the evolution of good to go jo

the other day one of my clients asked me of all the services we provide at Good to Go which to I love the most?
and well it was actually quite hard to answer, because I love them all.
currently we are a week away from opening our first training studio, so I'm feeling all nostalgic and scared and excited and all those emotions that come along with doing something huge in your life, and this question got me thinking about how it is that I have come to be in this place in time.

so here it is
the evolution of Average Jo to Good to Go Jo.

Before I moved to Sweden - Average Jo

I started my first business when I was 25, I was a very keen martial artist and wanted to start a self defence business, I went and did a business course, found a space to run classes, had a few clients, but very quickly learnt that whilst people like the idea of learning self defence that actually get a little freaked out by the violence of it all.so needless to say that was not very successful.
So i went and got my personal trainers qualifications. this was a great step in the right direction, I got a job working in a corporate health and fitness company and worked my way up from being the new trainer on staff to managing the corporate gyms and working in the corporate health section of the company as well.
during this time I also went and became qualified as a massage therapist. any way long story short.
after working in this company in various roles for about 10 years, it all culminated into this one big moment for me.
The company was in trouble and I was asked to join a meeting with eh business manager and senior staff and the board, so that we could come up with a strategy of how to turn things around.
now as a trainer and a martial artist I have learned that when you bring your passion into a situation it can help motivate and inspire and great ideas come about.
so i went into my business manager and said why don't we open the meeting with talking about what we are passionate about. She liked the idea, so we did it.

I went first and I was very nervous but in preparation I had a good look at my self and realised that the things in life I was most passionate about were the 3 things I have spent the last 10 to 12 years qualifying my self in and becoming very good at:
Personal training
Massage
Budo

Budo & crazy hair

now the outcome of the meeting is irrelevant here, but what happened to me is very relevant.
after that meeting I went home and thinking over what had transpired i realised that i wasn't doing any of those things, nor was i giving my self the opportunity to bring out my passion for them.
I was a middle level manager managing a team of people who behaved like children on a daily basis.
and I was not happy.

the point of the meeting was to develop a change strategy for the better, but I realised that for me the thing that needed to change was not the business it was me, I was miserable, unhealthy and angry and in a state that essentially goes against everything I believe.
I had to change.
So I resigned and started my next business Average Jo's.
Now at the time Dodgeball was a popular movie, and I thought the name was funny and suited me, I just wanted to be an average Jo. a trainer for the people.
And life was good. my business was doing well I was happier but not much healthier, I still had a few habits that needed sorting out.
what happened next?
well I fell in love and moved to Sweden.
and my wife and I started Good to Go.




But it was just apart time thing.
I got a job through a friend, and whilst I will always be very grateful for that job, it gave me many opportunities to learn Swedish and skills I would never have learnt otherwise.
But I returned back to that old feeling of not being happy, and being unhealthy.
something had to change.
so as before when something has to change the best place to look is at yourself.
and I look back and realised that I had in fact become Average Jo.
I was mediocre in every way. I was not what I wanted to be. And so change was needed again.
Thankfully my wife is very understanding, and after our son was born and I had finished my share of the parent leave (gotta love Sweden and their paid parent leave ) we decided that it was time to go full time with good to go and thus good to go Jo was born. (well still in the making )
why do I feel the need to do these things?
Because I believe that healthiness is 90%happiness and the rest is just plain hard work.
So if you're not happy you're not healthy and if you're not healthy you're not happy.
Do things that make you happy, if those things make you unhealthy then you need to ask yourself are you really happy when you do them?
The good to go training studio is a culmination of my vision over the past 15 years.

Studio treatment room

and here I am today getting ready to go full time into one of the hardest yet easiest things in my life.
And it feels AWESOME!
Thanks for reading
Good to Go Jo

good to go Jo