Jonathan Lautermilch is the owner and Founder of Smart Shark and Co-Owner and Co-Founder of Fit Pro Collective. Jonathan Lautermilch’s mission in life is to help as many Fit Pros as possible get paid what they’re worth.
Jonathan has 13 years of fitness industry experience, has written 2 books, over one hundred blogs, and is a Co-Host on the Real Talk With Real Fit Pros Podcast. Throughout his career, Jonathan has helped thousands of Fit Pros create thriving careers and businesses within the fitness industry. He’s also a loving husband and lives in Dallas Texas.
What were the top 3 mistakes you made as an entrepreneur, and if you could start over what would you do differently?
The road to building a 6-figure company that has served over 100 fitness professionals around the world hasn’t been easy, but it has been very worthwhile.
It’s great to reflect on the things we have done right that got us here, but the mistakes we’ve made have served as the steppingstones for our success.
There have been 3 mistakes that ended up being blessings in disguise that I’m going to share with you. My hopes are that you can learn from my mistakes, so you don’t have to learn by making them yourself.
Here are the 3 mistakes I made along the way to building a 6-figure online business.
The first mistake was trying to be everything to everyone
When we first started out, we weren’t completely sure who our ideal client was, so we cast a wide net. Casting a wide net resulted in attracting the wrong clients and created tension in the client service process. This experience forced us to get extremely clear on who we want to serve, which has led to better clients for us and an even greater experience for the client.
The second mistake was my fear of spending money to make money
When we started, I bootstrapped the company from the ground up because I had just quit my job to focus on building the company and, as a result, money was tight. Letting go of that scarcity mindset was a real challenge for me because scarcity was deeply ingrained in me from a young age. I rewired my mind by adopting the daily habit of writing down 5 things I’m grateful for. When you’re focused on what you’re grateful for you can’t focus on what you’re worried about. Gratitude truly changed our company’s altitude and rewired my mindset around investing in the areas I needed to invest in to grow.
The third mistake was focusing on micro tasks versus macro tasks.
When we first started, I was wearing every hat in the business. I came to realize that if we were going to grow, I had to find people I could delegate tasks to so I could spend more of my time in the visionary position of the company. Letting go of $10 and $100 tasks has allowed me to focus on the $1000 and $10,000 tasks that will take Smart Shark to the next level.
It sounds counter intuitive but getting clear on what tasks I could offload to take care of today so I could build for tomorrow is what has allowed us to generate the same revenue that used to take us a year in just 3 months.
My biggest takeaway from being an entrepreneur is you must fall in love with the process of making mistakes. They’re going to happen and you can’t stop it. What you can do is use those mistakes to move you closer to finding the answer. The best part about that is you only have to be right once to achieve massive success.
Jonathan Lautermilch Founder of Smart Shark Co-Founder of Fit Pro Collective.
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