Experience is a great teacher

Y-Fit will reach the 2 year mark at the end of the month and the growth has been amazing. Starting a sportswear brand is very difficult, especially in a world where this is a certain order and for a new brand, it is hard to establish yourself. I’m personally grateful to everyone who has supported Y-Fit because I understand how hard it is to get someone to buy into something new.
Over the past two years, as much as the brand has grown, I feel like I’ve grown so much personally. As someone who didn’t have any experience in fashion or business, I have learnt so much. There is something special about practical learning, I can draw from real life results rather than projections and theories. I think it was the combination of my health issues and a lack of ‘ experience’ that forced me to having perspective, to chasing my dreams, go all in and learn as you go because life is short. The aim is to become a practitioner, learning by doing and learning from the outcomes, whether success or failure, but the failures have been lessons not losses because the experience has put me in a position to win because is feedback is life lessons and I’m further ahead than the more qualified person who hasn’t started yet.
So in the space of 2 years, without any prior experience in fashion or business, I have a growing sportswear brand, been doing it full-time for 12 months, spoken at Brunel University on entrepreneurship and branding as well as doing a workshop about the production process, designed clothing for high profile people and experience brought me to this point. I wasn’t ready, I didn’t have any experience but I had a passion and was purposefully in wanting to learn how to run a company, to learn about the process of design and producing high quality clothing, especially as sportswear is so technical. I may of not had experience in the creation of clothing but I had a lot of experience as the athlete who wore the clothing and as an analyst who has an eye for detail. So my experience and perspective was just different, it wasn’t that I had no experience, my pov was just from a different angle and I believe my pov and my mindset has made me effective as an entrepreneur and in running the brand. 
When you have a passion, you find a way to make it work, especially when it is so fulfilling and you love the process. I love learning and as an entrepreneur I’m learning daily. I put that down to being a practical learner and being self-aware. Knowing what the most effective way you learn is important so you can put yourself in the best position to succeed. The main thing I’ve learnt up to this point now the business is in a place where the brand has great potential is how plan properly.
So I’m becoming more calculated and strategising more than before so I can execute better. I would ‘jump out of the window’ before thinking it through which isn’t a bad thing in terms of doing, but I’m learning to stop learning from my mistakes and rather from the mistakes of others, by reading books, getting advice from successful people, it can further put the brand in a position to succeed. 
I love the game of entrepreneurship, I see it like sport and fitness, in order to grow you must do, put in the work, reading is not enough, you must apply the knowledge because the experience is the key. The diamond is not in the clouds, it’s in the dirt aka the grind.

Persevere

Obstacles can reveal a strength you didn’t know you had. That’s why it’s important that you follow your dreams. What it does is mould your character because the road you take is filled with challenges and those challenges shape you into the person you aspire to become. The journey becomes less and less about your goals and more about the process of growth, however uncomfortable it may feel. Your goals become a byproduct of your growth and your ambition. That’s why achievement feels so good.

I personally have had a very difficult last few months and for the first time since I started the brand almost 2 years ago, I have been doubting myself and my capabilities to succeed. I have big ambitions and goals but they have recently become a burden. I’m a confident person and this journey has really revealed weaknesses in my character. Initially I was disheartened by that, I began to feel doubtful and the fact giving up even entered my mind surprised me. As the brand grows, so do the expectations, not just my expectations but of those around me and of the people who believe in the brand.

That brings a certain pressure that I don’t like but I realised that this is an obstacle trying to blind me from the reason I started the brand in the first place. It was out of gratitude for life and good health. I just wanted to spread a positive message through my brand. Sometimes the process can make us lose sight of our purpose. I initially was upset that I had these feelings of doubt but then I owned them and remembered this is all part of the story, the downs are part of the process, this is part of my personal growth, my ambition is refining my character and giving me an understanding of life that a place of comfort couldn’t. If I feel pressured to achieve from a place of fear, I will give up. The only way I will have the strength to persevere and achieve is if I remember my vision and my purpose. I need to remember why I decided to take this path in the first place, creating your own path comes with its challenges but remember that your choice was from a place of wanting to create your own happiness. The fact people are inspired by something I created helps me stay strong and not give up. You are stronger than you think, especially when you are motivated. So whatever your motivation, carry it with you always.

Have faith and persevere, you will pull through, imagine yourself sharing your testimony and explaining how you didn’t give up, then imagine the impact that could have on someone who is going through their own struggles and they decide to persevere because you did.

‘The feeling of success outweighs the pain of the process.’

What is the cost of your ambition?

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the cost of my ambition? What do I want to happen? Then work backwards from my end goal. It’s about my actions being dictated by my vision. It’s about realising what it takes to achieve my goals and if I’m willing to pay the price of that cost. That helps me plan and execute. We all have different goals and ambition so it’s about your actions reflecting that ambition.

I have written goals all my career goals and under each goal, the things I need to do so I achieve them. It’s interesting because it’s about weighing up the cost of your ambition, when you actually see what you have to do, it’s then you see what it takes and decide if it’s really what you want. I have had discussions with friends about what they want to achieve in life and then I ask about what they are doing to achieve those things and the answers didn’t add up.

Then it made me think more broadly and I asked myself why most people don’t achieve their goals? People are not willing to do what it really takes to achieve those goals. Being willing is the key. We all have different goals so it’s not about the size of the goals, it’s about your actions matching your vision. I know that to achieve my goals I must do what many people are not willing to do because I want something not many people have. It’s a mindset thing.

Life has its way of rewarding your actions. You want to be the best at something, you have to put the work in, put in the necessary time and application to match someone who is deemed worthy of being called ‘the best’. That’s the cost of what you want to happen.

It takes humility because your vision can be big but your work ethic has to match the size of your dreams or you are just a dreamer. We all want to be achieve great things but only a few do because the few are actually prepared to do what it takes. Ambitious in thought, humble in action.

I see work as faith in action and the cost of my ambition rather than just work because it’s part of the process.

My costs are different to yours, or maybe there are similar but whatever your ambition is, ask yourself if your actions reflect what you want to happen and where you want to be.

Fuelled by gratitude

Hi! How you doing?
I have been in a reflective mood lately and I like to write so felt like sharing my thoughts with you. 
Life has been difficult of late but I have been feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude for where my life is at and that makes me put into perspective my current challenges.
The fact there is someone on the other side of the world wearing something that I have created is truly humbling. It’s crazy because I never envisioned my life to be this, as an entrepreneur with my own sportswear brand, even though it’s something I had thought about before, but there are thoughts and then there is reality. I describe this path as ‘accidentally finding my purpose.’
It started in 2015 when I spent a week in hospital after one day randomly waking up with sharp stomach pains. Turned out one of my kidneys broke down and the doctors said I should consider my future as at the time I was playing football semi-professionally and my health situation made things complicated. So while in hospital I had a lot of time to think about my life and where I was at the time and although I was playing football and had a good job, I was just drifting through life, without purpose or drive. What this health scare did for me was give me perspective and gratitude for good health and life in general. It wasn’t that I lacked gratitude for my health before this, it was that I wasn’t fuelled by gratitude and sometimes you only really appreciate something when it’s taken away. I had taken for granted the gift of health and my personal gifts which led me to not fully grasp the opportunities I had to progress my career. It was at that moment whilst laying in hospital that I decided from that point on to live my life purposefully and to always be fuelled by gratitude.
The Y-Fit logo symbolizes hope & overcoming adversity but it also is a reminder for me to be grateful for my health, to persevere until the end for my why, and also that this particular situation was the inception of my mindset shift. An accident had led me to my purpose.
Y-Fit is a result of that purposeful mindset and letting my gratitude for life & good health be expressed through the way I live my life and follow my dreams.
Fast forward 3 years, my health is great, the brand is a year and a half old, I have designed clothing for celebrities, had celebrities and pro athletes endorse the brand, people in various countries wearing Y-Fit, done interviews, spoke in front of young students at Brunel University and for all those things I’m grateful.
It’s important to take moments to reflect on how far you have come and take pride in what you have achieved so far. I realise that even though there is still a long way to go, I have done something I would have never thought I could do especially coming from where I come from. When you come from nothing, you learn to appreciate any blessing, it’s not about the size of the blessing, it’s about the fact you have been blessed and you are blessed.
Gratitude opens the door for good things to happen.
I’m grateful for all the blessings and the fact that people are inspired by the brand & my story. That fuels my ambition to succeed in all I do and I hope my example can motivates others to follow their dreams too.

Thanks,Mark