• John Madsen, 38, played for the Oakland Raiders and bought a gym after leaving the NFL.
• When COVID-19 hit, he pivoted to an online training platform called Supra Human.
• This is how he grew to make $250,000 a month from subscriptions, as told to Chris Stokel-Walker.

This as-told-to article is based on a conversation with John Madsen, a 38-year-old entrepreneur from Salt Lake City about growing his virtual business after leaving the NFL. It has been edited for length and clarity.

From when I was 5, I wanted to be a professional athlete. If you'd asked me in seventh grade, and later in high school, the answer would stay the same. But in high school, I was really tall and scrawny. I went to the weight room and got completely crushed and embarrassed.

I went home and told my parents I wasn't going to play football and instead concentrated all my efforts on basketball and baseball. But football remained my love. Although I never played a down of high-school football, I gained enough confidence to try out for junior college. I made the team, transferred to a bigger school, and ended up playing in the NFL a little bit after that.

Although it was a dream come true, there were downsides: I was living out of a suitcase for 3 1/2 years in a state of constant worry. There are the stars who are pretty secure, and then there's everybody else who is hanging on. I got to live the dream, make pretty good money for a 23-, 24-, and 25-year-old kid, but by the time I was 26, my career was over.

In my mind, there was no backup plan. I was working out at a 24 Hour Fitness, watching a trainer train all these high-school football kids. I remember thinking these kids just wasted an hour of their lives. There wasn't anything wrong with the fitness side, but the mentality was missing. 

In that moment, I realized I was going to open a performance gym, back in my hometown of Salt Lake City. This was back in 2010. 

I opened up a gym with my leftover NFL money to train high-school athletes. I wanted to equip them with the mindset of a championship athlete. Although it was usually full and I'd attracted high-end athletes, my bank account was always empty. I never figured out the business side.

About 3 1/2 years ago, my wife and I had a baby girl. I realized getting up at 4 a.m. and training in a gym until 9 p.m. was unsustainable. I needed to figure out how to scale my business. I set up Supra Human: online training targeting CEOs instead of high-school athletes. My clients are businesspeople between 35 and 50 with kids who live all over North America.

I shut the gym in March 2020 and never opened up again. That moment cemented my decision to move everything online. I built the company through social-media advertising. We know people are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I have a lot of CEOs and top business guys as clients. And even though they might not be commenting and sharing their lives on Instagram, make no mistake, they're on it. It was just a matter of tapping into their feeds. 

I had to figure out how much it costs to acquire a customer and the average lifetime value of a customer. After a lot of tweaking, and maybe losing a little money or breaking even for a while, I finally got the message and price point right, along with all the metrics.

It got to the point where I could turn $1 I spent into $2 back. Once I hit that, I just started to scale it. What if I spend $10,000 this month? Will I make $20,000? When that worked, I just started scaling up past $100,000 a month in advertising. It brought in a massive number of clients.

We now have 18 employees working as salespeople or coaches, or in operations. It went from me and an operations manager to a full-fledged business in a matter of months. 

Being the star player wasn't profitable. I needed to go into the owner's box and hire the best coaches and players possible to support the business I had built.

Our price points average about $4,000, but we have programs of ascension, which can range up to $30,000 for certain individuals. Then we have a down-sell option: If someone just wants a workout plan, they can pay $19 a month and have their workouts in our app.

We reached $250,000 in revenue per month in March. It was mind-blowing to me. I remember wanting to hit $100,000 once. It gave me a sense of security and accomplishment. I want to build Supra Human into a B2B operation, taking on coaches who want to learn my methods on how to build an incredible brand. Then, ultimately, I'm going to come out with a supplement line that I'm in love with.

The income is nice, but the impact is what holds the most weight in my heart. And that's truly what I'm after. Impact over everything. And the income always follows.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufonywusuipZ5lk6SupLSMn6CtppWowG60xJqjraBdl8K0tc2eqqxlnpu5brbOoaVmpZGZwKa6jK2mnZmpYn9xfpBmaGo%3D