We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick Murtha a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nick, appreciate you joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
Long Story: Me and my business partner Anthony Mainella, put 75K in each to start the gym. We needed a 150K loan from the SBA to have enough operating capital. In 2017 South Florida was expected to get hit with a massive category 5 hurricane and the eye was supposed to come right over the gym. We had no construction insurance (we would have lost our tail) and got lucky. I had a massive laps in judgement and forgot to pay my mortgage on a home I owned in PA. They bank decided not to fund my loan. I had 10K in payroll ready to hit and 12K in the bank. I had to scramble hard to come up with 20K while I fixed the issue with the loan (That 20k bought me another month). The loan was funded and in within two months we were profitable (most gyms take 4 years) and in six months we had a 40% net profit margin and higher revneue than most facilties in the United States. The SBA did a big article on us becuase of how impressed they were.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My step father passed away of a suspected heart attack / drug overdose and I found him dead at 16. I was really depressed and couldnt get the image out of my head of his lifeless body. He was hero. I gained a ton of weight because all I would do is sit in my room and play video games and eat. I failed 10th grade because I would never go to school. My mom thought it would be a good idea for me to join a gym to gain some self confidence. I did and I ended up playing baseketball with all of the personal trianers. They would then invite me to watch their sessions and I decided to do my graduation project on being a personal trainer. When I graduated high school I got a job at a gym cleaning toliets and working a circuit and talking to members. Eventually that lead to walking around town in a chicken suit handing out guest passes to sell memberships. I ended up getting my training certification realizing quickly that I was not qualified (My First Client Was Engelbert Humperdink and I had no clue what I was doing. That has been my business experience. Constantly not feeling like I know what I am doing and I just find a way to solve problems by leverage my thoughts and data. Our business Catalyst Fitness & Personal Training sells Small Group Personal Training. We help our customers look, feel and perform better. We primarily work with people over 40 with the majority of our customers being over 50. Its that niche that sets us apart. We really pay attention to helping each client perform exercises safely and help them understand the importance of nutriton on their health and the way they look. I am most proud of the fact that we still have members who joined a few months after we opened in 2017. We have been with them through major life changes. It has been amazing to build relationships with them and see the highs of their kids graduating college of high school and to see some of them become grandparents. And we also have shared some lows where they get a cancer diagnosis, lose a spouse, lose a child and your brand is something they can count on to be there for them 3-4 times per week. I want people to know that we really want to see them win and strive to help them get out of their own way.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Expectations & Forcasted Results Are Something you should spend very little time on. Focus on your customer, their interactions with your brand and observing your employees delivering a solid experience. Focus on the details that create the outcomes. Its all that matters.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Covid 19: We are a brick and mortar facility. We had to pivot into virtual workouts for our customers. Some of them we even trained for free because they lost their jobs. I remember watching our gross recurring revenue decline faster than I could blink. It seemed like every minute we had a customer reach out about canceling or freezing their membership. Of course your brain wants to go into panic mode but I remember being in my office feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders and getting up and going to my massive white board and writing the word LEAD on my board. I then wrote down what does that mean? I wrote down it means that I can focus on what I can do and focus on my controllables. The levers I could pull on where leading my team, helping them get better and skill up. I could focus on my customers and giving them a sense of positivity during a challenging situation. I just really tried to live in hour tight compartments and folow my feet and tried to be as helpful to everyone as I could. I had to influence my own thinking and take the focus off of my fears and worries and show up as the highest version of myself. None of my employees had to take a pay cut outside of my and my business partner. I am really proud of that. I renegotitated everything with our vendors and our landlord and had really difficult conversations that my ego was so challenged to have because I had so much pride around what I built.
