Entrepreneurship and the “Math Isn’t There”
I was meeting with Adam last week and he was talking about the early days of TheGreenMicroGym – when it was nothing more than a concept on paper, when he pitched the idea to people, he often got the feedback on the business model that, “the math isn’t there”. The truth is, those people were right, given the current paradigm, the math isn’t there. Adam didn’t see the math, and he didn’t care about the current paradigm. Because even though he may not have articulated it to the VCs and potential investors, his idea wasn’t about the math being there for the current paradigm of gyms, it was about changing the paradigm to a world where the math was there.
This is the foundation of entrepreneurship. The definition of entrepreneurship is to take the same set of resources (land, labor, capital, energy) and create more value than was created by those resources before you. The only way to do this, is to change the paradigm. If you look at the problem the same way everyone else is looking at it, you will draw the same conclusions as everyone else. You will all agree on when the math ads up and when it doesn’t. The key to innovation and entrepreneurship is to change the way you look at the problem.
Adam believes that people will be inspired by a gym that does more than help you burn calories and believes in more than getting you to %8 body fat. 24hr fitness, LA Fitness, Precor, and Life Fitness don’t believe this. Adam has a different paradigm and we’ll see if it’s the right one.
