There are mornings when I wake up from such little sleep that putting my contacts in sting my eyes like acid. I usually work in darkness because the light hurts. Today is one of those mornings. But the stress I feel is exciting. I love this work that we’re engaged in.
RxFIT was born out of my own failure; a failure that surprisingly still haunts me to this day. As most of you know, my dream was to play football at BYU… but that dream was never realized. I fell short when the tryout came. I was so ill-prepared for the tryout then that talking about the specifics of those drills still leaves me with disappointment today.
At that time in 2015, I was really lonely. I didn’t have family in Utah and my identity as an athlete was just taken from me. So I joined Provo CrossFit hoping to surround myself with people that cared about my training. I found worth in training hard–like really, really hard. So going to the 6:15 a.m. crossfit class as an athlete every morning began to fill the gaping void I had of not reporting to football practice. Mark and Jordan Rawlings became my teammates that held me accountable.
Fast forward a year later (and a whole lot of other stories I can share another time) and I had failed again–only this time it left me lonely and broke. Karli and I purchased Provo CrossFit with a few business partners and quickly burnt through $52,000. We couldn’t pay coaches or cleaners, so I slaved away in the gym. Those moments between classes when no one was around were lonely. Those feelings of disappointing myself came back; but only deeper.
One weekend Karli’s mom came to visit and saw us living off of $45/week in our grocery budget. She told me that she expected more from me–that her daughter deserved a better life. That sucked, we had been married for less than a year. The only way she could’ve found out was that Karli was complaining to her behind my back… That was when I realized that I now wasn’t only disappointing myself, but I was disappointing my wife and her parents.
I could’ve tried out again for the football team, but I allowed that failure to be final. I couldn’t let this be the case with my business. So I offered to buy out my partners. I only had one issue… I had no money.
It was December of 2016 when I fell back again on my Utah family: Mark and Jordan. Jordan didn’t have any money, but I knew Mark did–he was crushing his phone sales job. I also knew that he had a lot of equity in his home in Arizona. So I pitched Mark on becoming a partner and Jordan on being a coach.
They both said no.
So I spent that Christmas break calling them every day until they were interested… three weeks later in January, Mark funded the transaction and Jordan signed up for his L1. Most of you know the rest of the story.
I love this gym. It’s built on the foundation of failure and friendship. And as your leader, I’m going to continue to fail. But the vision of providing a supportive environment with trainers that lead you to your goals will go on as long as I’m apart of it.
I have a dream that an RxFIT gym will be in every city of Utah–that our professional trainers can take any young, ambitious teenager under their wing and show them the roadmap to playing college football. But I’m only a dreamer; my weakness is revealed in the details.
As we move toward this future, it’s important to set a vision that’s vivid. To make that vision tangible, I’m going to push for 10 RxFIT Gyms by October of 2023 (3 years from now). Here are the cities that we plan to operate in:*
- Springville
- Provo
- Orem
- American Fork
- Lehi
- South Jordan
- South Jordan/Sandy
- Murray
- Salt Lake City
- Farmington
*Spanish Fork, Vineyard, Lindon, and Pleasant Grove are potential cities depending on market trends.
I can promise you everything but a smooth ride. We’re going to try a lot of new ideas, the majority of which will fail. The future will look similar to the past… but there’s no quit in my blood on this dream; so eventually, we will succeed.
Tyler