During the time I have been in this course I have been able to further dive into who I am and who I want to become. By doing this I have realized that my goal of starting my own gym and pursuing the fitness industry is still what I want to do with my life. Over time motivation and hobbies tend to change, but over the last two months since writing my entrepreneurial alertness plan, I have noticed no change in how I feel about this goal and am more motivated than ever.
In my entrepreneurial alertness plan, I had mentioned that a big step I wanted to take is to get my training certification as well as my first-aid certification as these are two big requirements when working in the fitness industry. I plan on doing my first-aid certification this summer and have already started my personal training courses. Although I am still fairly new in my learning, I have already gained way more knowledge in the technical aspects of training than I ever knew before. I have learned about how to attain hypertrophy by breaking down the muscle fibers so they can rebuild themselves up even stronger, the nutrition/macronutrients required to transform your body, and the most optimal movements to work a certain muscle group which was good for me as I have now removed certain insufficient movements that I used to do. I look forward to continuing to pursue this certification and learning even more. Another thing that I discussed was wanting to attend certain workshops that will allow me to better see potential opportunities and expand my thinking. Although I have not yet attended the specific workshops of Celi Arias and Debbie Allen I have done more research on the two presenters as well as introduced myself to the concepts that they discuss through even further research and reading. Through this research, a big takeaway of mine was finding the Stockdale Paradox which taught me that you must always believe that your vision will come to pass however, this belief should never cloud your confrontation with reality. I will be sure to think about this when considering any business venture in the future.
Through my journey in this course, I have learned many things about myself and the world that I will hold with me for the rest of my life. I came into this course as a young mind with a dream, but not really any real knowledge on how to make it anything more than that. This course has introduced me to concepts like the 6 thinking hats, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, working in teams by using parallel thinking, customer journey mapping, the “understand” and “ideate” mixtapes as well as much more. Using these concepts learned in the course I now find myself in a position to know where to go with my idea. Using the 6 thinking hats I can start to build on my idea as well as create a more detailed business plan. Working in teams has made me learn that I love parallel thinking and working with others which can perhaps open the door to creating my gym with one or more business partners that share the same intrinsic motivation as me. Finally, one of the biggest parts of building my dream gym in my opinion comes with using my newfound knowledge in customer journey mapping to give myself a reality check on whether it is actually a good idea or not. By filling out a customer journey map I can truly see if customers would be as excited about the idea as I am and if not how I could innovate to make them excited. If I do not have the customers on my side then it is clear that I’d have to do more research as another thing I have learned in this course is that the opinion of customers is a top priority.
Nearing the end of the course, I can candidly say that I am very grateful for having taken it and would consider myself a better person because of it. I have been able to learn many things about myself as well as increase my entrepreneurial alertness. I will walk away from this with a full understanding of what my passion is, how I can start building it, how to continue to better myself as well as a few friends gained along the way. This course was great all around and I recommend it to anyone that really wants a fun and necessary life experience.