Michael Budensiek: Starting a Gym Business and the Impact of Self-Care

Announcer: Coming to you from the Sunshine State, this is Create Brand NV, a podcast dedicated to entrepreneurs and business owners discussing business, marketing, leadership, and best practices in this ever-changing business landscape. Every week, we introduce you to a different business leader who has taken their company to new heights despite the odds. Learn, engage, and thrive. This is Create Brand NV. And now, your host, President and CEO of Brand NV, Nicole Alicea.

Nicole Alicea: Welcome back. It's been a month since my last episode. What happened? I was on vacation the week of the 4th of July. Then, one of my guests canceled on me because he was abroad and having real estate commitments that were forcing him to stay abroad. We feel so sorry for him. And we've been wrapping up and publishing a website for a client. We’ve just been busy bees over here at Brand NV.

Just a reminder, Brand NV helps clients with all their branding, marketing, online reputation, SEO, and advertising needs. If we can ever help you or a colleague with any of those needs, please reach out. My team and I are at your service. You can always fill out the contact form that’s on our website, www.createbrandnv.com, or you can call our main office line at 813-355-0036, and we would be happy to help you.

A couple of months ago, I received a text message from Dr. Carlos Garcia, a former guest on episode 21 titled "The Five Major Psychological Shifts for Business Success." He was asking for permission to introduce me to Michael, a friend of his who he thought would make a great guest on the show. So, I set up a call with Michael, and after about an hour-and-a-half conversation of me really exploring what it is that he could offer you, my dear listener, I am pleased to share today's episode with you featuring Michael Budensiek of The Fit Effect.

I'm going to share my personal takeaways from this episode in a minute, but first, I want to remind you to hop on over to Facebook and look for the Create Brand NV podcast group. That's Create Brand NV—the letter N as in Nancy, the letter V as in Victor. Please join the Facebook group. It helps us create a community around the common interest of being ever curious and ever fascinated by business. It also lets me have a two-way conversation with you, since unfortunately, this platform is a bit of a monologue when I'm expressing my thoughts and ideas.

I hate that I can't get direct feedback from you immediately as to what you’re thinking and feeling based off what you’re hearing, so it's a great way for you to be a fan of the show, hop on over, and stay have community with other people who have listened to the other episodes, share your thoughts and questions, and say “hey, did anyone else notice this? Or did anybody else wonder about this or that?” It’s a great way to stay in touch, create community, learn from each other and grow together. I'm also using that platform to share insider goodies that are exclusive to Create Brand NV podcast group members. So please check it out and join.

Alright, so my big takeaways from my conversation with Michael are that I need to take care of myself first. It sounds like a given, but in the show, he makes a compelling argument that convinced me that I need to put myself first and I need to take care of myself first if I want to have mastery over every other aspect of my life. I know that intellectually, but there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and really knowing it in a compelling way that makes you change your behavior towards that habit that you need to modify. The second big takeaway is that if I want to scale my company, I need to develop my people. Michael talks about how he did that beautifully with his locations. I don’t want to give anything away—you’re about to hear all the juicy stories.

Another lesson I learned is that if you’re going to fire someone, don’t blindside them. Put an improvement plan in place. Michael shares his own experiences with hiring and firing, and he did it beautifully. I was shocked. I was like, "Hey, I want you to fire me!" Have you ever been fired with pleasure? He’s mastered the art of doing that, and hopefully, you can learn how to do that as well in your organization if it applies to you.

The last huge takeaway, which I’ve already been applying, is that if you have an excuse or a barrier that you're telling yourself isn’t allowing you to do something you want to do, then test your hypothesis and see how it goes. For example, I’m telling myself that the time it takes for me to exercise regularly doesn’t leave me enough time to do everything I need to do both personally and professionally. According to Michael, test it. See if exercising with the frequency of exercising in the time I have allotted to do it and see if I do fall behind. According to Micheal, maybe the effects of exercising will give me more clarity to work more efficiently. So, don’t stop at your excuse, take that excuse and flip it on its head and test it to see if it’s true. Those were my big takeaways. I can’t wait to hear yours.

Next week, we have another great guest lined up. I won’t give a preview because sometimes guests cancel, so I don’t want to announce until it’s a sure thing, but we have a few exciting guests lined up. So, be sure to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you can be the first to know when we publish a new episode. And without further adew, on to today’s interview.

Nicole Alicea: Today’s guest is Michael Budensiek. He is the founder of U-Fit—not to be confused with the purple and green gyms by the name of YouFit. U-Fit, spelled with the letter "U," started in Greenwood, Indianapolis, and Michael grew it from one location to five, totaling revenues of one million when he sold them off. Today, Michael joins us to share his entrepreneurial journey of building five gym locations and the science, or rather the proof, for why prioritizing your health and taking good care of yourself is key to business success and effective leadership. Welcome, Michael. I’m so happy to have you here.

Michael Budensiek: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.

Nicole Alicea: So let’s talk about building five gyms. I have this idea that the gym business model is based on people not showing up. Can you break down why you started the business and how?

Michael Budensiek: Yeah, it’s fascinating. I didn’t realize it was a hard industry until a couple of years in, but I think that was because of my love for it. When I was in big-box fitness, which is where almost all trainers start, I worked for a huge company that had tons of locations. Their main priority was gym memberships, and a secondary focus was personal training. I was a personal trainer within the big-box gym. I always had this itch to do my own thing and was blessed to have the opportunity to get into management because of my performance. My management experience made me realize that I could run a gym on a smaller scale.

In 2011, I had to decide to go out on my own and jump ship or go to another company. Ultimately what got me started was that I knew that people needed and wanted a place where they could get services only. Most people aren’t going to go to the gym and continue going to the gym without some type of guidance, coaching, direction, accountability, or a friend to help keep them going. Unless they are just into fitness, but it wasn’t for most of my clients. I knew if I started something that was smaller and they had the option to just come and have somewhere there to meet them, that once I built the understanding and the knowing about what we do, that they would show up. And that’s ultimately what happened.

Nicole Alicea: The terrifying moment once you’ve had that thought that you just described is “How much do I charge? Are people willing to pay? And how am I going to get my clients?”

Michael Budensiek: So how much to charge was something I had a lot of experience in because I had worked in a facility and knew how much we were charging and how much clients were paying us. I also knew a lot about logistical matters like how to attract members, what they did to upsell, and what they looked for in potential clients. I had learned a lot of those little low-level basic concepts, so I was not afraid to take that step.

Within three months of opening the facility, which we didn’t up until 2013, so it took me a year and a half to find a location, and figure out what direction I was going to go in. In between that time, I was just hopping around from gym to gym, and I had the same 4-5 clients that would follow me to each of these locations. Then in 2013, I wondered what I had done – I told my business partner – we need to figure this out in the next 90 days or I’m done. The marketing was harder than I thought. The attraction piece of getting people to come to the facility was difficult. When I started telling people about the idea, everyone thought it was awesome. But then you do the idea, and it was crickets. I had to learn how to communicate my message and attract people to become what would eventually become five locations.

Nicole Alicea: What was your early-day marketing plan?

Michael Budensiek: The letter "U" stood for the individual, and it represented individualized personal training. You came to us with any health and fitness-related problem, and we would match you with a program that could benefit you—completely customizable personal training. One of the things that drove our early success was that we were the only place offering this in the area, unless people went to a big-box fitness center. I knew that if I provided a smaller, more personalized space, they would skip the big box and come to us.

Nicole Alicea: Not having any real competitors is definitely an edge.

Michael Budensiek: It’s not something I valued as much back then as I do now.

Nicole Alicea: You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the point of this show—so people can learn from others’ journeys. When I asked about how you handled marketing, you talked about the brand name and what it stood for. How did you get that message out to people at scale? How did you continuously bring in new clients?

Michael Budensiek: Networking was a big part of it—meeting people face-to-face. Personal training is such a relationship-based business; it has to start with the personal side. We did some low-level public speaking in the area. Facebook was also becoming a business tool, so we used it to put our message out there and host events. We did community events and had promotions, like bringing a family member or friend for free on Tuesdays to do a workout and introduce ourselves to them.

Nicole Alicea: You mentioned location. At first, you jumped around to different gyms, but then you started your own company in 2011. Did you start at a facility?

Michael Budensiek: I was at a big-box gym until 2011. That company was sold, and my non-compete agreement with them became null and void. I had the option to either stay with that company or take the opportunity to leap, so I leaped. From 2011 to 2013, I went from gym to gym—ones that allowed me to train in their facility without being an employee. I had my own small business, so I paid rent to these facilities that didn’t offer their own personal training. One place was a big sporting complex that happened to have a gym, so I asked if I could pay them to let me train my clients there. My clients from the big-box company followed me, and I was trying to build from there.

Nicole Alicea: How did you get your first facility?

Michael Budensiek: One of the places we were training at noticed us starting to grow and expand the number of clients we had, and they wanted to double our rent. I didn’t want to agree to that, so the next week, I called a realtor, and we found a location that we fell in love with. It was either jump or don’t. It was another crossroads because it was safe where I was, but staying there would be really expensive. We went from paying per client to suddenly having a monthly lease. It was a big learning experience because they wanted the first and last month’s rent, a security deposit, and that’s before we even furnished the gym.

I trained clients with bands and a couple of balls in an empty room for the first few weeks because our equipment order took three weeks to arrive. It was just an empty room, but our clients gave us a lot of grace during that time.

Nicole Alicea: So, these were clients who followed you from your gym? What were you charging them?

Michael Budensiek: I had about five to ten clients following me from gym to gym, paying around $50 to $55 an hour for two to three sessions a week. Our financial model was based on worst-case scenarios, ensuring we had a minimum monthly income.

Nicole Alicea: How much did each client represent as part of your business model? Can you break down the financial model from your early days?

Michael Budensiek: We always planned for the worst-case scenario. A client would come in at least once a week, so our minimum collected from each client was around $200. We needed a minimum number of clients to cover the facility’s rent and basic expenses, which ended up being at least 20-25 clients. Between me and my business partner, we were able to find 35-40 clients and started to scale from there.

Nicole Alicea: Is your business partner your current partner?

Michael Budensiek: No, he lives in Indiana. We still have a good relationship and talk often, but now it’s just me and my wife down here.

Nicole Alicea: In retrospect, can you visualize yourself doing it alone?

Michael Budensiek: Yes. The challenge is having different people with different beliefs, perspectives, and thoughts about what should or shouldn’t happen. Ultimately, if you split a business 50/50, you’re going to have crossroads every single week. That’s what I would tell people not to do. Somebody needs to be designated as the person who makes the final decisions. We debated how to spend money so many times, and it ended up being a waste of time. One person always ends up giving in and being disappointed, and it becomes a vicious cycle. Luckily, we had the same values, so we never allowed resentment to build, but it was still very challenging, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Nicole Alicea: Right. But with a partner, you can go faster. You can cover more ground.

Michael Budensiek: Yes. If I had to do it again, I would have made one of us the designated decision-maker.

Nicole Alicea: So, you have these locations, you have your clients. What was the next step? What was it like having your first employee?

Michael Budensiek: We already had one employee working with us when we started the lease. We hired someone as an employee instead of just 1099 contractors.

Nicole Alicea: What made you decide to hire him as an employee rather than a contractor?

Michael Budensiek: In personal training, there’s always a level of influence that you have on an employee versus a 1099 contractor. If they want to walk out the door tomorrow, they have the freedom to do that. As an employee, there’s more red tape, and we wanted someone who could get behind the vision and mission we had.

Nicole Alicea: How were you able to budget giving your employee a salary?

Michael Budensiek: My risk tolerance is way too high, so I used a credit card. I wasn’t willing to stay where the owner wanted to double our rent. I didn’t have a lot of cash, and we needed $18,000 just to get the equipment, so I applied for a credit card. They only gave me $3,000 of credit. I called them to request $20,000 because I had great credit and never missed a payment. They approved me, so my credit card essentially started the business.

We used the cash we had on hand and the revenue coming in to pay our employee, and we went without paying ourselves for the first few months.

Nicole Alicea: What was it like having your first employee?

Michael Budensiek: It was a learning curve. Our first employee lied about showing up for sessions, and we had to let him go. We didn’t always have eyes on him because we were out trying to drum up business. We would only see each other in passing, and we didn’t have a strong employee retention model or development practices—it was just about getting the job done. We had two clients tell us that this employee hadn’t shown up, and he insisted that he was there. The second time it happened, we parted ways. It was my first experience firing someone, and it was tough. We learned to put improvement plans in place and ensure mutual respect with our team members.

Nicole Alicea: A lot of people delay the process.

Michael Budensiek: For entrepreneurs, it’s hard to face the fact that we made a bad hiring decision, especially if it starts to impact the business.

Nicole Alicea: I remember my first ‘fire,’ and it was tough. It’s a big milestone.

Michael Budensiek: I’ve learned very quickly how to do it with more grace. The first one was interesting.

Nicole Alicea: It sounds like there’s an interesting story behind it.

Michael Budensiek: I’ve always been able to hold my tongue unless someone is lying to my face, and I know it. Both my partner and I were there. When I addressed our employee about lying, he tried to turn back with another lie. I was straightforward and told him that he was done. I said it so harshly that he ended up throwing his bag and flipping things over in the back. I realized I could have said it nicer and with more grace.

Nicole Alicea: How do you do that?

Michael Budensiek: I had to do it over the phone. This girl had worked for us for four years, and during the last year and a half of her employment, we gave her a lot of opportunities, but she continued dropping the ball. She knew when we sat down what the conversation was going to be, which is number one: Don’t blindside them. I learned to give people very clear improvement plans. She had been on this plan for about six months, so by the time we sat down with her, she knew what was coming. We explained that it wasn’t a personal attack and that we wanted her to succeed in life, but she wasn’t succeeding here, and we weren’t succeeding with her, so we needed to part ways.

Michael Budensiek: We expressed that we wanted her to do well and asked how we could help her find a place where she could succeed. If she needed something from me, like a letter of recommendation or a phone call, I was happy to help.

She followed up with me a year later and thanked me for everything. She told us she was doing a lot better and was in a good place financially. I realized that, in a way, we were holding her back by giving her so many opportunities to keep making mistakes.

We had gotten to a place with our team members where there was mutual respect. If someone wasn’t doing something that needed to be done but was honest with me, I didn’t mind if they made a mistake. The key was not to lie about it. We gave them many opportunities to correct their course, so by the time I gave a recommendation, I could still say positive things about them. They just didn’t fit in with our environment anymore.

Nicole Alicea: How did you start multiplying and opening more locations?

Nicole Alicea: It sounds like you've matured beautifully, hearing the way you handle things now. Let's continue your journey. You fired your first employee—what happened next?

Michael Budensiek: We decided that we needed to make sure we could definitely afford to hire someone before we brought on anyone else. So, we started using our clients as a referral base. We ran a referral program that became really popular, and we ended up doing it every year. Every time someone brought in a new client who signed up for 12 months, they got a free month. We even had a couple of people earn a free year with us over time. That’s how we started bringing people in because we couldn’t afford to pay for advertising. We could afford to give away our services, but not to pay for advertising.

Then we started hiring more people—second, third hires, or I guess it would have been the third and fourth, but two more team members. That’s when Facebook ads became a thing, and we started promoting through Facebook. From there, it just took off for a couple of years.

The traditional gym business model is based on hoping people don’t come, so the gym doesn’t get oversaturated.

Nicole Alicea: Your business model is 100% reliant on people showing up because it’s 100% personal training.

Michael Budensiek: Correct. Yes. It’s interesting that you brought that up earlier, and it kind of went past me. That’s one of the biggest things I don’t prefer about the industry as a whole. The industry is completely set up hoping that you pay and don’t use the service. The model we started and still operate with today is that if you pay and don’t show up, I’m calling you, texting you, emailing you—I’ll even knock on your door if I need to. There’s no option to just let it go. You paid me to show up and do a thing, and that’s what you’re going to get. It’s not like, “Let me just put this $30 to $50 a month on autopay and never go back.” Then $8,000 later, you realize, "I just want to cancel it."

Nicole Alicea: I have a tiny detail question, but I think it’s important because I recently went through this. If a client called you and said, “I woke up and I’m sick, I need to cancel today’s session,” would you just reschedule? Or would you say, “Alright, well, you forfeited your session because you didn’t give me 24-hour cancellation notice?”

Michael Budensiek: For me, everything is pattern-based. If it’s a one-off thing, we’re cool. If it’s the third time, they get charged. But I let them know. I don’t just put it in our written agreements; I also communicate it verbally. I let them know, “Hey, this seems to be an issue, and sorry, but X, Y, Z.” Our cancellation policy back then was 12 hours, so it wasn’t even a whole day. It was just, “Hey, just give us notice.” We rarely had issues with it, though there were a few times.

Another thing that helped fuel our success was our 90-day money-back guarantee, which we implemented after the six-month mark. The way it was written and agreed upon with the client was that if they showed up at least twice a week for three months and were unsatisfied with the service, results, or experience, I would cancel and give them their money back 100%. It only happened once in the entire history of doing it, and the client actually agreed to only get half of her money back because she knew she had dropped the ball on the other half. We asked them to show up, track their food, and bring up any issues with the trainer as soon as possible because we wanted the opportunity to fix things and make it right, whether that was with a few free weeks or whatever. We didn’t want them to go the full 90 days without saying anything and then blame us. That client admitted, “Yeah, I should have spoken up at week four, and I didn’t.” So, she was happy to get half of her money back, and that was the only issue I ever had with that policy.

Nicole Alicea: So, she wasn’t happy with her trainer?

Michael Budensiek: I think what happened was a clash of personalities. That’s a whole other thing in personal training. We actually started doing personality tests on all the trainers and then matched them with clients based on the results. Most of our trainers were 22 to 25 years old, while most of our clients were 45 to 65. If there was a hard line where they weren’t going to get along, I wanted to make sure we avoided those situations.

Nicole Alicea: I don’t want to get off-topic, but that peeves me a little, especially since I’m 41. My body isn’t what it was in my 20s. I just remember, in your 20s, nothing hurts. You look like you’re very fit, so I’m sure you’re in great shape. But I’m coming off of motherhood. I used to be very thin and pretty athletic-looking. Motherhood, lots of chicken nuggets, cookies, pizza, birthday parties—it’s changed. I’m not as fit as I was before. I’ve been with a personal trainer who’s in his 20s, and it’s irritating because I know he has no idea what it’s like. It’s a little annoying when they’re on this high horse, and I’m like, “You just wait.”

Michael Budensiek: This is why it's so important for trainers, specifically, to have mentors or coaches of their own. By the time I hired these young trainers, I had spent so much time in the industry that I knew we didn’t fully understand what some of our older clients were really feeling. My ability to communicate that to the trainers and coach them on it helped keep us out of trouble. Especially in your case, you mentioned having a male trainer. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s even more challenging when the trainer is young and doesn’t understand where you’re at in life because there’s no correlation with how you feel.

Nicole Alicea: All right, so you're 38. Have you felt a difference in your body? I’m imagining you’ve trained your entire life. What does that feel like for you?

Michael Budensiek: It’s interesting because I actually feel better now than I did several years ago, but that’s because I changed the way I train. Instead of training so heavy and so much, I started incorporating things like mobility work and stretching—not specifically yoga, but exercises that move the body differently. Yes, sometimes it takes a little more for my body to get going, but overall, I feel better now than when I was 28.

Nicole Alicea: I've seen other women in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s who work out and say they feel better than they did in their 20s. That makes me think maybe the future isn’t bleak.

How did you start multiplying and opening up your second, third, fourth, and fifth locations?

Michael Budensiek: By developing people. We started self-development groups within our team, using different books and study notes to help them grow. By building up individuals within the organization, we were able to expand. We did book studies, created study notes, and gave them recommendations on things to do. We made 6 and 8-week outlines to guide them through the books, with weekly conversations about what they had read. It was through developing people and finding those who were excited about the mission, which boiled down to service to others, that we were able to expand. We would talk about this all the time—did you serve someone today, whether here or outside of here? We discussed it in our team meetings every week.

By building up individuals within the organization, we were able to expand. We opened a second location and assigned a manager to the first one. Someone from the outside who really wanted to open a facility in Tennessee approached us, so we did one in Murfreesboro, TN. Then, a team member who wanted to do their own thing but wanted to do it in Plainfield, on the other side of town, asked us for help, so we did that for him. Finally, we had a client who really liked what we were doing and asked where they could open a location. That’s how we ended up with five facilities. We had team members who wanted to do their own thing, so we supported them in opening new locations.

Nicole Alicea: These were all employees. You scaled by developing your employees, for free, while they were on the clock, gave them books to read—it was voluntary for whoever wanted to learn. What stopped them from completing the training and going off on their own? How did you ensure employees stayed with you and didn’t leave to start their own thing?

Michael Budensiek: We did have a non-compete, but I believe what kept them was that we served them first. They wanted to serve us in return. We also offered office hours, paying them for time spent writing workouts, doing nutrition plans, and engaging in self-development. We showed up every week, holding them accountable and providing emotional support. Ultimately, when we decided to sell, a couple of people did jump ship because they got nervous about the whole thing. That was real late in the game.

It’s interesting that you ask this because I don’t view being an employer as a position higher than the employee. Yes, I have more responsibility, but because of that, I take the responsibility to teach them how they could take on this responsibility if they chose to. It’s fascinating to see how many companies don’t do this. I was looking into this last year—92% of workers in 2023 wanted some type of team development, leadership development, or self-improvement included in their job, but only about 12% of companies actually provide it. The fact that I naturally thought it was a good idea was odd to me because I just assumed that’s how everybody operated. When I realized we were the odd ducks out, people would ask me how we built our locations, and I’d say, “Oh, we ran Facebook ads and did networking.” But that wasn’t it at all. We poured into our team, and they wanted to stay. Because they wanted to stay, they wanted more clients, and because we could take on more clients, it became easy for us to scale those ads and other efforts.

Nicole Alicea: So what kind of support or resources did you offer them that motivated them to stay? Maybe give me an example.

For example, Fingers and I used to work at a radio station a long time ago. I’ll just be broad—I don’t want to get in trouble. Because this is for you, the employer. They refused to do it. I was telling him, “Yeah, that’s why I left.” I was a 100% commission salesperson using my own vehicle, my own phone, with no gas reimbursement, no expense account, nothing. I was busting my butt bringing clients in, getting commission, and then having accounts taken away. The bigger a giant gets, the blinder it becomes to the little person.

Michael Budensiek: In personal training, you have to understand that the pay, especially then, was trash. They couldn’t go anywhere and make more than $11 to $12 an hour.

Nicole Alicea: Is that what they made?

Michael Budensiek: We were paying them $18 to $22. So, we were already paying them more. We also allowed them office hours. In personal training, you’re either getting paid to work with a client or not getting paid to write their workouts, do their nutrition plans, or handle all the other things. That’s how it works. We gave them office hours. We said, “Hey, for a lower rate, you can have five hours a week to do all these other things—whether that’s self-development, writing workouts, helping with nutrition, or whatever.” We allocated financial resources for them to do these things every week.

But I don’t think that’s what motivated them. What got them to stay was us showing up every week, doing it with them. Yes, there’s that financial safety net, and there’s also the emotional aspect of being promoted or in charge. That’s certainly valid. However, if you’re not providing your people with anything meaningful, there’s nothing stopping them from going off on their own.

Nicole Alicea: Is there anything else about your entrepreneurial journey that you wanted to share before we transition into the personal care aspect, which is what you're doing today?

Michael Budensiek: I don’t think so. There are so many little things, right? For entrepreneurs in general, and this comes from my experiences today, when I look back and reflect, one of the biggest things I talk about when I speak is that the individual, the entrepreneur themselves, is literally the missing piece to the puzzle of their life. The reason I say that is because they often forget that in all the things they do in their business, they have to become better at whatever they’re struggling with. They have to become better leaders, better at communicating expectations, better at defining what success looks like, and healthier, or else they’re going to suffer.

There was a time when we were opening our third location—it was probably the unhealthiest time of my life since I was 16 years old. I was around 26 at the time. We were opening this location, and for three months straight, I was working out here and there, but it wasn’t like my normal routine. It was more like, "Wake up, run here, take care of this, go over there, help with construction, do that." Ultimately, in that three-month period, I lost about 12 pounds. I have a picture from the grand opening, and I looked sick—I looked ill.

Nicole Alicea: And I’m sure it was 12 pounds of muscle, not fat.

Michael Budensiek: Yeah, whatever it was, it didn’t look great when it came off. I remember telling my wife, my business partner, and our team, “Don’t ever do this to yourself. It’s not worth it.” At the end of the day, I felt like garbage. We accomplished something—we opened another location—but I felt like trash. For me, the message is to make sure you prioritize what is important and what is needed for you to be your best.

Nicole Alicea: Problems compound, right? The more responsibility you have, the more problems are going to occur. If you don’t take care of yourself first and center yourself, taking care of everything else becomes a rat race.

Michael Budensiek: Exactly.

Nicole Alicea: I think I’m channeling Dr. Carlos Garcia again. Dr. Carlos Garcia was the one who introduced us, by the way, which is why his spirit keeps coming in. I’ve had my company for 14 years, and sometimes I beat myself up thinking, “Why isn’t my company bigger? Why don’t we have more revenue? More team members? Am I a failure?” I think I should have done more with it by now. We’re not just getting by; we’re doing great, but we’re not doing what I know we could do.

I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and one of the most recent ones was about the psychology of money. The author points out that the problem with money is that you can never make enough. You chase and chase, and once you hit that next milestone, there’s always another one. But then I realize I have total freedom. I work from home, I’m able to be present for my daughter, and I’m not ashamed to admit I breastfed her for three years. If she had a bottle, it was a novelty. She was always with me. When I tell pediatricians, they say, “Oh my God, that’s the best thing.” Other people say, “Wow, congratulations, that’s so hard to do.” But it was actually the easiest thing to do.

If I ask myself, “Am I successful?” Yes, I am. I can buy whatever I want, I’m not in incredible debt, and I’m present for my family. So, how much more money do I need? Sometimes we strive to open one location, then two. But it’s important to pump the brakes, reflect, and realize you might already be as rich as anyone could hope to be.

So, fast forward, you sold your gyms, and you sold them at the perfect time.

Michael Budensiek: Not on purpose, I promise you that.

Nicole Alicea: I was reviewing the notes and thought, “Man, that timing was impeccable.” Tell me about that sale and your move to Tampa.

Michael Budensiek: We moved in 2018. We didn’t finish the sale until January 2020—again, not on purpose. Just for context, this was three months before the pandemic shutdown. I think it was literally six weeks later when they started talking about shutdowns in Florida.

The process of selling a business is much bigger and longer than I ever thought it would be. If you’re going to sell your business, plan for at least six to 12 months. They’re going to want to know everything, including what kind of deodorant you use. It’s pretty intense. It was a good learning experience, knowing what we had to prove versus what we thought we knew. A lot of entrepreneurs collect cash, and if you collect too much and can’t show it on paper, the business isn’t worth as much as you think because, to a bank, the business is only worth what it can show on paper.

Ultimately, we downsized and got rid of one location because it was smaller anyway. It was close enough that we got some of the clients to move to another facility about four miles away. We closed that one before the sale because the new owner didn’t want to deal with that much responsibility, which I fully respect. In hindsight, with COVID, they would have been really screwed, and I would have felt bad.

We started the sale in mid-2019, and it didn’t get done until early 2020. It just takes a long time.

Nicole Alicea: What attracted you to Tampa?

Michael Budensiek: Honestly, it was the weather. We looked at a lot of different places in Florida. Tampa specifically was because our last two choices were Naples or Tampa. We love Naples—it’s beautiful and awesome—but it was a little older demographic than we wanted. We still wanted to pursue business opportunities and new things, so we chose Tampa for the demographics. So I move here and ask: what am I going to do with my life? I sold. Now I have a company called the Fit Effect.

Nicole Alicea: And you specialize now in training business owners?

Michael Budensiek: Yes, part of my clients are in person, and part of them are virtual. Almost all of them are entrepreneurs or business professionals, and sometimes their family members work with us as well. The tagline I like to use is "the missing piece to their prosperity is their health." Some of them are already financially stable, while others are on their way up. But either way, they’re working on themselves now, which is expanding not just their business but also the rest of their life—whether that’s with their kids, their significant other, or just generally feeling better, getting off medications, or completely changing their lifestyle. They’re no longer dependent on things like CPAP machines or whatever else they were using just to stay alive. There are so many barriers that get in the way of someone prioritizing their health.

Nicole Alicea: For me, it’s time. When you were describing that time in your life when you were running to construction sites and eating garbage, I thought, "That’s how every day feels to a lot of people." When am I supposed to find time to work out? It’s not just working out—you have to go home, take a shower, and then you’re hungry. There’s a lot to deal with. Even after I take a cold shower, my body stays hot for a long time, and I feel like my brain doesn’t work as sharply for a bit. After a good, intense workout, I don’t feel as detailed mentally.

Michael Budensiek: Everybody’s body responds differently to exercise. One of the things I tell people is that you’ve got to figure out when your body wants to move and then create as much movement as possible during that time, whether it’s exercise, walking, cardio, yoga, or whatever. But time is the easiest excuse we use as a barrier.

Nicole Alicea: As an individual, it was easy for me to say, "I’ve got all these things going on. I can’t work out." It’s not that I couldn’t work out—I was struggling to focus on working out. I think it was partially because I got out of routine. Instead of demanding, “This hour is my hour,” I would just give it away to anyone who wanted it. Instead of saying, “I’ll call them back,” I’d answer the phone. Instead of making a protein shake before I left the house, I’d just leave. And that leaves you ravenous, starving, and whatever else. Ultimately, time is a barrier.

Michael Budensiek: My question is, what can you get rid of to get a little time back for yourself? You can’t run on nothing—the car is going to be empty eventually, and once it’s completely out of gas, it’s not going to start again.

Nicole Alicea: That’s the thought process. Exercise is one of those ironic things where you start, and you feel super weak, awful, and it’s hard. It’s terrible, and you don’t want to do it. But the more you do it, you know it gets better. I think you mentioned earlier that your clients are starting to look inward. I feel like I’m there. I finally signed up for personal training because I’m going to admit that I’m just not happy. I don’t hate my body—don’t come at me with “love yourself.” But I’m not happy with how I look and how I feel. I’m getting aches and pains that I’m starting to correlate with what I’m eating.

Also, I can’t deny that I’m sitting in front of my computer, hunched over with my hand on my mouse or typing all day long. That’s creating the body you see—my little mommy pooch has gotten worse because I’m sitting all day. I’m literally not using my abs at all. My hamstrings are tight. You could probably write down everything that’s wrong with me based on that lifestyle. I’m training once a week. My trainer has offered group classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but I think, “If I miss that much work, I’ll fall so far behind.” That’s my daily struggle with making time for working out.

I love how you’ve structured your business plan with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Are you still doing that? It sounds like a great best practice.

Michael Budensiek: The people we’re working with now don’t really expect that. They understand business. If there’s a value problem, they’ll talk to me, and we’ll figure it out. Before, it was people who didn’t understand the ins and outs of trying to grow or start a business. We were basically incentivizing them not to give up on themselves so we could get a chance to show them what was possible. Now, the clients’ mindsets are different—it’s a different clientele. I generally come back to people and say, “Test yourself and see if you don’t become more productive in a shorter amount of time once you feel better,” because that’s what almost always happens. It’s not always, but generally, almost always. I wanted to show that I have proof that working out improves every aspect of your life.

Nicole Alicea: What is that proof?

Michael Budensiek: I could give you a thousand stories of clients, but ultimately, our facilities spoke for themselves. Once we started assigning managers or lead trainers—people to run the facility—the numbers told the story. It may sound odd, but trainers don’t always take care of themselves as they should. If I did for myself what I do for my clients, my business would be thriving even more.

A trainer’s schedule is typically brutal—starting at 5 or 6 AM until 10 or 11 AM, then a break, and back in the afternoon, maybe from 3 to 5 PM, 3 to 7 PM, or even 5 to 9 PM. If they’re there until 9 PM and back at 6 AM, it can be exhausting. What we found was that the trainers or managers who took care of themselves—those who had a self-care routine that included exercise, decent nutrition, and self-improvement—tended to lead more successful teams. Their facilities had better financial returns, more leads, more clients, and more opportunities.

On the other hand, if we had a manager who didn’t take care of themselves, it trickled down to the team. We had one instance where we replaced a manager who was health-conscious with someone who wasn’t, and the performance dropped. The lead count went down because they stopped asking for referrals—they were tired, not thinking well, staying up late, skipping workouts, and eating junk. It’s a cycle. If I showed you the P&Ls, you could probably tell which trainers took care of themselves and which didn’t.

One of our biggest client success stories was a mom of two who came to us wanting to lose 50 pounds and feel better about herself. She was a teacher at the time. She started exercising, hit the usual wall, but stuck with us. With a lot of coaching and nutrition advice, she not only achieved her goals but also gained confidence. She wanted to have her own independent income and opportunities, and she eventually left teaching, started her own facility, and then moved on to run a store for someone else. She significantly increased their sales. There are countless stories like that, but the point is that until we prove to ourselves that we’re capable, we don’t believe we can do anything. That’s a trap many people fall into.

Now, entrepreneurs might not struggle with that as much, but they often think that if they don’t spend every single minute on their business, it will fail. Maybe, but probably not.

Nicole Alicea: I’m going to augment what you’re saying. That hypothesis—test the theory. A valuable takeaway is if you’re giving yourself an excuse, whatever that excuse is, flip it and prove it to yourself. Actually do it, and see if things decline. See if it’s real, or if, according to your theory, things will actually improve. Maybe I’ll be more productive, even if I’m not working as many hours. As a self-employed person, I’ve struggled with that a lot—this idea of a 40-hour workweek. Do we really need 40 hours to be effective in our jobs? That’s a whole different conversation, and it’s applicable to different types of jobs. Some roles require physical presence, but for others, it’s questionable. Do you really need to work 40 hours?

Michael Budensiek: That’s valuable. Especially now, we’re inundated with so much information. It’s like information is a drug in and of itself. People think, "If I just know the next thing, then I’ll be ready." The truth is, you’re never ready. If you want to know if something’s real, try it. I’ll tell you something and want you to prove me wrong. If you prove me wrong, I’ll stand corrected. I don’t care about being wrong—I care about helping people move forward. And the only way people actually move forward is by testing things they’re told are real or not real, instead of just accepting them. Especially self-talk—if someone constantly talks negatively to themselves, flip it. See what happens. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll say some nice things to yourself, and it won’t work? Just try it and see.

Nicole Alicea: There's this cultural thing in the United States. I'm from Puerto Rico, so I've had to adapt and integrate into American culture. Early on, I was caught off guard by sarcasm and people putting each other down.

Michael Budensiek: Sarcasm doesn't bother me, but I know people who I can't be sarcastic with because it does bother them. So, if I expect something of someone else, I have to set my own boundary. If I'm not willing to set that boundary, then the only other option is to deal with it. But I don't think that's always healthy.

Nicole Alicea: So, today, with The Fit Effect, what does your business model look like? What are you working on?

Michael Budensiek: It took us a while to get here. It's 2024, and we signed our first lease in 2019, so it's been about four years. We didn’t open until 2020, so it’s been four years. The facility is in Lutz, and essentially, what we’re building there is a community of entrepreneurs, business professionals, and their families who are looking for a high level of service—not just in physical health. I believe physical, mental, spiritual, and financial health are all important. If someone can truly master these areas, they can positively affect their life.

We’re building a community focused on entrepreneurs and business owners who want to improve their lives, not just financially. They want their business to grow, but they also want other aspects of their lives to improve. We’ve started a monthly client-only mastermind, so when clients join The Fit Effect, they get fitness coaching, a community of like-minded people, monthly masterminds, a client-only meal service where we cook and deliver meals to keep them on track with nutrition, and bodywork as well. It’s essentially a one-stop shop for someone looking to completely transform their life. For facility clients, they can show up anytime within the time window we allot, say from 6 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., and their workout will start. They’re not stuck if they get delayed. That flexibility helps avoid the issues of no-shows or cancellations.

Nicole Alicea: How do you manage that?

Michael Budensiek: They get one-on-one programming, but there are multiple people in the room at the same time. We usually don't allow more than four or five to overlap, but they only overlap for 15-20 minutes. It works out well because while one person is resting, we’re helping another get started, and they start interacting with each other. On the online side, we have a few small groups for group coaching to help with the financial commitment, but most of our coaching is still one-on-one. That’s more rigid in scheduling—if you pick a time, you have to stick to it because we can't be with people physically and virtually at the same time.

Nicole Alicea: Do I go to TheFitEffect.com?

Michael Budensiek: Yes, TheFitEffect.com. But we don’t list any pricing online because we’re looking for a specific type of client. If someone sees a $15,000-a-year package online without understanding the value, they might think it's overpriced. We vet our clients first, have a conversation with them, and usually do an in-person or online consultation. If we feel like we’re a good fit, we then offer them different package options.

Nicole Alicea: And are you qualifying them to make sure they’re a good fit for you? What do you ask them?

Michael Budensiek: I’m interested in what’s important to them—what’s their vision for their life? What don’t they like in other services? I want to understand who I’m working with. For example, if they’re really picky or had a bad experience with a previous trainer, I want to know about it.

Nicole Alicea: How do you tell a client that they’re not a good fit?

Michael Budensiek: First, I make sure they’re certain about what they want. If they’re unsure, I use that as my out, telling them to come back when they feel ready. If I feel like it’s not a good fit, I’ll be straight up and say, “I don’t know if we can meet your needs, but I’d be happy to try or refer you to someone else.” I have people in mind who might be a better fit, especially if they’re looking for something we don’t offer. I’ve referred clients to other gyms if I didn’t think we could meet their needs, and usually, they don’t end up signing up because they’re not really ready to make that decision.

Nicole Alicea: Are you planning on opening more locations?

Michael Budensiek: That's a great question. A client asked me that the other day, and I said I wasn't sure. If I feel led to it, maybe, but right now, the answer is no. I'm more interested in the depth of a single person or a small group of people than in the surface level of 450. You can't scale to that level without more problems and headaches. You have to ask yourself if that's really the vision you want for your life. Right now, I'm in a pretty good spot, and it feels like I'm advocating taking a chill pill.

Nicole Alicea: I remember talking to Dr. Carlos Garcia, and he was championing exactly that—don’t stress yourself out. I had a challenge with him on that because I was saying, "But how else do you grow if you're not stepping outside of your comfort zone and doing things that are uncomfortable?" He had a perspective on that, and a few months down the road, I understand the importance of valuing your spiritual, emotional, and mental well-being. You may already be living your best life right now while dreaming of something more that could actually ruin your life and stress you out to the max.

Michael Budensiek: The things that excite me now are speaking and high-level coaching. For example, I had a local client last year, which was really cool because I got to see how his business was running. We ultimately added $50,000 a month to his bottom-line revenue, and he was able to list the business for sale. Before, he was losing money and was afraid that if he sold it, he would lose everything. After we did that, I realized this is what interests me now, rather than having 10 locations and all that stuff.

Nicole Alicea: So now you're guiding them to get back in touch with their well-being in every aspect of their life that’s meaningful—like a business coach?

Michael Budensiek: Yeah, essentially. We’d meet once a week for about an hour, an hour and a half, and we broke down all the problems that were keeping him from growing the business. Almost all of it comes down to some sort of health—whether it’s poor leadership, poor communication, or poor expectations. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t define success for their team, so the team doesn’t know what success looks like. All they know is that they keep doing bad because they don't have a clear target or goal.

Nicole Alicea: That’s always an interesting conversation. Without a doubt, you’re remarkable in terms of what you’ve accomplished business-wise. What I find remarkable is how you've done your own personal development and leadership training. There was something interesting you shared with me that I initially dismissed, but I do think it’s meaningful. You didn’t finish high school.

Michael Budensiek: I didn't. I started working full-time when I was like 13 or 14. I was pretty much over school by the time I was 16. I was homeschooled when I was 12, and that started the whole thing. My parents pulled me out of a private school that was basically like a child prison, which I didn’t realize until I married my wife and she told me what actual grade school looked like. My parents decided to homeschool me, which was early in the homeschooling days. I wasn’t a great student - I wanted to move, do things, use my hands - so they let me start working really young. Today, they would have medicated me.

My parents were like, "Dude, you have until you're 36 to come back to this. If you're not sure, just go do stuff, try stuff." I was blessed to have people in my life who kept pushing me to try new things when I wasn't sure. For example, when I was offered a full-time position at the fire department at 19, I thought, "There’s this fitness thing, and I think I want to try it." Most captains would have said, "You're an idiot if you turn this down." But he said, "If you're not sure, just go. We'll take you back." I never went back because I fell in love with health and fitness. I did get a GED because it was required for EMT firefighting, but I never finished high school.

Nicole Alicea: How did you train yourself and teach yourself? What was the driving force for you?

Michael Budensiek: Six months into my career at the big box gym, my district manager told me, "We love your style, the way you communicate with clients, and how you help them, but you’re a horrible salesman. If you don't get your sales up, we’re going to have to fire you." I thought about it for 24 hours and considered going back to construction, but I didn’t want to spend my whole life building houses. So, I got online and started learning how to attract clients and start a boot camp program in a big box gym. I self-taught, and a year and a half later, they gave me a management position because they were amazed at how far I’d come. When I left, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I hired a coach, and I've had a coach off and on ever since.

Nicole Alicea: We hear that all the time, don't we? Mentors or coaches.

Michael Budensiek: Yeah, I think it’s super important. Honestly, I think it’s the most important thing. I really do.

Nicole Alicea: Did you pay this person?

Michael Budensiek: Yeah, it was a paid. It was a paid program at the time. Yes, it was. And I honestly think that it was better because I had inadvertently had mentors over the years. I didn't think of it as that when I was that young. But when looking back,

I know that those people affected the decisions that I made and ultimately it helped me and guided me. But I don't think that in my business, if I wouldn't have been paying them, I probably would have been as in tune to what they were tried some of the things that they that they offered to try.

So, yeah, I think hiring a coach for any new business owner is essential.

Nicole Alicea: Is there anything else that you wanted to share with the listener?

Michael Budensiek: The one question that people always ask me is, because when they look at my social media or whatever, and it says “physical, mental, financial” and then “spiritual” is like just like tossed in there - it's so interesting to me that people think that there is some way, shape, or form they can escape their spiritual reality that exists. If you deny it that's fine but you're not helping yourself by denying it. And so I always challenge people and clients, like, you know, investigate what's there for you. See what you feel. See what you hear. See what that might lead you to. But ultimately, I think for me, over the last several years, it has become more and more clear that if you align yourself spiritually, all these other things will take care of themselves. Now, I don't mean that you're not going to have any work whatsoever. What I mean is that the opportunities and the people that you need to come across and you need to meet, those paths will naturally cross instead of you having to feel like you're fighting your way. I know a lot of entrepreneurs feel like they're just fighting every single day to just like get to the next day. And I tell them to step back, listen to the silence, and then try to move forward from there. So probably a whole other conversation, but it is an area that I absolutely recommend that my clients investigate.

Nicole Alicea: I appreciate you adding that. Spirituality is just such a giant blanket that includes so many specificities underneath, you know? You're not wrong about that. But I'm glad that you added that in because I do agree that spirituality is really good for your mental health as well and in helping you reconcile certain things that - and I'm being figurative here - some math doesn't add up.

Sometimes, spirituality is where you need to make that "journal entry" in the figurative accounting of life.

Thank you so much, Michael. It's been such a pleasure to have you on. I learned so much.

Michael Budensiek: Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity.

Nicole Alicea: Make sure you hit subscribe so you can be notified of new episodes where we discuss business, marketing, and peak under the hood of successful companies to understand the leadership behind the organization and best practices for today's challenges.

I'm your host, Nicole Alicea, founder and president of Brand NV, an integrated global marketing communications firm based in sunny Tampa Bay.

Learn more at CreateBrandNV .com.

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