From Depression to Success: The Inspiring Journey of James Martin - Essay Sample

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how you can go from a place of depression where you do not know what to do with your life to finding your purpose and going after what inspires you? Well, that once worried James Martin, a 32-year old management graduate from Baruch College, New York, but does no more as he is now registering unimaginable success in the fitness business. James took a daring move when he quit employment only one year after college to pursue his dream of being an entrepreneur, and today he is glad that he did it because he is enjoying the freedom of your life.

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James's journey in entrepreneurship began when he was around 21 and had just finished college. He grew up at a time when the idea of success was to get a job, work hard, and earn money. However, by 2007 when James was going to university, the market had changed. There was a massive recession that brought a lot of chaos and uncertainty. College students were graduating with no jobs, and his situation was pretty tough because he had to do non-paid internships to get experience in his field as a management graduate. Afterward, owing to the difficult times, James had to work like two or three jobs but still could not make enough money to live well in New York City. The tough start soon left him, wondering if that is how life was going to be for him.

That was at the time when YouTube was actually first starting, and he had heard about it in college but did not really think too much about it. But then something changed when somebody suggested to him to help her with her personal training. Although his background was in business, James had learned some things about the human body. He was already yearning to pose working and take care of myself. So, when someone suggested that he does personal training, he took that very seriously. He went into the field and started through the certifications, and then little by little became very disenchanted with working for people. That is when he got the idea to start his own business.

While one may imagine that the idea of a recent college graduate not wanting to work for someone is an ego thing, for James, it stemmed less from inspiration and more from desperation. He believes that we do things for two reasons - it is either because we are desperate and we need something, or we were inspired, and it truly fuels us. For him, it was more like desperation because he remembers getting a lot of anxiety working for people. He had quit his last job because his boss kept stalking and talking down at him, making him feel like a loser. He then started his first business at boot camp out in New York City doing some marketing stuff, and from that got his first cheque, which he says was between fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. According to James, that was the highest amount of money that he had ever received at once, and it became his new source of inspiration.

Life began to change quickly as James went through the paradigm shift of going from that job where he was controlled to getting a check bigger than he had ever gotten before. In addition to all these, he was working for himself. One of the things that was so crazy about his first earnings an entrepreneur was that the cheque for 20 thousand was more than he would receive in almost six months, and he had made it while doing something he is passionate about. It was just like his whole reality was flipped upside down.

A lot of times, we hear that entrepreneurs would rather work 80 hours on their business than be forced to work 40 hours at a job doing something they do not like. James' experience affirmed this belief, proving that entrepreneurs are not scared of work. James emphasizes that any entrepreneurs who actually do not really want to work at all may not have matched their mindset because that is not actually an entrepreneurial or purpose-driven mindset. Rather, it is actually just lazy. That is one of the things that were always instilled in James from childhood. He grew up with just his mother as his dad was not around. Being constantly in lack taught them that if you get your paycheck from somebody else, you are always dependent on them.

Therefore, he hated laziness and wanted to work to make his own money. James always wanted to be successful, and that first cheque was like a taste of what he always dreamed about. So after taking some time to allow the business to wean itself out, James thought of something else that he could do, and he found coaching one-on-one to be a better model for him. As usual, when it comes to choosing the type of business, everyone is going to have their own preference. Some people want to run million-dollar businesses, some people want to run like six-figure businesses, but James, at the time, just wanted to make sure that he was fully financially free. Like not everybody needs a hundred thousand dollars a week to live a lifestyle that is almost like an overabundance, yet someone might think that as a small amount of money, which is crazy. He strongly believes that such ambitions are so relative, and one has to find the thing that makes them happy.

At that stage of his life, James realized that he deserved to be a six-burner coach but did not know how to do it, so he started brainstorming. Asked why he thought he deserved such a big change, James explained that if you feel like you deserve to have something that becomes your self-fulfilling prophecy.

Indeed life teaches us that everything as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and for James, it came from a place of fire, a place of passion. Little by little, he started noticing weird synchronicities. He does not know where he got his first private client but remembers that from that client, he got two more.

He then started charging a rate of $30 an hour, and he thought that was so good, considering that it was way more money per hour than he ever made when working. However, when he looks back at it now, he just pities himself. When James began to make the 30 dollars per hour without much struggle, he realized that his rate was not enough, so the new game became fifty an hour, then after that, it became a hundred and then after that became 150 and then it just went on and on. He then decided that instead of charging per session, he would charge himself for what he gave as a result.

That was a genius mindset shift. He would now get paid for the value he brings to somebody's life rather than getting paid for the hours he exchanged. That means, if he brought more value to those hours, he would get paid more. At the end of the day, if someone can get the same result in one hour versus 60 hours, they should get paid the same because they just put less work into doing it. A lot of personal trainers get paid such a little amount of money because all they do is show them how to work the machine.

When James started making those shifts and still made money, that became a big distinction for his brand because then he stopped charging per hour and started charging by the month. He started making a real and even bigger shift to leverage his time better. At this time, Facebook YouTube Instagram we are getting more and more popular and James saw some fitness trainers having a million subscribers on YouTube and over a million Facebook Likes, and they were realizing genomic differences in their salaries, incomes, and lives just making tutorial videos, and he thought to himself, "okay, I deserve to be there. Now how do I do this?" Next, he found himself investing as much as about 20 thousand dollars on coaching. He also made an online program, but it did not do so well. James ended up wasting about five thousand dollars on his Facebook ads, and his Facebook account got shut down.

He started going through a very weird moment in life. Little things started changing in his life as synchronicity started to happen. The synchronicities came from his deliberate move to clear himself. He was removing limiting beliefs and eliminating doubts. He was removing beliefs about himself, such as the judgment that we place on each other; like this person wears this shirt so they must be so-and-so person. He also started getting into a frame of clarion where he became very clear on what he wanted. He was making at least 10 thousand a month with his personal training business, and then he went to this new phase, all that stopped to matter him and his income declined suddenly. Finances became a problem because of the many expenses that emanated from his business. Despite having no staff, he had bills to pay because he had rented a place.

James then realized that he had to get out of his way to market the business, and at the same time, needed to spend quality time with the clients he got. At this point, it just dawned on him that there was no way he could do all this alone. That is how James Fit Lab came to be born. In December 2019, he used his savings to acquire a larger space and employed five well-qualified fitness trainers. With the in-place, employees, his work now began to oversee the running of the business, which has picked up pretty well. Moreover, since the trainers have demonstrated excellent performance so far, James now spends more time building the brand marketing through social media and running public relations functions for the business.