Resilience Redefined – From Loss to Leadership

Resilience Redefined – From Loss to Leadership

Scott Aaron:
This is our year. This is our year. And after you’re told that for 10 years and you’re still kind of just, you know, doggy paddling, so to speak, with the money, you start to lose hope. You inherently have blinders on the entire time. Right. Because if you’re in a family business, you you block out everything else. You entrust your family a 100%. I saw him cry for the first time in in years.

Scott Aaron:
And I think when someone is really faced with, a certain future or, unknown future, it really breaks you down.

Eric Deschamps:
Hi, and welcome to the Living Richly podcast. We’re so glad that you’re back with us this week. We so appreciate our viewers and our listeners who tune in every week for these amazing conversations. And today, we’re really fortunate to have a great guest and friend on the show, Scott Aaron. Scott, great to have you here.

Scott Aaron:
Great to be here and, looking forward to letting it rip with everything we’re gonna tell you.

Eric Deschamps:
Right on. Well, we decided to ease into the conversation with a bit of a softball, question, and that there was that was loaded with sarcasm, by

Scott Aaron:
the way,

Eric Deschamps:
if you didn’t catch that. Scott, you’ve experienced an incredible journey, of highs and lows from facing, some deep personal challenges, including things like bankruptcy, divorce, your dad’s incarceration, and brain cancer, to, also achieving incredible success in the world of marketing and networking, predominantly in the world of LinkedIn, but I know it goes far beyond that. Could you share with us the most defining moment in that journey, that not only tested your resilience, but also helped shape your philosophy the most significantly in both life and business. So real softball.

Scott Aaron:
Yeah. Yeah. We’re we’re really we’re leaning into this, from the get go, which which is good. Yeah. You know, I I like to peel back all the layers right away just to, you know Yeah. We’re not let people get to know this. I mean

Eric Deschamps:
Can we date a little bit first? Right?

Scott Aaron:
It’s okay. It’s okay. You know, every time you know, every date is different. You know, some of them go this way and then, others go other ways. But, you know, I, I love sharing my story because it allows other people to realize that they’re not alone. Mhmm. Because there there’s a lot of people that that go and grow through life and they feel like, you know, this has happened to me and no one would understand because I’m the only one that’s gone through it. And that’s why I do openly share all those things that you mentioned.

Scott Aaron:
But if I had to, you know, really define one moment, it definitely would be my father’s incarceration because there were so many back layers to that that entire situation. You know, coming from a very, very close knit tight family, you know, family dinners every night, except, you know, the weekends. That’s when my sister and I would hang out with some friends. But Right. You know, it happened at a at a very impactful age. You know, my my father, went to prison when I was 19, and, I was a sophomore in college. And a a lot there was a lot of turmoil in my life for, I I would say, a 19 year old.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah.

Scott Aaron:
You know, you you’re not really having to worry about too much, but I I had gone away to college. I started off at the University of Pittsburgh. I grew up in Philadelphia, so it was about a 4 and a half hour drive straight through the turnpike. Yeah. And I found it very challenging to be on my own. Mhmm. And that’s not to say that my family coddled me, but I was used to having a support system around me. I was used to having a sounding board.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
You know, I went with my best friend. You know, we were roommates together, but, you know, I was an 18 year old kid. I was not ready for that responsibility of, having the option of whether you felt like going to class or not or hanging out with your friends and partying. I always chose the latter. And at that same time, you know, my father, always an entrepreneur, still is to this day. You know, he’s, you know, still doing personal training and everything. Yeah. But I come from a long line of entrepreneurship.

Scott Aaron:
You know, my father had multiple businesses prior to us getting into the fitness industry. My grandfather owned his own pharmacy. We just celebrated his 96th birthday.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow.

Scott Aaron:
My great grandfather was, a butcher in South Philadelphia. So I come from a long line of business owners. So I I had a great example around me growing up of someone being their own boss. You know, just very softly being dripped on. You know, my dad was always available. Still is. Yeah. He was my coach in baseball, basketball, even when he wasn’t.

Scott Aaron:
When I got older and was coached by others, he was at every single game. He wasn’t stuck in an office. He wasn’t so I I unconsciously saw the availability that he had. So when when everything kind of going south with my educational side of things after my freshman year at college, you know, my parents had a heart to heart with me and they’re like, listen, if you don’t get your shit together, you’re you’re coming home. And, you know, 18 and a half in one ear out the other. Didn’t even hear him say that. Right?

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. We’re not that smart at 18. Right? We think we are. We think we know everything at 18 years old, but what do we really know?

Scott Aaron:
I got it figured out. Yeah. You know? So on the the the personal side of things outside of college, my dad was transitioning from owning his own, large industrial business. Him, him and his partner broke partnership. He was bought out. And then my dad started working for a physical rehabilitation company in our local area. And they were looking to expand and grow and compete with NovaCare, which is a, a large rehab company. And my dad was basically managing all of the east coast locations, like, you know, all over the tri state area, which is New York, Philadelphia, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and he was growing it.

Scott Aaron:
So outside looking in, everything seemed good. And then I remember after my freshman year, I came home And, as we did very often during the summertime, my mom loved, still loved the barbecue. She always manned the grill, which was really interesting. And, you know, we were having our a family dinner, just the 4 of us. And my dad’s like, we need to have a serious conversation. And he said, you know, I’m I’m leaving the rehab company and I’m gonna be starting to work for someone else. And the reason why I’m leaving is because the federal government is investigating this company, for a $9,500,000 insurance fraud case. And he goes, I’m at the center of it.

Scott Aaron:
And he goes, I’m just letting you guys know, more so myself and my sister, that worst case scenario, I may get house arrest. So that seed was implanted. Even that was just a complete, earth shattering statement to to hear, you know, the your hero, the person you’ve looked looked up to your entire life may get house arrest.

Eric Deschamps:
Right. Right. And we were Scott, we were just, just last week, we had, our guest was Dawn Lachance, who’s a grief and loss specialist. And we talked about how grief and loss is often viewed as the loss of someone from our life, like passing, you know. But here, what you experienced, were probably experiencing in that moment, was the loss of an image, the loss of the dad that you knew, as that news lands on your doorstep.

Scott Aaron:
100%. And it was it was weird for me because, you know, as things transpired, my father cooperated with the federal government to, mitigate and minimize sentencing as much as possible. I remember I wrote a letter to the judge pouring my heart out about my, my dad and everything he meant to me and how much he meant to so many other people and, you know, people make mistakes, so on and so on. So 3 months, before, the proceedings of the sentencing began, my father, a few months prior to that had purchased a a failing fitness club in downtown Philadelphia called Old City Iron Works. The the owners were just not having fun with it. They didn’t really know what it meant to run it. And my dad was given the opportunity with the help of my 2 grandfathers to purchase the gym. And they, I mean, they stole it.

Scott Aaron:
It was just, they, they were looking to just get rid of it. And he bought the gym. He’d always been in physical fitness. So, you know, he competed in bodybuilding in the, in the mid eighties. He was just, and he’s still, jacked to this day at 71 years old.

Eric Deschamps:
I I’ve seen, I’ve seen the pictures on Facebook. Yeah. I mean, he’s in pretty good shape.

Scott Aaron:
He’s full benches, you know, I mean, we’ll get to the cancer stuff, but he’s back benching over £300 already. You know, his, he competes around the world. And so it was I wasn’t shocked that he went down this path. Like he’d always been the the big muscle dad of of my group of friends. And he was there from the minute the gym opened at 5 AM to the minute they closed at 11 PM, every single day, 7 days a week for 6 months. And I I under I I was still away, and I understood. So when I came back from college after failing out, you know, not taking my parents’ advice, I reenrolled at Temple University right outside of Philadelphia. And this was right around the time.

Scott Aaron:
I’m now 19 and we’re sitting in the courtroom in in downtown Philadelphia at my dad’s sentencing. And, you know, my my if you met my dad, he’s a very loving, open, caring, but very strong individual. And I saw him cry for the first time in in years. And I think when someone is really faced with, a certain future or, unknown future. It really breaks you down. And, you know, he was begging for forgiveness. And when all was said and done, he was sentenced to 2 and a half years in federal prison. And he had about a week in between sentencing to the time that we actually drove him to prison ourselves because it was in New Jersey.

Scott Aaron:
And, we were driving home from the courthouse, and, you know, we were all a mess. And he said, Scott, I just gotta let you know, you’re gonna be taking over the gym. And I said, what do you mean I’m taking over the gym? He goes, I, I need someone to run the gym. No, your your sister’s in high school. Your mom is, you know, working at the boutique, you know, for someone else. Someone needs to run this gym, and it’s gonna be you. So right there, that that moment was my pivotal moment because at 19 years old, I could have decided to say, hell no. You’re not putting this on me.

Scott Aaron:
This is your mess. You clean it up. Yeah. Or I say, you know what? Let’s do it. You know, this is the hand that I’m being dealt. I’m gonna learn everything that I that I wanna know and what I wanna learn. And I was that kid and and I still am. I always like making my parents proud.

Scott Aaron:
And this was my moment this was my moment to to make my fam

Rob Dale:
I love that.

Eric Deschamps:
Right. Right.

Rob Dale:
It’s amazing to me. We’ve had a number of of different, entrepreneurs on the show. And in almost every case, they start young.

Eric Deschamps:
They start young.

Rob Dale:
Yeah. It’s like, you know, starting businesses at 15 or at 12 and and and did different things and and to be able to go through it. You and I, we don’t know each other’s story. We’re really hearing it for the I know that that you and, Eric have talked, worrying for the first time. My dad spent 17 years in prison, and, now I was younger. I remember writing that letter, but I was writing the letter to to see if he can get out on parole for the first time when I was about, 19 years old, and remember presenting that letter before the judge and all of the of what you went through. You you go into now, taking over this business, you become this entrepreneur, you’re very successful. It’s interesting.

Rob Dale:
We talk about we call this living richly, and probably one of the things that people misunderstand the most Yeah. Is we’ll get people who are send us notes saying, I don’t care about money, and they think that Living Richly is an is a podcast about riches Right. About monetary riches. But you did get a lot of monetary like, you were doing pretty successful, and there was a moment where and and I I don’t get a chance to say this to too many people, that you lost literally lost 1,000,000 of dollars, and what an incredible what were the lessons when that moment happened that you were suddenly, you know, having this challenge? What were some of the lessons that you learned during that time?

Scott Aaron:
So going back to that that that moment with my dad, the instinctual, I would say, personality trait was then embedded in my DNA was resiliency. Because I I you know, Eric and I talked about this when he was on my podcast that you you have to be resilient. You have to kinda push through those things. And, you know, fast forward, I I grew the gym from around 300 members to 1200 by the time my father came back after two and a half years. A year later, we opened up a second gym. And a year after that, we sold them both for a $1,000,000. And and this is I was 20 I was 24. I became a millionaire.

Scott Aaron:
Yeah. And that was not the intention. Right. You know, we were just gonna open up gym after gym, but when you’re offered, you know, 7 figures, you you take the deal and this is

Eric Deschamps:
it’s hard to resist. Right?

Scott Aaron:
Yeah. It, it was also an interesting time in the fitness industry because the, the bigger chains were on the horizon. You know, we we got into the industry in the the mid to late nineties. You know, if your gym had a website, you were ahead of the game. Right.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
Yeah. And, but, you know, planet fitness wasn’t around yet. LA fitness wasn’t around yet 24 Hour Fitness, but they were on the horizon. And we had the idea of, you know what? Let’s let’s chill for a few months, kind of figure out what our next move is, and let’s roll into a a bigger gym, but outside of Philadelphia. So we made the move to go more to the not suburbs, but the outskirts of the city. So our 2 gyms were in the city, meaning, like, city block type gyms where you don’t have to worry about parking. People walk there, apartment complexes everywhere. So it was a breeding ground for a constant churn of new members.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah.

Scott Aaron:
Right. We we found a location outside of Philadelphia. And, again, when you’re in a family business, you inherently have blinders on the entire time.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
Because if you’re in a family business, you you block out everything else. You entrust your family a 100%. So whatever decisions are made, you sign where you sign. Right? You dot the i’s. You cross the t’s where they need to be dotted and crossed, and you just go.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
Right. A lot of the things that I signed and I dotted and I crossed led to losing 1,000,000 of dollars. So and, and that’s not, it’s not playing the blame game. It’s just how sometimes business goes and my, a house that I owned was used as collateral for the gym’s equipment. I was the personal guarantor of the lease of the gym and all told, in the 5 years that preceded the opening of this final gym, I went from, you know, over a $1,000,000 in revenue from the sale of the first two to about $1,500,000 in liability debt. Wow. In a matter of 5 years.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow.

Scott Aaron:
And but I’ll go back to something that I said a few minutes ago. It was that so what now what mentality? So this is my situation. What am I gonna do about it? And I was I was a scrapper. You know? My my dad definitely, you know, if he was on here with me right now, he definitely, worked through a lot of the guilty feelings because a lot of it was pinned on me just because of his in incarceration. He had zero credit. He couldn’t put his name to everything. So everything had to be put in my name. It was the family name, but it was me obviously very invested in, in the company, and the business.

Scott Aaron:
But it was that, so what now what mentality where I’m like, okay, this is what the situation is. I need to figure out what my nest next move was. And that was literally if if there was a way to make money in the fitness industry, I did it. I I it got to the point, guys, where I would meet people at the grocery store, and they would pay me $75, and I would teach them how to go food shopping at the grocery store.

Eric Deschamps:
Right. Right.

Scott Aaron:
And I just I tried to think of any and all ways, and I did very well as a personal trainer and did doing sports nutrition. I was doing corporate wellness speaking, but the gym itself, there were so many factors that went into it. Yeah. You know, a, we had terrible landlord, terrible landlord, where they did not put any of the money back into the building, which led to the building slowly deteriorating over time.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
Leaks everywhere. So when it rained outside, it rained inside. We would have buckets everywhere, towels everywhere, black mold.

Eric Deschamps:
That could be handy. Right? So, like, if, you know, the raining inside, you could have positioned that as, like

Rob Dale:
It’s showers.

Eric Deschamps:
It’s the showers. Yeah. Right?

Scott Aaron:
So there there was a lot of things that that led to the demise of that. And, you know, in between all of that, you know, no one wanted to sign up at a gym where it was raining inside. How how are you gonna market a gym?

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. I don’t understand.

Rob Dale:
People are so picky.

Scott Aaron:
I mean

Eric Deschamps:
They’re so picky. I mean, it,

Rob Dale:
But it’s interesting. You the mindset piece that you said you had about, so what, now what? Mhmm. It actually right away. We had Ben Berger on on, many months ago now. Yeah. And owner of the legend. Yeah. Owner of 1 of the largest CrossFit gyms in, down in New England and has, coached a bunch of CrossFit, some of the winners of the the champions of, the CrossFit Games.

Rob Dale:
Fascinating guy, but he talks about the 5 mindset.

Scott Aaron:
Mhmm.

Rob Dale:
And that last mindset, the highest mindset, highest mindset, rather the highest one is the warrior mindset, but the the one you wanna live in most of the time is what he calls the realist. And and that’s exactly what the realist is. The realist is, okay. This is the sit this is the reality. This is the situation. What am I gonna do about it? And that really ties into your mindset about I love that language. I’m I’m gonna steal and use it. It’s like, so what? So what?

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Rob Dale:
It’s or no. So what? So what? Now what? Now what? Yeah. You know? And it’s it is. That’s the realest mindset is what am I gonna do with this?

Eric Deschamps:
And Scott, I’m really curious. Like, this all happened in your early twenties, and, like, you were a pretty young guy at the time. Your your story in mine is very different yet similar in some ways as well. Rob shares the story or the the, you know, the the the the the fact that his dad spent time, incarcerated as well. My parents left the country when I was 18, to go on the mission field. They they were doing, work, so so I just left. I could really connect with your story when here you are 18 years old, and now you’re left with all these major decisions. You’re used to having that support system, and now you don’t.

Eric Deschamps:
And I would go on to, start a church when I was 23. So I was a entrepreneur, but in a very different world. And back then, it was just kinda you just take what comes on and you’ve got all the energy and the spunk and the fire and it’s like you you feel invincible. But then you reach a point in your life a little later on where you start to look back and you start to see some things a little bit differently. What were what would be some of this the the lessons or the the the the shifts in your heart, in your mind, in your spirit that would come, but probably didn’t show up for for a few years?

Scott Aaron:
So looking back, and I still I have, like, a a keepsake box, like, in my closet over here that it’s like just letters from throughout the years and and I found a letter, a few months ago that I wrote to my dad while he was in prison. Wow. And it was about a month and a half into me running the gym. And again, I was a 19 year old kid. I had a general manager. I had a manager. I had trainers, fitness instructors. Like, literally, I was a kid in charge of adults, which I’ve, I’ve never run a business.

Scott Aaron:
I’ve never owned and operated one.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
And I, I went on in, in the letter that I wrote him and I’m like, I don’t know how I’m gonna do this. I can’t be you. I am not you. You know, you’re you’re so good at this, that, or the other. And I he wrote me back this beautiful letter. And basically he said I’ve never asked you to be anyone other than yourself.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow.

Scott Aaron:
He goes you don’t have to be me. Don’t try to be me. Always stay true to who you are. And that that message didn’t resonate then and there because I was so in my stuff at the time, like, just trying to keep things going that it it wasn’t until much later. Now I would say 2020 14, 2013, 2014 that it all kinda came crashing down. So for me, I I always had blinders on. I it was almost like the ostrich effect. I I just buried my head in the sand.

Scott Aaron:
You know, we would have year end meetings and, you know, every year, the message that was was given to me was this is our year. This is our year. This is our year. And after you’re told that for 10 years and you’re still kind of just, you know, doggy paddling, so to speak, with the money, you start to lose hope. Yeah. But you start to dig a little bit deeper as to, you know, we have more members than we’ve ever had. Why is the revenue not growing? And this is when I did the digging, and I found I found out that I was the guarantor of the lease of the gym, which pinned everything on me. It’s also when I found out that the gym was using my house as collateral that I owned.

Scott Aaron:
It was a it was a rental property that I owned in South Philadelphia. And I didn’t know that it was being used as collateral until I went to sell that house. And I was at closing, and I had around $35,000 to of equity that I was gonna be getting back from what was left on the mortgage to the sale price. But the check I got was $830. And I said to, the real estate broker that was kind of brokering the deal, and I said, what what’s going on here?

Eric Deschamps:
Where’s the rest of the money? Right? Where’s the rest of the money?

Scott Aaron:
There’s a couple zeros missing here. What’s going on? Right. And he said, well, unfortunately, when we were running all the the due diligence and the checks, there was a lien against the house, from your gym’s equipment company that basically said if the house was ever sold, X amount of dollars would then be given to the bank where the lease was taken out from.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow.

Scott Aaron:
So PNC ended up making out really, really well. And that was like that was kind of like the final straw. So the week after that, I I had one of the most difficult situations and conversations I ever had to had in my entire life, and it was me telling my dad, you need to leave the gym. Now this was the hardest conversation I’ve ever had to have because of two reasons. Number 1, he was my business partner from 1998 until 2013. So 15 years of working every single day with your father. Yeah. For 15 years.

Scott Aaron:
Yeah. The second thing is I was a very nonconfrontational person. I was a sweep the feelings under the rug type of guy. I don’t wanna ruffle feathers. I don’t wanna offend or hurt anyone. So I was a doormat. But as I started going on a little bit of a personal development journey about a year prior, I started really embodying the highest version of myself and realizing that if I didn’t speak up, if I didn’t share how I felt about things, I would be living a very incongruent life.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
So I called my dad into my office and I said, listen. I think everything has run its course. If if this gym is gonna survive, if we’re going to get this gym out of debt, I’m gonna need to do this on my own and in the way that I wanna do it. And I think it’s time that we cut ties. You should find somewhere else to train and do your business. I don’t mind if you take people with you, if members wanna leave and go where you go. I totally get it, but I need to do this on my own. It it’s my time.

Scott Aaron:
Yeah. And there was no yelling. There was no screaming. There was no arguing. He literally grabbed his gym bag, left the gym, and never came back. Now the I would say the the the saddest part of that is that it really fractured our relationship.

Eric Deschamps:
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. That would have been the toughest part of that. I mean, it’s it’s amazing. You tell the story, like, how many of us struggle to find our voice. Here you are in a family business, and we work, you know, part of outside of the podcast, of course. We are, business coaches and leadership coaches.

Eric Deschamps:
We work with organizations of all sizes. We’ve worked with so many family businesses over the years. And when you talk about the blinders and the blind loyalty and the, commitment to the family and the trust that goes into that, it’s one of the reasons people gather family around them is because I feel like I can trust you more. But with that come blind spots, and with that comes layers upon layers of issues. And, one of our colleagues actually has a full time he he specializes in family businesses in transition. He actually has a therapist, that works with him full time to help those families navigate those changes. But here in the midst of all that, I mean, the the the difficulty in finding your voice, as you’re telling the story, I’m I’m like that. That was tremendous pressure to overcome that, to be able to have that tough conversation with your dad.

Scott Aaron:
100%. But it was a conversation that I needed to have. Right. And it gave me the confidence that I can have future future conversations. And it it was not said in a mean or negative or, aggressive way. I I I I was basically just upfront with how I was feeling and what I needed to do for me. And, you know, we didn’t speak for about a year and a half. And that was that was on my terms.

Scott Aaron:
I needed to heal. I didn’t want to have any anger or resentment. So it was about a year and a half before we even even talked again. And, I remember when, when I was finally running the show myself, I was able to really see not just the leaks in the building when it rained, but I was seeing the leaks in the financial structure of this business. And luckily, you know, Eric, you know part of this story that I started really leveraging LinkedIn back in 2013 to start doing some higher level business coaching and consulting. Because again, I was looking to kind of break the chains of that daily grind of being a personal trainer. Like, if I wasn’t working, I wasn’t earning, and I wanted to find more, not passive ways, but leverageable ways. And that’s when I started leveraging LinkedIn in 2013, And it got to the point where the gym started to lose around 3 to $4,000 a month on average.

Scott Aaron:
And I was having to cover all of that personally. So I had to start something else. And I remember my my landlord, I had I was very what what I will also say about myself, what the the other side of me that started to come out was being very transparent and very open. And I remember having 2 separate conversations with my landlords, and I said, listen. If you do not fix the building, this gym is not gonna survive. Just letting you know. And you’re not gonna get any money. And because the gym was able to be grown because the condition of the building, I had people leaving and I wasn’t able to give them the amount of money required for the rent.

Scott Aaron:
And I said, I’m not, I’m gonna need a rent reduction. You can add it to the back of, of the lease. I’m fine with that. They wouldn’t agree to it. They took me to small claims court to get the back pay. And this was the final straw that, that, that for, for me leaving the industry altogether.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah.

Scott Aaron:
I had to take about $30,000 out of my retirement, but also that was gonna be money for my son for his future education. I had to take that out of my personal 401 ks and pay it to them. And I remember they were in my office and I was giving them this check for $30,000. And I said, if you don’t fix this gym with the money that I’m giving you right now, in 6 months, I’m out of here. And they didn’t think I was serious. So as you can imagine, nothing changed in the 6 months after I gave them that check. And I re I I reached out to a friend of mine and I, I said, I need to hire an attorney. And I, I, I hired this business attorney and I was sitting in his office and he asked for all my financials.

Scott Aaron:
And he said, well, I’m just gonna be frank with you. He goes, you have 2 options. He goes, option a, you continue to run this gym. And at this point, a year and a half prior, I had signed a 5 year extension because I already I had three and a half years left on this, lease agreement and again, on the guarantor. Right. Right.

Eric Deschamps:
So I still

Scott Aaron:
owe all that money. And he said to me, option a is you continue to funnel the successful money that you’re making in your coaching and consulting into the gym to keep it going or option B is you file for personal bankruptcy since you are tied to this. And I said, bankruptcy? And he said, yeah. And I said, well, what would that do to me? He goes, it would allow you to start over. Right. And he said, on a scale of 1 to 10, if I was in your shoes right now, he goes, you’re a

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. It doesn’t get much higher than that. Right? But, again, isn’t it amazing how sometimes, I’ve talked about some lessons that I learned, I learned them slowly. That there were signs all along the way that a shift needed to happen. You said at the beginning, right, when your dad said, listen. I need you to take over the gym. Right? And you did that. But maybe that wasn’t the path that necessarily you had set out on.

Eric Deschamps:
It was kind of imposed upon you, and it would take years serving faithfully, loyalty to the family, and then all of a sudden, things aren’t working, things are going the opposite way, and finally, the lights come on to say, maybe there’s a better, option for me here and and look at you now. Right?

Scott Aaron:
You hit the nail on the head. I I made lemonade out of lemons.

Rob Dale:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
And I I and I remember saying to myself, this is not my dream. This is not my passion. This is not the life that I wanted to live. I was following in the footsteps of my father’s dream. Right.

Eric Deschamps:
My

Scott Aaron:
father, he wanted all this.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
Not me. Yeah. And and that’s when I decided, you know, July 1, 2016, almost 8 years ago, I decided to file for personal bankruptcy, which, you know, there’s not to get too in-depth, but there’s 22 types of bankruptcies. There’s business bankruptcy and personal bankruptcy. Right. I couldn’t file for business bankruptcy because then the money that would be owed to the lease would be turned over to me personally. So I had to file for personal so I could then close the gym. And that, that was the weird part of the conversation, because he said to me, he’s I I said, so when am I actually gonna be closing the gym? And he said, at the end of this month.

Scott Aaron:
I said, like, 30 days from today end of the month? Yeah. And he said, yeah. And he gave me a checklist of things to do and, obviously, contacting vendors and settling balances. And I said, well, what do I tell the members? He said, you tell them nothing. You stop all their payments. You call your billing company. You make sure all the automatic debits are completely stopped, so there’s no money that has to be going back. And he said, you close the gym on the 31st.

Scott Aaron:
Whoever’s supposed to close that night, you let him go home early. You stay there yourself. And he goes, what I want you to do is I want you to write a handwritten letter letting people know what’s going on, what you’re doing, and why the gym is closing. You’re gonna stick it on the door, You’re gonna shut all the lights. You’re gonna lock the door, and you’re never gonna go back.

Eric Deschamps:
Talk talk about literally closing one door to open another. I mean, that’s what literally you had to do. What what an amazing story. I mean, part of the Living Richly message we talk about all the time is that so many people live their lives according to the shoulds, the musts, the the right, the the that literally they’re living not writing the script of their own life, but they’re like an actor in in another movie, somebody else’s story. And here, you this transition of, kind of coming out from under your dad’s shadow and pursuing your dream. Now, here you are. You’ve got a very successful podcast, called, Networking and Marketing Made Simple. I had the pleasure of being on it, several months ago.

Eric Deschamps:
And on that show, you often talk about the importance and, of of authentic connections. How has your journey shaped you and influenced your philosophy on business building and networking specifically?

Scott Aaron:
I you know, 2 things. I wouldn’t be in the personal and financial situation that I am in now if it wasn’t for my wife. I’m gonna just say that 1st and foremost, because she is the being to my Yang, the peanut butter to my jelly. She’s she’s everything. And, everything that we do, we we water each other. But what I will say this, the second part of that is one of the most important aspects of growing a business that people don’t talk about is relationship marketing. The relationships that you build in business are what allow businesses to progress. So going back to my days in the gym, because the our first gym, they called it the cheers of gyms.

Scott Aaron:
We we knew everybody and everybody. We knew their first name. They weren’t just a member. And I learned 2 very, very important things running that gym. Number 1, the art of personal connection Saying hi to every person that walked in, saying bye to everyone that left. Really leaving them good when they walk in, leaving them better when they leave. The second thing I learned is the importance of being a solution oriented person, a value added person. So when people would come into the gym, they were coming in there for a solution to the problem that they had.

Scott Aaron:
Losing weight, gaining weight, building muscle, whatever it was. So ingrained in my DNA were those two things, that the importance of building meaningful connection with people, but also being that value added solution oriented person, which we’ve put into everything that we’re doing, not just with what we teach on LinkedIn, but our entire courses and our mastermind. And we literally give that to everyone that we work with to let them know when you double triple, quadruple down on the relationships that you’re building, the business allies that you have, and the value that you bring to the marketplace, you can grow your business to whatever level you’d like wanna grow it to.

Rob Dale:
Powerful. Many would relate to some of the struggles that you’ve had, both the financial challenges, but just the personal challenges that you’ve gone through. What advice would you give to to those who are listening, who are facing their own personal, and professional challenges, you know, personal challenges or or business challenges, what advice would you give to them? What encouragement would you give to them, if they’re listening today?

Scott Aaron:
A number of things I would number 1, first and foremost, just keep going. You know, there’s, Darren Hardy who wrote the compound effect also wrote a great book called the entrepreneur roller coaster. And that’s exactly what the entrepreneur life is. It is ups and downs. It’s twists and turns. Sometimes you’re shot out of a cannon. Sometimes there’s a quick stop. And I always tell people what’s the first thing that you do when you step into a roller coaster? You pull the safety harness down.

Scott Aaron:
Right? Because you’ll you’ll fly out of that car if you’re not strapped in. So just understand no matter where you are in your journey in entrepreneurship, you’re going to face adversities. That’s why entrepreneurs are so special because we have to push through those adversities.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
The other thing that I would say is recognizing that fear is your friend. You know, there’s gonna be a lot of things that you do in your professional career as an entrepreneur that are just scary. They’re they’re, you know, they they talk about the comfort zone and then the uncomfortable zone. And then outside of that is the unknown zone. Right? The unknown zone is where you wanna that’s the sandbox you wanna be playing in because that’s when the world is your oyster. That’s when so many different things can happen. Being a creative as entrepreneurs are, being comfortable is never gonna get you to where you need to be. So I always tell people when being uncomfortable becomes your comfortable, you’re doing amazing things.

Scott Aaron:
And the final thing that I’ll say is that we have a due diligence and a responsibility. You know, don’t make it so much about you when when when someone is struggling in their business and struggling in entrepreneurship, you automatically cast this spotlight, like, oh, woe is me. You know, you start pointing fingers, you start playing the blame game. It’s social media’s fault. It’s this person’s fault. There is a significant power that is given to you when you turn the mirror around on yourself.

Rob Dale:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
And you start taking full responsibility for why things are going good or why they’re not going good. And this is something I learned from my wife. I was a I was a blamer. I was a victim for a really long time in my life. Mhmm. And I’ll never forget it. It was very early on in our relationship. We were out to dinner.

Scott Aaron:
We were going to see the Nutcracker was around the holiday time and I was being a victim at dinner. And she said to me, plain and simple, she goes, if you want this relationship to continue from this day forward, you’re never gonna be a victim again or I’m out. You need to take ownership. Wow. That’s again why I love her so much.

Eric Deschamps:
She’s a

Scott Aaron:
very, like, she’s a very strong, like, she’s a, I I her confidence is just so attractive, and it helped me because I’m like, she’s right. Like, I have to own my stuff. I have to own my faults. I have to own my positives. I have to own everything. Right. And there’s significant power in that. So that person that’s watching watching this or listening to this, that you’re, you’re in that victim mentality, you’re in that blame game mentality.

Scott Aaron:
Just stop, understand that you’re gonna make mistakes. Not everything is gonna go your way.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Scott Aaron:
And I’ll leave you with this one last thing. You guys will love this. It’s another, great Canadian that I became friends with. His name is Cody Schuen. He’s in the Toronto area. He rated a he read a wrote an amazing book called Everyday Legacy. I highly recommend you guys to read it. Anyway, he spent 20 years, in the funeral business where he was surrounded by death.

Scott Aaron:
And one of the biggest lessons that he learned, and and he shared this with me with me on my podcast years ago, he said, Scott, he goes, you have to understand that you do not have to wait for yourself to be gone, for your legacy to be felt. You can leave it while you’re still living.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow. And

Scott Aaron:
that is

Rob Dale:
something Yeah.

Scott Aaron:
That was so powerful when it was said to me that every single person that just heard that just remember every day that you wake up, you’re leaving the footprint of your legacy right now. And the more that you dwell on all the things that you can’t control and you start focusing on the things that you can control, you will start impacting that many more people.

Eric Deschamps:
I absolutely love that. We talk often. So many people are waiting for the right conditions, waiting for the right person to come along, waiting for the right set of circumstances, while others are out there creating and designing the life and business that they want. Right? Final question for you. We ask all our guests this question. Living richly is a very important message to us, but we’re curious what does living richly mean to you?

Scott Aaron:
It’s it’s got nothing to do with the money. That’s just a side effect of the impact that you have on those around you. I think for me, the meaning of living richly is having a rich life. And that means spending my time the way that I wanna spend it with who I wanna spend it with, when I wanna spend it.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah.

Scott Aaron:
And for me, family and friends are everything. Yeah. I I love my friends so much. I love my family so much, and I am so grateful and so blessed and so fortunate. And I feel so lucky that I get to live the life that I do as richly as I get to do it and the way that I get to do it. And I want that for every single person. That’s exactly why, why my wife and I, we teach what we teach and we do what we do because we wanna show people that we’re not an anomaly. We are not that special.

Scott Aaron:
Every single one of us has a gift inside of us, and you can create the life and the business and the impact and the legacy that you truly wanna have, and you can have that rich life. And those that think it’s tied to money, it’s not. You can have all the money in the world and be more miserable than you can ever imagine.

Eric Deschamps:
Right. Right.

Scott Aaron:
Money is a side effect of the lives that you impact.

Eric Deschamps:
I love that.

Scott Aaron:
And that’s what living richly means to me.

Eric Deschamps:
That’s amazing. Scott, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been such a great conversation to hear your story, and to have you share with our listeners. And, again, thank you for tuning in this week, everyone. We’re gonna be putting, all the links in the show notes where you can connect with Scott, links to his website, his LinkedIn profile, his podcast, so that you can continue to connect with him and and follow his story, on social media. We ask you to please like, share, and subscribe. Help us get the word out. The Living Richly movement is growing.

Eric Deschamps:
More and more people are joining all the time, and, you can help us do that. Also, go to our website, livingrichlydot me, where you can find more information about our private Facebook group, an amazing community where we’re unpacking these conversations and really supporting each other in this journey. And you can also sign up for the 15 day, life vision challenge where you can begin to take steps to craft that life, that you are dreaming of. Thanks again for joining us, Scott. Thank you once again. Please say hi to Nancy for us, and we’ll see you next time. Folks, until next week, get out there and live your best life.

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