As we continue to come to the close of a work week and are now days late receiving a whack of membership monthly fees, I can't help but admit it's made me nervous, frustrated and wanting to frown my eyebrows with confusion.
Do members not want to continue, is that why they haven't paid their fee on time? Perhaps they think it'll buy them time but we all know, as stated in the consent form, it really won't because members have set fee dates -- either the 15th or 30th.
I had a member whom I thought was all about our Crossfit Circuit training classes, and was actually even pondering hiring later on in the year, totally go a-wall on us and join another gym. Word has it it's because his girlfriend now wants to train with him but we haven't yet finished our girls-only private shower room. Sure it's long overdue from being done but I was rather hurt and shocked to hear he so easily left us. Snickers and I do ALL the renovations ourselves and trust me, there's every day renovations, many of which I have to Google to find out how to do or simply do trial and error. My current renovation I've taken on: fixing the plumbing for our club wash machine.
It's rather nerve racking.
Members want this and members want that -- more taping on our monkey bars, a lat pull-down bar, different stretching mats, more protein shake mix flavors,... oh the list continues. I'd love to give them all that they want and all that we do really need but it'd be nice for members to pay their membership fees on time; that'd make a huge difference. It'd be different if we were a few months into business and late fees wouldn't be an issue in terms of paying the bills and covering our expenses but we're not. The gap between when we opened and now (fees now overdue and still being waited on) is quite large and honestly there is no cushion money to fall back on. Snickers and I put every last pocket full of cash we could possibly dig up into our boxing club. Our plane tickets to Canada... ya, they've been cashed in and put into our club too. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong, but it's so hard and it's so frustrating because I really do want to try to give my members all that they want but now we're playing the waiting game with many of them.
There's really no margin for error and I'm feeling the pinch, I really am. We never expected to find a building space this large -- it's almost three times the size we initially were aiming for and, in our case, bigger space meant way bigger bills but it was too good of a diamond in the rough to give up.
I ask Snickers if we're ok with money and he continually says "it's OK" but I've got a list of 30 members I'm now chasing and their overdue payment means all our business payments will be overdue too.
"Stay calm Amy", I remind myself but sometimes it's hard to. "What's the worst that can happen?!" is the question I ask myself all the time and strangely enough I find much comfort by it because what is really the worst that can happen? We lose the club, have years of debt to work ourselves out of and perhaps have to move back to Canada and live with my dad?! Now would that really be so bad? Sounds like a pretty good deal if you ask me, especially considering we already have a large debt to work out of as it is, what's a couple more figures to the already jaw-dropping figure?! Exactly.
We knew full well going into this business venture that there'd be a lot of risks and obstacles to take on and deal with but every so often there's a fear too. It comes over me usually when I'm trying to go to sleep. Snickers is out like a light as soon as his head hits the pillow, leaving me pondering over the day and allowing my thoughts to wonder. It's then that the fear enters in my mind and I have to calm myself down so not to go into any kind of mini panic attack. The fear is real and this risks are high, I know this, but I remind myself that I much rather drown myself in debt than not try to pursue my dream. If I wake up in the morning and my boxing club has mysteriously disappeared into thin air for some strange unexplainable reason, I can at least say I did succeed in making my dream. My dream was to make a boxing club, now continuing it, well there's the challenge... and you know I'm all about challenges!!!
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