion for their purpose.
Morgan said she felt a lack of purpose after exiting Pacific Direct and soon had to channel her energy into new ventures.
Wright said running a growth business, as opposed to a lifestyle business, comes with some frustrations: “If you raise money you’re at the mercy of those who invested and have to ask permission for everything.”
The panelists also talked about the necessary sacrifices made to run growth businesses. Even though she never missed special occasions, Morgan says the year she sold her business she was away for 221 nights and having travelled so much when his four children were young, Wright has retired early to spend time with them.
Wright’s top tips for being successful were to think about the customer: “You can have anything you want in this world if you help enough people to get what they want and treat every person with the respect and dignity which you would expect to receive.”
Morgan said: “Be relentless and honest. Quality wins and persistence persuades, believe in your brand, learn how to negotiate, get three things done every day and enjoy the journey.”
“Prepare to be misunderstood,” said Leary. “People said to me that Remedy Place was the most "LA thing" they’d ever heard and the first bank manager I approached laughed at me. I had to be OK with being told it wouldn’t work.”
Finally, Morgan says imposter syndrome isn’t a thing, so don’t buy into it.
Close Window