How Reggie Dulaney Left His 6-figure Job to Open Up His Fitness Business

Reggie Dulaney
So we got some people that work in corporate, that are trying to make that adjustment. So that’s what I’m trying, that’s what I want to talk to you about is making that leap, learning how to swim. And you’ll see a correlation that I draw with that and learn how to soil. I was a mechanical engineer graduated from the Ohio State University. You got it. You gotta say it, who’s, who in here, graduated from Ohio State and went to Ohio State. I heard a wage. Nobody. All right. Well, I spent 15 years of Westinghouse, been in my business now. panthro fitnesses, name my business for four years. Part of that time was overlapping with my time with Westinghouse. So I had a significant income, as Sean was saying, you know, I was making six figures. You know, so I was pretty comfortable. But there was something else I wasn’t fulfilled, it was just making money. You know, engineering was cool, but I wasn’t helping anyone. I wasn’t, I felt like I could be replaced at any moment, you know, was I didn’t feel special, I didn’t feel like I was making a difference. And you know, and that’s kind of what everybody here, you kind of gets into the fitness business to do is make a difference and help people. You know, so I found Npw, about three years ago, as needed to know some marketing tools, I was looking to take my vision to a next level, you know, but I also knew like, well, I can’t just do it off of a couple clients. Like I said, I have bills, I got it, I’ve got a significant income to replace. It’s something I always knew that I wanted to do. But again, I was comfortable. It’s hard to be hungry when your stomach is full. You know, so it was like, I’m this dude, right here, I’m sitting on the dock. kind of got my feet in the water. You know, but I’m watching my ship, which is my potential. My my dream does drift by. So it’s like, if I don’t make a decision here soon, I’m a firm believer that there’s seasons for things that you want to do. And if it doesn’t happen, then the lesson is never going to happen. But it’s going to be a lot tougher. You know, so I’m sitting there, and the opportunity is, is now you know, and I’m just I’m but I’m like I’m comfortable. Like, like, how do I just take that plunge? You know, it’s like, Yeah, I don’t want to get the impression that No, I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do with respect to my business. Because I was training, I was working hard. I was getting up at 430 in the morning, doing the split shifts and still going to work. Putting in eight hours a day, sometimes I would go at lunchtime, do a console or train someone go back to work. And then instead of going home, go back train more people, six o’clock, Friday, eight o’clock, maybe nine o’clock. Wiggins was doing marketing or whatever, I could slap together and call a marketing plan. You know, so I was hustling, you know, I was doing all the things. But after three years of that, you kind of get tired. So yeah, I’m kind of being comfortable here. And this is kind of like, well, what’s wrong, comfortable. comfortable, to me, is the worst place to be, if that’s not where you’re trying to be. So like, if I’m not trying to be comfortable right here, that I shouldn’t be comfortable. Because it’s not going to drive me to do anything else. It’s not going to drive me to get better. So that’s where I was as like, man. It was just a dilemma. I was just constantly stressing over that choice to leave with that push pull. I’m at a crossroads. Now. Like I said, I’m working crazy hours, you know, and I’m work my performance at work wasn’t great. But as some of you know, and corporate you know, at first it was I was doing a great job. And once you kind of get on the path and they kind of have a vision for you. Kind of no matter what your performance does that all sudden you kind of are this guy that they want to move in this direction. So they were kind of moving me in a certain direction.

Now, my business was struggling and I really didn’t have any control over it. I wasn’t being a leader. You know, it was kind of running me it was running itself. Luckily, I had a pretty good lead coach. That was that was doing a lot of things that were the right things that were kind of keeping clients around. But I wasn’t building I wasn’t really doing anything on my own. I wasn’t really applying any of the NP tools. You know, I was tired, wasn’t watching my numbers and when taking responsibility for my business. I was Blaming everything on my job, if I have this job, I’d be killing it. If I didn’t have this, I’d be doing this. Well, that’s just don’t be in business, then, you know, as basically what what that that came down to, is what you need to make a decision. Which pill you’re gonna choose the red pill, or the blue pill.

Unknown Speaker
And it was like, Alright, you choose the blue pill,

Reggie Dulaney
you wake up the next day, and you forget your dream, you say, I probably will not work anyway, is cool that I mean, I know what I know what I get with this job, you know, I can probably climb the corporate ladder, I’m doing pretty well, I’m doing this net. So you can kind of write that anything however you want in your imagination.

Unknown Speaker
But you take that red pill.

Reggie Dulaney
And now you get to make your future, you get to determine how exactly it’s gonna go.

Unknown Speaker
And I wish I could say I jumped all over that red pill, but I didn’t.

Unknown Speaker
I kind of tried to smash them together and try to have both.

Reggie Dulaney
And that’s where Morpheus came in. That was chameleon, she was one of the coaches, I don’t know, maybe a lot of you guys don’t know her. But I’ll tell her about this opportunity that I had one of the VPS the kind of approached me is like, Hey, we want to kind of groom you, and I want you to kind of get into more strategic thinking in the business, you know, something, and Okay, you know, after being in the company for 15 years, you know, that was my initial vision to kind of do that. I was like, Man, this kind of sounds interesting. So I’m talking to camillia about it. And she wasn’t really saying anything. And then she kind of just said, Reggie, Reggie, Reggie. Sooner or later, you’re gonna have to make a decision. You can’t keep doing both as real as real talk. So what happened? I kind of went, I was like, Alright, well, I’m not going to take that position, I’m going to do something else, I’m going to take like a little dead end position that I’m not really going to go anywhere, but it’ll allow me to still kind of keep both things. And because once you start moving up in a company, your time is not your time anymore as their time. Okay, so you’re not going to get to do anything extra, you might get called off on your vacation to come back in and work. So recognizing that it was like, Well, I don’t want to do that. So I called it operation lay low. You know, so I was like, Oh, just take this little job and be in the corner. But there’s no laying low and you say no to a VP. They you’re on the radar. There’s questions now like, Well, why wouldn’t he take this? They knew I had a business, you know, so it was like the Kool Aid and pursue that then. So I got pushed out. March 2 2012. So I thought, all right. Well, I wasn’t nervous. It was a, it was kind of a weird feeling. I never looked back. I mean, I remember driving out in a parking lot. I never even looked back at the building. But is because I had a false sense that I was ra that I that I knew how to run this business.

Unknown Speaker
The reality was, I can’t swim.

Reggie Dulaney
I was sitting on the dock, I was dipping my toes in the water. I’ve been doing that long enough that I convinced myself that I can do it. And I was about to drown. You know, I needed somebody to save me. I didn’t know the numbers. I was flailing around. I’m trying to replace six figures worth of income. So I’m grabbing it anything, I’m not paying attention to my business. I’m grabbing it, if you shove anything in my face, I was gonna try grab at it. Because I was I was drowned. I was looking for that I was looking for my dock, I was looking for that safety, I was looking for my security again. You know, instead of working on the things in my business, my core business that was going to make me successful. You know, I’m just looking for whatever. You know, when you’re struggling and you’re swinging, you don’t really see anything. So I had no vision. And no vision means no leadership. So my employees, they were acting the same way. They just confused as I was trying to follow me and I’m like, let’s go here. Now let’s go now let’s do this. So after a while, he just kind of stood still was like, I don’t know what this dude is doing. Let’s just kind of make it our own way. And as you do that long enough, and you struggle long enough, you get fatigued and you just start to sink.

Unknown Speaker
In that’s kind of where I was.

Reggie Dulaney
Man Allen, you know, we’ve been talking through this whole process. You know, I wasn’t giving him anything solid. He’s like, how’s everything going on? It’s going great. I’m telling him all these things I’m doing and I’m not going anywhere. And he was like, Okay, he’s like Well, I get the feeling that you’re not doing as good as you say you are. I want to see some numbers on our next call. Task like, okay, numbers shouldn’t be too hard to get right? Well, I was in denial I was in, I was in so deep that I really believed that I knew how to swim. But in reality, I had never even had my head underwater. I hadn’t implemented anything. You know, I’ve been in this is embarrassing. I’ve been in this game in this with MP for three years, and didn’t know how to execute. I learned all the tools, I had all the stuff, I was on all the webinars, but most of them when I wasn’t at work, you know, and but I wasn’t executing. So that’s why I couldn’t swim. So this is what the numbers do. And this is why the numbers are so important. First of all, they make you start from scratch. If you’re not there, I had to start all over, I had to get organized, I had to start tech, because there’s things that you have to do in order to even get those numbers. You know, he wanted me to put stuff in profit analyzer, I was like, All right, let me look at profit analyzer, I was like, I don’t even know how to get most of this stuff. I can’t even get my hands on it. So in order for me to even get my hands on the things that I needed, I had to go and start from scratch, I had to go back through all these courses. Because they’ve been so long since I’ve looked at them, and understand what the heck I was doing and then start to implement. Again, now I started to get some focus, now I got my numbers together, now I can see where the heck I’m going, what’s driving my business. So now I can give some leadership now I can give my guys some guidance. Now, this is what you need to be doing. on that, you know, now they have something that they can do and get make them leaders. You know, give them that vision, because I didn’t have it, what we’re able to do measure, track, adjust and improve. It’s just a process. And so do loop. That’s what you do with your clients. And that’s what I’ve been doing in my business. This is what I call my visual management board. This is in my office in office with all my, my employees, everybody, we every week, every day, we actually look at this. But every week, this gets updated. And we go over it. And it’s really for accountability. And it’s really to understand where we are, what we’re doing and where we are based on our target. Okay, and accountability wise, I have action items. So it’s not to beat people up in the meeting. Is you going to meet that date? If not, what can we do to help you get there? Alright, so everything is focused and we execute. That’s the biggest thing. You know, I would kind of throw things out there. But there would be no execution because they were following their leader and their leader wasn’t executing. You know, so now I’m accountable. I have everything up there is very transparent. Everybody sees what everybody’s doing. I’m not there yet. Right? It’s Alyssa process. But I’m getting there. I’m learning how to swim. Finally. So I’m not reaching out for things and looking for stability in things that may or may not get me there. My core business was designed to take me where I need to be. So that’s why I’m starting to implement these tools, implement all these things that you guys are getting in here. You know, there’s a lot of stuff. There. Now, you can’t do it all at one time. But piece by piece, get it done. I mean, this is so critical, especially if you’re working a job and you feel like you don’t have time. If you don’t find time, you will not be able to get out that job successfully and make a smooth transition.

Unknown Speaker
That’s all about helpful.

Unknown Speaker
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