The Power of Community
If you’ve ever played any team sports growing up, you know what it means and feels like to be on a team. You don’t win alone; you win as a team; and conversely, you don’t lose alone either; you lose as a team. There’s a power in that. It’s a group of people you spend hours a week training with towards a common goal. A bunch of like-minded individuals who aspire to achieve the same success you do.
And if you’ve been fortunate enough to be on a team in high school or later in life, you know how far beyond a sports team your team members go. They oftentimes become your closest friends and people you can confide in. They become your social group, who you hang out with in your free time, who you introduce to your girlfriend or boyfriend, and people you can count on to be there for you when you need them. They become more than your team, they become your community.
The idea of creating and having a community has always been at the forefront of GTY Performance. Yes, we always wanted to create a brand, a supplement company, and an image of progress, but none of that is possible without a strong community as your support system and foundation.
Recently, we went forward and started the GTY Performance Run Club. People in our local area all gather on Saturday mornings to start their weekend off right with some fitness and good vibes. I think my two favorite parts of our run club are before and after the run—when everyone is meeting up and saying hello, and afterward when everyone finishes up and is energized, swapping stories of their runs. The run itself, as important as it is, is not the most valuable part of our running club - it’s our community.
We have people ask us all the time if they can join our next run club meet, but a lot of the time their next question is asking how far we plan on running. And that’s a fair question. If you’re not much of a runner, the last thing you probably want to do is join some hardcore run club that runs 12 miles on a Saturday at a 7:00-minute mile pace. Luckily, that is not our run club. Our answer every time is, “However far you feel comfortable running.”
Once our run starts, people spread out quickly. We have people all over the running spectrum who come to our run club. We have folks training for races and who take their runs very seriously, we have friends and new members who use this as an opportunity to run with faster and longer-distance runners than they would normally feel comfortable running, we have people who come as an excuse to get themselves out of the house and do something productive, and we have people who come just to meet new friends in the area and create a more in-depth social group. And we love every single person’s reasoning for coming. THAT is the community we have always envisioned creating. Regardless of which person you may be in the above, you are finding your 1% that day and doing something for your own self-betterment.
Our goal is to grow GTY Performance to the extent that our community reaches individuals all over the world. There’s no worse feeling than feeling like you don’t fit in or worrying about being judged. But if we can grow GTY Performance to the point where, when you see someone else in public rocking GTY Performance apparel, you already know that person could be a friend and is a like-minded individual, then we have done our job.
Iron sharpens iron. Have a great week!
