Dog Days to Glory Days

Let me take you back to 2012. At this point, I’d had seven different dirty hoodies and four pairs of sweatpants in the back of my truck for over a year. The clothes are on top of the stacks of bumper plates that took up the places where a passenger would sit in the back seat. The bed of the truck at the time was full of an assortment of kettlebells (including the one in this photo) that clanked around and sometimes were buffered by a bundle of yoga mats with a bungee cord around it. My truck suspension bottomed out on bumps due to the weight. 

This was our gym. 

The hoodies and sweatpants were piled up because it’d be so cold on the Santa Monica bluffs where we’d meet for class early in the morning, but it’d get hot for the afternoon session and I’d have to strip layers. A specific place my truck would bottom out often were the speed bumps in the underground garage at the Whole Foods on Wilshire. Once inside Whole Foods, I’d usually get food from the hot bar and try to think of a blog like this one to write. When I’d go to pay, I’d shuffle through my credit and debit cards searching for a lucky one. Getting an overdraft fee was less embarrassing than getting declined. Some days were less embarrassing than others. 

One particular day I parked next to a Chevy Tahoe in that parking garage with all kinds of things written on the windows about fitness. The driver was a rep for a major bootcamp company out of Texas and they were coming to Los Angeles to expand. They had celebrity coaches, thousands of students, and money. 

The gentleman with the painted windows approached me in that parking garage and over the course of the next several months he courted me to lead a lucrative fitness opportunity with them. The declined credit cards would go away and my back seat wouldn’t be full of bumper plates with just one word: “Yes”. All it would cost is a slight ethical concession of a dream.

Almost a decade later, it’s easy to look back and say, “I’m glad I didn’t do that.” But, there were lots of reasons to consider it back then. I tell this story not because there’s some virtue in saying no to opportunity, but because behind every successful venture there are dog days and uncertainty that cannot possibly be understood in retrospect to the magnitude they were felt in real time. 

Over quarantine I thought I was going to lose this company and I’ll tell you that even if I had. I still would have declined the big money bootcamp to experience what DEUCE has become with you all. If you observe or enjoy an independent company in any industry, consider that there likely was a small group of individuals who made unfathomable sacrifice to bring that creation into being. 

Thank y’all for being along for the ride. 

NOTES:

Daily at Home GPP Coaching Video