Cameron Elliot
Founder and co-owner, Physique Transformations / TT Fitness
My life in little squares may have appeared to be pretty good, but in reality I stepped into 2020 a mess:
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No permanent address
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An obscene amount of debt
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A Range Rover that doubled as my wardrobe
Worst of all I was a sh*t dad. My kids didn’t get any of my energy and when I wasn’t with them I would revert to drugs and alcohol to try and escape my reality.
In February I was so grateful to get a roof over my head and to put an end to the sofa surfing. I had somewhere my two babies could stay.
March brought lockdown. My recently opened gym was forced to shut. Years of sacrifice felt like they would amount to nothing. But I hadn’t come this far to give up.
With the help of my business partner and our amazing employees we transferred our gym members to an online coaching model. I knew it had to work, or we would come out of lockdown without a gym.
We hosted multiple daily live sessions on the covid famous ‘Zoom’, weekly socials, weekly 1:1 check-ins and we invited some special guests to join us on line to educate and inspire our members.
The most important thing I learned was however to switch off from the business and to be fully present for my kids. I cut my working hours massively, so that I can have my kids exactly 50% of the time. I had missed things like their dinner time, bathing them and reading bedtime stories for far too long. It’s a solid work life balance and I refuse to give it up for anything.
And working fewer hours has made me more productive and my business is scaling more than ever.
This year has been a year of uncertainty and humans are hardwired to hate that. But it’s been a year that’s forced people to adapt in order to survive. And it’s given people for the first time in their lifetime, the time to be able to take a step back and reflect, to work out the things and people that matter most.
For me the year has been a blessing. A wake up call. I can’t go back to the life I was living before. The year has taught me how to enjoy the things in life that are free and that when I commit I’m capable of achieving more than I ever thought I could.
So if you are feeling like you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders right now, remember....
Tough times don’t last. You have the capability to push through anything and to become that better version of yourself that no one thought you could. You just have to believe you can and start to do the f**king work.
