When I set out to open a cheer business with Hybrid, I had zero clue. I walked away from a career where I could’ve been making good money in a nice suit with a nice title, and I traded it for an idea and nothing else. Everybody thought I was crazy. To be fair to myself, there wasn’t much of a roadmap to follow. Cheer training facilities, gyms that just teach skills without offering a competitive team as the outlet, barely existed yet.

The industry’s meat and potatoes had always been the all-star gym model: athletes pay to train so they can compete as part of a team. Nobody had built the alternative, so nobody had the answers on how to structure it, price it, or set commitment levels. I didn’t have the answers either. I jumped in anyway.

The Leap Nobody Recommends

I sold my car and signed a lease to pay a landlord $2,400 a month while making zero dollars a month. Every internet guru will tell you that you have to take risks, and conceptually, sure. But you cannot understand the emotional weight of a real risk until you’re the one who signed the lease. On paper, it looked like a terrible idea: no structured business model, no comparable company to reference, $0 in revenue. I remember sending that lease back and thinking, “What did I just do?”

That’s how our first affiliate cheer training gym, Hybrid Jax, started.

The Trade Off

Something clearly worked out, because I’m still here. But there was no secret ingredient. I picked one thing, made a decision, and put all my eggs in one basket. Then I showed up every day for years. 12 to 14 hours a day.

Looking back, the realization is simple: there is no secret formula for building a cheer business or any business. It’s a series of trade-offs, made over and over, for a long time. Everybody wants the result. Almost nobody wants to make the actual trades required to get it.

What I Actually Traded

I traded a secure job. I traded weekends, holidays, vacations, time with friends and family. The worst trade, the one nobody warns you about, was giving up my ability to absorb risk. Signing a lease at $2,400 a month with no income meant I had nothing left over. No cushion for a car problem, a medical bill, anything. I had no money to weather a storm, and life doesn’t ask permission before it throws one at you.

Different Starting Points, Same Question

People get hung up on their starting point: their education, their financial position, their background, their experience.

Those things are real and they matter. But none of them remove your ability to make trades. The trades just look different depending on where you start. That’s the part people miss when they compare their situation to someone else’s.

You don’t build something by waiting for the conditions to be perfect. You build it by asking one simple but deep question: what am I willing to trade?

The Same Principle Applies to Athletes

Every athlete who improves is making trades constantly. Trades like free time for reps, comfort for progress, immediate gratification for long-term gain.

No money for privates? Find a free resource. No gym nearby? Use your backyard. No backyard? Use the local park. Friends invite you out, but it’s a tumble day or a stunt day? You get the work done first, then you go. That is a trade-off, and sometimes the trade is missing out entirely.

None of this means life has to be miserable, and balance does matter. But if the goal is to become one of the top performers in your field, cheerleading or anything else, you will not get there by optimizing for balance. You get there by asking whether you’re willing to trade some of that balance for the specific thing you’re chasing.

Ownership, Not Business, Was the Real Lesson

The biggest thing entrepreneurship taught me wasn’t business. It was ownership.

Ownership of the trade-offs.

Those are my decisions. I own them, whether I choose to make a trade or choose not to.

By my own definition, where the business stands today is a success.

And what I learned in that process is that success isn’t a mystery. It’s a collection of the same trades, made repeatedly, over a long stretch of time.

Take the risk. Make the decision. Accept the trade-offs. Keep showing up. That’s the whole formula… for building a cheer business, and for building anything worth building.