I Just Want to Fucking Coach

What's up everybody. It's Dane Miller from Dane Miller’s strength secrets and I just got back from Lima, Peru where I was at the 2019 grand Prix for Olympic weightlifting and I was down there with two Garage Strength athletes, Hayley Reichardt and Jacob Horst, both of which ended up tearing it up. Hayley broke the clean and jerk and total junior pan American records. She also broke the junior American record in the clean and jerk and became the third strongest clean and jerk in the history of the 48k-49K division in the US so that's pretty cool, especially for a 20-year-old. Jake ended up tearing it up, going four for six and putting himself in the ninth slot on the pan American championship team here heading into 2020. So it was a really good time. It was a well-run meet, surprisingly, especially for a pan American competition.

Typically these are the meets where things are run very, very oddly and backward and random rules are made up. But that didn't happen. I was pretty impressed with the presentation and then the competition was really good. So it was awesome. The hotel was incredible, the food was awesome, but it was a very well run meet. One of the things I noticed was something that I wanted to cover here was entirely from my coaching perspective. And I want to share with everybody that I've been spending quite a bit of time trying to develop an online business system and trying to develop an onsite business system. So what does that mean? Basically, I'm spending the bulk of my time reading business strategy, reading business marketing, reading all the little details that go into a modern-day business, online and onsite, and how we can provide value for our customers and nurture them and make them feel as though what we're offering is valuable so that they continue to come back to us as a business and we make money and it's profitable for me to continue doing this as much as I am at 80 hours a week.

So with that being said, when I was down in Lima, one of the things that I noticed is that I love to fucking coach. I love to coach all the time and I sat there when we arrived and when we were in the training hall and when we were going through the competitions and I started to realize like why am I existing as a business owner? What do I want to do? What is my passion? It almost seems as though I'm having this midlife crisis of is this really what I want to do? I want to coach all the time. I want to talk about coaching. I want to coach athletes, I want to write about coaching. I want to tell everybody my experiences and I want to tell everybody what I'm learning all the time and how I'm constantly trying to better my training program and all this stuff.

I don't really want to be a business owner, but the problem comes down to I don't really want to be a business owner because I don't want to manage people. I like managing athletes. I don't like managing workers. The biggest thing that I learned while I had this epiphany in Lima was that I don't like to manage workers because I don't do a good job. Well, I do a decent job. I'm getting better and I'm learning and I'm figuring out the best ways to approach communication and things like this. I'm improving dramatically, but traditionally, historically speaking, I have not done as good of a job managing my workers as I do my athletes and I started to comprehend and understand this when I was down in Lima. The reason why I don't really like the business side behind everything is because I'm not that good at it and that's where sat there and had this long drawn crisis, Where I was sitting in the sauna and I'm just walking through my entire existence currently and I'm going, “all I want to do is put my efforts into coaching, but for me to do that as well as I possibly can, I have to set up a business system.”

I have to set up a successful profitable business that makes money online, that makes money on-site and that essentially runs like a well-oiled machine and that the expectations are clear on all fronts and everybody knows the goals and everybody knows what they need to do on a day to day basis. Just like in training. I think that's something that I've struggled with over the years. I'm now starting to figure out, and the hard part for me is that it's not something I'm as passionate about in relation to coaching. While I was down in Lima, I sat there and I'm like, know what? What can I do? How can I alleviate this situation? Do I hire somebody to just run the business or do I sit here and write out every little single business idea that I have? Then trying to implement a system that is repeatable, that gets executed every single week that gets executed every single month. Then on top of that every single year. I think that that's where I'm at right now with my life is coaches, especially in a sport that's not overly profitable like Olympic weightlifting or throwing or anything like this. You've gotta be creative and you've got to be steadfast and you've gotta be focused and you've got to have all your ducks in a row so that you can continue to do what you really, really love.

At the same time, you've got to manage your employees. Also, at the same time, you've got to manage your athletes and you've got to give your athletes a ton of attention. That was almost something that I've been struggling with is how do I put so much attention into the business side and the employee development side and still provide enough attention for my athletes to feel for them to feel as though I care about their success and for them to buy into the training system while the backend system is developing and adapting and improving week to week to week. So it's something I think a lot of coaches struggle quite a bit with. Something that I think ruins a lot of coaches and that leads to a lot of coaches getting out of the sport and going into other sports and going into athletic endeavors where they just get to coach.

I think that that's something I've been jealous of in the past where it's been, Hey, I just want to coach, but for my personality and for my wellbeing, I truly believe I need to set up a full-blown system of business operations. See that through over the next five to six years. If it's not working by 2024 well then I gotta hang it up and go back to the drawing board. But if it is, I need to keep rolling and keep working towards all my dreams and my goals, my financial dreams, and my goals. More importantly, my coaching dreams and goals. Because at the end of the day I had this discussion with my wife while I was talking to her about this whole scenario was that I'm sitting in the sauna and I'm contemplating my life, I'm contemplating my existence and I'm going, what makes me happy?

That's really as hokey as it sounds now that I'm 35 I've got four kids and I'm away from home quite a bit. What makes me happy? Would $150,000 a year make me happy? Absolutely. Yeah, that would make me ecstatic. But what if I'm doing this horrible job to make that? I'd be miserable. I'd come home and I'd be grumpy and stressed and even with the current state of our business Garage Strength where we're successful but not overly so. We're scraping by basically. That's one of the things that as stressful as that can be, that's still where I want to be. That's still where I would prefer if I had to choose between some shit job making $150,000 a year versus my current existence. I still get to travel, I still get to coach everybody. I still get to experience these incredible moments of athletic performance and mental achievements and accountability and watching athletes grow as individuals and become adults and become positive contributors to society.

That's what I am about. That's what I value. That's what I want to be, And so here I am today. I just wanted to voice this because I want to constantly try and improve my business flow and my business systems with the number one goal being, I just want to fucking coach. That's all I care about. I want to create champions. I want to have Olympians, I want to have world championship qualifiers, I want people to win medals. I want people to accomplish their dreams and break records and do things that they never would have believed imaginable and that's what's going to make me happy and that's what I'm going to continue to do and I will figure out some way that makes this a bit more financially feasible while continuing to develop all the animals and champions that we do at Garage Strength.

It's something that I don't think many coaches talk about and I wanted to share with a lot of people that will say to me, I want to get into owning a gym. I often jokingly will say, don't do it. Don't do it because it's freaking hard. There's a lot of stuff that you just don't think about. There's a lot of stuff that pops up that you're like, “really? I've got to go buy 37 rolls of toilet paper just so I can keep the gym open and coach?” It's stuff like that that just nags at you. Once you can figure out how to manage all that stress, and that's sort of where I'm at right now is I've figured out how to manage that stress. Now the next step is how do I manage that stress and create a system of business operations that's more successful.

Then it is how do I grow that business system or business operations that are more successful. That's where I'm at right now. I wanted to share that with everybody cause there's a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors that people don't realize when it comes down to owning a business that's a fitness/sports performance center and you have to be wary of that. At the end of the day, what are your goals? If you want to be a coach that's a world-class coach and have an impact on a tremendous amount of people, then you do have to have a business and you've got to coach. If you just want to coach and try and make money on the side, pushing your agenda or whatever, then you know, figure it out. At the end of the day, I've got to figure out a way to make my business more financially stable so I can continue to do this and continue to live my dreams. Again, I just wanted to share that with everybody cause it's hard, but it's fun and we're figuring it out.