Being a business owner, it has been great not having to create a resume over the years (I think I only made one for my first job out of college).

But I was thinking that many of you may not really know who I am besides that guy that sends out a lot of promo emails for products. I’ve been in the industry for so long that I even forget what I have done.

In previous emails I said I will be sharing more of my experiences, what I have learned, mistakes I’ve made, and also what’s working for me now. I’ve done a lot in the past 20+ years in the sports performance industry outside of training and coaching athletes that I don’t really talk about much.

I started Athletes Acceleration in 2004 with Latif Thomas (who I eventually bought out). Before that, I was a personal trainer (running the largest personal training department in Boston), a high school track coach, and interned for Mike Boyle. I was a Division 1 sprinter and graduated with an Exercise Science degree.

– Athletes Acceleration’s sports performance facility is located in North Attleboro, MA and is over 22,000 sq/ft (with an amazing staff). I open this facility with no clients (I actually moved from another state with my family just to open this gym  so I was starting at a complete zero). We opened at the end of September 2019, then was shut down about 5 months later  when COVID hit, killing our momentum. Being in Massachusetts, we were closed for 4 months, then opened at 25% capacity. (I learned a lot during this time).

– I am the owner and founder of the National Sports Performance Association (NSPA), a certification company  (started in  2016)  focused on providing coaches actionable sports performance education from speed & agility training, to program design, to weightlifting, to sports nutrition, to exercise science, to growing your business.

– I’ve run a ton of camps and clinics. Large camps of 550+ athletes to smaller intimate clinics of only 10 athletes.

What you may not know:

I was an owner in two franchises.
In the Entrepreneur Franchise 500, one franchise was ranked #193 and the other was ranked #271 – along with recognition among the Fastest-Growing, Best Low-Cost and Top New Franchises along the way. In 2014, they were ranked #1 Personal Training Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine and the other franchise was ranked #1 Youth Fitness & Sports Performance Training Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine.

In addition to that, Franchise Business Review ranked us as the Top Fitness Franchise and Top Midsize (all industries, under 500 locations) Franchise in North America (basically the franchisor that had the happiest franchisees). We had close to 300 franchisees. I ended up selling my shares in each, but that will be a story for another time.

When Athletes Acceleration was started, we were only running camps and individually training athletes.
It got to the point where we couldn’t fit any more kids in our groups. We didn’t have time. And because of the volume of athletes we had that wanted to get faster, and coaches that were coming by to see what we were doing, we decided to create DVD’s of our total system that we were using. This product was called Complete Speed Training (and became the best selling speed training product of all time). This was the start of creating and selling courses online.

I have created and published more products and courses than I can remember but…
When our first product was created in 2004 (Complete Speed Training), I had no idea how to film, edit, or create a product. No idea how to create a website or write sales copy. No idea how to get traffic. No idea how to capture email addresses or send out emails to them. No idea how to take orders. No idea how to make DVD’s, manuals or ship them out. Had no list. Had no money. Started from exactly zero. That product ended up selling tens of thousands of copies.

Because of the success of our first products, I was involved with launching some of the most successful products in sports and fitness (outside of Athletes Acceleration). Helped some local youth coaches and local trainers with no exposure become ‘household’ names in our industry. I have a crazy story about launching for the first time a product that wasn’t my own and making over $100K in the first day (I will tell you that story later).

The NSPA was not the first certification company I was involved in.
I was a co-owner of the International Youth Conditioning Association (IYCA), I am not anymore – again, another story for another day.

I started the Complete Speed & Power Summits because Coach Dos and Wil Fleming convinced me to.
The format of the CSPS events are perfect where you can learn from a coach during a presentation, ask questions, and also learn by performing their system in a hands-on section. We have had some amazing coaches throughout the year – coaches like Dan Pfaff, Rachel Balkovec, Joe Kenn, Carmelita Jeter, Lee Taft, Mike Boyle, Teena Murray, Joe DeFranco, Robert Dos Remedios, Nicole Rodriguez, Eric Cressey, Bobby Smith, Chip Morton, Dave Gleason, Joe Defranco, Bo Sandoval, Ron McKeefery, Duane Carlisle, Pete Bommarito, Chris Mohr, Andy McCloy, Matt Durant, David Padilla, Mike Robertson, Jim Kielbaso, Adam Feit, Zach Even-esh, Justin Kavanaugh, Josh Henkin, Lauren Green, Tony Holler, and Boo Schexnayder. But it took Dos and Wil to push me to make them all happen.

My first event I ever ran was around 2002-ish and I got Tudor Bompa, Mark Verstegen, Mike Clark, and Vern Gambetta to speak. Legendary. I had no idea what I was doing and needed to figure out how to pay for them all to come, but I wanted to learn from them all so I made it happen.

I’ve also:
– started businesses and programs that failed
– taught a college health & fitness class
– had multiple business partners (some good, some bad, but makes for some great stories)
– invested money and lost (the best investments have always been in myself)
– (and I also believe myself to be a bourbon and coffee aficionado)

I don’t speak much.
I’ve only spoken at a couple of my friends conferences and podcasts, as I turn down most speaking opportunities. I convinced myself earlier that most people don’t take action on information so I shouldn’t commit time to do them – but as time has gone by, I really think that I made excuses because I don’t like public speaking and it’s something I need to get over and work on. If I’m in front of athletes, I’m good. If you want to talk about growing a business or how to get an athlete faster, I can talk for days. I have been brought in as a guest to some of my friends’ MasterMind groups (Pat Rigsby, Todd Durkin, Craig Ballentyne) and I think I dropped some actionable knowledge. I think my disconnection with things like podcasts is you can’t see the listener and also hold them accountable for taking action??

I am a life-long learner and value education and experience.
Which is why I am so heavily involved in creating coaching education courses and certifications. And is also why I want to share more of what I have experienced and learned along the way with you. I have a ton of S&C certifications and business certifications. I’m pretty sure that there is no one that has more certifications than me – I don’t recommend all of the certs I have (and probably don’t recommend getting as many as I have), but I realize that learning without implementing and trying things out is almost a waste of that education.

I spend a ton of money on education each year.
If there is a topic I want to learn about or am interested in, I buy everything. (I probably own every speed training course/book out there). Along with S&C info, I make sure that I keep learning how to be better at business. I am a big fan of MasterMind groups (I’ve been in Yanik Silver’s, Frank Kern’s, Ryan Deiss, and Andy Frisella & Ed Mylett MM groups) You can not only learn a lot from the main coach, but the knowledge of the people in the room is invaluable.

I don’t believe that balance exists
There are ebbs and flows to everything and there are times when you need to spend more time in one area in order to succeed. I do love coaching and growing my business, but my family is the most important thing to me and they always win when I need to choose.

This has been all over the place and I’m sure I left some things out. I also used the word ‘I’ more times in this than ever before. Talking about myself isn’t my favorite, but hopefully some stories and experiences I share with you, you can take and grow your own business or training.

Keep chasing greatness,
– Pat Beith

 

 

P.S – UPDATE

Survival Mode

The past 5 years have been hard
I’ve had cancer 3 times in 4 years.
I’ve been through surgeries, chemo, radiation, multiple hospital stays (over 100 days), removal of muscles, organs, and nerves, 13 blood transfusions, 12 months of physical therapy learning to walk again, and more tests and scans than I can count.
I’ve been in survival mode.
My body and mind have been in a constant and prolonged state of stress and exhaustion.
Physically feeling like shit all the time. Always tired and my brain was in a fog.
No self development or motivation.
I’ve stayed pretty isolated.
As you can imagine, my business was also in survival mode.
I haven’t been able to work much so it’s been maintaining. I was  just going through the motions for a while, no focus on the future or growth, just trying to get through each day.
When you’re in survival mode, all of your focus is on trying to live, and everything else falls by the wayside. Your body and mind try not to think about anything else that is not essential and tries to stay safe.
It’s a weird feeling because when I heard I was cancer free, I thought I was going to have all of this energy and excitement for surviving my aggressive sarcoma.  Instead it felt more like depression.
Having it three times, it’s a roller coaster, you overcome cancer just to find out it came back. The relief and hope gained by surviving quickly goes away.
I went 2 and half years cancer free and started to feel a little normal again, only to find out that the cancer had come back. It was pretty devastating.
I had my last surgery in 2024 the day after Christmas.
3 months later I met with my doctors to go over my test results, and although it was great that it was a clear scan, one of my doctors kind of ruined the mood.
He said that my type of cancer will continue to come back.
So we have no plan. Not sure when it will come back and since there are no signs of it now, we can’t create a treatment plan for it. Just waiting.
It took me a couple of months to get over that.
But, I’m now taking control back.
We have no idea of what the future holds, we can only decide what we want to do with the time we have.
Finding accountability and digging into what made me happy prior have been a catalyst. It’s been a grind though and I need to put in the work every day.
I’m thankful for having an amazing team and community that wants to see me win.
I’m not special, I know that tough times happen to everyone.  I can tell you this though, you are not alone and you can get through it.
I am now 7 months cancer free and do not know what the future holds but I know that I am meant to leave an impact.  And this, along with my family, is what drives me.
I have some big things I’m working on now and am excited about. Everything seems to be turning around. It’s happening by design, structure, and constant self work.
I’ll let you know about some of the projects soon, I just wanted to give you an update to where I’m at since you probably haven’t seen too much of me recently and not much new has been happening, but you’ll love what we have in store.
Thanks for reading this and being a constant supporter, I appreciate it more than you know!
– PB