BIO: Dana Anspach is the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, LLC, a firm specializing in retirement income planning. In 2022, Sensible Money ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing privately owned companies in the U.S.
STORY: Dana loved a fitness product so much that she decided to open her own franchise. Soon enough, she discovered running a business is so much different from loving its product. She sold the company at a loss.
LEARNING: Just because a product is great doesn’t mean the business will succeed. Instead of opening a second business, create a new revenue stream in your existing one.
“Just because you love the product doesn’t mean the business itself will be highly profitable.”
Dana Anspach
Guest profile
Dana Anspach is the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, LLC, a firm specializing in retirement income planning. In 2022, Sensible Money ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing privately owned companies in the U.S.
She is the author of How to Plan for the Perfect Retirement, a lecture series on The Great Courses and Control Your Retirement Destiny, available on Amazon. She has hundreds of articles online and numerous educational webinars on YouTube. Because of her continuing contributions to financial literacy, Investopedia named her three times to the country’s Top 100 Financial Advisors.
Worst investment ever
Fitness has been part of Dana’s life. One of her best friends married a man who founded a fitness franchise called Rockbox Fitness. When her friend moved to North Carolina, Dana and her fiancee visited. They went to check out Rockbox, and it was terrific. This was the best workout she’d ever been to.
The couple inquired how much it costs to open a franchise, and they felt the franchise fee was reasonable. The price was about $40,000 at the time. The couple decided to open a franchise since there were none in the Phoenix area. They signed up to open four because of economies of scale—they wouldn’t profit from one.
They found a beautiful location a mile from their house, did the pre-sales, followed the program exactly, and opened their franchise in October 2019. They had the most successful opening that the franchise had had so far. Running the gyms turned out to be more exhausting than Dana had anticipated.
She thought it was all about handling the financials, payroll, and stuff that could be done in the background. But the gym required her to be at the forefront too. Not only that, they were open for less than six months when COVID hit. They had to shut down for eight weeks. They reopened for about four weeks and then got shut down again. At that point, Dana decided this wasn’t going to work.
Eventually, they found a buyer for the franchise. The sale was substantially less than what the couple had put into it. Getting the franchise open cost about $400,000; they sold it for just $100,000.
Lessons learned
- Loving a product and being thrilled with the daily running of the business and making it profitable are two different things.
- Just because a product is great doesn’t mean the business will be a success.
Andrew’s takeaways
- Instead of opening a second business, create a new revenue stream in your existing one and make sure it’s five times higher.
Actionable advice
If you have a financial planner, run your investment ideas by them and listen to them.
Dana’s recommendations
When it comes to investing, Dana recommends her go-to books, The Four Pillars of Investing, The Behavior Gap, and The Psychology of Money. She also recommends visiting her website Sensible Money which has a learning page with all kinds of resources you can download. She also hosts a free webinar about every six weeks.
No.1 goal for the next 12 months
Dana’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to focus on the next growth phase for the business.
Parting words
“It’s been wonderful to be here. Thank you.”
Dana Anspach
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