Isaiah Stanback reinvented himself as an entrepreneur after retiring from football. He recently... [+]
Making the switch from pro sports to entrepreneurship isn’t easy, as Isaiah Stanback, who started Steadfast Fitness and Performance after retiring from the NFL, discovered. Stanback, 31, had played for the Dallas Cowboys, the New England Patriots and the New York Giants, winning a Super Bowl. But after repeated injuries, he was released from the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2013.
While NFL players can make a fortune in the years they play, few do a good job of saving or planning financially for the decades to come after retirement from the game. Stanback was better at planning than most: He set the groundwork for Coppell, Texas-based Steadfast Fitness, which he opened with a partner before his retirement, by getting an MBA from George Washington University. But he struggled, psychologically and financially, with the transition from pro football to running a business.
I spoke with Stanback about setting up Steadfast, the bumpy road to its recent expansion from apartment-sized gym to 14,000-square-foot fitness facility, and why he thinks the business has a million-dollar opportunity. What follows is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.
Amy Feldman: Tell me about the fitness facility you set up.
Isaiah Stanback: With my history of injuries I could see I wasn’t going to have the long career I wanted. When I got home to Seattle to play for the Seahawks, and I tore my Achilles, all the dreams and aspirations I had as a kid – that was taken away at that moment. I knew I could be healthy again, but I would never have a real shot at that big payday again. I hate school, it’s not my forte, but I did it because I have to. I found a program out of George Washington University that had an affiliation with the NFL. I won the Super Bowl and got my MBA, but I was still lost about what I wanted to do next. I wanted to connect my faith to what I love, which is fitness and sports.
Feldman: How did you do that?
Stanback: I was still playing in the NFL. It was the off season, and I was in school and thinking about what was next. I started visualizing, and driving around, looking at locations. I had read about guys overextending and that being their downfall financially, so I wanted to start off small. We opened the business in March 2013, and I retired from the NFL that August. The same day I got released from the Jacksonville Jaguars, I got a phone call from my wife that we were having twins. So I made a decision, I think I’m done. I chilled out that weekend, and on Monday I went in to work.
Feldman: Did that feel jarring?
Stanback: It was scary. I’m used to making 30-grand a day, and here I’m lucky to make 30-grand a year. It was definitely some shock. I had to think back to, hey, where did I start at as a little kid? I thought back to those mornings where my coach got me up at 4. Success didn’t happen overnight in sports, so I can’t expect it to happen overnight in business.
Feldman: Were you able to roll the money you’d made from the NFL into the business?
Stanback: People hear numbers on TV about these huge contracts. The majority of guys on the team are making $300,000. As an athlete when you a sign a contract that puts you in the highest tax bracket and you pay 3% right away to your agent, and I’m a Christian so I tithe 10%. I was in the documentary “Broke” on ESPN with one of the financial guys in Dallas who was mentoring myself and some baseball guys who made a lot of money. You hear these stories about guys out of the League, and they’re broke. In football, it doesn’t take much. So I think I put in $15-grand when I started the business. Then I probably put in another $15-20-grand because when we initially did our projections I miscalculated.
Feldman: How did you get from there to the expansion?
Stanback: We had signed a three-year lease, and wanted to outgrow our space. The whole space, including the bathrooms and storage, was 1,500 square feet. The actual gym floor space was about 900 square feet. We used to train a group of soccer girls, and we had to shut down to accommodate them. We packed people into the space for our bootcamps on Saturday.
Feldman: Sounds like you really needed more space.
Stanback: Our current place put a space up for lease. It was in the back of the shopping center, about 5,500-5,600 square feet. Was it what we wanted? No. Was it better than what we had? Yes. We started the process. They sent us plans, what they were going to build out. When it came time to get the contract done, they stopped returning my phone calls.
Feldman: What? What happened?
Stanback: I was calling them every day, and emailing, too. They were in negotiations with a big gym called Youfit. Instead of telling us, they just stopped responding. We have a great relationship with the city, the chamber, and we’re doing 5ks, but all these places didn’t want us.
Feldman: Why didn’t they want you?
Stanback: Gyms were closing left and right, and it was putting landlords in a bad position. So if landlords heard a gym was coming in, they didn’t want anything to do with it. They didn’t think it was a sustainable business. We were in negotiations for six months for this space.
Feldman: How was the process of getting financing for the expansion?
Stanback: It was substantially worse than I expected. We got shot down by easily over a dozen banks. It was hard for me as an individual. I had to humble myself down to ask. It was very uncomfortable, especially having played here.
Feldman: So they’re like, ‘Yeah, you played for the Cowboys, you should have money”?
Stanback: Yeah, exactly. My credit was shot. My credit score was low-600s. I had gone through the MBA, and we went through graduation, and they sent me a bill for $20,000. I didn’t have $20,000 to pay for that. Long story short, that $20,000 went to collections and turned into $26,000. When that’s sitting on your record while you’re trying to get financing, it’s not that appealing for bankers.
Feldman: Was there a point where you thought, ‘I’m just going to pay the $20,000 and make it go away?’
Stanback: I didn’t have the ability. I had three kids and a wife who wasn’t working, and I wasn’t sure at what point the business would start bringing in revenues that I could pocket. I had to make sure the security of my family was taken care of first.
Feldman: So you just went bank to bank?
Stanback: At least 12 banks. It got to the point where you expected to hear no. We went from the first year making $30-grand to the second year making $140-grand in a studio with two people, and we’re showing them the numbers and the projections. And I really got laughed in my face. It was frustrating, it was extremely frustrating.
Feldman: How did you move beyond that?
Stanback: A couple of clients did personal investments. That covered a small percentage of the funds we needed. Then someone in our network got us connected to [equipment-financing marketplace] LeaseQ. I had a folder ready to send off: Here’s our business plan, here’s our projections, take it. I expected a phone call, ‘sorry.’ The phone call I got back from them was, ‘we think we can do something.’ I turned to my business partner, and I was like, ‘no way.’ We went to work every day envisioning a large facility, and we’d been hearing no, and that hope was starting to diminish.
Feldman: That must have been a relief.
Stanback: Between the equipment financing [for $100,000 at a rate of 20%] and the personal investments, it was enough. We’ve done a lot of work ourselves, at one or two in the morning, getting stuff installed. We’re trying to save as much money as possible because we’re going up against places backed by a multi-million-dollar industry. But the opportunity is amazing.
Feldman: How big a business do you think it can become?
Stanback: I think in the next year, or year and half, we should be a million-dollar business.
Feldman: Three years in, how do you feel about the transition out of the League?
Stanback: There is still a huge reality check on the financial side of things. I got spoiled. That’s one of the hardest things transitioning out of professional sports. Even though football pays the worst of sports, I’m making $30,000 a game. And now I’m putting in way more hours. You have to find something you’re passionate about because you can’t change the money. I can see the effect that we’re having on people. There’s nothing else I could see myself doing personally.
