(This article is 1,639 words long and takes about 9 minutes to read.)
I just shut down a business at a huge loss.
It was a B2B SAAS client management tool for personal trainers called QuickCoach.
On paper, it looked impressive. Over 5 years we had 36,521 users who used QC to train 196,867 clients with 3.6 million workouts.
So why shut it down?
The catalyst for this decision was the birth of Jasmine, my third child.
Every kid I’ve had has sharpened my focus by reducing my patience for anything that’s working well, but not great. Even moderate success creates inertia—walking away from something broken is easy. Walking away from something that’s working decently-well, on the other hand, is brutally hard, even for something better.
Having kids reduces the amount of fucks I have to give. Less time and energy has proven to be a useful constraint.
When I started QuickCoach, I was an ambitious business person. Now I’m an ambitious man.
- An ambitious business person chases money and status.
- An ambitious man is driven by family, exploration, and ruthless focus on work that matters.
Entrepreneurs obsess over time. I obsess over creative energy. If you have time but no creative energy, you’re not going to accomplish anything anyway.
Lots to cover. It’s a long story. I’ll do my best to hit on it all.
-First, the vision for QuickCoach.
-Next, the harsh reality of running a B2B SAAS in a competitive space with a small total available market (TAM).
-Following that, four major takeaways.
-And finally, some thoughts on the tradeoffs we all have to accept if we want to take a shot at excellence.
Let’s get into it.
Why QuickCoach was Able to Break Through
From 2012-2019 I owned the biggest blog for personal trainers. We gathered a lot of data. One stat stood out:
92% of personal trainers never have more than 10 clients at a time.
Despite that, every software platform was built for the other 8%. They all had:
- Robust automations.
- Tons of features most trainers never use.
The opportunity was obvious: Most trainers were stuck with Google Sheets or pen and paper.
The best businesses are often the simplest—Bic pens, Casio watches, Craigslist. They don’t get headlines, but they print money year after year.
Why hadn’t anyone built simple software for trainers?
It’s because the churn rate of the fitness industry is too high.
Some more data:
Certified trainers stay an average of eight months. If they land five clients, they might last two years. But even the successful ones rarely stay longer.
High churn means high acquisition cost and low lifetime value. Which forces you to pack in features to charge more. In other words: extract maximum value, fast.
Other companies had more money, bigger teams, and network effects. I couldn’t compete on features. I needed to play a different game—one where I had leverage they didn’t.
Leverage #1 – Profitable core business:
Another business I owned, the Online Trainer Academy (OTA), was generating millions in annual profit. Social media algorithms were getting more difficult to depend upon. I needed a new way to generate leads. QC as a freemium SAAS platform could be used as lead gen for OTA to fund its initial growth.
This worked to both feed OTA and get QC to its critical mass to stand on its own.
Leverage #2 – Organic (free) marketing assets:
We had a website with millions of unique visitors a year. Large email list. And big social media accounts. My self-published books for personal trainers have sold over 200,000 copies.
I revised key articles and the book manuscripts adding in ads for QuickCoach.
I ran free Kindle giveaways of the updated books, moving 6,000+ copies at a time.
Leverage #3 – Personal brand:
No other company in our space has a recognizable figure as a front-face. I anticipated that we’d benefit from the trust I’ve worked hard to build over 10 years writing online in my industry.
–
The strategy worked at first. After a lengthy product innovation and beta period, QuickCoach officially launched to the public in 2022.
We nailed the product, the vision, and the market opportunity. 5,000 trainers registered in the first week. But none of that ended up mattering . . .
The Harsh Reality-We were losing (a lot of) money
Our free tier was too generous. Most users stayed on it. The paid option only generated $11,000 MRR against $31,000 in monthly expenses. QuickCoach was losing $20,000 a month.
The path to profitability seemed clear: eliminate the free tier.
Even conservative estimates put us at break-even within 4-6 months—but that meant burning another $80,000-$120,000 to get there.
Here’s what I realized: I didn’t want to run a software company.
You can have a great product, strong product-market fit, and tens of thousands of users—none of it matters if execution is shit. And when the owner is checked out, execution will be shit. QuickCoach’s failure is on me.
Why not hire someone to run it?
I tried. Over the years I had conversations with potential operators. I thought I’d found the right person multiple times. Each one walked.
Because they could tell I didn’t care.
To attract real talent for a role this critical, you need to radiate passion and vision. You need a lengthy vetting process. I couldn’t fake it, and they knew.
So I ran the numbers again: 4-6 months to find someone, another $100,000 lost, and no guarantee they’d succeed. Selling faced the same problem—to whom? How long? How much energy would that drain?
What about the users?
Client management software represents a massive time investment. Switching platforms sucks.
People are angry. Some say I abused their trust.
I lost $1.4 million giving away free software for five years. I acted in good faith. But I also understand their frustration—they invested in QuickCoach, and I’m walking away.
Here’s the truth: shutting down wasn’t just right for me. It was right for them too. Short-term, it’s painful and disruptive. Long-term, they deserve a company committed to growing with them. Once it was clear that wouldn’t be us, the only ethical move was to shut down.
I created a transition plan to help existing users move to Trainerize and gave everyone time to migrate. They don’t have to go there—I just needed to provide a clear path forward.
This was a real opportunity. I gave it everything I had. It didn’t work. Businesses open and close. I feel for everyone affected, but I also know you’ll be better off with a company that actually wants to be in this fight.
3 Big Lessons Learned
Execution matters more than vision
Identifying a great opportunity means nothing if you aren’t obsessed with making the product better every single day.
Ego is expensive
When I told people I owned a software company with tens of thousands of users, they were visibly impressed. No one knew it was losing money.
Meanwhile, my coaching business generates millions in profit annually. But somehow a profitable coaching business doesn’t carry the same cachet as a money-losing tech company.
The dumbest part? I’m actually worried people won’t find me as impressive now. Ego is expensive—and often irrational.
Cognitive load is real
I didn’t operate QuickCoach day-to-day, but I thought about it every single day. It didn’t consume my time, but it drained my creative energy.
Which brings me to what I’m focusing on now.
What are you willing to sacrifice for excellence?
When you make a lot of money, you tend to make life more comfortable. But comfort breeds distraction. You’re not on your A-game anymore. You stop innovating and start accepting external demands that drain the energy and fire the people you love depend on.
The hard part, once you’ve achieved some success, is keeping that fire burning. To keep improving, creating, innovating. And that requires sacrifice. If you want to show up fully for one thing, you cannot show up for everything else.
There are a thousand things we could all be mediocre to good at. Those thousand things are distractions from where our attention should actually go.
We all have one or two things we can be truly world-class at. Things that we, at first, enjoyed being bad at. It’s hard to explain—some woo woo shit that’s also real shit. There’s surely some aspect of your work that never burns you out. You have boundless energy for it. I call it the worthy struggle. If you have the luxury, spend as much time there as possible and as little as possible anywhere else.
In life, the challenge isn’t figuring out how to play the game. It’s finding the right game to play.
My goal is to be a world class author.
I’m obsessed with the journey to get there. My next book, Unhinged Habits, which is coming out at the end of January, is another step on that path.
I’m not world-class yet. I might never get there. I don’t even know what that means. All I know is it demands my full attention.
Losing $1.4 million on a SaaS project sucks. Letting down our users sucks. QuickCoach was a great opportunity—but it was a distraction. So it had to go.
My 15-year career as a business owner can be best defined by “fuck around and find out.”
I’ve done a lot: 8 digital programs, 3 memberships, 5 conferences, 12 books, a software platform. In every case, I went all in. And in every case, I had no sunk cost bias.
Because every attempt is another rep. All part of the search for that singular thing worth pursuing excellence on.
Yeah, it’s unhinged. But I tend to think that’s a good word.
The whole world tries to get you to conform—to settle for “okay” instead of going for excellence. It does this by presenting you with distractions masked as opportunities.
If there’s one thing I want you to take from my story, it’s to figure out what works for you and do more of it, accepting the inevitable tradeoffs.
-Jon
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