After 34 years in the fitness business, Rick Mayo and Matt Helland have learned one undeniable truth: growth never gets easier—it just gets different.
In this milestone episode of the Alloy Personal Training Business Podcast, Rick and Matt reflect on more than three decades of wins, failures, reinvention, and relentless evolution. What emerges isn’t a highlight reel, but a grounded, honest look at what it really takes to scale a business with integrity—especially in fitness.
Their lessons aren’t just for franchisors or gym owners. They apply to anyone trying to build something that lasts. Here’s what 34 years of staying in the game has taught them.
Scaling Lessons For Business Growth
1. Every Business Is a Brand-New Business
One of the most common misconceptions in entrepreneurship is assuming that success in one model automatically translates to success in another. Rick points out that across three decades, Alloy hasn’t been just one business—it’s included many types of businesses from brick-and-mortar gyms, consulting enterprise, licensing, education, and now franchising. Each had different revenue levers, cost structures, sales processes, and risks.
Franchising in particular, is where many owners get blindsided. Running a successful gym and running a franchise organization are not extensions of the same type of business. They are entirely different businesses. Franchising has its own legal frameworks, operational demands, sales systems, and leadership requirements. Thinking you’re “just helping others do what you do” is a fast way to underestimate the complexity of the model.
If you want to franchise, understand this first: you’re not scaling your current model—you’re starting a new company from scratch.
2. Franchising Is Not Gym Ownership
Rick and Matt emphasize that franchising requires mastering a business that exists around the gyms, not inside them. At scale, the franchise organization must know more about franchising than it does about training sessions or programming. That realization forced Alloy to build new departments, learn new disciplines, and seek expertise far outside the traditional fitness space. This realization of acknowledging what they didn’t know, became one of their greatest advantages.
3. Be Teachable and Seek Outside Help
Experience doesn’t eliminate blind spots. It often creates them. Despite decades in business, Rick and Matt deliberately chose to sit in the seat of beginners when they entered franchising. They partnered with experts, leaned on franchise sales organizations, and brought in consultants who had already navigated the terrain they were entering. Their mindset was simple: why struggle to reinvent something when others have already solved it?
This approach applies well beyond franchising. Whether it’s sales, leadership, operations, or technology, the most dangerous belief a leader can hold is “I’ve been doing this long enough—I don’t need help.”
The smartest leaders stay teachable, no matter how long they’ve been in the game.
4. Audit Your Tech Stack—Regularly
As businesses grow, systems that once worked, quietly begin to crack under pressure. Rick highlights the importance of stepping back and asking hard questions about infrastructure—especially technology. A tech stack that works for 30 locations may collapse at 300. Rather than waiting for failure, Alloy brought in outside experts to evaluate what would scale and what wouldn’t. This zoom-out perspective is critical in fast-growing organizations, where teams often operate in silos and miss systemic issues. Growth exposes weaknesses. The goal is to find them before they become emergencies.
5. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
One of the most emotionally difficult lessons for leadership is realizing that the skills that built your success may eventually limit it. Rick and Matt talk openly about identity shifts—moving from doer to leader, from executor to coach. Each transition requires letting go of a version of yourself that once worked extremely well.
That loss is uncomfortable. It can feel like grief.
Leaders often feel the pull to return to what they know—what made them successful in the first place. But scaling demands killing the “old you” to make room for the next version. If you don’t evolve, you get left behind.
6. Leadership Requires Emotional Discomfort
Growth isn’t just operational—it’s personal. As teams expand, leaders must relinquish control, empower others to speak for the brand, and accept that things won’t be done exactly the way they would do them. Matt shares how challenging it is to let go of being the voice in every room, even when he knows it’s necessary for scale. That tension—between comfort and progress—is where real leadership lives. The ability to tolerate discomfort, ego death, and uncertainty is not optional at higher levels of leadership. It’s the job.
7. Develop A Resilient Mindset
For franchisees, Alloy provides more than systems and playbooks. They provide confidence. Rick explains that new franchise owners are essentially borrowing Alloy’s resolve, emotional control, and belief structure while they build their own. The model accelerates learning, but the mindset still takes time.
There’s no skipping the emotional reps required to become resilient. Even with support, growth involves struggle, uncertainty, and self-doubt. The system shortens the path—but you still have to walk it.
8. Take Responsibility: 99% of Your Problems Are Your Own Doing
This may be the most uncomfortable—and empowering—lesson of all.
Rick argues that blaming external forces feels good in the moment. When everything is someone else’s fault—the market, employees, leads, timing—you also give away your ability to fix it. Taking responsibility hurts. But it restores control.
Resilient entrepreneurs default to the mirror. They ask, What could I have done differently? What can I control right now? That mindset isn’t pessimistic—it’s optimistic. It assumes solutions exist. Solving problems requires taking an in-depth look at yourself and what you can control.
9. Consistency Beats Motivation—Every Time
Motivation is unreliable. Discipline is not. Rick’s message is simple: you have to show up—especially when you don’t feel like it.
- Bad mood? ➡️ Show up.
- Tired? ➡️ Show up.
- Bad quarter? ➡️ Show up.
- Employee quits? ➡️ Show up.
Success isn’t built on peak moments of inspiration. It’s built on boring consistency, stacked day after day, for years.
Most people fail not because they aren’t talented—but because they stop showing up.
10. Don’t Hire for Potential—Hire for Now
One of the most common leadership mistakes is hiring based on who someone could become instead of who they are today. Potential is tempting. It feeds the ego. But it also creates friction—for the leader and the employee.
Rick advises to hire people who can do the job right now. Growth may come later, but the seat must be filled with competent people today. When expectations exceed reality, burnout follows. Clarity beats optimism every time.
11. Time Flies—Enjoy the Journey
Thirty-four years passed faster than Rick ever imagined. The message is clear: growth demands humility, responsibility, consistency, and the willingness to evolve. Yes, business is hard. Yes, leadership is heavy. But perspective matters. If you’re building a business today, especially in the U.S., you already have it easier compared to most of the world.
- Problems are inevitable.
- Suffering is optional.
- Laugh when things break.
- Celebrate wins more often.
- Remember that challenges are opportunities in disguise.
- Stay teachable.
- Show up.
- Take ownership.
- Hire the right people.
- Don’t forget to enjoy the ride.
Podcast 318 Key Takeaways
- Intro (00:00)
- Every business is a brand-new business (02:48)
- Franchising is not the same as gym ownership (05:33)
- Be teachable and seek outside help (07:26)
- Audit your tech stack regularly (10:36)
- “What got you here won’t get you there” (12:14)
- Letting go of old identity is hard but necessary (17:28)
- Franchisees borrow Alloy’s business model and mindset (22:43)
- 99% of your problems are your own doing (28:24)
- Consistency beats motivation (36:35)
- Don’t hire based on potential—hire for now (38:33)