Words from our Leader to Celebrate 10 Years

MadLab School of Fitness is 10 years old.

In the next 10 nights of posts – as we lead up to our July 18th Beach Day Celebration – Craig “Patty” Patterson is taking over the blog to tell you our story: A rich 10-year history of trial and error, successes and failures, that has led us to where we are in 2015.

A lot of time, blood, sweat, tears have gone into the last 10 years – and into writing this story – so grab a drink, relax and enjoy this Introduction and the 10 chapters to follow.

Without further ado, here’s Patty:

INTRODUCTION

I am Craig Patterson, the owner and CEO of MadLab School of Fitness and The MadLab Group. I was born an entrepreneur. Over the course of my life—growing up in Gaspe, Quebec, watching my mother Heather run a very successful hairdressing salon, playing university hockey, working as a mechanical engineer, owning and operating a gym, coaching, and turning my gym into a provincially-registered School of Fitness, taught me a number of lessons for business and for life. These lessons are the backbone of what we’re doing today.

Even when I was a kid growing up in Gaspe—a minority English-speaker playing hockey in a French-speaking area where the government was on a mission to drive all Anglophones out of the province—I was interested in generating my own business.

I knew one thing at the age of 12: I didn’t like people breathing down my neck all the time. I didn’t want my parents doing it, and I certainly didn’t want a boss on my case all the time.

My sister and my Mom got in scraps about grades in school all the time, and it eventually became a mission for “The Beav” (my sister) to start prying into my shit. My dad, Deano “Vasolino” Patterson, took issue with this and told me real early on: “Just get 85 percent in every subject and nobody will be bothering you about school.”

Problem solved.

This meant I had to get myself out of bed, make my own breakfast—ultimately live a self-sufficient life that I was thankful for.

Every now and then there was a behaviour issue or I’d punch a kid in the nose, and my parents would intervene and help me through the issue. “He took my baseball. What was I supposed to do?” But generally, it was a seamless arrangement.

This piece of mind my Dad taught me led to the first business model rule that has built the MadLab Group: Performance-Based pay. If you are good at what you do, you don’t need to grade grub, kiss ass or sabotage others to get ahead. If you produce and perform, and aren’t a problem to others, nobody will fuck with you.

As I mentioned before, my parents didn’t micro-manage my life, and this gave me freedom to pursue whatever I wanted. When I was 12, I fell in love with the 1983 Suzuki RM80 motorcycle. This bike was the balls — the first of its kind with a “Full Floater” suspension. It won every shootout in Motorcycle Digest. I had to have it.

I asked my parents for it. “Jesus Christ, $950 for a Motorcycle?”

There had to be a way.

So after a lot of thought (and whining), I tabled an idea. If I came up with $350, would Deano front the rest? He agreed, thinking I’d take 5 years to come up with my end.

To earn the cash, I got into the lawn mowing business. I knocked on a lot of doors, did a good job and earned myself business. I also got a contract with the school to mow their lawn. I quickly learned making money was fun, and within six weeks I came back to the table with my $350. 

But the old man didn’t have his $600. He hadn’t figured on this happening so quickly, so he tried to throw a wrench in the process. My mom stepped in and said, “A deal is a deal,” and told him to quicken his pace.

This is the first life lesson: Never go back on your word and try to change a deal.

After I got my bike, I kept my lawn mowing business—dictated by the free market. I was raking in money in no time. If I didn’t mow those lawns well, I’d lose a client.

Lawn mowing was fine, but it wasn’t a passion. I didn’t know it at the time, but I felt it. I needed to upgrade my business to something I enjoyed more.

Just like magic, that summer, Jerry Patterson showed up in Gaspe with the Def Leppard Pyromania album. With that album in tow, he could turn any place into an instant party. Wherever he was, when he put on that album, girls would round around to listen.

You couldn’t buy the album in Gaspe. So I convinced him to sell it to me for $20 and he could go back to Toronto and buy a new one for $7. He took the deal.

This spawned the start of something new: I started sourcing more and more music until I had an arsenal. I eventually took my lawn money to Montreal and bought a $1,000 Yamaha Amp and some Cerwin Vega D9 speakers. Now some of you might not know this, but a set of D9’s pumping at 4 ohms can create a serious party. I reasoned I’d be able to up the ante pretty high on any party if the time presented itself. And I did. But it didn’t occur to me that this passion of having friends (and girls) wanting to come over to the house and listen to music all the time had a commercial application.

Then one day, my mom was in town and heard that the main DJ in town had double booked himself. My mom said, “Craig can do that. He’ll do a better job anyway.” I got my first DJ contract at a TD Bank Christmas party.

By the time I was 16, my disco mobile business was charging $250 a night. And I was booked almost every weekend. I was rich bitches!!! I was rolling in a new Camero (parents helped me out with that), with my $750 purebred basket hound Wendel by my side, Air Jordan’s on my feet, and the hottest girl in school—Sherry Phillips—under my arm.

This led me to life lesson two: Love not just what you do, but also the people you do it with.

This lesson was reiterated while studying engineering at McGill University. I would have done anything to go back to mowing lawns. Instead, I was studying mechanical engineering and hated it. All my entrepreneurial pursuits had been shut down, and I was surrounded by stale engineering students, whose sole purpose was to get good marks. They went through their days with their heads up their asses. The greatest party city in the world, and they were studying on Saturday night, or too lame to get in anywhere good anyway.

After a few years an underground scene emerged. It turns out about 10 percent of the people in Engineering wanted to enjoy the ride, to explore and have fun along the way. And did they ever. My 25-year-old mentor told me in second-year, “Patterson, this can be the worst 4 years of your life or you best 7.” I met some of the biggest mental cases in my life at McGill, many of whom I am still close with today. (For the record, I got it done in five. My sister (The Beav) would have disowned me).

I digress.

*******

From the MadLab Group’s belief in the free market, to believing in what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with, to specific codes of conducts for clients, coaches and business owners, to the way we develop coaches, each part of our business is based on a different lesson we learned along the way, with the trump card being: HAVE FUN!

After 10 years, I can say it’s working. The MadLab Group today has 150-plus gym owners who are on board with our system, (with zero marketing or sales) who have seen real, tangible improvements in their business since adopting our Best Practices. (The results are fascinating. We will show you these at the end.)

And we have developed one of the most successful fitness facilities in the world – MadLab School of Fitness — a business where coaches have found a way to make long-lasting, professional livings (a rarity for the fitness industry).

Come back tomorrow night to read chapter one. And chapter two the following night. On top of releasing our business story, you’ll get to know the creatures and characters who have played a role in the process. And I promise, we’ll entertain you along the way.

– Patty

Wednesday Lesson Plan

Warm Up: Coach Choice

Incl. Wrist Mobility Drills

Strength/Skill:

A) 10min OTM Handstand Hold

Partner Trade Off w/ Spot: Fingertips to Wall

B1) 3×3 Overhead Squat

No fails.

B2) 3×5/5 Side Over Arch

Conditioning:

20 Goblet Reverse Lunges 55/35

60 Double Unders

20 Goblet Reverse Lunges

40 Double Unders

20 Goblet Reverse Lunges

20 Double Unders