In case you missed it, we just launched a $120,000 renovation at LEAD in less than 7hours. That's ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS (incase you couldn't imagine my voice emphasizing the amount of money we just spent on a completely new gym).
The journey has taken over four months to get from the first concept call with the former USC head strength coach (kinda cool) to the install day. And for the last few months I have measured out the potential equipment, redesigned the layout, panicked, and repeated that processes 20 times over.
This was a project that would turn LEAD into the single greatest private performance gym in Northern California comparable only to Power 5 Division 1 Universities and professional teams' weight rooms. (Obviously a bias perspective).
And just 4 days before we were set to do this whole "Extreme Home Makeover: Gym Edition" thing, I heard something that would bring everything back into perspective.
If you're a strength coach, you know who Bo Sandoval is.
Sorinex, the company who was about to deliver the $120,000 worth of equipment in a matter of days, posted a video online of Bo speaking at one of their annual events. It was a clip of the current Texas A&M and former UFC Performance Institute Strength Coach giving a speech where he urges that "The church is not the building, the church is the people." And there it was. The reminder I didn't know I needed.
I had spent months curating this mega-church of strength & performance just to be reminded in the 11th hour that it is nothing without the athletes that we serve.
In the speech I gave at the grand re-opening, I teased that, "it doesn't hurt when you have a church as nice as this," but in reality it has been the transformational relationships that have left imprints on the coaches and athletes alike that are the driving force behind what we do. In the same video, Bo talks about being able to draw someone in to be able to work with them long enough to have impactful relationship with them on a long term basis.
And with that, we arrive at a refined version of our "marketing plan."
The phrase "build it and they will come" doesn't apply too much but now we use this space to appeal to the type of person we originally set out to work with in our mission statement.
The type of person that just wants more.
The type of person that sees what LEAD is today, and envisions what they can be tomorrow.
They see that, they take the first step, and they start their journey with us setting off a chain reaction of better life habits that open up new doors in their future.
Maybe they go on to become Kinesiology majors like us and pay-it-forward with athletes down the line.
Maybe they don't.
But maybe, just maybe, with this new church, we can add a few more people to the LEAD congregation for life.
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