In 1991, Mimi Phene-McKellar rented 1,000 square feet of community space three days a week, set up equipment she had mostly built herself, and started teaching gymnastics to 10 kids while sharing the room with a jazzercise class.
She had $470 to her name and no business plan.
Thirty years later, she owns her building outright, coaches close to 500 students, and is widely regarded as one of the most respected gymnastics club owners on the Central Coast of California.
We sat down with her on the A Family Business podcast to hear the whole story.
What came out of that conversation was one of the most honest, practical, and genuinely useful discussions we have had on the show.
Here are the biggest lessons from 30 years of building something real.
- The nos are not the end. They are the training.
When Mimi started out, she was told repeatedly that San Luis Obispo was a retirement community with no families, that nobody had made it work before, and that she shouldn’t bother. She said the endlessness of the discouragement she received surprised her. But she also said something important. Every “no” just motivated her more. She treated rejection the same way she had been trained to treat a skill she could not yet land. Not as proof that it was impossible, but as information about what to adjust and try again. For any gym owner who has been told their market is too small, their vision too ambitious, or their timing too early, this one is worth sitting with. The people who told Mimi no did not know what was possible. She did.
- The business is not about gymnastics. Gymnastics is just the tool.
This was the moment in the conversation that stopped us cold. After 30 years, Mimi said this: "When I started, I thought it was about teaching gymnastics. But it's not. That's just the tool we use." The real business, she said, is people. Hiring them. Training them. Communicating with them. Building relationships that hold the whole thing together. The owners who struggle with growth, she said, are almost always the ones who are incredible gymnastics coaches but have never been given the tools to lead a team and build a business around a vision that is bigger than themselves. The technical skill gets you in the door. The people skills determine everything else.
- Systems before scale. Every time.
In 2016, Mimi was handed an opportunity she couldn't refuse. Big space, below market rent, right across the parking lot from her existing facility. She took it. And she said it was the decision she would most want to revisit today. Not because the opportunity was bad. Because the systems were not ready. The accountability was not in place. The business was not structured to hold the weight of what she was trying to build. She was growing faster than the foundation could support. This is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes we see from gym owners who are actually doing well. Growth reveals gaps. And the time to fix the gaps is not after you have expanded. It was before. If you are thinking about a second location, a new program, a major hire, or any kind of significant growth, the question to ask yourself first is not "can I afford this?" It is "is my current business structured to hold this?"
- Start small. Build the vision. Connect with people who have walked the path.
When Andy asked Mimi what she would tell a young gym owner starting out today, she gave three answers without hesitating. Plan your vision. Not just what you want now, but what you want in five, ten, twenty years. Start small and learn as you go. Build what is manageable and let the systems catch up with the growth. Find people who have already walked the path and learn from them. Whether that is a mentor, a coach, or a community of other gym owners, you cannot build this alone, and you should not try to. She said finding SCORE, a free mentoring organization for small business owners, was something she wished she had done in year one rather than year fifteen. The lesson is simple. The experience is available. You just have to go and get it.
- Resilience is the non-negotiable.
Mimi ended the conversation with something that stuck with everyone in the room. She said that resilience is required in this industry. As an athlete. As a coach. And as an owner. Gymnastics trains it. The sport builds it. But the business will demand it in ways no amount of training can fully prepare you for. The difference, she said, is whether you have the vision, the systems, and the people around you to keep going when it gets hard. Those things do not happen by accident. They are built, intentionally, one decision at a time.
What This Means For Your Gym
Whether you are two years in or twenty, the lessons from Mimi's story point to the same place. The gym owners who build something lasting are not the ones who work the hardest. They are the ones who got clear on their vision, built their systems before they needed them, and found the right people to help them execute. If you are a gym owner right now and you are not sure what the next three years of your business look like, or you know where you want to go but you are not sure how to get there, that is exactly what our free strategy call is built for. It is called the 3 Year Growth Compass. One focused conversation. Where you are now. Where you want to be. And the clearest path to get from one to the other. No pitch. No pressure. Just clarity.