The Perfect Storm: Running a Gym When Everything Goes Sideways with Andrea Lawson

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the Business for Unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym.

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Go do it right now. Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business for Unicorns podcast. Today, I have a longtime Unicorn Society member on the podcast, the founder of Balance in Motion in British Columbia, Canada, just a badass entrepreneur and gym owner that you’re gonna learn a lot from here today.

It’s Andrea Lawson. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, Michael. I’m so glad you’re here. What a treat. We’ve worked together for a while now, and I think this is your first time on the pod. Is that right? It is my first time on a podcast, on your podcast. Oh my gosh. What a treat. You’re welcome. I’m so glad to have you here.

Thank you. And, and for those of you watching on video, which very few of our listeners watch on video, but if you’re watching on video, Andrea’s coming to us live outdoors [00:02:00] in the beautiful British Columbia, Canada. I’m so jealous you get to be outside, ’cause I’m in New York where it’s raining today, and so I’m gonna be jealous throughout this whole podcast.

But let’s dive in. Tell everyone a little bit about how did Balance & Motion get started, and just talk a little bit about your journey since then. Yeah. Balance & Motion, I opened my first location… I guess Balance & Motion started before I had any location. I, I used to sublease originally from a couple girls that own…

or they rented a space, and I started working with clients out of there, and quickly had to f- hire my first coach for some help with some extra people that I didn’t have time for at that time. And then the logistics of the sublease, the space the people I was subleasing from didn’t work out super great, and the coaches that I, that worked for me at the time, one of them still works for me actually.

And- Okay … they heavily encouraged me to get my own place. And I ended up finding a lease around the corner, and I moved in there 2013. [00:03:00] I bought everything off of Craigslist, like everything. Did all the painting. My partner at the time helped me with setting up the space, and then that was kinda h- the start of the studio and the training facility.

And then- Yeah … I ended up opening my second location in 2019, and that’s a whole ‘nother story in itself. But- Yeah But yeah. I’m sure we’ll touch on it a little bit. But thank goodness for Craigslist back in the day. I know, yeah. Because now I think the- It wasn’t Instagram … the equivalent is probably Facebook Marketplace now maybe, right?

Yeah. Where people find everything. I, we- I’ve shared maybe on the podcast before when we first opened Mark Fisher Fitness, all of the furniture was my apartment furniture. Yeah. ‘Cause I moved to New York into a furnished rented apartment, so all of my furniture was like our lobby furniture in the gym. And and I never got it back, frankly.

It just it stayed there for a long time. But good for you. I love the fact that you had started by renting space and working outside of your own facility. That’s a very common story we hear from folks in Unicorn Society and guests on the podcast. Now you’re open two locations. And [00:04:00] what I, the thing I wanna talk about today, the kinda theme of our conversation, is the fact that I’ve seen you be one of the most kind of resilient gym owners- I’ve ever worked with.

And I say that with, as the greatest compliment one could give, because anyone who’s run any small business, let alone a gym for a while, knows that there are lots of ups and downs. And I’ve seen you be persistent and, and when things go down, you stay the course and double down and put in the work, and you’re just so resilient.

So that’s really what I want to pull apart and share with our audience here today, is how you do that, because you’re now at the place where your monthly reoccurring revenue has consistently been increasing. Your sales are up about, I think, 15% from in the last year. Your profits have doubled, I think, in the last year.

And at the same time, you’re forecasting that in the near future, you’re about to have one of your best months ever, and you’re predicting you’re also gonna maybe have one of your worst months ever, right? So that’s just a quick snapshot of the fact that even when you’re doing great work, [00:05:00] our progress as a gym is not always a straight line up to the right.

And so let’s just talk a little bit about going back a year ago, what kind of place were you in? What were the big challenges you were facing back then? Yeah. So I guess the challenges had started Before last year, I- Sure … I’d had a team that maybe ha- had been around for a while. I know you’ve talked about that on the podcast before, and the…

It’s easy to not keep things as, as high of a status as you want or, or you focus on some other projects while you have your team take over. And so I think there was some things happening on that side. And then I wasn’t doing any marketing up until 2024. I’d all done everything by word of mouth, which, which to be honest, worked when I had one location.

But it didn’t- Sure … work when I had two locations. And then I did a semi-private sale. I needed the cash flow at the end of the year, so in November I did a semi-private sale, an offer, didn’t really have any restrictions around it, [00:06:00] and a lot of people purchased it, a lot of my regular clients, and they got a discount.

And then, so I got this chunk of cash flow that I needed for year-end in December, and then in January of 2025, my sales were down, I think, like 60%. And then I spent the next three months, like, catching up, and eventually people’s memberships got restarted. But that was… It set me off in the worst place, and I had just rejoined- Mm

the Unicorns, and I had all these things that I was working on, but I was, like, flatlined. And- Yeah … and it was really scary. And, and yeah, so I think things started turning around in March when just trusting that what I was doing was gonna work, and I ended up taking out a small loan to help with, cover some of the expenses that came up that I just couldn’t cover anymore.

And, and then, yeah, I think it was July, which is weird, ’cause July is not, is historically a bad month. People tend to check out when it gets warm, right? Yeah, but I, I ended up… But I just, with consistent marketing and having [00:07:00] a strategy, figuring out seasonally, there’s different, in different quarters you have to do different things, and figuring out what worked for me.

And then I think part of it’s always luck, and then timing, and having the right offer. And, and so I was able to reactivate some people and have a really stable summer, so I didn’t have that low. I wouldn’t have been able to hi- I mean, it would’ve been really hard to handle at the time. And so- Yeah … yeah.

And then I was also going through some personal stuff, so that was hard. My sister- Yeah … was diagnosed with cancer. And when you’re already down, I had one of my full-time people of seven years quit And so I had to go from not coaching, I don’t generally coach, to coaching five or six days a week. And I lived- Wow

an hour and a half away from one of my locations, an hour from the other. So I was getting up at 4:00 in the morning, and I was also training for- Oh my God … I’m an ultra runner and I was training for a race, and- Wow. Yeah. Spoiler alert, my race didn’t go well. I tomahawked down the side of a mountain and had a DNF.

And like- No … kind of probably could’ve predicted that, but I didn’t hurt myself [00:08:00] really. A little bit, but anyways, so that was fun. Well, talk about a perfect storm, right? Talk about a perfect storm, right? Where, when you’re training for a race that’s doing all this intense things with your body, your sister not being in good health, long-term employee leaving, summer coming when you think business is already gonna be down.

This is the real stuff that a lot of, I’ll say, business podcasts don’t talk about, right? It’s like this is real life, is that it gets messy, it gets frustrating. You mentioned before, like when you started to realize that your standards have been slipping with your team that have been around for a long time, revenue is slipping, your cash flow was low.

It’s hard to even know where to start in those moments, right? So maybe let’s go back there for a second- Yeah … ’cause we covered a lot of ground. But let’s just go back there for a second. And so let’s just start with the people stuff, so ’cause I think a lot of folks will resonate with that. Recognizing that your team’s been around for a long time, and and this happens.

This is not a judgment on anyone who was on your team or anyone who’s on a team right now that fits this description. But when people are in jobs for a while, they can get a little [00:09:00] complacent. They’re not as passionate, maybe not on top of the ball as before. You as the leader really trust employees who’ve been around for a long time, so you’re not as on top of them as maybe you once were to make sure they’re doing good work.

Let’s just start with that piece. When you started to recognize that was happening, how did you start to turn that around? I didn’t actually… I think I turned a bit of a blind eye to it because I needed it- Yeah … to not be that, and also really loved the person, and like they- Of course … and a lot of what they were doing was great, but just the small things.

And then after he quit and moved on, I realized some of the struggles with retention of newer clients because he had such a following of people that loved him ’cause he was a great person and a great coach. But they let some things slide too that maybe- Sure … his, he just stopped putting as much effort when, I think- Yeah

lost some interest. So it was a mixture, and then after going through that, I was like, oh, those are one of those moments as a lesson of if that you- [00:10:00] I’m… People care about your business, but it’s h- it’s hard to sometimes admit that they don’t, they’re never gonna care maybe as much as you do because it’s gonna be different.

And then sometimes it’s just easy for people to lose interest. And even one of my Vancouver manager who’s been with me forever and is probably, I think, one of the most solid people I’ve ever had, sometimes I’ve had conversations. He’s like, “You know what? Thank you. I feel like I’ve been dropping the ball lately in, in certain things.”

Mm-hmm. And this just re-inspired me. And so I think it’s important, and sometimes too- Yeah … it’s a mixture. Well, listen, I think that’s a great example of how we learn lessons as an entrepreneur, right? Is that at first you were like, “I just needed to ignore it for now. I had too many other things on my plate.”

Yeah. “I couldn’t jump in,” right? “I couldn’t run into the burning building and put it out. I just had too many other things. I didn’t have the energy for it.” And the person winds up leaving, which is often the case, right? If folks are checked out enough that they’re not doing their best work anymore, they often have at least one foot out the door anyway.

Mm-hmm. So in that case, I’ll use the phrase, you got lucky [00:11:00] that they chose to leave. Totally. But from that, you’ve learned this lesson, which is, okay, in the future I can recognize that. I can recognize that people might need a little inspiration, might need a little coaching, right? Need to find their motivation and inspiration to do their work again.

And you’ve been able to do that with folks who, who you’ve been working with long-term now. And I bet moving forward you’re not gonna let that sweep under the rug again, right? And that’s how we learn lessons, right? Is by doing things we don’t often wanna repeat. So I think that’s a perfect case study of that.

And I think- Anything else about staffing you wanna share? Yeah, and I think just like leaning into problems, that, that feeling- Yeah … that you know is happening, and it happens not just… It happens with many things, and you sometimes, you’re like, “I don’t actually wanna look at my cash flow.” The only way to address it is to look at it, and to know, and to understand it, and plan for the thing that you maybe don’t want to.

And so, yeah, so for staffing, I think the- one of the biggest things that’s been helpful in the last year is going in and really taking some time to To train them, to support them, to [00:12:00] give them the systems, and then hold them accountable even when you don’t want to, ’cause again, I’m a strength coach, kin, gym owner, but I’m not the best manager.

And I, I- … and just putting myself in these roles where I have to do some things that I don’t really feel is my strongest suit, they’re not comfortable- Yeah … I don’t really like them, it’s hard. It’s so- Listen, I think you just summarized entrepreneurship in a sentence, right? Like part of my job running a business where I wear many hats is that I don’t wanna wear a bunch of those hats, right?

And at some point we can often grow and scale and not have to wear as many at some point, and we delegate other people to do things we don’t love or we’re not great at, or we don’t wanna learn in the first place. But when it comes to being an owner, you’re always gonna have some responsibility when it comes to managing people.

Mm. So finding an approach that works for you. And I love the way you described it, right, which is we have to lean in even if our body and our brain and our heart is telling us, “No, I don’t wanna do this. I don’t wanna tell them they’re doing a bad job. I [00:13:00] don’t wanna have to give them this feedback. I don’t wanna have to discipline them,” or listen, we all have that.

I think our brains and bodies will do all kinds of things to avoid discomfort, and part of our job as leaders is to run towards the discomfort, right? And gosh, it’s hard every time, but as you practice it, it is like a muscle and we do get better at it. We maybe never love the things that are tho- those things, but we at least get better at running.

A- and I c- I always use the firefighter analogy when having this conversation, ’cause literally when they train firefighters, our friend who’s a firefighter, and they said they like to train you to like, to ignore all of your intuitions and instincts to not run in a burning building, right? Your body, your bra- your, every cell in your body is telling you, “Stay away from that burning building.

It looks dangerous.” And you have to override all of that to run in. And obviously our job is not that extreme, right? But I think it’s indicative of the kind of physical experience our nervous system goes through when we have to have difficult conversations with clients or with [00:14:00] team members or with our balance sheet.

It’s same physiological response. But all right, let’s pivot here because I know you described back a year and a half ago when your team was maybe underperforming. You also described the cash flow was tight, and you did a few things to get some immediate cash flow, a flash sale, which worked. But then what you started to describe, which I know ’cause I’ve seen you do this, you started to really get really consistent about building systems for marketing, for sales, teaching those systems to your team.

So go back and talk a little bit about how did you get started with that? And obviously I, I know working with us played a little bit of a role, but I’m not asking you to do a Business of Unicorns commercial, but just saying, talk a little bit about how working with a coach and putting those systems in place was helpful to you.

Yeah, I think first was trying things that I maybe didn’t wanna try. Even I think even my, my quote-unquote low barrier offer, I’ve been… I’m pretty sure either you or Mark was like, “It’s not that good of a deal.” It was like in my [00:15:00] deal. It was very- Yeah. But I used to do an introductory package, which was, it was a bit more of a leap to join us, but I always had really warm leads, or really hot leads.

I think now I still have pretty warm leads, but the- Okay … it was a no-brainer ’cause people knew. They were like, “Okay, whatever.” But it was, I think it was about $700 for people to join, maybe 500, I don’t remember, but for the first month. Yeah. And it was structured. And so then I decided to be open, or was encouraged by you and, and Mickey at the time to, to try a low barrier offer.

And so that was the first step. And then reactivation, where I don’t, I never really reached out to clients to, to reactivate, which sounds- Yep … really crazy now. But just thinking like- … they broke up with me. They don’t wanna come back. And- Yeah … so there’s a lot of stories, I think, that I was stuck in. And so part of it was starting to Be open to offering people deals, but it didn’t have to be free.

Just [00:16:00] like a little- Yeah … something to attract them, and playing around with that, ’cause that was something that I was… I didn’t wanna deal with people that were just looking for a deal. And I- Yeah … I f- I was a bit snobby about it for some reason, maybe a little bit of ego. And then with starting to play around with it and understanding that’s just how it works.

And it does work. Mm-hmm. And even though my deal is still, I don’t offer group training, so e- everything’s individualized, so I have a hard time offering sometimes the really low priced, but it’s still- Sure … $150 for the first package that they’re gonna do with us, which it seems to work right now. And- That’s huge.

Yeah I mean, it’s a fifth of the cost that it used to be. I know. Yeah. And less time commitment. And then I think still the way I present it is just to try us out. So yeah, it does help to f- to filter out maybe some people that couldn’t afford us, and then also give the opportunity to see what the value is.

So that was the first step. And then yeah, starting consistent. I started- Yeah … newsletter- Can we pause there for a second? I just wanna call out something that I think is [00:17:00] so amazing. I just think in what you just shared, Andrea, you’re displaying, like, a just a remarkable sense of self-awareness, right? ‘Cause I don’t know if p- people listening caught this, right?

But you described at least two instances where you really just challenged your own thinking, right? To say, “I don’t want all these cheap tire kickers coming for just the discount, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna force everyone to spend $750 in their first month.” And you were like, “I don’t know. Maybe I should be open and try something different that’s not really working,” right?

Same thing with reaching out to former members, ’cause I think a lot of listeners will resonate with this. A lot of folks think of their past clients like exes that you don’t wanna see in the streets. Do you know what I mean? Like, you bro- you, you even used the phrase like, “You broke up with me. You don’t wanna see me anymore,” right?

And that’s often just not the case. With exes it might be. But with clients- … it’s just not the case, right? So many times they leave for all kinds of reasons. Work got busy. I had a kid. I got an injury. I just lost motivation for a while, or whatever the case may be. And they do wanna come back, but they just haven’t been asked, right?

And so [00:18:00] not only do I love the strategies you chose, which is to do actually re-activation campaigns for past members and try a lower offer. But the thing that was so remarkable to me about w- how you just shared, it was such a wonderful example of challenging the stories in your head, challenging your own thinking, which is just so important when you do this work, right?

‘Cause we’re, we’re often an army of one or up to five, right? We don’t have big teams. And so we often have to recognize for ourselves, maybe with the help of a coach, when we might be getting in our own way. And like you just described that so beautifully, so I wanted to call that out. Yeah. Bravo to you.

Thank you. Yeah. So keep talking then. You started doing some more email marketing with a newsletter, so maybe talk about that. Yeah, it started that I think at the m- end of 2024, and it was early. I stopped coaching in 2021, and I was feeling a little disconnected, and also sometimes when you feel disconnected, yeah, it’s hard to care about things as deeply as you need to make all this work.

And so [00:19:00] anyways, and it was really… It’s from me personally. It’s not from MIM and, but the… I just talk about random things. I share a lot of my experiences in the mountains and some struggles, some mindsets, some fitness tips, all the things. But a lot of people constantly still this day tell me how much that they read my newsletter, and the consistency, I haven’t missed, I haven’t missed a day since, since I started, which I think…

And I like it more than I thought I would. Yeah. So that was another thing, ’cause I feel like that helps tie the rest of stuff in. When I send a marketing- Yeah … they’re used to hearing from me, and then I can use some of the things that I talk about, and it feels better. It feels more comfortable to me that I’m not always just asking people for stuff.

I’m offering, I’m trying to offer people stuff, and then build relationships, and then ask them for, to come hang out. Yeah. Good for you. I think that’s huge. I, I think the word that you said, I think I, I want all our listeners to really underline in their heads is the consistency, [00:20:00] right? ‘Cause when you s- put out a regular newsletter through email, or you put out a regular post on social media, Instagram reels, whatever it is, the consistency is what helps you build that relationship with people.

‘Cause you’re showing up on their phone or in their inbox consist- on a regular basis. They can, they know to expect you, and they can start to build habits around, “Oh, I get Andrea’s thing on a Friday and I read it on my weekend, on Saturday mornings when I’m drinking my coffee.” Or, “Or the podcast comes out every Monday.

We, and we listen to it on our commute on Tuesday morning,” right? It’s that kind of consistency of content that gets people to really connect with us. And then I, I… what you said about it helps you feel confident in making the ask once in a while because you know you’ve given so much. You’ve given so much of yourself, and your stories, and value from things that work for you, that then you’re comfortable saying, “Okay, now try us out.

Now come in. Now give me money.” Right? Yeah. And I think so too, so many people hesitate to make offers on a regular basis ’cause they don’t feel like [00:21:00] there’s been enough value given, and the fact that you’ve gotten through that is fantastic. Yeah. And you mentioned you, you hear clients now talking about the fact that they’ve read it, and I imagine it’s had an impact on your kind of lead flow.

‘Cause when we think of email marketing, it’s really a mid-funnel activity, right? It’s people who are already in your orbit, former members, current members, people who’ve never bought anything. What’s the impact been on your kind of lead generation from having this engine always running? I think it’s just been consistent in terms of y- I went, this year, sometimes I have a bad habit of overdoing it and then getting a little burnt out.

I think everyone does. But then- Yeah … I also, in March and April, just had so many leads coming in that I was, part of me is, if I would’ve actually done some marketing, this would’ve doubled. But y- I was, I had a really great spring and I wa- I didn’t do anything. I was doing my regular things, but I didn’t do anything extra.

And sometimes- Yep … if it’s not broken, you don’t try to fix it sort of thing. And then- Yeah … focus on the other things that you’ve been focusing on, and I kind of needed that at the time. [00:22:00] So Yeah, the, I think the impact has been that you also can benefit from some of the work you put in previously when maybe you’re having a m- a month or two months or whatever where you- Mm

don’t have the energy, or you’ve had to be pulled away into something else, and in terms of- Yeah … multiple hats. And, and then you have that buffer to, to build up momentum again. And so maybe that’s not the best example, but it is a real example. And then- No, that’s real. I, let me just say what I think that is happening there, is that when you do these things consistently, re-engagement campaigns to past members, regular newsletters to everyone on your list, make offers to get everyone on your list to come in, y- all these things, it creates this kind of flywheel effect.

Mm-hmm. Which means if you need to take your foot off the gas because you have a employee who leaves, you need to jump in and be on the floor for a while, or something personal happen, that flywheel effect will often keep momentum going without you having to keep investing. You can’t probably step away forever and expect leads to be flooding in, but the fact that you didn’t have to push as hard or do anything extra during [00:23:00] those busy spring months, I think is a reflection of all the momentum you’ve created by being so consistent.

Would you agree with that? Yeah, and I guess you can relate it to, like, all of the strength nerds, is when you are- strength train for a really consistent period of time, if you take- Yeah … a couple months off, you don’t actually lose strength. It’s, it, you might lo- lose a bit of adaptation, but for the most part you can get it back really easily.

And then too- Yeah … the habits that you form, it doesn’t feel like as much work when… Since I write a newsletter every Tuesday morning, I don’t get stressed about it. It’s just because I just do it now, and I, it’s, I, sometimes if I need to, I can do it in 10 minutes because I just, I have that muscle memory.

And similarly with all the other things that what helps with consistency is it just becomes easier and easier because you get more and more practice doing it, it, and then you have room to do other things. And so at first it takes up a lot of your time and bandwidth, but then it slowly gets funneled into, “I just do this, and this is just part of what I do,” and it’s feels easier.

Yeah. Beautiful said And that’s gonna create momentum and foundations to stand a little taller on [00:24:00] and make those little micro improvements, and then before you know it, you’re like, “Oh, this kind of… Things are just working, and that’s nice. That’s a nice feeling.” Other than things slowly falling apart, which is what used to happen to me.

Yeah. Isn’t it so mira- miraculous, you used the analogy about strength training, but it’s so miraculous that this is exactly the kind of momentum and habits we help our clients build in their practice, and that we can turn that same technology, let’s call it, onto… That same tactic onto ourselves to say, “Oh, we’re doing the same thing.

But instead of deadlifts, we’re doing newsletters,” right? Instead, instead of eating in a caloric deficit, we’re, we’re having one-on-ones with our team every week, right? Yeah. We just have the different kinds of habits that create the same long-term, “This is who I am now,” right? It’s an identity shift that comes at the end of these habits that says, “Oh, I’m just someone who writes a newsletter Tuesday mornings.

I’m someone who…” You know, and I think that’s so smart. I mean, let’s just pull that string. My last question, just to wrap things up here, is clearly what you’ve done is you’ve put a lot of habits in place to keep this momentum going [00:25:00] and keep yourself sane and keep the business growing, and it’s predic- it’s created some real predictable cash flow for you.

It’s created more predictable leads for you. But maybe talk to me and our listeners a little bit about what’s your plan moving forward for continuing this consistency? What do you have to have in place for yourself to make sure you can keep doing this on a, for months and maybe years to come? Yeah, that’s a good question, and I think I actually spent a quite a bit of time, and maybe the times when I wasn’t doing as much marketing, is I found I was getting bogged down with, we have more clients than we’ve ever had, and dealing with all the, the issues.

Not problems, but just the conversations you’re having with people, onboarding new clients, supporting my team, making sure they’re, they have tr- staff in services, and even just studio maintenance and whatnot. And so figuring out what I need to be able to do my job better, and sometimes it’s easy to get sucked into emails and whatnot, so I actually have just hired some [00:26:00] extra help.

They start this week, so a virtual assistant to be able to offload The things that will help me. And then two, to be able to say, put some projects on the calendar and then hold me accountable because I can have help with them, and then all the details of that. So that’s one big thing I think that will really help.

And then help my current administration assistant who can’t increase her hours right now to make sure… ‘Cause I feel like sometimes to grow it’s, it can be a bit scary because you’re like, things aren’t, are already kind of hard in terms of systems, and then doubling or adding 25% more clients, you’re like, like things are like just gonna blow up.

Mm-hmm. And so having the confidence to, A, continue to move forward and push through that discomfort, and that probably that’s some of that story. And then, and building up some more support for that. And so for that it’s like really relies on my team and buil- and making sure that is everything I want it to be.

And then continuing more of the same, but [00:27:00] also starting to look at what other people are doing. The Unicorn group is a pretty expansive group, so I often have to ignore a bunch of stuff that’s going on because I don’t nee- I don’t wanna get attracted to ideas. But then sometimes when you are ready, then you can go in and be like, “All right, should I go start talking to strangers now because I’m ready for that.

I have the capacity.” Yeah. So it’s, I don’t have it all structured on a spreadsheet per se for my next quarter yet, although I should. It’s, uh, it’s more of that. So more of the same- Sure … but also starting to entertain some new projects that I, I don’t think I would’ve had the bandwidth and the mental capacity or even the confidence to do a few, a year ago for sure, but even like probably four or five months ago.

Yeah, for sure. I love that. Let me just tell you some things I heard that stood out to me. One is that you mentioned that you wanna just continue to challenge your thinking and your own stories about the business, which I think goes back to your amazing self-awareness, which is such an incredible skill.

The other thing I heard you say is that you’re at this [00:28:00] phase now where you’re really building a team around you to support you in all of these new habits. And so if you have an admin who can’t take on more hours but you need more help, you were proactive and you found a virtual assistant who can come in and fill in those gaps so that you can start to delegate more and make sure that you are building a sustainable version of these habits, right?

We know that some habits you can do for a few months, but long term you need like a sustainable version of that. So building a team around you makes so much sense. And then when it comes to moving forward, what I heard you say, at least my version of it is, you’re still navigating when to step forward and challenge myself and go seek out new ideas, and when to say, “You know what?

I’m all good. I don’t need any new ideas right now.” Love it. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I hear that all the time in Unicorn Society, ’cause like groups like ours, we have a whole circle community, we have this podcast, we have courses all the time, retreats. Like, you could easily just go in and get overwhelmed by seeing all the things everyone’s doing.

And I’m constantly trying to tell people to do exactly what you just said, Andrea, which is [00:29:00] don’t… You don’t have to look at all of that. Please don’t, right? It’s gonna be overwhelming, right? But when you are ready and you have the bandwidth, the capacity to take on something new or learn something new or question you’re ch- you’re puzzled with, then jump in and engage the community and like they’ll help you, right?

Yeah. They’ll give you all the answers. And so I’m so glad you said that. Did I miss anything? No, I think that’s… Yeah. You’re so good at summarizing. Sometimes you say things better than I say that as, or you say my thoughts better than I do, and it’s really fun. It’s always different and easier from the outside, right?

I’m not, I’m not in your brain. It’s always easier from the outside, for sure. I got my own… Yeah. This has been amazing. We could probably keep going forever ’cause there’s so many cool things you’ve been up to, and I love the way that you think about your business, and you’re honest about the great parts that are going well, and you’re honest about the messy parts.

And I, I’m so glad we did this podcast, ’cause I hope it normalizes for our listeners that it’s not all sunshine and roses, right? There’s gonna be times that suck, and there’s re- requires a real persistence and perseverance to stay in this game long term. And [00:30:00] geez, you got it, my friend. You’re persistent, and so good for you.

If people wanna learn more about you, follow you online, learn more about Balance in Motion, where should they go? Yeah, I guess personally it’s just andrea.lawson for Instagram. That’s- Great … and then Balance in Motion. I feel like our Instagram handle’s a little confusing, but if you just go to our website, balancemotion.com.

Great. There’s no N in any of my domains because it was taken at the time, but Balance in Motion. Great. That’s the other way. I love it. We’ll put the links down below in the show notes- Okay … so if people wanna go follow Andrea or follow Balance in Motion, see what they’re up to, reach out, ask her more questions, she’s around.

But thank you for your time, my friend. This was a great conversation. Excited to have you back again in another year to see what you’re up to. And listeners, I hope this was valuable to you. You have a kickass week, and I’ll see you all soon. Bye, Andrea. Bye, [00:31:00] Michael.