In December of 2022 I wasn’t in a great place. It was a fight to get out of bed every morning. Every day I was going through the motions and wasn’t finding joy in anything I was doing. I was forced to evaluate my life and take a hard look at if the life I was living was aligned with who I am. It certainly wasn’t the first time I had thought about a career change, but I had previously just been able to push through and use logical arguments to stick with the job. This time those logical arguments weren’t helping and I was feeling more and more down by the week.
Depression has played an interesting role in my life. Often, it’s what has lead to major life changes. I think partially because it forces me to evaluate exactly what I want out of life and then make changes accordingly. I had been feeling ready to make a change with work for sometime, but the comfort of a good paycheck and a job that I knew well made it hard to make that change. For me, coming face to face with depression again is what ultimately pushed me to make the decision to leave. I had to ask myself: is this the life I want to live? Is this how I can contribute most to the people around me? What do I want?
As I wrestled with those questions I came to the conclusion that the only way for me to find an answer would be if I left the cush tech job. I wish I could say it was an easy decision, but it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made – I was terrified to leave the security that job provided. I was afraid that I would be a failure for leaving and that I was making the wrong decision. I left not knowing exactly what was next but once I made the decision I felt a weight was lifted off of my shoulders.
I’ve always been interested in health and fitness and my wife, Lainey, was working out at a CrossFit gym down the street. I reached out to the owner and he gave me a job coaching on Saturdays. I threw myself into learning how to coach and very much enjoyed it. Getting to work closely with people in an environment that I loved was a refreshing change of pace. As the spring moved forward I was able to jump in and pick up classes when needed and was coaching up to 15 classes a week. The coaching was fun, but it wasn’t going to pay the bills.
In June of 2023 a buddy of mine sent me a podcast and the guest on the podcast asked the question “if you were going to do something knowing you were going to fail, what would you do?” That was the moment everything clicked and I decided that I wanted to open my own gym. Something about the way that question was phrased helped me things fall into place. I’d heard the question “what would you do if you couldn’t fail?” but I never had an answer that one. Something about facing the reality of failure helped me know starting a gym was something that I did indeed want.
I started business planning and making sure that a gym would be a viable option as a career. I knew that if I started a gym and implemented the Functional Bodybuilding programming it would help a ton of people (just like it had helped me). At the CrossFit gym I was coaching, folks loved the community aspect of the workouts (and the fun nature of the workouts as well), but they often were telling me that something was hurting. I had my own story of moving from pain to health and knew I had a solution that I could bring to the market.
In November of 2023 I signed a lease on the current location and quickly worked to open on December 16th. Since then the gym been slowly adding members. Starting a business is just as hard as I was expecting (and I was expecting it to be pretty tough) but it’s also massively rewarding. Even in two short months Carbon is helping people feel better and live better lives.
That depression that I was feeling a year ago is gone, I’ve found a renewed sense of purpose and challenge. It’s been amazing to see a dream coming to life and even more amazing to hear how it’s already helping people feel better. There’s a lot more work to be done and I’m thankful and excited for what is ahead.