Jonathan Slain - Rock the Recession

Yes, you read that right. I had no plan in place for the recession. I owned a number of franchises of something called Fitness Together. These personal training studios did great at firstwe grew very fast, opening several new locations. Our studios achieved new franchise records every year. It felt like we couldnt miss! In 2008, we set a world record for the most personal training sessions ever in the history of the franchise, and later the most locations ever. We just grew and grew and grew

Until we ran into the Great Recession.

The only reason we survived at all was that I borrowed over $250,000 from my mother - in - law . Amazingly, Im still married, and I have paid back what I owed at this point. But it was bad. I wasnt prepared whatsoever: I hadnt been monitoring any of the gauges on the business. Because I had no plan for what to do when the recession hit, I spent the first couple months curled up in the fetal position in the corner of my office.

I couldnt pick my head upeverything collapsed so fast. I wasnt thinking clearly; I was too emotional. Every week, I had to call my mother - in - law for more money. The $250,000 wasnt one big loan. I asked her for $20,000, and then $20,000 more, and then another $20,000. I just kept coming back, week by week, probably a dozen times or more, until she had lent me over a quarter of a million dollars total. I still remember those agonizing phone calls

Hey Anne (thats my mother - in - law s name) the girls are greatyep, really doing wellyour daughter is also doing great

So I was calling because I was hoping

I was hoping you could send me another check, so I can make payroll again

Can you imagine? It was terrible all around. I felt like I was getting waterboarded by the recession. To complicate matters further, mine was a family business. I had three brothers - in - law , a sister, and a sister - in - law all in the business. Once we reached a certain point during the depths of the recession, we had to make some terrible decisions about who was going to be let go. There was no choice: we just couldnt afford to pay everyone anymore.

Up to this point, our journey had been a happy one. We had started with one location and grown rapidly to five. But then the Great Recession happenedand the wheels came off. The worst part was the emotional toll it took on all of us. Personally, I went through a series of emotional stages: first, feeling like a failure, then questioning why this had happened to me and how I got there. I felt raw and exposed, like all my insecurities had been put on display. My self - worth had been tied up in the business. It all just made me feel like I had failed.

Studies have shown that during a downturn people gravitate toward junk food and tend to overeat. In Alabama, a state that was hit especially hard by the Great Recession, an already alarming obesity problem became even more severe, according to AL.com. I may not live in Alabama, but I can relate. When youre scared and numb, you need something to grasp onto. It is a terrible feeling.

My self - worth had been tied up in my business. I felt like a failure.

Luckily, I had a wife and a mother - in - law who believed in me. But trying to figure out what to do about all my brothers - in - law was so difficult emotionally, especially knowing we were all going to have to be together at Thanksgiving. I was the keystone of the family business, the one who had brought everyone together in the first place. I felt responsible for what had happenedI needed to figure out a solution to preserve our increasingly strained relationships.

Ours was a typical family business, and we had made all the mistakes that family businesses make. Because we had no plan, there was no path to save ourselves that didnt involve much pain and emotion. I just remember us having so many arguments with everyone, including me, trying to place the blame on someone else.

Looking back now, I see that I made a colossal business mistakeI clung to our one and only service, our one skill as a company, which was one - on - one personal fitness training. To be fair, no matter what I did, I would have still been swimming against the current. Personal training is probably the worst thing that you can try to sell in a recession when customers are tightening their belts. Nobody wants to pay for personal training in a recession (I can say that now, with 20/20 hindsight).

Nobody wants to pay for personal training in a recession.

But if I hadnt been so busy fighting with my family and battling my own demons, I could have pivoted and expanded into other services , like group training. If I had established a plan in advance, I would have been able to lower my prices before it was too late and keep more clients. Or at the very least, I could have limited the borrowingand wound up owing my mother - in - law a lot less than $250,000!

I also ponder what would have happened if I had been able to read a book like ours back in 2007. I might have been in a much better place. Obviously, that didnt happen. But what did happen was that my path crossed with Pauls. After initially coming together through the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) mentorship program, he randomly became my mentor for a year. It was the start of a friendship and partnership that has now lasted close to a decade and is still going strong.

During the past eight years, Paul and I have worked with many of the same clients. We have helped them build value, gain traction, and grow profitably. At some point, I also tried to find resources to help our clients prepare for the next recession. But there was just nothing out there. Nothing on Amazon, nothing on Google for recession workbook. I said to Paul: Somebody should really write a book about how to plan for the next recession.

It dawned on us that maybe we were somebody. We started putting together our own recession workbook for clientsthe Rock the Recession Owners Manual and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We realized there was a much larger audience for this message. For reasons that will soon be made clear, Paul was proof that our system worked. His planand the process he createdbecame the foundation of this new Recession Gearbox Model that we began sharing with clients and speaking about publicly in our talks and workshops.