TO U G H TI M ES
Life lessons ____ I used to look at myself in the mirror at three o’clock in the morning and say “why the fuck are you doing this?”
Dave Wright The founder of Myzone and one of the fitness industry’s most visionary entrepreneurs talks to Kath Hudson about how he deals with adversity
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PHOTO: MYZONE
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Issue 10 2023 ©Cybertrek 2023
PHOTO: MYZONE
he toughest time of my career was in 2011-2012 – about a year after I’d launched Myzone. CFM, my company which sold gym memberships, used a collections company to handle contracts. That company was taken to court for having illegal contracts and 98 per cent of these were for CFM. Although I moved our membership administration away from them, they continued to collect the money, so we lost £7.2m of what we were due and there was nothing I could do about it. As this was shortly after the launch of Myzone, we were having technical issues and product recalls and our monthly CFM income went down from £480,000 to £112,000 at the same time as
Myzone needed investment. It was like being punched in the face with your hands behind your back and not being able to do a thing about it. Everything was on the line. I would meet with my financial controller and make the decision about who we could pay that week and I didn’t take a salary from Myzone for Dave Wright six years. It was a stressful time. I said to my team that we had to sell our way through it, that Myzone would eventually change the health of the world and if they stuck with me they would be paid handsomely. From years of selling memberships, speaking to people and owning my own gyms, I knew Myzone would be a global success, but many people doubted