Shanli Liu compares training for a fitness competition to scaling a business. Both require periods of exhaustion and discomfort where real progress happens. The payoff comes later, but the grind itself is the cost of growth.
I learned from my first fitness competitions that apply to how I grow businesses is that most of the time when you are making the most amount of progress in life, it's when you're wildly uncomfortable. And so the entire time I was preparing for this competition, I felt like crap. I was exhausted, I never had time for anything, and I was in a bad mood half the time because I'm so tired and I'm putting all this energy into something. And the same kind of translates to business. When we were growing like a rocket ship, I was tired, I felt like I had no time, I was exhausted, and there was no time to do anything. And the reason is because when you're expanding, you're expending a ton of energy. And so the same goes for fitness as it goes for business, is that in order to expand, you have to first expend. And it doesn't always feel good in the moment, but it feels good when you reach the goal.
