My 2017: Achievements and Failures - Robots Facing Bankruptcy While Helping Crying Customers

Hello my fellow Steemers! Nice title hey?

Firstly, what a great idea for a competition. This is an excellent opportunity to look back at the past year and think about all our achievements and lessons learned.

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For those of you that follow me, you'll know that I am the owner of a small business - a gym to be precise.

I have only owned my business for the past 2 years. And to say that the experience has been a roller coaster would be an incredible understatement. This year has seen:

• Amazing new experiences
• Finding new friends
• Very nearly losing my business (ouch!)
• Discovering that I'm not a robot and actually can feel emotions (there's a story here) and genuinely want to help people
• The discovery of Steemit!

My first year in business was incredibly tough. After being employed as an Environmental Scientist for close to 10 years, going into business ownership was always going to be a challenge, and unsurprisingly, I underestimated just what a challenge it would be.

But that was 2016 and not what this post is about. All you need to know that I saw the revenue from my business virtually halve, so my focus for 2017 has been all about staying alive, and rebuilding my business into something that I can be proud of.

Ever seen a bank account bleed? Mine had severed an artery

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The year started off at a struggle. My bank accounts were very quickly running dry. I was basically bleeding about $5000 a month, every month. And, even though my gym provides amazing service, we were struggling to sign new members up. New competitors had moved into the area, so a price war was raging, which caused people to think that a cheap gym was a good gym. What they didn't realise, was that a good gym is one that provides quality service and actually cares about seeing them achieve their fitness goals. This can be a hard message to sell at times.

Since I was losing so much money, I had to get incredibly creative at managing what bills would be paid and delaying payments to suppliers that I knew wouldn't push too hard to be paid. I felt like crap. My main concerns were that my employees got paid each week and that the rent was paid.

My finances were so bad that I couldn't even afford to go to the doctors or dentist, even though I needed both. My only consolation was that every week, I knew I could expect about $100 in cash payments. This was enough to keep food on the table and pay some household bills.

By March, my bank accounts were empty. I didn't have anything left in my emergency fund. So if something broke in the gym, it would stay broken. I literally couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I knew, that if something didn't change fast, I would have to close the doors to my gym permanently. I was on the verge of losing everything that I had saved and built over the past 10 years. This is no small amount of pressure.

I called for a medic, he stopped the bleeding as fast as he could

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It was at this time that I met my business coach. My coach already owned 2 gyms, and was making great money from them. He had set them up so well, that he only spent an hour working on each of them every day. He worked with me to make some immediate improvements to my business. And the results were impressive.

Within a matter of weeks, we had revamped our marketing campaigns, identified cost savings and re-trained my team in sales. I was incredibly happy to see the number of leads go through the roof and we had the best month for sales ever.

This was a real turning point for me. My confidence had taken a serious hit over the previous few months. I was feeling rubbish up until this point and felt like a complete failure. I felt as if my wife was looking down at me, I thought my team had lost respect for me, and I felt useless at my work.

Making these massive improvements brought back the realisation that this business could work, and it could be amazing.

We hadn't fixed the business completely but things were looking up. My main stress point now was that I hadn't paid myself a wage in 18 months. And it was starting to hurt.

A poorly paid soldier is a poor performing soldier

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So the business was improving but not quite there yet. I still wasn't earning a living. My coach asked me a very simple question.

What is it that is keeping you going? You could very easily close the doors and walk away today. With your skill set and qualifications, you could easily find a decent paying job. Why keep putting yourself through this stress?

He was asking me this as a test. My coach simply wanted to make sure that I was working on this business for the right reasons. They didn't have to be his reasons, but I needed to have strong motivations to keep moving forward with this business.

I have many things that keep me going in this business. But it's mostly the people that I met this year that keep me motivated to make this business a success. And most of those people are clients of the gym. These are the stories of just two of my members who keep me motivated to keep my business alive.

The Tale of Brigadier Brendon
Brendon is probably my favourite client. Mainly because he reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age.

He came to me at a time when he was just getting over a severe case of agoraphobia. This is a phobia of open spaces. It basically prevented him from leaving the house for months on end.

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On the day that I met him. Brendon admitted that it took all his strength just to leave the house and walk into the gym. His doctor had told him that he needed to lose 12 kilograms, and Brendon had set himself the goal of doing this in 3 months. Not only did he suffer from this terrible phobia, but Brendon also had severe anxiety, which made it extremely hard for him to interact with people.

I did my absolute best to be as understanding and empathetic as possible the day that I met Brendon. He was clearly a good kid and was looking for help. I knew that we could give him the help he needed.

Over the next few months Brendon came to the gym almost every day. I made sure that one of my team gave Brendon some extra care during his workout sessions. And I spoke with Brendon personally every day that he came in.

Brendon lost more than 20 kilograms in 3 months. His confidence shot through the roof. He was feeling so good about himself that he was going out and socialising. He made new friends, and very recently, met his first girlfriend.

We recently ran a weight loss challenge in the gym, and I gave Brendon a discount to join us on the challenge. He made amazing progress on this challenge, and really ramped up the intensity of his exercise. Brendon did so well, that he won one of our top prizes.

He doesn't know this, but I actually changed his prize when we realised that he had made it into the top 3 challengers. I gave Brendon a skydive ticket. A couple of weeks before the end of the challenge, Brendon and I got talking about facing our fears. Brendon was going through a phase in his life that was almost exactly what I went through at his age. He was going out of his way to face his biggest fears. And one of his fears was a fear of heights.

I had also faced this fear, and to get over it, I jumped out of a perfectly serviceable plane (with a parachute of course). It cured my fear of heights, so I wanted to see if this would help Brendon as well. I decided to join Brendon on the jump, so we could do it as a team.

So, just last weekend, Brendon and I jumped out of a plane. It was incredibly rewarding to see how much courage he mustered to do the jump, and to see how happy he was when he achieved such a fantastic milestone.

_{Yep, that's me. I just high fived a cloud!}

Brendon's journey at my gym has been the most rewarding experience that I have had to date. He has come so far, and I've been truly blessed to have watched him grow as a person these past few months.

The Memoir of Major Michael
Michael is a truly unique case when it comes to a gym member. Michael came to me 3 months ago after one of my long term members recommended he meet with me.

Michael was an inspiring character to speak with from the moment he walked in the door. Michael is in his early 40's and has lived an incredible life.

Michael worked in the entertainment industry as a make up artist, and also did jewellery sales on cruise ships. His work took him all over the world multiple times. In his free time, Michael was a body builder, so was incredibly disciplined at maintaining his fitness and incredibly careful with his diet.

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Michael was very successful, he had built up quite a decent amount of wealth over the years. But everything came crashing down when he was diagnosed with cancer. Michael relocated back to Australia and started to undergo treatment. The bills mounted and, since he wasn't able to work, his finances began to suffer.

The biggest struggle for Michael throughout all of this experience however, has been weight gain. The drugs that Michael had to take have caused massive weight gain. And the day that Michael walked into my gym, was the day that his doctor had referred him to an obesity doctor. This referral destroyed his confidence.

So here was Michael, crying in my gym, while a robot of a gym owner tried to console him. I never used to need emotions. When you work as a scientist for 10 years, emotions aren't important. Data is all that matters. Michael and Brendon have both taught me the meaning and importance of empathy, and for that, I am forever thankful to them.

Michael now trains in my gym 6 times a week. He has become the gym larrikin and jokes with us every day. His confidence is increasing daily as well and it's amazing to see him smiling and laughing with the members and my team. His medication makes it hard for him to lose weight, but he is definitely making great progress. I'm sure that, in time, we'll have him back to his old weight again.

So you can teach and old dog new tricks

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I never thought I would understand emotions or people. In my old career, I was able to avoid dealing with things like emotions, and the diverse range of issues that people deal with on a day to day basis.

Data data data, that's all I cared about. It was easy, it didn't cry while sitting in front of me, it didn't quietly cry for help.

But weirdly, when someone is in front of me asking for help, I actually want to help them. And not just because I know I can, but because I genuinely want to see these people smile and feel better.

I once read a quote, I have no idea where it was from, but it essentially said If you are in a position to help someone, you have an obligation to do so*. This rings of truth to me. We all have an obligation to help our fellow man. I know that I can help people, but the difference now is that I don't feel obliged to help them, I want to.

Sure, I'm not making any money, but right now, I don't care. I have an amazing business, and in time, I'll be making enough money to keep me satisfied. More importantly, I have people in my gym that need help. And I want to do everything in my power to help them achieve their goals.

So this is what 2017 has taught me. And this is what I have achieved in 2017 - I actually do care about people. I'm not the robot that I thought I was.

It's only taken me 40 years. But I actually do want to be around people and help them. I'm not the data driven machine that I thought I was.

Happy New Year Steemit! Bring on 2018, It's going to be even bigger and better than this year!

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