Today is PDBM Day! One year ago, I officially launched Perfect Day Business Mentorship.
13 years ago, I started my first business to help people change their lives through health and fitness. I had a life-changing experience in my own health and fitness when I found CrossFit in 2008, and I wanted to share this new found excitement and vision of possibility with all that I could. So, I started a gym.
I was 20 when I opened this business. I was young, dumb, and I knew nothing about starting or operating a business. Largely driven by youthful exuberance and a passion for the craft, I set out with determination that I would learn how to build a successful business along the way.
I was learning, but I wasn’t building a successful business. Maybe on the outside it appeared that way, but most definitely not on the inside.
After 8 years of not paying myself and running that business financially into the ground, I signed up to work with my first business mentor. My business turned around quickly. I was paying myself a wage that I could finally take care of my family with, and I was able to turn my business from a hobby into a professional company that creates full-time careers for staff, with more means to continue to change our clients’ lives. We not only survived, but thrived, through a global pandemic in one of the hardest hit industries.
When my business became self-sufficient and I could step closer to living my Perfect Day more frequently, I filled my time by becoming a mentor for the company that I hired, and gave back by helping other gym owners that came after me. One gym saved is thousands of lives changed. That’s an incredibly powerful mission to ride.
The turnaround story of my gym is one for the books, but the story I haven’t told is how PDBM came to be.
The truth is, the more and more I started helping gym owners transform their business and help get closer to living their Perfect Day, the more I saw the carry-over of those tactics applying to all service-based businesses. The things that worked in the gym industry, also worked in the HVAC company down the street, the coffee shop I spent long days with my dad in, the physiotherapy practice I rehabbed my foot at, and the u-pick flower farm out of town.
If we could create this type of world-changing impact just on gyms, imagine the wave of impact we could create through expanding that reach. It wasn’t only just about saving a gym to save thousands of lives. It was now about saving the “mom and pop” shop that’s been in my town for 20 years, helping the struggling husband and wife HVAC duo pay themselves for the first time in 15 years, or guiding the young entrepreneur, fresh out of school, to start their own business and create their own legacy in our small town.
Another small business saved is another life saved. Maybe not literally in the same sense that saving a gym business would impact, but it might mean that small business owner gets to come home in time for dinner that night, be home with their family on the weekend, and finally take that vacation they dreamed they would but had never been able to. That alone keeps me waking up everyday, driven to continue helping those around me.
My team and I at PDBM are driven by a mission to impact 100 small service-based business owners this year. It’s a small drop in the bucket, but you don’t run a marathon without tying your shoes first.
Thank-you to everyone who has been a part of this journey so far, all those we have had the opportunity to work with in the past, and all those we have yet to cross paths with. Being an entrepreneur is one of the best things I have ever done, and I want nothing more than to help other entrepreneurs win.
Happy PDBM Day!