Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 727: Bedros Keuilian- Self-Made Trainer of Trainers
Episode Date: March 15, 2018In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Bedros Keuilian, mentor to top fitness icons and trainer of personal trainers who want to build a successful business in fitness. In this interview, the c...onversation goes from Bedros' move to the United States from the former Soviet Union, to the challenges he has faced, to building a multi-million dollar fitness empire. This episode is not only entertaining but is packed full of valuable "nugget bombs" for anyone wanting more success in life. Million Dollar Mistake. Bedros talks about his new gym and how entrepreneurs can talk business while working out. (16:50) Quite the fucking shock experience. He describes his family's move to the United States from the former Soviet Union and the challenges/adversity they faced. (18:23) Immigrant edge. Turning your disadvantages to your advantages. (23:45) Learned the basics through reading muscle/health magazines. How he got into fitness and how the mental transformation was his ah-ha moment. (26:38) The various side/odd jobs he had that taught him the art of talking down people and selling I take a little bit of money from a lot of people. Advice he got early on in his career that changed the game in his business. (34:37) Created first fitness app Entrepreneurship is thinking differently Infotainment. Content-rich email he created done for the fitness industry. Jumping off the cliff and using the parachute. The practice of “Done for you marketing” and how he implemented it into his life. (42:00) Bring controlled rage to the fitness industry. How his enthusiasm always fueled his passion and the high archery of academia. (45:40) Always going to have a battle to fight. He passionately explains the chip on his shoulder and the health scare that brought him to his knees. (53:52) Anxiety comes from HALT – Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Tips/practice’s to control your HALT’s. (1:00:53) Take control of future pain, become man of action Success in business. How to create systems in your life bred success. Which clients, that he has trained, have surprised him? (1:05:44) Crop dusters vs. fighter pilot reference Don’t ride the bull on my time! A great leader turns the team around. How leadership is everything. (1:17:32) People don’t remember what you said; they remember how they felt about you. Practical methods to improve your communication skills. (1:20:00) Carve out your niche and nail down what you are the best at. What does he think of the current state of the fitness industry? (1:22:20) Insta-famous epidemic. The social media impact and the mistakes young entrepreneurs are making. Atom into a knife fight. (1:29:30) Man up. His upcoming book and biting off more than he can chew. (1:32:50) Zone of genius. His 5% rule and how he manages his work/life mix. (1:34:45) The king of injuries. Trusting the process and his current training regimen. (1:37:35) The more people I serve, the less time I spend in the darkness You have to influence and attract your clients. How the fitness industry will become better by training our trainers correctly. (1:45:12) Network channels not a place to goof off Going to battle with a rifle. Bedros responds to a question asked on a #quah regarding being a trainer and wanting to start their own gym. Why most gyms fail? Get detailed tips and examples of what a trainer should do. (1:56:45) Results come from confidence SYSTEM – Save Yourself Time Energy and Money The transition in his business from the red to the black. Systems of success. (2:09:40) Set expectations to meet expectations. Tips to be a better leader amongst your team. (2:13:53) Want To Leader vs. a Have To Leader I don’t want to let you down, rather than fear you Point. Story. Metaphor. How is his enjoying podcasting so far? Favorite podcasts he has been on? Advice for someone wanting to start their own podcast? (2:17:45) Links/Products Mentioned: Fit Body Boot Camp Best Companies For LGBT Employees How to Master the Art of Selling – Book by Tom Hopkins Fitness Goes High Tech FitPro Newsletter™ Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable – Book by Tim S. Grover Bedros Keuilian: PT Power Renegade | Fitness Marketing The Perfect Day Formula: How to Own the Day And Control Your Life – Book by Craig Ballantyne Ep 717-Vince Del Monte is Reinventing Himself - Mind Pump Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win – Book by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin Developing the Leader Within You - Book by John C. Maxwell Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think – Book by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler Strength Camp | Become The Strongest Version of Yourself Ep 715-Mind Pump Goes Deep with Ben Pakulski Featured Guest/People Mentioned: Bedros Keuilian (@bedroskeuilian) Instagram Bedros Keuilian Podcast – Bedros Keuilian Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) Twitter Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) Twitter/Instagram Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Twitter/Instagram Peter Thiel Steve Jobs Jillian Michaels (@JillianMichaels) Twitter Tim S. Grover (@ATTACKATHLETICS) Twitter Dr. Dan Ritchie Ben Pakulski (@ifbbbenpak) Instagram Jason Phillips (@jasonphillips_in3) Instagram Gunnar Peterson (@gunnarfitness) Instagram Lewis Howes (@LewisHowes) Twitter/Instagram Craig Ballantyne (@realcraigballantyne) Instagram Vince Del Monte (@vincedelmonte) Instagram Jocko Willink (@jockowillink) Twitter/Instagram Joel Weldon Ryan Holiday (@RyanHoliday) Twitter Freak Fitness (@freakfitnessonline) Instagram Alwyn Cosgrove (@alwyncosgrove) Twitter Jay Ferruggia (@jayferruggia) Instagram BioTrust Nutrition | Founder - Joel Marion ElliottHulse (@ElliottHulse) · Twitter/Instagram Andy Frisella (@andyfrisella) Instagram Bradley Martyn (@BradleyMartyn) Twitter/Instagram Shawn Stevenson (@shawnmodel) Instagram/Twitter Jordan Harbinger (@jordanharbinger) Instagram You can find Bedros at www.bedroskeuilian.com, on Instagram @bedroskeuilian and on his podcast, the Empire Podcast Show. Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS HIIT, an expertly programmed and phased High Intensity Interval Training program designed to maximize fat burn and improve conditioning. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Also check out Thrive Market! Thrive Market makes purchasing organic, non-GMO affordable. With prices up to 50% off retail, Thrive Market blows away most conventional, non-organic foods. PLUS, they offer a NO RISK way to get started which includes: 1. One FREE month’s membership 2. $20 Off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) 3. Free shipping on orders of $49 or more You insure your car but do you insure YOU? If you don’t, and you are the primary breadwinner, you will likely leave your loved ones facing hardship and struggle if you die (harsh reality). Perhaps you think life insurance is expensive, but if you are fit and healthy, you can qualify for approved rates that are truly inexpensive and affordable. To find out if you qualify for the best rates in the industry, go get a quote at www.HealthIQ.com/mindpump Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)
Transcript
Discussion (0)
If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.
Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts.
Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.
Pedro's, coolian.
Where is it? Quailian.
You could do the movie, you could do the movie guy.
One man.
Yes.
Takes on the world.
Oh, one man.
No world of trainers. Three children. children trainers who don't know shoot about business
One man is there for them my voice is almost like that it's be droves. That was cold. Yeah
Yeah, I mean, yeah, can you do anything like can you do any voices at him?
Or you stuck with your no, I'm stuck with anything anything outside of that squeaks
Yeah, it goes this it goes different You stuck with your... No, I'm stuck with. Anything outside of that is... Squeaks, you can do. Jesus, no!
Yeah, it goes different.
It's gonna stick with me.
It's all I got.
You know, it's a trade-off.
It is a trade-off.
I'm really instinctively your voice, though.
I'm really good at me.
Yeah, but you know what I'm saying?
It's very polished.
Like, I feel like you had a magic genius at some point
and he's like, grant me a wish and he's like,
okay, whatever you want, go.
I want the best radio voice of all time.
And he grants it to you, but there's a twist.
You can't do anything.
That's all you have.
Limited.
You can't purely limited.
You can't yell across the room at your girl.
You can't fall in.
Yeah, anytime you push it, it's just a dog.
You can do the shit out of that radio voice.
Do you think a lot of those guys,
like I think of Bruce Buffer, right?
Like does he talk like that in real life?
You imagine if he did?
Yeah.
It like as he's having sex.
Oh, right.
We're here today.
Let's get running to do this.
Oh.
I always said he had the best job.
Like all he does is get up and fucking talk for.
Yeah.
Do you know a couple of his one-lineers?
He's trademarked them.
Oh, he's trademarked them and he makes up. He's the pay money. He's a ton of money just to say that stuff. Yeah. Do you know, do you know a couple his, his one line? Oh, he's trademarked
him and he makes the pay money. Plot of money just to say that stuff. Yeah. God trademarked
that same brilliant. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, so you can't say that's. I've been trying to
probably, I've been trying to push you out to get the motherfucking. Like I want to get
that before too late. That's ours. Yeah. I don't think anyone's going to want to steal
that. That's right. You say that right now, but I bet you that Bruce Buffer didn't,
or I mean, obviously he realized it early on.
I mean, when he actually went out and thought
about trademarking it, but I'm sure the first time he said it,
he didn't go like, oh my God, everybody around the world.
That's insane.
Man, it's so funny.
You know it's going to be, you know it's funny about this,
this episode, people are about to listen to is,
one of the most common messages that I know I get
and I know you guys get to is from trainers who really appreciate when we talk about like
how to build their business as personal trainers because you get nothing.
Oh, yeah.
You get no training there at all.
No certification provides like any valuable business information to go along with it.
Arguably, that's the most important part.
Yeah, that's what's going to keep the lights on.
Yeah, because the whole reason why you're a trainer in the first place is because you
want to be a good trainer.
So you're automatically going to hopefully learn how to be a good trainer.
The other part isn't so obvious, which is to be a good trainer, you need to know how
to run a business and sell yourself and market and all that shit.
And you get zero training.
It's like they threw you to the sharks.
It's seriously appalling.
Yeah.
No, you started with Adam, so you had somebody show you.
And then Adam, when you started,
you were just talking to people.
Yeah, no, I was lost puppy dog for sure when I first started.
I remember the first day of work,
the boss came in and he handed me this stack of,
Oh, you had the shit leads.
The stack of papers.
They're one of the Glen Gary leads.
Bro, it was like from, they're like three, four years old,
cold logs for days.
Just all these people that I came in
and done a free fitness assessment
when they bought their membership
and then never either came back to the gym.
I'm forever grateful for that though,
because that's how I met my wife.
Right. You're cold call there. I'm forever grateful for that though, because that's how I met my wife. Right.
You called, called her.
Yeah, I called, called her.
Right?
Did you really?
And she just, yeah.
She was just down.
She was in some store, like Burlington coat factory.
I remember this vividly.
Really?
Yeah.
I got her into the gym.
Now when she walked in and you're a trainer,
yeah.
Did you really like, I was like, gold mine.
You were like, oh, this is gonna work? Yeah, I was like, I'm gonna make this one happen. You knew right trainer. Yeah. Uh, did you really like, oh, it was like gold mine. You were like, oh, this is gonna work.
Yeah, it's like, I'm gonna make this one happen.
You knew right away.
Yeah, my uncle.
Did you come up close this?
Did she end up hiring you or did you just train her
for free because you liked her?
No.
I got more skills than that.
Come on.
Come on, she paid.
She actually hired you?
Yeah, yeah.
She gave you money to put it.
Yeah, this was after, because those sessions,
they have to burn to those sessions.
Oh, right. Yes, it like, she had like five sessions. Do you know my, this was after, because those sessions, they have to burn to those sessions. Oh, right.
They like, she had like five sessions.
She's sold her 20 back.
My furthest memory back of Courtney
is she used to come in and train with Justin
and she used to wear this shirt
that said, nurses do it with patients.
Right.
It's my favorite shirt, dude.
I love that shirt.
I remember that.
She was a nurse for those that don't know that.
So that's what made it really fucking funny.
It was a funny shirt.
Yeah, did she like you right away?
Or was she like, did you have to work out?
No, no, she didn't like me at all.
For reals?
Well, I mean, she liked me.
She just didn't really find me attractive.
Really?
Yeah, because she was with somebody.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
Did she cheat on her boyfriend with you
or did she break up with him first?
That's a good question.
We know the answer. That's a good question. We know the answer.
That's a good question.
The timing, I don't know how that sinks up.
I definitely know who the leader was.
You were that guy?
I didn't know that.
I was aggressive.
You know how many people get jealous of their girlfriends or whatever training with trainers?
Yeah, yeah.
There's some truth to that for sure.
Oh, of course.
Oh, do you remember when I posted like two years ago,
some crazy, I remember reading an article
on some stats on that.
I think, God, it was like 70 something percent of trainers
like sleep with their clients and shit.
It's a fucking crazy stat, dude.
And now it's terrible.
It's deep on my Instagram,
somewhere way back there.
It's actually a terrible, it's one of the top
five or 10 stigma. It is, and I think it's just because just cuz it's so you know what's another one that's really bad
Hospitals oh yeah, oh you guys were just a fun you guys are made for each other. Yeah
You guys were just fucking
scandalous
We're like we're like desperate half like
You guys ever role play like do you ever play like trainers? like trainers yeah trainers flying or nursing my favorite is in the gym yeah when
you trainer yeah I'll just like pretending you know
did some bent over rows or something just getting weird yeah I'm gonna stop right
there she's like every time you train me just and you
you glute exercises I can never do you know we've never done though oh I'm a
patient there's something there's something to be said though about the importance of doing those things.
I know a lot of training.
It always told me a lot about the trainer's character when I would drop that book on him
and be like, listen, this is where you start.
You start here, you start getting it.
But it does kind of weed out the weak ones.
The weak ones, but at the same time it also highlights the terrible
Training because how many trainers could become you know relatively successful if they just got the right training
Yeah, you know, I mean how many people do we lose like when I first became a trainer, which is which was a while ago
Right over 20 years ago. I walked into the gym got hired and, and I'm 18 years old, so I'm a young kid.
The top trainer, this is what they did, he said, okay, follow this guy around on his
fit start appointments.
You guys remember fit starts, right?
These are like orientations for new members, which really the goal is to get them to buy
a training.
I followed the top trainer who, let's see, it was, I think it was like the middle of the
month, like the 13th or 14th of the month, and he'd already sold, I think like 1400 or
1500 dollars in personal training, which back then was a lot of money.
We're talking about, you know, 97, so this is 1997.
Back in those days, if you sold, you know, 2 to 3 grand in personal training in a month,
you were like, king, right?
And he was, he was like one of the top guys. He'd already had sold like $1,400.
So he's like, he thinks he's like the shit, right?
And I'm just a young kid like an idiot,
that's in his mind.
So I follow him along, he doesn't really pay much attention
to me, you know, just follow me and don't talk.
And I did for a couple of his fit starts.
And then this lazy fucker's like, hey listen,
you're just, I'm just gonna have you take my next three.
Because back in those days, they didn't view these appointments
as anything other than just you have to do them.
Yeah.
Now, I later learned like,
this is where you get your clients,
you're more on like getting leads
is one of the hardest things.
And you only get paid minimum wage to do them,
but if they hire you, if they hire you,
then you get paid much more.
I think you got like $20 something an hour,
which is a good amount of money for an 18 year old kid,
especially 18 year old, you know, in fitness,
that's a decent amount of money back then.
So he leaves and he gives me three appointments
and he's like, yeah, yeah, you can take them
and don't worry about it.
So I, when he left, before he left, I said,
so is this how we get paid, we just do this?
He goes, well, kind of, you get minimum wage.
And I'm like, I thought, I made like 15 to $20 something dollars an hour, he goes, well, that of, you get minimum wage. And I'm like, I thought I made like $15 to $27 an hour.
He goes, well, that's if they hire you, then you get paid more.
And I'm like, they hire me.
I'm like, well, how do I do that?
And he hands me this sheet with the prices of personal training.
So I'm like, okay, cool.
That's all I need to know.
So that day I sold almost, I think almost $2,000 in training
with the next three guests.
He comes in the next work the next day and he was so pissed off.
But I was one of those dudes that it's just, I talked and that was my thing.
Most people need some of that training, especially if you go into fitness with a passion for
fitness and a disdain for sales.
How many trainers have a disdain for sales?
Well, the irony in that to me is, so it's crazy how any other profession you could think of,
you know, when you're training
or you're learning the craft, you're learning the job,
you're spending 80, 90% of the time
learning the skill sets that you'll need
to sell at that job.
For some fucking weird reason,
personal training is different.
I don't know a single successful personal trainer
that won't tell you that this skill set
of having a
Sales background or learning sales is not a majority of your job
You're selling yourself at all times if you can't and even when you have all that information in knowledge
If you can't convey that to the person sitting across from you. It's worthless
Getting getting clients is good sales keeping them as being a good trainer right if you're a good trainer with shitty sales
You can't get to that next step, right?
Because you never got them in the first place.
But don't cap.
Didn't you guys find that crazy that they didn't put a lot?
Like even your all your national certifications,
like all certifications to become a trainer
that everybody goes after, oh, this is the best one
or do this, there's no fucking train.
Nothing around them, but yet 80% of the job is that.
We've talked about this ad nauseam, just us,
but this was something I thought about for a long time.
I say if I ever made a certification,
I'd want to have the best results
in terms of successful trainers.
Not necessarily trainers who know the most shit,
that will be part of it too,
but trainers who afterwards can write back and be like,
hey, because of your certification,
they're thriving.
I'm a successful personal trainer, so when I first heard of
Bedros and what he was doing, I was like, well, fuck,
like there's a huge open market for that.
And the dude in that arena knows what he's talking about.
He knows how to build, how to teach trainers and fitness professionals,
how to build their fucking business, and there's a huge need for it.
Oh, no, he came in.
Absolutely.
When we were up and coming,
he was the only one, man.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, everybody else was talking about
the latest and greatest tool,
the latest and greatest certification
that came out, or whatever,
new supplement line was out.
Like, that was the talk of trainers,
forever, except for Badros.
Badros was this guy that was pushing
the sales summits, right?
And he was the marketing guy.
And I remember part of the reason why I didn't buy into a lot of
the stuff is because there was in my area in my circle, there was a lot of
kind of hate towards him.
It was like a lot of people hated on him because he was this sales and market
guy. And he, oh, he's not a real trainer.
He doesn't know shit about fitness and this and that.
So crazy.
That was the attitude towards him.
And I didn't know enough at that time
that it didn't promote me to go research him.
I just thought, okay, I'm the new kid on the block.
I don't know much about this guy.
And all these trainers are saying all the talking
all this shit, but I didn't know anybody
that actually had gone through any of his summits.
Then I get later on in training
and all these successful trainers that I met
that had gone through his training.
I thought, okay, well, there's gotta be something
to this guy.
Yeah, these are the trainers that are having the most success.
I went to one of his summits, way back in the day.
What year was that?
Do you remember when you went?
I think it was like, was it before after me?
It was after you.
Yeah, so when I was independent and I was on my own
and it was just like, I needed more information
as far as like how to like market myself online.
And got a lot of valuable information
from his summit from a lot of speakers that he brought in.
And it was, it was great, man.
Like literally, like you said, nobody else was like listening
to this guy and like I was at a point where I was just focused on business. And he was the only guy that was like listening to this guy and like I was at a point
where I was just focused on business
and he was the only guy that was like there
with a voice for how to market yourself
as a fitness professional online.
Absolutely, I mean, there's a huge market for it,
there's a huge need for it.
It's arguably the most important skill
or a set of skills you can learn
if you wanna be a successful trainer.
You definitely need to know how to train people,
you need to know exercises, you need to know all that stuff.
That's a given though, right?
You're a trainer, obviously, you need to know that stuff.
You can't be crap and you can't hurt people.
But the other part, which isn't so given is
the other half of your job is knowing how to build
your business and I don't care if you work in a gym
where you work for a big company like an LA fitness
or 24 fitness or whatever.
Or, and especially if you're private.
If you don't have those skills,
then you are, the odds that you're gonna succeed,
you're fucked.
Our slim to none.
Right.
Absolutely slim to none.
So in this interview, we talked to Bedros
and we talked to him about what he does.
We talked to him about him and his story. He's got a very fascinating story.
I did was not privy to a lot of it and he talks in depth.
The guy will not does not shy away from questions.
It gets pretty intense in a couple moments or in a couple sections of this interview.
And the guy is just, he's an open book, which I really appreciate. It's a great interview too,
just for entrepreneurship in general.
Oh, it's huge.
So even if you're not a personal trainer,
but you're building a business,
I mean, there's a lot of gyms and lessons
to from this episode.
And like Sal said, you'll definitely hear
a couple of times where he gets riled up for sure.
Oh, he gets really riled up.
Now, I will say this,
if you are a trainer and you're listening
and you do want more tools for skill, I will say this. So why we created prime and prime. I was just
gonna say, if you want, if you want, obviously learn how to sell yourself, market yourself, you're
gonna get a little bit of that in this episode where we talk a little bit about that. But if you also
want to invest in the skill of being a trainer and get the most return. Easily, I could say, and I'll debate anybody with this,
if you want to build your value as a trainer,
learn how to correct imbalances,
learn how to promote excellent recruitment patterns,
learn how to improve mobility,
for the average client that will give you way more
return in terms of business than almost any other skill.
Learning how to just train someone real hard,
make them sweat and all that other stuff.
Most people, if you can solve their pain issues,
get them to move more.
That translates to real life very quickly.
Pain clients are lifers.
It's for, that's the thing.
100%.
Now our programs, Prime and Prime Pro,
were specifically designed to be tools to be used
for either yourself or if you're
a personal trainer, you can get these two together in a bundle, which is discounted.
These are tools you can use on any client.
You can take them, apply them, and then start to individualize them.
Your clients in terms of your skill will get tremendous amount of value.
The other thing too is this one.
Don't forget too.
It's 30 days money back guarantee.
So if you do not see how much it fucking helps your business out,
helps you, then fucking return.
That's right. And it also comes with free forum access this month.
So on our forum, we have a private forum, a nice chunk of people in
there are personal trainers. So it's a great way to be a part of a
training community, talk to other people about training clients,
building a business, if you have questions, whatever. and then of course, Adam Justin and myself are all that
forum daily as well, to get access to the Prime and Prime Pro programs or the bundle with
the free forum access, just go to mindpumpmedia.com.
Now, Bedros Kulean, you can find him on his website.
That's Bedros Kulean B-E-D-R-O-S-K-E-U-I-L-I-A-N,
dot com.
You can find him on Instagram at Bedros Koolian,
and he has a podcast called Empire Podcast Show.
So with that, any further ado,
here we are interviewing Bedros Koolian.
I bought a building by mistake,
which was across the street from the men's prison,
in Chino Hills, or in Chino. So I bought a different by mistake, which was across the street from the men's prison in
Chino Hills or in Chino.
So I bought a different office building and then I was stuck with this what we call the
million dollar mistake.
A giant 6,000 square foot industrial building.
So my fuck it, we're going to build that BK strength.
My coaching clients who come out and work with me can work out there.
My staff, I got a staff of 40, I can work out there and I can work out there.
No more 24 hour fitness, really fitness. Jim, so it's got a nice lobby 40 Can work out there and I can work out there number 24 our fitness really fitness
Jim so it's got a nice lobby area that we're building out and so I'm gonna do a the bk
Strength it's basically it comedians and cars getting coffee mm-hmm
Entrepreneurs and people who interest me and fascinate me working out talking business or whatever there
I just found that Netflix series. Did you have you guys found what he just
business or whatever they're. I just found that Netflix series.
Did you have you guys found what he just
to be here?
I haven't seen you out of this series.
I haven't seen you out of this series.
Yeah, I just found the comedians in cars.
Yes, I thought you mean like the Jim version.
I'm like, what?
That's me.
I mean, people, he said go on the golf course
to talk business and make connections,
but you got a Jim.
Dude, Jim's a great way to do it.
Oh yeah.
How many times have you like met someone and like,
hey, let's go get a workout in and you in between sets,
you just talk brilliance because you
got the dopamine's going, the endorphins going like all the great. You're vulnerable because
you're paying right. You're sweating. You're not looking your best necessarily or whatever.
It's right. And the whole time the guys are, you know, I got a team of four videographers
and the guys are going to catch us shooting the shit the whole time. And then we finish it
up in the lobby, you have an protein shake or whatever, high protein meal and peace out.
It's a great, it's a great business.
It's a great business video then.
Yeah, it's gonna be all YouTube
and then we'll just strip the audio and put it up.
Yeah.
Oh, excellent, excellent.
So now you have a, and you've told the story
on other podcasts, so, but there's parts of it
that I think are just, our audience needs to hear
if they're not familiar with it that are absolutely,
I mean, Jim, they tell a lot about who you are.
And like your family escaped communism.
Soviet Union, you guys came to the US,
worked extremely poor.
Like tell us about that story.
How old were you when that all happened?
What was that like?
Yeah, man.
So my dad was part of the Communist Party.
And we lived in Armenia, which was under the Soviet rule.
And in 1981, my brother was going to join the Red Army.
And of course, the Soviet Union was at war with Afghanistan,
just like we were at war with Afghanistan now.
And my dad's like, the hell if my son's going to go and fight a war
that he doesn't believe in, and all these soldiers were dying?
My brother's significantly older than me, so he was about to go.
So my dad saves up all this money and bribes the Soviet government and we escape into Italy in June 15th 1980. I was six
years old, so we escape, go to Italy, from Italy to the American consult, and that's when they were
doing the whole hey, if you're a communist and you want to come to the United States and get your freedom come on in we'll take you and so we enter the United States legally on June June 16th
so actually we left I'm sorry we left around June 1st June 2nd and by the time we enter the United
States it was June 15th 16th JFK we landed there from there to California. My dad had under 200 bucks in this pocket. Family of five. I was the baby of the family six years old. And man, it was quite the fucking
shocking experience of all of us. I grew up eating caviar as a kid. When your dad's
a member of the Communist Party, you're eating caviar in the morning. Like it was, it was
you know, sourdough bread with butter on it and as low scoop of caviar, my mom would
put 10 to 20 pieces
out and give me tea.
And I remember that as a four or five year old kid.
So now we come to the United States,
and I'm crying for caviar.
And we're literally eating out of dumpsters.
And living in a two bedroom apartment, right?
That's right.
Yeah, a two bedroom apartment.
Some guy rented out one of his spare bedrooms to us.
So he was using one bedroom.
So family five and one of his spare bedrooms.
Damn.
And we kept moving around getting evicted,
and one of the places we lived was so shitty,
I got lice as a kid,
and we couldn't afford lice treatment.
We were broke, we were poor, didn't speak English,
didn't understand the culture.
And my mom made my dad's siphon out gasoline from a car,
and she washed my hair in the grassy area.
That's the old school way of getting the lights.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean, he's like, well, we can't afford life treatment.
We have to buy food, right?
And so that's kind of how you survive.
And we were dumpster diving on a nightly basis, you know, behind grocery stores, foods
that are expired that have to get thrown away, but aren't necessarily bad yet, right?
And so, you know, I jokingly say that I was the bread winner because my dad would hoist me up into the dumpsters.
I'm the smallest one.
And I'd pull out, you know, bread and cheese and milk
and lettuce and my mom would just peel off the bad leaves
until we got to the core of the lettuce
and those fresh, let's do this, let's eat.
And so it was a pretty interesting upbringing,
but through all that adversities and the resourcefulness,
those are all the things that I use now
in business as an entrepreneur to thrive.
So, that's why it's so fascinating.
Now, was it just your brother going to fight
that motivated you guys to escape?
Because that's a very, I don't think people realize it.
If you get caught escaping, they'll put you to death,
especially if you're part of the Communist Party.
Right, because he was part of the 18%,
only 18% of the population was part of the party.
And so to denounce communism and escape,
like if my dad had pushed caught, it's over.
It's dead.
How did he say,
because I heard you on another podcast
talk about how your dad saved the money
because when you're under communist rule,
you work for the state,
you really don't get extra money.
But people don't realize at the times
those countries had massive black markets
because people would try to figure out ways to
Exactly and the black market was huge there just like if you if you work in the flower shop for the state
Well, maybe a couple of uh dozen roses disappeared and then got sold under the table and that person made some extra money that way
So my dad oversaw a men's clothing manufacturing center had all these tailors working under him.
And he knew that, I forget what the number was,
but I think they gave him so many yards of material
and he could make 13 suits out of it.
Well, he figured out that if he has his tailors
put the patterns really tightly close together
for every like whatever 20-some odd suits,
he can come up with enough material for one extra suit.
And he would take that home.
And of course, he used to be a tailor before he was, you know, the overseer of these guys.
And he took enough material home and he'd make suits.
And he'd sell it to KGB agents.
KGB guys would come to our house.
Shut the fuck up.
The guys that were going to buy cheaper from my dad, right?
And so the guys that were supposed to ultimately put him
in jail or send him off to Siberia,
were buying from him and he did this for years,
like throughout the late 70s,
and raised 25,000 rubles,
and bribed the right member in the Soviet government,
where we were able to escape into Italy.
And we escaped under the guise of of my mom has a sister in Italy,
which she didn't, and we're gonna go visit her sister.
Because if we said, hey, we're going to the United States.
No way.
It's over.
Yeah, you would have been executed.
Yeah.
So, I mean, obviously you're extremely successful,
very hard-working, but you started in a very difficult situation.
You come to the US, you have no money,
you said your dad had under $200.
I find, and maybe it's just my own perception,
but it seems like people who come from other countries
that are so oppressed, that come to a country
where there's more opportunity,
even though they start off very difficult,
they tend to do well, are the rest of your siblings
like you or in the sense that,
are they found their way in or successful
or were you the anomaly in the family?
I am the anomaly, but keep in mind,
I'm also the youngest.
My brother is 14 years older than me.
My sister is 16 years older than me.
My sister works for me.
She does all my customer support
for my digital info products from home
and hangs out with my parents.
And when I say, hangs out with my parents,
it takes care of my parents during their 80s.
And thank God they're in good health.
My brother's a real estate agent does well for himself.
And yeah, so I guess we do well,
but it's because of this immigrant edge,
I call it the immigrant edge Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Gary Vaynerchuk, Elon Musk, Peter Teal, PayPalFound.
Like when you have lived in depression,
whether communist rule or whatever kind of rule where
Life didn't offer you much you can come to a country like this and even in the worst case scenario
you can see opportunity
When one's not present you can be resourceful when resources are not around
You can take disadvantages and turn them into advantages Gary Vaynerchuk did in 2009. He started Vayner
Media. You know, on the tail of the biggest economic crash we ever had, I started to fit
by the boot camp. One of the nation's largest and fastest growing franchises, same year
2009. And in fact, one of my videographers at the time was like, he literally stopped
filming and he goes, what are we doing right now? Why are you even making a pitch video
to sell a franchise
when there's 12% unemployment rate?
I go, the money didn't disappear.
Rob, his name is Rob.
So the money just exchanged hands.
And my job is to figure out who got the money
and sell them this franchise and teach them
how to be successful.
And so I constantly see resourcefulness and opportunity
where others don't, but it's because I come
from a place of oppression.
And I think that's that immigrant.
My dad says the same, so my parents are both immigrants.
They were very poor.
So, so my dad, you said, tell me the same thing.
And another thing that my parents told me was,
you know, when you live in a poor country
without much opportunity, you learn to lie a lot, you know,
like whether it's selling something on the black market
or figuring it away to create your own opportunity,
but that's against the rules.
And he says, you live in a kind of a life that's not necessarily as honest as when you come
to a place where you can be very honest.
There's lots of opportunities and you can make things happen without fear of prosecution
or without fear of people taking your stuff away from you necessarily.
And so my dad did very well as a result coming over here, worked very hard.
So I'm very familiar with kind of this, you familiar with what you're talking about, the immigrant edge.
What got you from this now, you come over here,
how did you get into fitness?
I heard a little bit about your story,
I guess it was a way to improve your confidence,
and that's what kind of changed your-
There was a girl involved, yeah.
Usually.
So imagine when you're eating out of the dumpsters
as a kid, growing up, you kind of develop a palette
for white bread and baloney and velvita cheese and peanut butter and sugar.
And so that palette kind of continues
throughout elementary school and junior high and high school.
And so as I entered high school, I was 35 pounds overweight.
Like I had like young man tits.
I don't know how I was to this right.
I had sharp tits.
But you can't milk me, but otherwise, I had tits.
Madonna looking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's cool.
I started the fad before she did it.
And here's a funny part is around junior year of high school,
I'm like, man, prom's coming up, you know,
and there's a scroll named Nakaia,
who I had the hots for.
She had no idea that I had the hots.
By the way, did she know what you do now?
Have you talked to her?
No, everybody asks me that.
I suppose I can look her up one day on social media.
What's the point?
Right, right, right.
Wife wouldn't love that one.
Right, right.
The fuck you doing?
Look at the high school suite.
Checking my searchers.
Checking your email.
And so the summer before senior year,
I start reading Flex Magazine, Muslim Fitness.
Every Muslim magazine I can get my hands on.
And a guy, and I was a pry in school, by the way.
Like every, no kid wanted,
the nerds didn't want anything to do with me
because I got bad grades.
The jocks didn't want anything to do with me
because I was a horrible athlete.
I was not an athlete.
Even the gothic kids,
I didn't have all the cool stuff to wear
because my parents just-
You weren't depressed enough.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I was slightly too happy, yeah, exactly.
And so I hated lunchtime,
because I would just walk around the quad
until lunch was over.
But thankfully I had one friend.
He played the center on the high school football team
in science class.
We made friends, because we were science partners.
And he's like, hey, I'll take you into the gym.
So I learned to work out through muscle
and fitness flex magazine.
And I learned the basics, the basics,
the very raw basics
of eating well, which is don't eat sugar and don't eat white bread, right?
Don't eat baloney.
And so that's summer, dude, I lost to the 30 pounds.
I come back senior year, more confident, more self aware.
People are like, man, you're a whole new person.
But I never had the balls to ask Nakaia out to the prom.
So I never made it to the prom.
She never knew that I had the hots for her. Probably still doesn't. But that changed my trajectory. I was supposed to be a
small technician. Well, I imagine right. That's probably when that first, that was probably your
first real taste of health and fitness. And you're probably loving it, right? Oh, dude, you're getting
attention. It's transformative. It is. It is. On more than just a physical level. And every level,
the biggest transformation is a fact.
You're absolutely right.
So I came to me in self-esteem, self-image,
and self-awareness, not actual physical change, right?
Even though I had lost 30 pounds of fat,
which is substantial for a young man.
And so I'm like, you know what?
I'm not gonna be a smog technician.
I'm gonna help more people do this.
And I'm like, and I remember when I was reading
the muscle and fitness magazines,
seeing a little ad in the very back of the thing that said,
get certified as a personal trainer or in a hundred dollars an hour.
I could do the math.
If I change a six clients a day, I had 600 bucks a day.
I'm gonna be rich.
Right.
I did the math, got certified.
Zero clients.
So I was a certified personal trainer through the American CalSonic exercise, a fry cook at Disneyland, and then in the winter times I have a
lot of nieces and nephews. I was a balancer at a gay bar. All that just to make ends
me. Now I heard you say that on Sean's podcast and what led you to go to a gay
bar to be a balancer? Very good question. So Disneyland is the happiest place on
earth. Okay, so you're not trying to figure out your own sexual out?
No, no, no, no.
No, Disneyland being the happiest place on earth has a lot of gay employees.
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I didn't know that.
You walk into any other store and I don't know what the straight to gay population is as
far as employees are concerned.
Let's say whatever, 80 to 80 20, right?
It's probably more like 60, 40 in Disneyland, you know,
40% 50% being gay.
So I made a lot of gay friends and one day I was just
griping about, man, I don't have enough clients,
I don't have like three clients.
I don't have enough personal training clients.
I'm not getting paid enough here as a as a fry cook
at Disneyland, I'm just griping.
And one of my gay friends is like, hey man, you know,
there's a bar that I go to, they pay $14 an hour for bouncers,
whereas the other bouncer job down the street
for a straight bar is like nine bucks, I'm like,
oh shit, hang out with you guys all day long here at work.
What's wrong with hanging out at night, right?
And what he didn't tell me,
the reason they were paying more
is because skinheads would come at night to gay bash.
Wow, and I'm not a fighter, like I'm a big guy, but I don't fight, I can talk my way out of any fight, tell me the reason they were paying more is because skinheads would come at night to gay bash. Wow.
And I'm not a fighter.
Like I'm a big guy, but I don't fight.
I can talk my way out of any fight.
I can hug you and make you love me.
Like, I don't want to fight.
So next thing I know, I'm getting into fights, right?
And I didn't like that.
But I did enjoy working there because I got to learn
to talk my way out of fights
into calm down situations.
And to me that's like objection conquering, right?
That sales skills.
Yeah, it really is.
And we were talking about sales skills earlier.
Like I got to really fine tune my sales skills
on highly angry emotional people and talk them down.
But a great training ground.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah.
And only the first week and a half you get groped.
And after that you're like,
ham straight and straight.
And after that everyone's cool with you. like, hey, I'm straight. I'm straight. Yeah.
And after that, everyone's cool with you.
Yeah, so it was a fun experience.
But I remember thinking there is no cop who's also a bouncer or a, I don't know, a doctor
who's also a fry cook.
Why in the fitness industry do we have these side jobs?
And so that's really when I started kind of searching out a way to, can I do this full
time?
Yeah, that's when that really happened.
And of course, that's when one of my clients
took mercy on me and goes,
here's a Tom Hopkins sales tape.
You're, he goes, you're an order taker,
not a closer, listen to this tape every night
until you learn how to sell.
That's so funny.
Tom Hopkins is the first sales course I ever took.
They, 24th Fintis actually hired Tom to create
like some, I think it was,
what was it called? Mastering the master in the art of membership sales right and he taught you know tie downs and you know
You know I had an overcome objection. There's a lagging
I mean I learned all those first through Tom Hopkins. It's hilarious that you did the same thing. Then she say he's like
Yeah, that's such good a good friend recently told me that he's somewhere
in Ventura County, not in the best place.
Really?
Yeah, financially.
You know what, I think a lot of people,
and especially people like you,
like myself that didn't come from a lot,
a lot of our motivation is to have things
or to build a business or be successful.
And then you kind of get there and you realize
that there's more to it.
It's not that doesn't fulfill you the way you thought.
Did you ever go through that?
Were you chasing this, going from eating government cheese
and bread and dumpster diving
to all becoming this multi-millionaire
and then also going like, fuck, I'm not that much
as happy as I thought it would be.
Were you ever like that?
You know, I can't say that I was
throughout my career as I ventured into other businesses
that didn't have to do with helping people. I was like, I don't like this. And ironically,
I shut all those down or had a fallout with all the business partners in those areas. But
anything that has to do with personal training, fitness, nutrition where I get to help people.
I just love.
So I actually stumbled upon my passion
and my purpose early on in life.
Thanks to that 30 pounds of fat that I had to lose.
When I've diverted and gone into other spaces,
for a little while I was in the dating niche.
Not me, because I've got no game,
but a business partner, it wasn't fulfilling.
That helped young men get laid. Good luck, I didn't get laid, but a business partner, it wasn't fulfilling, that helped young men get laid.
Good luck, I didn't get laid, I turned out all right.
You know, go suffer.
I don't actually, I don't want you to get laid.
How about that, right?
That'll build more character.
Right, blue balls, all that.
Yeah, because that gives you a chip on your shoulder
to go and do something different,
go sell something, right?
Sure.
Yeah, so anyway, so whenever I venture outside of my lane,
I realize I'm not happy.
Now, when did the success start to come? Because now you're a trainer, you're learning how to build that business.
When did that start to take off? Yeah, so Jim Franco, one of my personal training clients, who was this kind of rough and tumble
older dude in his 60s, he'd work out with me. I trained him Monday. Monday Wednesday Friday at 2.30 in the afternoon.
And I would see that, you know, he'd roll up in a different car, Mercedes,
a Cadillac Escalade, some sporty car, I didn't know what it was at the time.
It was ended up being a 64 Shelby Cobra replica, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was like, Jim, like all those cars you come here, he retired, he's like,
no, I have a job, I have an office, but I leave early and I come work out here.
I go, how do you make your money?
He goes, I take a little bit of money from a lot of people.
Those were magical transformation awards for me,
and I hope anyone listening to this,
it could serve them well as also.
I take a little bit of money from a lot of people.
Well, he owns a software company
that serves independent auto part stores,
like if you owned your own version of pet boys, right?
And the software has to be updated
because fram oil filters are changing the part numbers, et cetera.
And so he's charging these guys like $99 a month
and there's literally thousands of these private auto part stores.
And so I go, well, how can I do that?
He goes, hey, dummy, you're selling me 10 sessions at a time
while the gym is charging me a membership fee.
I have to pay $40 a month to come into the gym, but you keep selling me chunks of training at a time.
So I was probably one of the first guys, if not the first guy in our industry,
to switch from 60-minute workouts to 30-minute workouts and then to introduce
EFT, electronic fun transfer. Yeah, month to month payments on a $600 to $800 a month program.
So I started selling, I was like,
well, if you're taking a little bit of money from a lot of people,
I can take a lot of money from a little bit of people, right?
And the math will work out the same.
And it did, as I learned sales skills through him,
and ultimately opened up my five personal training gyms
over a three year period.
And did I'm getting a really good offer.
Here's the crazy stuff.
The skill that he taught me,
how to take money automatically
from people's bank accounts, right?
Is the reason that my five gyms got bought out.
They were buying my future receivables.
You had a dues base.
I had a dues base, thank you.
So had I been making the same amount of money
but constantly selling blocks of sessions.
You wouldn't have been working nearly as much.
No, sir.
Now, because you can show when you do that,
and we learned this from work in the gym business,
you can show that guaranteed monthly revenue,
that annual revenue,
then usually you could sell your business
for maybe two, three times that amount.
I hire multiple.
If you don't have that,
then it's maybe one time your amount or half,
because you're not there,
you're not the one selling it basically.
Exactly.
What year was this and how much did you sell the five gyms for?
So the year was 2001.
Okay.
And I sold the five gyms for just 200,000.
It wasn't much.
There was like tiny little personal training studios, right?
Like twice the size of this room, each one.
And I was like, holy smokes, like, I got a lot of money right now.
And yeah, well, as the internet was taken off,
I had also started, came up with this idea of high-tech trainer,
which was supposed to be an online personal training software.
But except the idea was that it would be on palm pilots,
because this is pre-i phone, right?
This is actually how I found you.
Really, through high-tech trainers.
Yeah, because so back when I used to work at 24,
I'll fitness with these guys
and then decide to leave and do my own thing.
And there was just nobody out there
like speaking to business and fitness together.
So I kind of just put the search terms in there
and then it kind of led me into you and high-tech trainer
and in that direction.
But I remember you saying on somewhere else
where high tech trainer wasn't sort of your best product,
you put in.
No, man, it wasn't my best product.
And so much of it has to do with, you know,
I was great at marketing the fitness software,
but I didn't know how to code it or program it.
So I had cotton someone who was a coder.
He wasn't up to date on it.
He wasn't as excited about the software as I was.
Like the three of you are so jazzed about mind pump.
Like this is, you guys live and breathe, mind pump.
And when you, Sally, even told me when you guys met,
you guys were on the same wavelength.
Like this is what we wanna talk about.
The coder had one idea for it.
I had another idea for it.
So we're constantly in the struggle.
In hindsight, Steve Jobs says,
when you look back to dots connect,
I look back to dots connect.
We should have never started high-tech trainer, especially with Apple coming up with iPhone
a few years later.
But we had these palm pilots and the idea was to sell it to gyms, and if you couldn't afford
a personal trainer, you check out a palm pilot and you walk around the gym and it puts you
through your workouts, so it's right, et cetera.
Yeah.
And then videos and workouts.
Actually, a pretty good idea around that time.
It was.
And here's how it...
In theory. Yeah. The couple of clubs that actually allowed us to test it in people were walking out with fucking pom pilots
Thank you
Think about that part
We put a big chain on this
So they're like hey like half the pom pilots, each the two gems that we tested with,
we gave them each 15 pom pilots.
Within like 35 days, half the pom pilots were...
Oh shit, yeah.
I don't know if it was gone by the staff,
it doesn't matter, they're gone.
And they're like, hey, your pom pilots were gone.
I'm like, mine?
Like, yeah, yeah, they were yours, shit.
Right, that can't be afforded.
So I burnt to the $200,000, so quickly.
Wow.
But in that time, sprint, I guess one of the two gems,
there was a sprint executive who worked out there.
They're like, hey, we like to put the workouts on this,
on our jukebox.
It was their app store.
And so for $2.50, sprint was selling
high-tech trainer workouts, $2.50 a month,
a little bit of money from a lot of people, all of a sudden, right?
And so this executive reached out to us and says we'll do a 50-50 ref share on $2.50 a month, a little bit of money from a lot of people all of a sudden, right? And so this executive reached out to us and says, we'll do a 50-50 ref share on $2.50
recurring, but we have 26 million subscribers on their cell phones.
Sure. Yes.
Had a big surge in my revenue all of a sudden.
Wow. So the app, or the pom-pilot thing didn't work out so well, but thankfully,
it being out there, it caught the eye of someone who's like, I see a vision.
So before there were apps,
like I created the first fitness app
and it was on the sprint jukebox.
Wow.
I did not know that.
And you're making a buck 25, a person that's downloading a piece.
Now it wasn't from 26 million subscribers because-
But that's a huge pull, the pull from.
Yeah, but we're getting like 30 grand a month
and I had never seen that kind of money before.
Oh, that's crazy. Now the quote, entrepreneurship is jumping out of a plane and making
a parachute on the way down. Is that, do you think that's accurate? Oh my God. Oh my God.
That should be the definition, right? It really, I mean, there's a great example of it.
I, I didn't know how to open up gyms. And my client, Jim Franco, taught me how to open up gyms.
Like I just know I wanted to be an entrepreneur
and I was gonna sell blocks of sessions
and they were gonna be one hour long and he's like,
dude, can you just deliver results
in short amount of time?
Like yeah, he was how come that industry goes to one hour?
I'm like, I don't know.
So it's thinking differently.
Entrepreneurship is thinking differently.
It's taken a leap with pom pilots,
realizing you're falling off the cliff. The pom pilots are not a parachute. Oh look, sprint jukebox, that is thinking differently. It's taking a leap with pom pilots, realizing you're falling off the cliff.
The pom pilots are not a parachute.
Oh, look, sprint jukebox.
That's the parachute.
And if it wasn't that, as long as we were willing to keep trying to make a parachute, you
will make one before you hit the ground.
Most people just give up on the second or third attempt and then they go splat.
When did you decide to help others in fitness build their own business?
Well, wait a second.
I want to know, you're making 30, how old are you?
You're making $30,000 a month at this point.
Any idea to put your feet up?
Buy some nice cars.
Cool.
Take chicks out.
Have a good time.
Are you still driven to do more?
What's going on in your head?
By this point, I was married.
I was, so it's 2003, 2004.
Okay.
My wife and I got married in 2003.
And like, hey, we bought a little house in Chino Hills.
Cool. That felt good.
No fancy cars, but we were sharing one beat up Ford Taurus
and now she had a car, I had my own car,
which was great and they were both new cars.
I had like a Chevy Tahoe and I think she had like a Toyota
Camry or something, but better than the Ford Taurus
that kept overheating that we shared.
So it was that kind of lifestyle change.
Like we went from drinking water to spring water.
We went from regular Cantuna to Albacortuna. Those things mattered because I was like
saying, Oh my God, my lifestyle is improving, right? We bought a dog. So no, I wasn't
ballin' by any stretch of the imagination, because I also had a business partner and high
tick trainer, right? Okay, got you. So you're not actually walking away with $30,000 a month
coin. Well, we all have a business partner, Uncle Sam. He takes away anywhere from you.
Oh, yeah, there's that part.
From 30% to 40%.
Good point.
I don't remember signing that on thread.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a guy really telling you what to do.
And then of course, then you have another business partner,
which is your business partners.
So, but I was taken enough where we were bringing home
like probably $5,000, $6,000 a month,
personally, come my wife and I,
because she worked in high-tech trainer with us.
And I was like, this is really cool, man.
I don't have to be in a gym running my gyms,
selling training programs.
And I got to the point where I was the district manager
of my own gyms, but I was still floating around
between my five gyms, making sure my managers are selling.
So the fact that I could work off a laptop,
a Toshiba laptop at the time, it felt good,
and I saw the vision.
So I said, I think there's more here.
And the other thing I was doing is
we had scraped the internet for email addresses
for personal trainers.
I didn't know what an opt-in page was.
This is 2003, 2004, right?
So I would type in, let's say San Jose personal trainer.
I find your website, scrape your email address, Adam.
It's probably me.
Yeah, that's how I got you, man.
And I own that. Yeah. And we would add you to constant contact, our email database.
So we had 1400 people in that database, and I would send out an email every single day.
Horrably written, no direct response, I would use the best salesmanship I could, but
there was no infotainment.
Today I'll talk about infotainment.
I give information and I entertain in my videos, blog posts, emails,
etc. Back then it was just blah, right? Here's how you make money as a personal trainer.
I would throw up information digitally. And trainers would reply back and go, man, I wish
I was as consistent with my emails to my prospects and clients as you are with yours.
Like, well, if we created a content rich email that you could send out automatically every
week, would you, would you pay me money for it?
Yeah.
Created Fit Pro Newsletter, which today is a $3 million a year software that I own.
Wow.
For 10 years now, and Fit Pro Newsletter is like automated eye contact or e.e. was it male
champ or whatever.
But for the fitness industry, done for your broadcast, we write the content, it goes out
on your behalf to your clients and prospects. But again, it's jumping off the cliff and making
the parachute, listening to the market space. Enough trainers, tell me, I wish I was
as consistent as you. I'm going to go, what if you don't have to be? What if I do the
work for you? And that's where I quickly learned instead of teaching them, do it yourself,
make it done for you. And my business really started to change
when I started teaching done for you marketing
instead of go do it yourself.
And that was around too.
How long did it take to scale it up to where
it was making that much money?
Oh man.
Four or five years.
Okay.
Yeah, in fact probably four years
to make the first million with high tech trainer.
And then probably another two, three years after that.
And then now we're starting to make...
Or Fit Pronies.
Now our lifestyles are really changing now.
Yes.
Okay, lifestyles are really changing now.
Still, we've got the motivation and drive
to continue to grow and you're bigger.
Where's that coming from?
Because I realized by this point,
biggest loser was hit in television,
and Julian Michaels, of course, was pretty hot, right? And everyone's
like, man, she's an awesome trainer. She's like America's trainer. I'm thinking like, no,
she's not. I am. I am because through all these thousands of personal trainers that are
using high-tech trainer, fit per new's letter, and now buying close clients and PT business
course, my two courses of selling and marketing, through them, I'm probably impacting more
end users than she is, but no one knew of me.
But in my head, I'm like, fuck that.
I always had someone that I was battling in my head.
There's another thing, right?
And so the first one was Jillian Michaels.
And I'm like, she's not America's best trainer.
I am.
I'm impacting more lives just through all these other trainers.
And so it really felt good, but to me, it was always service.
I was still the trainer.
It's just not hands on.
Where did that chip come from?
Where do you think that chip came from?
Have you guys read Relentless Tim Grover?
No, I have not.
Great book, highly recommend it.
He was the personal trainer for Michael Jordan
when the Bulls trainer couldn't deliver the results.
Tim Grover was called in.
And he ultimately ended up being the trainer for Charles
Barkley, Kobe Bryant, Duane Wade. Like you named the no shit best and bad asser.
I heard that book. Great book relentless read it. And when you do, you're gonna see there's a section
where he talks about, he's working with Duane Wade getting him through an injury, but he's still
self conscious about the injury. Hey, maybe I'm not going to be the best as I'm going to be. And he tells the Wayne, I want you to go on that court and bring 48 minutes
of controlled rage to your opponents.
And when he said that, I was like, holy fuck.
And I read the book just this past year in 2017.
I told my wife, I go, you got to listen to this part because I was his audio
book. I've been bringing controlled rage for 15 years to the fitness industry.
And where it came from was when I said, hey, American counts on exercise, I'm doing 30-minute
workouts, let me come speak at idea, right? Because they're in kohuts with idea rejection
letter. Hey, NSCA, let me come teach fitness marketing because I was the personal trainer
for I cook on a bouncer and I'm sure, and I know there's a whole bunch more trainers
who are also having side jobs
No, we don't need that they just constantly wanted to teach more
Pilates and certification and core strengthening and what is that with academia and like right?
Just not like interweaving some kind of a business structure
Yeah, they're protocol and listen
I love Peter Davis to death and and and I ran into him at an event two years ago and I go
Hey Peter twice I got rejected from idea. Like he's the CEO of idea.
He goes, I wasn't part of the panel that,
whether you're part of the panel or not, man,
we need marketing and sales information.
Like you three met because you guys understood sales
and you guys are now doing this and you're still selling.
You're selling knowledge information to wisdom, right?
Our fucking fitness industry is so ass backwards.
Yeah, ass backwards.
100%.
Any certification organization does not, not a single paragraph of learn to sell or market yourself.
I had countless trainers with very little knowledge on fitness who became extremely successful
trainers because they were good at communicating their ideas and what the, and of course the
knowledge can be learned and they became excellent trainers.
And then on the other hand, I would have trainers that come to me with a master's degree in sports medicine or
four different certifications and they just did not take that communication part seriously and failed.
They just didn't succeed. That's such a better way to agree about it because they know how smart they are.
They compare themselves to the other trainers and they see these guys that maybe not have as much knowledge as they do.
Rule number one, like a client is going to if they're gonna work with you for one to three days a week
for hopefully years, they gotta like you.
That's like rule number one.
If you're not a likable person, you can't communicate well.
I don't get as a matter of how knowledge you'd be.
Are they gonna pull it up?
Let's talk about the personal training market.
Like that being a really tough market
to be able to kind of impact,
because everybody has such big egos in the space
and like you're talking about kind of impact because everybody has such big egos in the space and like you're
talking about kind of making things turnkey for them which I think is really the only way you
can do it in the space. Yeah well I learned very quickly that I can't come to you as a trainer
and go hey man I know you're great you got the the master's you got all you got the NSEA distinguished
strength coach etc. I had to wait for you to feel the pain of being broke.
So the young trainers in the mid to early 30s,
like 31 all the way up to 31-32,
they were not my fans when I would reach out to them.
Because, hey man, I got this.
You don't understand.
Yeah, I think they know more than you already.
Once they open up their gym sign a lease
by equipment, all this stuff,
and then the wife or the fiance is going,
hey motherfucker.
We're brown.
Yeah, go get a job.
Guess what they do?
A little Google search called fitness marketing, right, or personal trainer business secrets.
And so I realized very quickly, I need to dominate these keywords.
And so I started two blogs, PT Power, and Renegate Fitness Marketing.
And I just owned the 25 keywords in my space that I knew struggling trainers would look
for, because I would start reaching some, those who reached out to me, I'm like, how And I just owned the 25 keywords in my space that I knew struggling trainers would look for.
Because I would start reaching,
those who reached out to me, I'm like,
how did you find me?
Fitness marketing expert, fitness marketing.
So much fucking brilliance in that, dude.
Yeah, so I'm gonna wait till you're in pain
and then you'll look for me and you'll spend money.
But when I come to you, like fuck you, get away,
Badros, the reason you weren't successful
is you don't have a PhD or a master's
because I don't have any of that stuff, right? I was an enthusiastic trainer and I was telling you guys away, Badros. The reason you weren't successful is you don't have a PhD or a master's, because I don't have any of that stuff, right?
I was an enthusiastic trainer, and I was telling you guys
earlier, my enthusiasm is what helped people show up
and get workouts and get results.
What seems to bug the fuck out of me?
So underrated.
Really academia.
What, I don't know why?
Did you get a lot of pushback with that?
Have you had bad old life?
I've been the black sheep in this industry.
I bet.
I bet people hate on that guy.
They hate on the guy that's doing really, really well
and fitness, but he doesn't have a PhD in one of the fields.
I don't know where every muscle originates and inserts.
I don't.
I still don't.
I'm 43.
And some of the best PhDs are now my clients in the industry,
right?
Like Dr. Dan Richie and Dr. Cody Syp, you know,
they, actually I co-unfunctional aging institute with them.
And Ben Pekolsky that we talked about
and Jason Phillips and Vince Del Monte,
all these motherfuckers are my clients
and yet I can't get on the stages
that they were getting on.
So I was bringing so much controlled rage
as Tim Grover says in this industry
that I brought EFT, went to 30 minute sessions,
took the outdoor boot camp that everyone thought
was a red headed stepchild in our industry
or outdoor boot camps.
That's just how you make side money.
It's like, no, we can bring that indoors.
Now that the economy's crashed,
make it a legitimate fucking business
and bring the cost of personal training down,
make it more affordable and convenient to people.
But I was like, I was speaking fucking alienese.
Right.
The industry's like, you're wrong again.
I'm like, I've been proven right four times,
motherfucker.
Now all of a sudden I can't catch lightning.
Right.
These fucking hands were made't catch lightning. Right.
These fucking hands were made to catch lightning.
You know, the timing that you did that,
this is when I switched and transitioned into boot camps.
And I saw the riding on the wall with the crash.
I'm all sweaty.
We went from 01 to 0304-ish
where it become, especially in California,
it was like almost a trendy thing to have a trainer.
Like if you had money, you had a personal trainer
and selling training was the easiest thing in the world for me.
And then from like, oh four to oh nine era,
there's now some, we start to see this dip,
the housing market crashes.
Now everybody wants a personal trainer,
but they're not, they can't afford it
because their house is upside down $100,000.
And that was like instant light bulb went off of my head.
Okay, I gotta find a way, I'm charging $100 an hour.
These people are telling me they wanna train with me,
they just simply can't.
And I believe them because I had a house at that time
that was now $100,000 upside down.
So I get it.
So I thought I gotta find a way to train more people
for a lot less money.
And that was when I made that transition.
So you obviously were one of the leaders in that group,
so brilliant that you saw that and you made that move.
But yet still people just giving you a record.
I'm a sell out, yeah, I'm a sell out.
What do I know?
Personal training is, it's in the name, it's personal.
Yeah, many emails and DMs I still get.
It's in the name, personal training, like look at it.
If you wanna go be a loser the rest of your life
and not have a life, be my guest.
That's the reality. If you do one-on-one personal training, if you want to go be a loser the rest of your life, or not have a life, be my guest. That's the reality.
If you do one-on-one personal training
unless you're Gunner Peterson, right,
who I love to pieces, where he can go, hey guys,
like Tim Grover, I'm going away for a while.
You guys are gonna keep paying me
and do the program that I wrote up for you.
That doesn't happen to regular personal trainers, right?
Now, you're super motivated by this competitive rage.
That's what drives you.
Yeah, but when it happens when you're accepted,
everybody likes you, cause you're on your way, right?
You're fucking great.
Now, Bedros is the man, there's no boarded fight.
Like, what are you gonna do?
I'll find a fight.
Yeah.
I literally came out as a footling out of my mom,
like foot first.
And they pulled, cause this is what the communists do.
They just pull you out. They don't straighten you out you guys have kids?
Yeah, I got to you. So if you have kids, I don't know if they came out but you know this was come out head first right?
Yeah, I came out the same way. Okay, so they're in America. Yeah, they turn you they turn you around right in Armenia. They just pull you right out.
Apparently. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great. Thank you. got the same thing. Thank you, thank you.
And so, and so I come out that way, of course, in the process, my mom's bleeding, and again,
in a communist hospital for 43 days.
Now, my dad and my sister are boiling rice and feeding me rice water, because there's
a formula in communist Russia, right?
So, I come out as a footling.
I'm living off rice water instead of breast milk, right? Um, fucking really bad things happen to me between ages of four and, uh, four and six in
Armenia.
Uh, really bad things that traumatized me sexually.
Um, I think you get the picture, no point in going in a greater depth about that.
I've talked about another podcast.
But so there's that come to America, you're being called Herman because your parents find
a shirt Herman Herman Munster,
from the dumpsters, right?
And I wear the shirt and now kids are calling you Herman.
So much so that I start responding to them as Herman,
introducing myself as Herman.
I'm the foreign kid, go back here and fucking country.
How many times have I heard that, right?
Because I don't speak the language.
And so I'm the fat kid who doesn't get the date.
I'm the personal trainer who's constantly
bucking the industry. So I'm always gonna have a fucking battle to fight date. I'm the personal trainer who's constantly bucking the industry.
So I'm always gonna have a fucking battle to fight.
That's my lot in life and I love that.
That's my fucking superpower and I love that.
Well, it's also normally our Achilles heel too.
So I would speculate that at one point
because I've had a lot of people that I've helped
in the same place, I'm a lot of this person too
because I came from nothing.
And so I've always had this chip and Lewis Hals talks about our mass, mass of masculinity,
right?
And a lot of times that chip or that attitude that we have is the result of all of our
success.
So why the fuck would I not want to do it?
But then sometimes our body starts to rebel on us with either stress or anxiety or issues
going on with your health.
Did you ever start
to have this?
Yeah, in fact, so I'm 43 now.
At 37, I had my first massive anxiety attack and it was so crippling that I thought I was
having a heart attack.
Or were you, what were you doing?
I actually write about this in my book, but I was, So imagine my house, I have a good life now.
I live on a one and a half acre property.
My house is here.
There's a giant pool deck, big giant grassy area
than a separate garage and above the garage is a guest house.
The two bedroom guest house where Craig Valentine stays
when he visits town, which I gotta talk to him about that,
but that's definitely different.
Is he overstaying his moral?
Not that he the fuck, Craig.
You eat so many protein bars and all men's and all this shit.
I go up to the, I keep, I have a drum set in the guest house and, uh, and, uh, I end up
eating all his shit.
And even though it's healthy stuff, I still over consume.
Yeah.
Every time he comes, like, Craig take that shit with you.
He sabotage you.
He does.
He does.
But anyway, so, uh, one morning I go to get something
from the guest house and I, I'm 37 years old,
I bend over to pick up my shoes.
It was my shoes.
I bend over to pick them up and I stand up
and my throat's closing up.
I get tunnel vision, I'm sweating, my heart's racing.
I hear the thug lug, thug lug of my heart in my ears.
I've said my arms start tingling.
And just out of nowhere.
Dude, out of nowhere, it's like a Monday morning.
I'm getting ready for work.
It was gonna head to the gym first.
And I wasn't, didn't think much of it
until my arm start tingling.
And I remember reading somewhere
that when your arm tingles are...
Heart attack.
Heart attack.
But I'm like, both arms are tingling.
Holy fuck, this is the big one.
All right guys, I'm not the smartest fucking knife in the drawer. I'll take that right now, right? I'm like, I'm a sharp as a bowling ball. Yeah, I'm gonna die, this is the big one. Yeah, this is the guy's one. Guys, I'm not the smartest fucking knife in a drawer.
I'll take that right now, right?
I'm like, I'm a sharp as a bowling ball.
Yeah, I'm gonna die, this is it, fuck.
So all I'm thinking, and I wrote this,
and I'm chuckling as I'm writing this,
all I'm thinking is my wife and kids are gonna find me
sometime tonight in the guest house,
because they think I've left for work already.
By then, Rig and Mortis is gonna set in.
I'm gonna be all stiff and bloated,
and the last way they remember daddy and the husband is stiff and bloated. So my philosophy was, if I could, I know,
crazy, right? If I could just stumble down, I've already accept the death. Now it's like, how do I
want to look when I'm dead? I know, it's fucking twisted. And don't talk shit till you've been there,
right? The good news is you accept death very quickly, fellas.
I thought it's like, now you reconcile with it.
No, no, I was like, okay, I'm going.
Now, how am I going to be gone?
How am I going to be found?
So I go, if I could just get down the staircase
across the pool deck, my wife will find me sooner
before rigamortis, before I get all fat and bloated
and whatever I just picture myself yellow and vany, right?
And then, and my kids in a certain pose.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get into my best pose. Exactly. Yeah. In the process of going down the staircase, I don't
know if it was the fresh air or the movement, everything clears up. Tangling goes away,
throat opens up. I can breathe again. My heart rate comes down to normal. I'm like, holy
fuck, I just cheated death. I just dodged a heart attack bullet. And so off to the gym,
I went. You go to the doctor. No doctor. I know. No doctor went right to the gym I went. You wanna go to the doctor?
No doctor.
She says, I know.
No doctor went right to the office, come home that night
and tell my wife like, hey, you're not gonna believe
what happened this morning.
I cheated death baby girl.
How about that, right?
Does that turn you on?
She's like, what the fuck do you mean?
I think I had a heart attack, but thank God,
I'm in good shape.
I get a big turn to this guys.
So she goes, what do you make of this?
I explain the whole thing to her.
She goes, dude, tomorrow morning we're going to the doctor.
We go to urgent care.
They do the whole EKG test on me.
Like, your heart's fine.
Are you stressed out?
And she's like, yeah, he drinks Nike wool
and takes a vikin' in to go to sleep every night,
which I did.
I'm not proud of it, but I was stressed out.
At this point, Fit Body Boot Camp, the franchise,
that we started is $640,000 upside down.
I have this like, like tense relationship,
adversarial relationship with my business partner.
We only had five employees at the time,
and I saw all of them had it out for me,
and it was just mounting, the stress was mounting.
And so, boom, it came up as a big anxiety attack.
So to answer your question, yeah, I did,
and then subsequently, I had five or six more after that
that forced me to go seek out therapy
because when I told my doctor about it
that I can't control these anxiety attacks,
he goes, well, here's Xanx.
Well, of course.
Now I'm waking up in the morning.
I've got no motivation.
I'm drowsy, I'm foggy, I'm drooling at the side of my mouth.
I'm like, well, now this new franchise
is surely gonna go out of business, right?
So I can't take Xanx, I gotta go find a therapist
who can give me tools.
I can't not be stressed.
I just need to know how to cope with the stress right now.
That's the phase of life I was in.
So I went and found a therapist
in just 16 months of work began.
What are you learning, going through this?
Two very big things and actually stress
and anxiety, people who suffer from stress and anxiety and anxiety attacks in general, anxiety
just comes from halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Those are the triggers, right? If you're
hungry, you're angry, you're lonely, you're tired for a long time. And the way Kevin, my therapist
described it to me was if you're in a former recovering alcoholic, if you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, halt, then you're more likely to go
hit the bottle.
If you're recovering drug addict, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you're more likely to
go hit the drugs.
So as entrepreneurs who deal with anxiety and stress, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you're
about to have an anxiety attack.
So control your halts was number one.
Number two is anxiety is anticipation of future pain. He's like,
this is a definition of it. Anxiety is anticipation of future pain. He goes, so let's, and he causes
the golden threat. He goes, give me a golden threat. And I go, okay, my business partner stresses me
out. He goes, okay, great. What is the future pain you're anticipating? Well, one day we're going
to have a big blowout and then we're going to get in a fight. Hey, I don't want you to work in
FitBot of Bootcamp. He's going to say, I don't want you to work in FitBotiboo Camp. He's gonna say, I don't want you to work in it. We're gonna be in court, and I don't want it.
So I'm anticipating court cases and lawyer fees
and all this stuff, right?
And FitBotiboo Camp just crumbling around me.
He goes, well, will that happen?
I go, it probably will.
He goes, but what if he did something about it?
I go, shit.
What do you know?
So it's the only reason we have anxiety
is because we're anticipating future pain
because we're not doing anything about it now.
Soon as you take control back into your hands, he says, and do something about it.
So I immediately went and had a conversation with the guy.
We parted ways as friends.
I bought him out.
And everything I was anticipating never happened.
Started doing that in every aspect of my life that was giving me anxiety.
All of a sudden, this anxiety prone freak went to no anxiety in his life.
But I'm a man of action now, which I wasn't then.
Are there things that you have now learned to put in place as to watch out for these triggers or to if they do something does trigger you to like stop and okay,
free box, breathe or meditate or are there any practices that you've now included in your life to try to mitigate that? Yeah, one of the biggest things, I have the credit Craig Valentine for this, before he
ever wrote his book, The Perfect Day Formula, because we've been friends and business partners
for almost a decade, I learned the perfect day formula through him, but unfortunately,
I learned it too late once I needed it.
I was like, Craig, he's like, remember, you'd laugh at me because he'd want to have dinner
at 6 p.m.
I'm like, you're fucking nuts.
That's like a late lunch for me.
We're having dinner like a 10, dude.
We're in Vegas, we're in Miami, right?
Running for a year.
We're in a peak.
Right. Exactly.
And so I've learned to create my morning rituals the night before.
So I write down my list of things to do.
My hardest thing I'm going to do top of the list.
I go to sleep at the same time, seven days a week, wake up at the same time. I've got 96 people that I've blocked on my phone,
people who just send me long text messages of the skies always falling. Some of them are
clients, some of them are people just from my past who I don't want in my life anymore,
but I've created filters and boundaries.
That's so important. Yeah, morning rituals.
And those are the things, the dominoes that if they fall,
like if I get a text from that one person,
it's likely to put me in a tailspin, right?
And so I've had tough conversations with friends,
like, hey man, our paths are different now
and I'm just gonna take a little break from you for now.
And you gotta have these talks.
I've become a better leader, led myself first into
better health again, and then lead my team. The best compliment you gave me was like, man, your team
is so communicative. Well, great. That's they weren't before. Now they are. Like you show up in our
lobby and all 42 people walk by you, they're like, hey, how are you? Do you need the Wi-Fi code?
Does someone know you're waiting for them? You know, do you need anything? Can I get you water,
coffee, what? And that never happens.
So I became a great leader, turned my employees
into a team, got clear on my vision,
where we take in FitBody Bootcamp, clear on the path,
and I had the blinders on like a race horse.
And like I told you guys earlier,
I just dismantled any other business
that didn't have to do with FitBody Bootcamp
or me coaching personal trainers
and growing their businesses, because that's my purpose.
Order is so important for managing stress,
because I think it's that chaotic nature
of the unknown that tends to stress the hell out of people.
Do you teach this with your coaching?
Do you teach your people who coach to have
that structure to know what's going on?
I do.
Personal structure and discipline are the number one things.
People come to me because they have a marketing problem.
Now you're undisciplined.
We can give you the best funnels,
and you'll get 50, 60, 100 clients a month for the next three or four months. But you'll do things
to not create systems. You're undisciplined with the way you communicate with your staff
and so you have an adversarial relationship or a passive-aggressive relationship with
your coaches and trainers. So they don't deliver the service. Those clients leave. Now you're
having more anxiety attack. Now you want the next marketing funnel for me. So I sell the marketing funnel, but I give them personal structure, discipline, and systems,
which is what we all need. What does this look like for you? Because I know you've done this,
probably for thousands of coaches and trainers, when you first go in and you're helping somebody out,
what are either, are they just like when I help a client, I feel like there's common things I look
for, probably over consuming sugar, probably in stress,
probably not sleeping, and what are your things
that like you know right away to kind of look at,
if you were to meet me as a trainer 10 years ago,
and I'm coming to you saying like,
man, dangerous, I just can't scale this business
past 60, 70 grand a year, I'm fucking struggling.
What are you asking and looking at to it?
The very first question is, all right man,
so what are your income streams, right?
You might say, well, okay,
what's the idea of small group personal training?
And then I do, I have a myofascial release,
little workouts that I do, then I do boot camps,
and I do, I have eight one on one clients.
Great, got it, you have four income streams.
What's the biggest income stream?
Like, there's usually an 80-20.
There's an income stream where 80% is coming from,
and the other 20% are taking up time and energy and effort and
You'll tell me whatever. Let's say it's one-on-one training. Do you like it? Yes
If I paid for all your bills in life would you do that for free? Yes, great
We're gonna cut everything else out and scale that and so I'll figure out what the one thing is that they like
They're passionate about that's making well most money and we go all in on that and then from there
We start reverse engineering. What are your best marketing systems?
Uh, I don't know.
Okay, where did you get the most clients from last month?
Referrals, great.
What about Facebook?
No.
All right, let's create a Facebook system.
So we, I started reverse engineering
by teaching them systems of Facebook system
and email marketing system.
Do you see how these systems make your business predictable?
Yeah.
Hey, I'm curious in your life, do you have any systems?
What do you mean? What time do you have any systems? What do you mean?
What time do you wake up? What time do you sleep? Well, my wife is she gets home late and so we
watch a show and then sometimes 11 o'clock, sometimes 8 p.m. You don't have systems. And life systems
are called discipline and structure. Can I help you there? So I help them get a win here in business,
which is what they hired me for, which is also where the sky is falling. And we need to get them out
of this limbic state of holy fuck, I need money.
Why are you having this talk about discipline and structure?
So we fixed the money problem first,
they stop being limbic,
and I go, can I create systems in your life?
Sure.
Before you know it,
they're like amazing marketers and entrepreneurs.
That's excellent.
The military discovered that a long time ago.
That's why when you, in the military,
it's like, fold your shirt in a particular way, make your bed a particular way, stand a certain way, wake up at a long time ago. That's why when you, when you, in the military, it's like, fold your shirt in a particular way,
make your bed a particular way, stand a certain way,
wake up at a certain time,
because they know that extreme discipline results
in execution.
On the flip side, however,
two extreme discipline can sometimes
stifle creativity because creativity literally comes
from many times, the unknown or it comes from just things
that are different and that not necessarily the same.
How do you balance that with the people you're working with?
How do you teach them to be super disciplined, but also maintain that type of creativity?
Or do you actually find it increases their creativity?
I don't know if it increases their creativity, but I teach them to be curious.
One thing that we're never taught in any of the certifications that are offered out there
is to be curious, right? What if I can actually deliver one-on-one type results
in a group environment of three?
Don't go to 30 of three, be curious.
What if I can actually take a 60 minute workout
and bring it down to 30 minutes?
Let me challenge myself as a coach and a trainer.
Can I deliver results in 30 minutes
and then teach them to do their cardio
or their interval training on their own?
Maybe I can, and therefore I can make it more affordable
and open up the market to myself, right?
So we forget curiosity because in the fitness industry,
probably like a lot of wellness and health industries,
we're taught, this is the way it's done.
So I teach curiosity as the last and final piece
to the puzzle where it's okay to be curious, man.
And maybe it's not three. Maybe it's 30 people.
We have some of our top FitBody Boot Camp owners who are running 80, 90-person boot camps,
but they have three coaches on the floor.
I didn't create FitBody Boot Camp with three coaches on the floor.
I created a FitBody Boot Camp with one coach, 20 clients.
They decided they're going to have three or four coaches, 80 clients.
One of them is the ringleader, and then they put the other three coaches in the stations
that are of highest risk.
So you've got a trainer in that one station,
fixing form, right, and then the clients rotate.
Wow, had I not taught our FitBody Bootcamp owners
to be curious, they wouldn't have been able
to help the model evolve, which now we teach that
to all of our franchises.
And so curiosity is a really important thing,
not to just personal trainers, all entrepreneurs across theises. And so curiosity is a really important thing, not to just personal trainers,
all entrepreneurs across the board.
Absolutely.
When you first meet a trainer,
do you feel pretty confident you can tell
if this is someone who's going to be successful or not?
Within about an hour of communication.
Wow. Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. What are you looking for?
I'm looking for...
I'm looking for a fire in their belly
and a chip on their shoulder.
And if they come to me with the cowardly lion mentality, the sky's always falling panicky,
they can't string their words together well.
They're blaming everybody else knew the competition is too high and I have one client in Las
Vegas.
The competition is too high because my competition is the guy that was your client six
years ago and he's got eight locations out there.
Well, he's probably not gonna know who he is
But who gives a fuck? I'm really honest with things. It's like dude. I helped him open eight
I can help you open 18. It doesn't matter
There's overweight people all throughout Las Vegas. There's more than anyone can handle
So if they're pointing the blame out out out
They're likely not going to be a great entrepreneur. I call those crop dusters.
If they're saying, I don't know how to market,
I'm a horrible leader.
I got certified as a trainer.
I built the training side of my business,
but I don't know anything about the marketing.
So I need help.
The more responsibility they take,
the more I realize I can help you.
Because you're coachable.
You're gonna take feedback, where the other guy's gonna take
my feedback and look at it as criticism every time, right?
So the fighter jet is open to feedback.
The crop duster is, views everything as criticism.
The crop duster blames everybody else.
The fighter jet, yeah, takes responsibility.
And so within an hour of asking a lot of questions
of meeting them, I know they're success rate.
They're still gonna do better than what they did.
Right.
But you're not about to have nine locations.
Right, no matter what, you know, you can help everybody.
Yeah.
But there's a percentage that you can see that in their eyes
or with how they communicate.
Like, okay, this motherfucker is gonna be a big deal.
Now, when you see that, you tend,
I mean, being a smart business guy like yourself,
you tend to latch onto those people
or you tend to stay close to them because you see that.
Which one's doing?
So like, you meet somebody,
and we've already named drop some people
before we got on that are mutual friends of ours
that are very talented, smart, building seven,
eight figure businesses.
When you meet somebody like that,
you tend to, you know, attach yourself to them right away
and keep
in foster relationships?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
I do because they're going to grow so quickly that they don't know what they don't know.
And the next level of growth might be the tipping point that fucks things up for them.
Give me a great example.
Jason Phillips, and he doesn't mind me sharing the story, so I'll share it with you guys.
Jason Phillips was a horrible coaching client.
He was a crop duster through and through.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, through and through. He would show up touster through and through. Oh wow. Through and through.
He would show up to one mastermind session
with myself and Craig and then he'd disappear
and miss the other one, then he'd start missing payments
to the mastermind so we'd have to kick him out
of the mastermind.
I'm gonna talk shit to Jay to that.
Yeah, yeah.
It wasn't until his, he told you guys the Thanksgiving
miracle story where he didn't have any money
to buy coffee and things to him.
Yeah.
After that, he reached out to me recently
about maybe a year and a half ago.
He reached out to me,
hey I'm ready for coaching from you.
This time I want to do private coaching.
You're most expensive private coaching.
I just replied with that,
Jason with all due respect,
you couldn't afford the group coaching,
the masterminds, I certainly don't want you
as a private client and they were gonna have to chase you down
for money, cost a lot of money, 50 G's.
You can't afford this.
No thanks, no, no, no, I'm different.
You just have to get on the phone with me,
you'll know I'm different.
The guy had transformed from the crop duster to the fighter jet. No thanks. No, no, no, I'm different. You just have to get on the phone with me. You'll know I'm different. The guy had transformed from the crop duster to the fighter jet.
Oh, wow. He had a tipping point in his life. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was that
Thanksgiving coffee morning. Maybe it was a fact that he's marrying someone or got married
to someone who has what two or three kids and right now he just had his daughter. But
something had changed. And I say he does, and he just keeps making more money.
Like he texted me as I was driving in here like,
dude, I had the shortest month of the year
because we're in February right now.
He goes, I made the most amount of money I've ever made.
And it's because he takes action.
He has adopted speed of implementation as his friend
instead of fear and doubt as his friend.
Like he was just the fucking chicken little
if there was everyone.
Oh wow.
Has anybody else surprised you like that?
Where you're like, I don't know if you're gonna do
so well, and then.
Yeah, Vince Del Monte.
You guys have been in here?
We were just with Vince last week.
Okay, Vince Del Monte, and he's a private coaching client
again.
And, you know, you mean, listen, I'm gonna be honest,
you meet Vince and you're like,
is there any light in the attic?
Like the way he talks, you're like,
you're right.
And Vinnie's like a giant puppy,
and what I love about Vinny, he's so innocent.
Like, the innocence that I lost,
the thing that we see.
Yeah, the innocence that I lost as a kid
between the ages of four and six,
which is why I'm so protective of children.
And I see that in Vinny,
so I was a really big Vinstelle Monty fan,
but I'm like, is there any light in the attic?
Like, does he understand what I'm saying here about upsells?
Cause one of the first things he said to me when I met him was,
I'm doing Taguchi testing.
I said, what is Taguchi testing?
He goes, we're doing a split test with 12 different variables.
Well, how are you gonna know?
Split test is A and B, not ABC, the EFGH, IJK.
I was like, Finney, stop that shit.
Whoever's taking your money and doing that, stop it.
Just cause they named it Taguchi test.
What the fuck?
I've never heard of this thing, right?
It's the Guchet. Yeah. But but now I don't know if you guys know this
Vince has he wanted to start a mastermind great within six months. He's got a mastermind
of 50 members paying $1,500 a month. 50 members paying 15, 1500 a month through the math.
He's fucking killing it. Vince is the king of hey, I'm not going to listen to my own voices.
My the idea fairy that I carry with me because the idea fairy wants to take me down a rabbit
hole. I'm going to listen to Craig and Badros the idea that I carry with me, because the idea of fairy wants to take me down a rabbit hole,
I'm gonna listen to Craig and Badros.
And every time he does, he's successful.
And this isn't me being cocky,
because I've got my own coaches that I listen to,
because they have outside eyes on my own life, right?
And so when I listen and take action, I get rewarded.
When I listen, don't take action,
or take the opposite action,
because I think I know better, I always get punished.
Biggest mistake ever is thinking you know everything.
That's a massive mistake, it's your ego
and it'll take down, it's taken down empires
let alone, you know, your normal little weak ass or whatever.
Is anybody surprising the opposite
where you thought, oh this guy's gonna kill it
and then just...
Yeah, there's several of those who just come in like,
man I'm gonna be your next and they drop Vince Del Monte,
Jason Phillips, Ben Pagolski, I'm gonna be your next Matt Wilbur and Bryce Henson and Stephanie
Flynn, because they know the winners of my groups, right? Because I talk about them. And
then they don't. It's like, fuck, man, you started off looking the parts, smelling the part,
but then I saw that you were late to the second day of mastermind and you showed up hungover
because we're in Las Vegas. Oh, God. You know, and I had to talk with them. And I said,
hey, what, what the fuck happened to you?
How come you're showing up at 11 o'clock
when the mastermind starts at eight?
Well, we went, you know, the mechanical bull there.
We went and rode the mechanical bull
before you know what we're having shots.
And what else is having shots?
That guy whose eyes are closing, that guy and that guy.
Yeah, you motherfuckers don't ever ride the bull again.
You're not here to ride the fucking bull.
And in one of my maps, I have four masterminds.
In that particular mastermind we have the
whole because we record everything. We we show all new members that don't ride
the mother fucking bull. Like you're not you're not coming to Miami to go to
prime 112 and fucking get drunk with Jay-Z. You're coming to Miami to
fucking sit with me and learn you're going to Vegas to sit with me and learn.
On your own time with your own money you can go do ride bull, but don't ever fucking ride the bull on my time.
Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah, there are plenty of people. And I get intense about this because,
that one trainer can impact hundreds of lives. And that's a fucking, that's what I'm on this
planet to do. And I'm running out of fucking time. I'm going to die one day, you know?
Yeah. How angry does it make you to see wasted potential?
one day, you know? How angry does it make you to see wasted potential?
It's, you take a personal.
I really do take a personal because I've wasted so much time
that I'm trying to make up time for it.
When I see wasted potential, especially people pain me
to give them the advice,
but then they fucking go ride the bull effectively.
I don't know, this rage builds up in me, man.
And maybe, you know what,
maybe I'm not an evolved human,
maybe I need to be more caring, more compassionate. I don't know, and I'm up in me, man. And maybe I'm not an evolved human. Maybe I need to be more caring, more compassionate.
I don't know, and I'm very open.
Maybe you care too much.
Or maybe I care too much.
Yeah.
Well, what would you say the big differences
between scaling a six, a seven, and a eight figure businesses,
because so different every step of the way.
The leader, the leader.
You can, and extreme ownership.
Have you guys read extreme ownership?
Jocco Willings. Oh, okay, Okay. Right. The Navy seal talks about leadership. And he talks so in, in, in,
in buds, basic underwater demolition training, they have boat crews. And there was like seven
boat crews. The boat crew that was in the last place had a, had a, had a great team, but a weak leader. And so they were in last place. They brought the boat crew
from the first place team leader into the seventh place team and a great leader turned a
weak team around. They were able to paddle faster in sync and start winning. They came all
the way up to second place. When they brought that leader into the first place, a horrible leader took a great boat crew and made them mediocre.
Right? Leadership is everything. And so I always say you have to build your leadership muscles
as you build your entrepreneurial muscles. John C. Maxwell talks about this. He's the leadership
ladder and that a eight can never develop any more than a seven. If you're an eight leader,
if you're a seven leader, you can never develop anything higher than a seven. If you're an eight leader, if you're a seven
leader, you can never develop anything higher than a six. And if you're 10, you can develop
nines underneath you. That's such a clear word picture. I love that. Right. Yeah. So true. How important
is mentorship and having coaches? You've already mentioned how you have coaches. Yeah. How important
is that? I think it's extremely important. It's outside eyes. It's so I've got my therapist now
that I see once a month because he really helped me get through the darkest times of my life.
Now I see him once a month and just wrap with him
about my personal life, right?
I need outside eyes from someone who can go,
oh, hey, Bader, so we thought about this path in life.
Craig Valentine, where my personal structure
and discipline is concerned.
Ironically, I was his business coach
when our relationship started.
Now we're business partners and have a podcast together.
And now I coach him in business again, he pays me and I pay him to coach me on my productivity, life management, etc.
Joe Polish, I'm in his genius network group and he's making all the right connections. Joe
connect me with who you think I need to be connected to because I think I'm connected to everyone
I know I need to know. I'm not Joe Polish is the ultimate connector. So I pay him to connect me because he knows what my path in life is.
Joel Weldon, he's in the Speaker Hall of Fame, old dude, teaches me how to speak and sell from the
stage, how to storytelling properly, right? English is a second language for me. I'm an introvert.
I get nervous. This is a better conversation for me, on a couch, four dudes hanging out,
putting in front of a thousand people, like I know that's my purpose in life,
but I get fucking nervous.
Joel is my speaking coach, and every time I speak,
we film it, we send it to him,
and he sends me pages of notes,
and I take it as feedback,
and those outside eyes and those four areas of my life
have helped me so much.
I've gone from a knuckle-dragging animal
to a somewhat of a night and shining armor.
That's cool, man.
What are some of the key takeaways to learn how to speak
in front of people?
That's such a difficult, I don't know if it's as difficult
as it is scary more than anything.
That's a number one fear for most people.
What were some things that you that helped you with that?
So one of the things was is people don't remember
what you said.
They remember how they felt about you.
Yeah, that was a very key takeaway.
Transfer of energy, man.
Yes, because I would get up on stage with my PowerPoint
and just again vomit out facts, right?
Stats and facts and numbers and figures and do this
and don't do that.
Well, if my energy's off and I'm nervous
and it's a lot of facts, at the end of the day,
people do want to laugh and get entertained.
So one thing that Joel Weldon taught me
that also Frank Hirntot me was point, story, metaphor.
So make your point, and share a life story about that point, and then a metaphor. And when you do
that, if you have 10 talking points, point, story, metaphor, the Bible is written in stories.
It's the number one selling book for a reason. We learn from stories. Now, and also when you're sharing a story from your own life on the 10 points
that you're going to talk about, people feel like, oh, Jim, I'm really connected with him better.
Right? So they feel different about you. So they go, hey, what did you learn from? I really don't
remember what I learned so much is he's such a good guy. I bought his product. He's such a good guy.
And that's really what you want
because you want people to let down their wall
and let you win.
Because the way Joel describes it to me,
there's a third bullet point for you,
is everyone in the audience is listening to you
with their arms crossed, leaning back with doubt.
Who is this guy?
What are you trying to sell me, right?
Our job is to get him to bring the wall down
and lean forward on cross so that they can be.
You're watching the body language?
Yes, yeah.
And if I can do that through my stories,
now the information that I share
is gonna absorb instead of bounce off.
Well, someone is connected as you are in fitness
and being in fitness as long as you are.
I value your opinion on the state of the current state
of the fitness industry.
What do you see when you look at fitness now as a whole?
What are the good things and the bad things that you see in it?
Well, the bad things right now is what are we?
2018, is this March 1st?
Yeah, yeah.
March 1st, 2018 is that,
look, here's why it's bad.
The economy is blooming.
The economy is great.
The economy is great.
Just like in 2005 and 2006 and part of 2007, everybody
was a real estate agent, right? And they got a house to sell you. And they were selling
homes for above value. Wow, such a great real estate agent. The economy crashed, who stuck
around only the best agents who had been around through the shit, right? So right now, there's
tons of competition, tons of competition because the economy's booming. People have money.
They're buying fitness and personal training online and offline and group and one-on-one and
So yeah for a personal trainer for a small gym owner
It's pretty competitive the good news is lots of people have money. So carve out your niche
So carve out your niche and define yourself like what are you known for and I'm a big fan of
Being known for one thing like I do one thing and I do better than anybody else
I do personal training business coaching. I do personal training, business coaching.
I don't do Pilates or spin class or yoga instructors,
personal trainer gyms, not 24-hour fitness
and LA fitness and equinox personal trainers.
And so I do one thing and I do better than anybody else.
So find your niche.
What else?
The internet has brought about like what you guys do, right?
All types of programming.
You can reach clients worldwide. Holy shit shit like through Instagram and this podcast you gaining an audience
you're getting them to know like love and trust you they're actually asking you hey do you
guys have services that I could buy in fact we do their digital here they are you could
be sleeping and making money and probably happens to you all all all the time so trainers
now can really take their knowledge your single income stream of one-on-one personal training or boot camps and parlay it by making
a Instagram page and a YouTube channel and a podcast and now have a second income stream because
we can all have an audience no matter how big or small. So there's so many great things happening.
So the drawbacks are hey it is competitive right now. It is competitive and it's because the economy is good. But the internet is there to create another
income stream for you. Boutique gyms, right? Our FitBody bootcamp. Boot camps. Haken off, growing quickly.
You look at CrossFit. You know, there are people who want to train pretty hard court. You know, CrossFit's
doing well. And now CrossFit itself is doing well. I know many
CrossFit locations start and fail. Yeah, they're starting to fail and that's because CrossFit HQ
and I think Glassman, God bless them, he's doing a great job growing the CrossFit brand, but I think
he also has an obligation and a duty to the owners. Like when someone says I'm a firefighter and I'm
a cop and I'm going to team up with my friend and the three of us are gonna own a CrossFit.
It's like, you can't have three jobs and fund a CrossFit.
Your CrossFit has to fund your lifestyle.
Could you imagine if I sell a Fitbot
a bootcamp franchise and I go,
but you need another job to fund it?
Like, it doesn't happen.
See, I teach business.
He teaches CrossFit, right?
You just take people to regional games
and then global games or whatever the games are.
Good for him.
He built the brand, but he has an obligation to those people who signed a lease about the
equipment and have families to feed, right?
I look at it that way.
I had that fucking obligation.
And so all of our franchise owners who own a Fitbody bootcamp, I have to make sure they
perform.
They can choose not to.
That's on them.
But I'm going to give them everything.
I'm going to give them the rope and I'm going to hope that they build a ladder and not
hang themselves with them, right? So, so often in the fitness industry, do we see companies grow and then disappear and grow
like curves? I remember curves. Curves came out of nowhere, exploded fastest growing fitness
franchise at the time in the history of fitness and then just crashed.
They had over 13,200 locations at their peak.
Number one, we saw CrossFit explode.
You're starting to see it really start to level out now.
A lot of people start to fall off a little bit.
Orange theory, still on the upswing of explosion.
Why do we see so many ups and downs in fitness like this?
You see it in every industry, believe it or not.
Look at the sub industry, the sandwich industry.
Quiznos came and went, right?
Subway for the first time ever closed them most
amount of stores in 2017, 973 stores they closed down in 2017.
Wow.
And Subway's been around for a long time.
They have 26,000 stores.
Jared really killed that, huh?
And it wasn't Jared.
It was the adversary relationship between the franchisee
and the franchisee,
or because as Jersey Mike's is coming about,
as which which is coming about,
as all these, you know, firehouse subs is coming about,
Subway chooses to hang on to the,
we're the low price leader.
And they're saying, well, we have higher quality,
better quality, and it's better for you.
And Subway franchise owners are like,
hey, we have to change our message, HQ is saying,
none of us, yeah. So Papa John's, HQ is saying, no, no, no, we don't.
Yeah, so Papa John's, it's on the downswing right now.
So it happens in every industry
where there's it's either a chain or a franchise,
and it only happens when the guy up top
isn't listening to the owners or the managers
that are running.
So why Starbucks around since 1974?
Because Howard Schultz still listens
to all the partners that run the locations, right?
They're not a franchise, they're a chain.
The moment you stop listening and go,
I know better, because I'm on the top,
you don't, man, the industry has changed.
That's why I own my own Fitbody Bootcamp locations.
I have my foot in the door.
Smart.
Your finger on the poles.
You have to, because otherwise it's a massive ship
and then you can't, how do you know where to turn it
if you're not listening to the people that are in the...
Exactly, and a massive ship turns one degree at a time,
so it's a slow turn, right?
So I wanna know when the industry's changing
as soon as I can.
So I have trusted owners who reach out to me
and know that I'm open to feedback,
going back to feedback.
I'm open to feedback instead of feeling
like they're criticizing me.
Because sometimes it can feel that way.
You said something interesting about finding niche
and I couldn't agree with you more.
In fitness, you've had the big box gyms now, which have kind of, you know, your 24-hour
fitnesses, your LA fitnesses, your crunch.
And I don't know when it started happening, maybe early 2000s, it was a race to the bottom
in terms of who could sell the cheapest memberships for the most access with the hopes that
nobody will show up and use your jamming.
That's the general model, good luck trying
to compete with that on your own.
And then you started to see these niche types of things,
like Polotti Studios, Yoga Studios, start to kinda,
and I feel like that's, how important do you think that is?
Like finding that niche part for somebody.
If you plan on not only surviving, but thriving,
like making really good money so that you can pull yourself out of it and open up multiple locations and have a lifestyle,
a really good lifestyle, you have to be in a niche market period.
Period. That's why when a FitBody Bootcamp owner decides to add a juice bar,
we have a compliance department that cracks down on them.
They add a squat rack, we crack down, we're not crossfit, we're not fucking 24-of-fitness,
you don't need a juice bar, don't add showers because you're gonna have one shower because you can't afford to add five
You're gonna have 26 people upset at you while one person's showering right like don't let the idea fairy come in
And so we go narrow and deep we have a niche market
We do one thing would do better than anybody else and we continue to thrive the moment you don't have a niche
Is when you decide that I'm gonna serve everybody I'm to be everything to everybody and you're really nothing to no one.
Do you have any businesses that you're watching in the fitness industry right
now that really peaks your interest?
Business. Yes.
Yes.
I'm looking at all the influencers right now who are who have half a million
to two, three million followers on Instagram, specifically because Instagram
has done something
that Facebook and Snapchat didn't do,
which was, we all have a network now.
I look at that as my own MSNBC, CBS Network,
and these influencers who have a massive following
yet they're hawking someone else's product
for 10 to 20% commission.
I go, what the fuck are they doing?
Or they go, they get in the Me Too game,
and they go, oh, everyone's got a clothing line,
I'm gonna create a T-shirt line as well.
They're thinking too small with such a broad eye.
It's almost like you have an atomic bomb,
but you're treating it like you're at a fucking knife fight.
And I'm waiting for them to either explode in a good way
or fall apart because they go,
I'm just constantly putting up,
because it is a full-time job,
all the content they're putting up,
maintaining the page, growing the page,
the DMs for 10 to 20%.
So, they're making what, eight, nine,
$10,000 a month, maybe 20 grand a month.
With that many people connected them,
it's insane.
It should be making millions.
We share this all the time on the show
that we get tons of different guests
with all different
size social media followers.
And more often than not, we will meet somebody who has two, three, four million people
attached to them, barely making six figures.
And then we'll meet somebody who's got 30, 40,000 people attached to them, making eight,
nine figures.
So it's crazy that, and I think it's this problem that's being perpetuated by
this young generation that's coming up that just kind of sees what this guy is, who's got two
million followers, and everyone just starts to kind of copy of each other. And then you see all
these supplement companies, t-shirt companies, praying on all these athletes or famous, you know,
via sponsored athletes. Right. To the point, right% of the stuff. To the point where, right, the product, to the point where that's,
I remember a meeting and this was really,
this is, this is an epidemic in the,
the bodybuilding game.
So, and I, and I saw this, it was just blew my mind.
You've got these guys that become, you know,
on the Olympia stage like a Ben Pekolsky,
that has that much pull on social media
because everyone's watching what they're doing.
And they're doing.
And they're selling all these other t-shirts
and supplements for everybody else.
They have no idea they've got a multi-multimillion dollar
business sitting right in front of them
but they just don't have that.
They don't think big enough.
You have an atom bomb, like I said,
you have an atom bomb but you're trying to treat
like a knife fight.
Like what are you doing?
Drop the fucking bomb.
Right, you know, this just, but.
If you can truly impact thousands of people,
that's worth way more than just having a million followers on social media. Very well said. And I
don't have quantifiable facts for what I'm about to share right now, but I can almost guarantee you
follower to dollar equation. Jason Phillips makes the most money followers to dollars. Like he has a
multi, I'm not gonna share his numbers,
but he has a multiple seven figure business.
And I think his followers are under 15,000, right?
And so when you really look at it,
when you really look at it,
those that are in the same nutrition, coaching,
fitness, wellness, coaching, business,
they should have at least 10 times what he's doing
if they have half a million or more followers. but they're under thinking, which is unfortunate.
Let's talk about you for a second.
What's difficult for you right now?
What are your weaknesses?
What are you working on?
Writing a book.
Writing a book, yeah, but thank God for Ryan Holiday.
So as I was sharing with you guys, I've got a book coming out called Manup, which is about entrepreneurial leadership in September, late September. And I wrote what I thought
was an amazing book, manuscript, 62,000 words, sent it to the publisher. And I didn't hear from them
for like five weeks so much so that I reach out to Lewis House and I go, Hey, Lewis, when was the
first time you heard back about the edits? It should take like two or three weeks, I go, man, it's been five weeks.
He goes, reach out to them.
I reached out, they said, give us one more week, right?
There's so much shit.
We got to clean up.
Yeah.
They sent me six pages of notes of things to change and modify and edit and wise this
here.
And I realized I bit off more than I can chew because because I can scale businesses,
it doesn't mean that I can write a book and I couldn't.
And so they go, here's six pages of notes, fix these and you have two and a half weeks
to do it.
And so as my friend Dean Grassiose says, if you have a problem, they can be solved by writing
a check, you don't have a problem.
So I reached out to Ryan Holiday and I said, buddy, I know you work off long time spans,
but I got two and a half weeks.
I'll send you $30,000 in cash in a brown paper bag.
If you can make this manuscript
and these six pages of notes work,
and he and his co-host writer came back
with just brilliance brilliance.
And so I've got a great book coming out
that's Ghost Written by Jimmy and Ryan Holiday.
I forget Jimmy's last name right now,
but I'm excited for it, but I'm a horrible author.
And that's because I speak from the stage.
I do YouTube videos and I write thousand-word blog posts.
Not even a thousand-
Yeah, it's a, so it was very humbling.
It's like when Michael Jordan went to play baseball, right?
I'm sure it was a humbling experience.
So that's what I am not good at.
Just so you thought I'm gonna do this good.
Dude, I thought in six or seven weeks I can knock it out.
It was horrible.
It was embarrassing.
How are you balancing personal with business?
Do you work a lot of hours doing all this stuff?
No, no, like I told you guys, I have this 5% rule
that I talk about.
I only work in my zone of genius.
My zone of genius is my 5%.
Most people are doing things that are in there like 95%.
Like they're cleaning their own house when they're,
I said, you can afford a house cleaner, you know?
They're doing their own shopping.
You know, people can shop for you now.
We forget because as we grow our income,
we go, oh, well, I've always done my own dry cleaning,
so I'm gonna take my own dry cleaning.
You don't have to do that.
So my 5% is a delegate motivate cell.
So I work six to eight hours a day,
sometimes 10 hours a day, on my 5%.
So I get a lot done, right?
Whereas the other guy might be trying to do a whole bunch of stuff
and so they have to work 18-hour days like I used to.
Like I used to. So I've got pretty, it's not balanced,
it's more of a good work life mix.
It's tough to narrow down that 5%.
I mean, one of the hardest things that we've had to deal with
with scaling this business is, you know,
you work so hard to get it to a certain point,
then it gets to a point where you're actually really moving along
and then what happens is everything looks awesome.
Yeah, everything looks like, oh my God, let's go over here.
We can make a million dollars doing that.
We can make a million dollars.
Yeah.
And we find ourselves scatterbrain instead of really becoming very myopic
on what got us to this point and continued to excel at that.
I think that's one of the most challenging things for people to do.
Do you do have things that you have to help people figure out what their 5% is?
Yeah, I mainly tell people like, what is it that only you can do that no one else can do in
your business?
And so I always start off on a marker board with people and we'll draw the old Benjamin
Franklin, a line right down the center and we'll write 5% on one side of it and 95% on
the other.
So Benjamin Franklin said, yes, and no, right?
And if he had more yeses and noes,
then he would do the yes thing.
So I just write 5% on one side,
95% of the other, and I haven't do brain dump.
I go, all right, Sal, what's in your 5%?
Should you be vacuuming this room right now?
No, okay, that's in your 95%.
And we'll dump, usually it's we dump out
all the 95% should you be doing this,
should you be doing this, should you be doing this,
should you be dusting the place,
should you be booking the guests? No, no, no, no, no, okay, so what's left? 95% should you be doing this, should you be doing this, should you be dusting the place, should you be booking the guests?
No, no, no, no, no, okay, so what's left?
Well, I should be interviewing them
because no one else can interview
like you guys can, right?
What else?
I should be, whatever else the thing is,
I should be programming, I should go find sponsors.
Great, those are your 5%.
So once you write it down and you see it,
and I go, hey, you see this little line right down the middle
between five and 95, yeah.
I go, it's like a cell membrane, it's porous, and I start kind of scratching it out with my finger. I go over time, you see this little line right down the middle between five and 95? Yeah. I go it's like a cell membrane, it's porous.
And I start kind of scratching it out with my finger.
I go over time, that line wears out.
And some of the 5% don't go into the 95.
The 95 start pouring in.
And what happens is people go, hey man,
I'm gonna be late, can you vacuum for me?
Before you know it, that becomes a habit.
Hey man, I'm not gonna have time to set up the mics.
Can you set up the mics for me?
Before you know it, now that I'll just set up the mics
from now on. So you have to do an audit and go,
am I still on my 5%?
Holy fuck, I'm doing 22%.
Start moving those other things over.
Go back to your 5%.
Life will be good.
Excellent.
Oh my God.
How about your current fitness regime?
You were talking about how you started training
a little bit differently now.
Yeah, so I'm the King of injuries because I just,
again, I'm a little bit... You go too hard, what's going on?
Bro, I don't know what it is.
You know what?
I think because I blame my mom because I wasn't breastfed,
I've got weak connective tissue.
Sure.
And I told Ben Pukolsky and he's like, I doubt it.
I'm like, oh, Ben, no, we'll see.
But so, I have torn a bicep, ACL,
meniscus, pectare, hamstring tear,
and pretty bad.
Yeah. I mean, surgery,
that's a lot.
And parachute didn't open one time.
No, right?
And these are all different occasions ironically.
And so I realized very quickly that I probably don't have
the best training.
I trained what I saw guys in the gym doing.
And so I go, man, some of the, like, top elite athletes
are my coaching clients now.
Like Steve Weatherford, right?
Like Armageddon guy with the biggest arms like
He's a coaching client. Hey Steve. What do I do for arms? Hey?
Who the fuck did I just train with a Venice Beach Michael hern? Right Mike? I've known you for a decade
We've never worked out. I'm gonna come to Venice Beach
We're gonna film it. You're gonna put me through shoulder workout because I got all the shoulder pain
He put me through an amazing shoulder workout where I felt strong
I was sore the next day in a good way
But I didn't have the pain that I normally do the of the what feels like a pinch nerve in my trap I was really crazy, I was really crazy, I was really crazy, I was really crazy, I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy,
I was really crazy, I was really crazy, I was really crazy, I was really crazy, Crazy, you were crazy for that. But basically my routine is now. So two people have really helped me with my diet
is a freak fitness, Darren, I forget Darren's last name now.
And then of course, Jason Phillips,
they've helped me dial in my diet,
which now I can go anywhere and eat clean,
have abs at the age of 43, which feels good.
And then of course, all my muscular friends
that I've helped grow their business,
now I'm asking them, hey, I'm gonna fly out to you
or drive to you and you're gonna put me through
a great workout and teach me how to grow muscle
without tearing it off the bone.
And so it's scary as shit because they're big
and scientific and smart, but I trust the process
and just like they trust their business in my hands,
I trust my muscles in their hands.
So it's been fun.
Did you, this is so true with a lot of trainers, by the way, we tend to train our clients much better than we train ourselves.
Very true.
All with your injuries, were you looking back, were there signs leading up to it that you just ignored?
Were you like disconnected from your body?
Absolutely. Absolutely. So when I turned my bicep, I had trained with the MMA coach that morning,
I had a bicep, I had trained with a MMA coach that morning,
which is, you have a lot of static contraction against your arms when you're getting people in an arm bar,
you're putting an arm bar, whatever.
And then I did back in bicep work that day with Josh Carter,
a friend of mine who also works with me.
And then as we're leaving the gym, there's these two ropes.
And I asked a gym owner, I'm like,
hey man, what are the ropes for?
He goes, oh, you climb the ropes,
and then you bring the bell up top,
and you climb back down.
So, obviously I had over fatigue that muscle.
And so I climbed the rope.
I could do it, I'm tired.
So I just hang off my right arm,
just for a second to get my left arm to break.
Snap hop.
And I go down, right?
Josh was like, holy fuck, you just tore your bicep,
and he rolls up my sleeve,
and you see it rolled up like a Venetian blind
So each time it was one of those when I when I tore my hamstring I was looking at someone in the mirror who was behind me and it wasn't even a check
So I was like was it a chick? No, I was just watching some guy in the fluorescent shirt walking in as I was doing alternating lunges
So I lost focus, right?
But again, I probably should have warmed up done mobility and all that stuff, you know focused
But again, I probably should have warmed up, done mobility and all that stuff, you know, focused,
been more aware of them, overusing the bicep right now or the hamstring or whatever. So, but with all my clients, what do I do? You pay attention. Focus. And, you know, we warm up with
you mobility. We, you know, we get them into the workout slowly. Everything that I would teach I
didn't do. Well, why do you, why do you, why do you think that is? Why do you think you're,
you weren't taking care of yourself like you should have or like you think that is? Why do you think you weren't taking care of yourself
like you should have or like you like somebody else?
I don't know, dude.
I honestly believe that there's some sense of like,
I do, I enjoy hurting myself.
Not like in the, I'm gonna go tear a bicep.
No, you've survived as being the underdog, dude.
Yeah, I feel like.
You like being the underdog, you.
I put myself in an underdog position often.
Right, you probably self-savotage and don't even realize
that you do it every once well
because you like to overcome.
Yeah, yeah.
I literally was learning MMA fighting
from this guy for six weeks,
halfway through my wife and I.
So three week point, my wife and I take my kids to Maui.
We're flying back from Maui.
There's this guy who's raging out at the front of the plane.
We're kind of in the middle of the plane in business class.
And this guy's raging out and hitting the guy in front of out at the front of the plane, we're kind of in the middle of the plane in business class. And this guy's raging out and hitting the guy in front
of him over the head, the flat attendance
are trying to calm him down.
So the other group of flat attendance
are walking down my aisle with two zip ties linked together.
And I'm like,
man, what's going on?
Is everything okay?
And I'm thinking this is post 9-11.
This is like a few years ago.
Everyone's gonna dog pile on this guy.
I was like, you know what?
Man, what's going on?
Is everything okay?
Well, he's a flight risk.
He's a danger to the flight. We have to zip time. We're like over the Pacific right
now, dude. I'm like, Holy fuck, I travel all the time. Like, nothing happens. Now I got
my wife and kids with me. And like, this is going to happen. And so she goes over there
and she's trying to get the zip ties on him. She looks up at me because he starts freaking
out. Like, help. And I'm thinking everyone's going to rush. No one rushed, but this me
and this one other guy. I just went over there, got the guy on a choke hold,
and the whole time I realized,
I have no idea what I'm doing,
because it's been three weeks that I'm doing MMA,
but this guy's likely to kill me,
but why am I putting myself in danger?
And it wasn't to be a hero.
And hindsight I look back,
I just do things to maybe hurt myself just a bit
to be the underdog.
In this case, it worked out, I ended up choking the guy out
and put the zip tie on him, and then LAPD took him away
when we landed.
But all this, I've come to a lot of realizations lately that I do like to abuse myself.
Do you fear like ultimate success where that no longer exists?
Where there's no more of that?
Are you asking, do I fear like, like, success? Yeah, like, look, like, I'm so successful that I don't have any of this.
No, if I lost it all, it wouldn't matter
because I've been broken poor before.
It's not that I just, there's a high I get
off doing things, taking pain.
And a lot of physical pain, emotional pain.
Bro, when you're molested for fucking two years straight
by two older boys and you have to mentally
fucking go away while that's happening to,
you fucking know how to zone out.
Like I can put anybody in a box
and put them away for good for life, right mentally.
And that's not a fucking thing I want anyone else
to experience in their life,
but that's pain, scarring pain.
And I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry
from like I've gone through that with the therapy.
I'm fine, I'm good.
Like that's one of my superpowers now, right?
But where that pain no longer exists,
maybe I'm just giving myself other pain.
I'm not trying to tear muscle.
It's just I do things thinking I'm a fucking superhero.
I could do it.
And if I get hurt in the process, oh well,
I survived that, I can survive anything.
I accept the death in seconds as I told you.
Like in that fucking guest house,
I wasn't trying to resuscitate myself
or call 911 off my cell phone.
I was like, all right, I'm gonna die.
I just don't want them to find me stiff and loaded.
Had a good run.
Yeah, had a good run at 37, peace out.
And so you know what, I'm human, man,
that's my thing.
And hopefully one day I'll figure that piece out too.
But until then, and this is why I also serve people.
The more people I serve, the less time I spend
in the darkness.
I was just gonna ask, do you get a different rush
from helping others become successful?
Is it more fulfilling? Is it different?
It is more fulfilling. It feels better.
Yeah, yeah, it's very different.
Yeah, I love seeing others succeed.
I love helping others. Yeah, the help that I never got, I love giving.
And I've realized that.
And my therapist will help me realize that.
You also have mentioned several times about, you know,
not being the smartest guy or nutrition, physiology,
biomechanics, like you admit that, how long or if ever was that
in security?
I mean, you, and you have a multi-million dollar business
that you've built within fitness,
but yet you don't, you would openly admit,
I don't even know that much shit about the body.
That's fucking unbelievably impressive,
and that's a huge insecurity
that most people have a hard time overcoming.
But at least people in fitness.
Right, yeah.
But it's completely detached from what I'm amazing at,
and I believe I'm world class at,
and I'm tip of the spear razors edge at,
which is scaling a business, a fitness business. fitness business these days you give me a dental business car practice business
I can ask you enough questions and learn about your business to see the opportunities that you missed for a decade and a half being in your business.
So I'm not a great trainer never was but.
I understand how the personal training and fitness business works better than anybody else on the planet.
But Alan Cosgrove, right?
Amazing coach and trainer.
He can train.
In fact, I haven't come speak at our FitBitBootCamp
World Conference because he can teach them
how to train, yet I help him in his business, right?
Same with Craig Valentine, same with Jay Faruja.
Like, I just, I'm really good at one thing,
at business development and- Trainers are, Iuja, like, and I just, I'm really gonna one thing, a business development and.
Trainers are, I always remember,
like one of the things, managing gyms and having,
I had sales people work for me,
I had trainers working for me, front desk staff,
the whole thing.
Trainers, it was always a bit of a struggle
or a challenge to get them to understand
that they have to be good salespeople,
they have to be good business people.
I didn't have to do that to my salespeople, obviously.
But all my trainers wanted to do
is be better trainers, which is great.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Be better at training their clients,
but when it came time to teach them about
how to grow their business,
there was a lot of reluctance at first.
And luckily, I'm a good salesperson,
so I could eventually close them on knowing
that this is very important,
but I always remember that being a struggle.
It was always something I had to, it was a conversation I had to have with trainers.
Why?
Because like, like doctors like dentists, we think that well, because I have, I've put
all this education behind my name, people should come to me because of that.
Let's just show up.
Yeah, the reality is you'll have a heart attack or a toothache and you'll go to a dentist.
But we kind of walk around with 30, 40, 50, 200 pounds
of extra weight.
So people don't feel like they have to go to a trainer.
So as a trainer, you have to influence
and attract your clients where a doctor dentist
doesn't have to pain or a heart attack or a disease
gets you in.
And the moment trainers decide to adopt that,
instead of fight that,
our industry will become better and we will ultimately beat our competitors.
You know where competitors are by the way, it's not the fucking crossfit or the orange
theater or the Fitbody bootcamp.
It's the McDonald's, the Taco Bell, the Coca-Cola, the Snickers.
Who's going to win?
They understand marketing where we don't.
So I still feel like I'm not doing my fucking job in this industry.
Well, they're marketing better and they're putting better science behind it.
Yeah, they're science kicks ass too.
Amazing.
High jacking our palates and finding a way for us to be addicted to the foods.
Like, man, we're getting the shit kicked out of us when you look at the ratio of people
that are actually getting in shape and getting healthy compared to how many people.
I mean, that's the thing that always saddens me is that here we are in 2018 and we're supposed to be smarter and better yet we're seeing more issues, more obesity, more autoimmune.
That's kind of shitty when you think about it.
You know, when we know more today than we did 15, 20 years ago, but yet it's continuing
to be on the rise.
So we're really losing the battle when you think about it.
Big time. Dude, Peter, Peter, a de-amante talks about in his book,
abundance that we have, things are more abundantly available
to us, like in our hands, in our pocket right now,
we all have an iPhone of some sort where we can Google
answers to things, right?
Yet we are more sick, we're more broke, we're more dependent
on mood altering drugs than ever before.
Yet we have so much abundance around us,
which means that the other guys are winning.
And so people who look at marketing and selling
is bad, bad, bad.
I don't wanna be used car salesmen,
embrace selling and marketing
because you're selling a solution
that's saving people's lives.
You have to be able to look.
You could know the answer to somebody's problems,
but if they don't know that it's the answer, if they don't buy
into it, you might as well have no answer. It doesn't matter. It doesn't make it
different. So, you know, when I would tell teach sales training, I would change it to
effective communication only because sales has such a bad connotation that people
think, oh, I don't want to learn sales. So I would teach people how to communicate
effectively. And really, all of what it's all about and what I said to teach people was
I if I can take my feeling and understanding of what I know and just
transfer it transfer into your brain like put it into your mind
So you feel what I feel now? I've done an effective job
But it always has to start with integrity and here's the other thing about fitness that you know
We rail on all the time. There's so much information. It's a lot of conflicting information.
And there's a lot of bad information out there.
And there seems to be, and this is true for any industry,
but we're in fitness, so that's the one we see the most of.
There's a lot of charlatans.
Like, is that one of the most important things for you
when the client comes and hires you
that they have to have impeccable integrity?
How do you talk about that with them?
Oh, absolutely.
In fact, I've turned away plenty of people who,
hey, I'm starting a supplement company
and the product, does this, does it?
Show me.
It blocks carbs.
Show me.
Because I may not know that it does,
I may not know how to figure it out,
but I show me the supplement.
I'll send it to Ben.
I'll send it to Jason.
I'll send it to Joel Marion,
who started biotrust supplements.
I'll send it to the people who I know
because I'm so well connected.
And I'll say, no, you can't be a client.
You're full of shit because ultimately,
it's my reputation because in the past,
I have brought on coaching clients who I knew lacked integrity,
but I needed their money.
I'm being very honest with you here,
and I needed one to their money.
I brought them on only for them to erode our industry,
and I'll never do that again.
I'll never do that again.
How did that affect you negatively?
What was it?
Just affected your name, or did you just not feel good about it?
Well, the way it once I figured out what they were doing
and how they were just burning bridges left and right
and I parted ways with one of them.
And he went and created a blog and started to slander me
for 18 months on that blog, right?
And that was not a good feeling.
What's crazy is the reason I parted ways with him
and I saw this coming is he would slander all these people in the community that he served, right? The mayor and the whatever.
And I was like, wow, well, you know, he's a dick to them, but I'm sure he'll never bite my hand
because I help him grow his business. I help him get to seven figures. Sooner or later,
they're going to turn around on you. And he did. Yeah. Wow. What do you see for the future of the fitness industry, like business wise, where do you see
the opportunities?
Like I said, social media is going to continue to grow.
And as much as people think that it's just all about posting pictures for Aunt Millie
to see while she's in Tallahassee, Florida, it's way more than that.
You've got your own network.
I tell people right now, if I could snap my fingers and get NBC, ABC, any of those affiliates
to put you on their popular morning show. Like, how much would you pay me? Oh, I paid you
10 grand, 20 grand, 30 grand. Would you? Yeah, how come? Well, because I'd be on a national
network and a big popular TV show. I go, but do you know if all the right people, the
right audience is watching? No. I go, what if you can actually create your own network
beyond 24 hours and have the right audience. What if NBC let you do that?
How the fuck would they let me do that?
It's called Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, motherfucker.
That's what that is, but people are still treating it
like this place to go goof off on,
whereas I'm building multi-million dollar industries.
Like we're building Strength Camp.
You guys know Elliot Hulse?
Yeah.
Strength Camp, he's one of my coaching clients now.
It's gonna be the next fit body boot camp,
but in his space, I helped build,
I love kickboxing with Michael Porella.
He was a coaching client.
We replicated the model there,
and it's all social media driven.
We're not getting leads from entrepreneur
and ink magazines anymore like franchises do.
We're getting leads from Facebook
by following the right people
and attracting them into our business model.
So more people need to start looking at these things
as TV network channels, unless
it's places to go goof off on or just sell a supplement and get 10%.
What do you see?
What are some of the tips that you give to people with?
Because I see a lot of mistakes in my opinion on Instagram.
One of them in my opinion, I like to hear if you agree or disagree, is, you know, I
view social media as a way for me to be able to connect to you and for you to kind of learn
about who I am and my message, what I stand for,
and I wanna grow that with like-minded type of people.
What I don't use it for is to market and sell my products.
In fact, if you go through my personal Instagram,
you don't see me pushing and selling that,
because I think it supports the rest of the business
that we have right now. What's your thoughts on that? And what are the some of the business that we have right now.
What's your thoughts on that? And what are the some of the mistakes that you see people making that are trying to build
an Instagram following?
The biggest mistake I see people making is they are not being them.
They're authentic and transparent subs.
They're being in the entrepreneurial world.
They're trying to be Gary Vaynerchuk and Andy Fercilla in the fitness world.
They're trying to be Gary Vaynerchuk and Andy Fricilla. In the fitness world, they're trying to be Joey Swole or, look at the fuck, there's her name, Paige Hathaway.
Both wonderful human beings, but there's only one Joey Swole.
There's only one Paige Hathaway.
There's only one Jeremy Budia, BU, BU.
And the moment that I decided to be me,
and not a Gary Vaynerchuk or Andy Fricilla,
or Ed Mylett, is when my social media
falling started to grow where I just started talking about, hey, I didn't take
out alone. I didn't have rich parents. I failed many times. Let me make a list of
my failures. Instead of a list of my successes and wins. Let me show you every
chink in my armor. Instead of showing you that my armor is impenetrable. Let me
show you all the kryptonites that I have in my life that can weaken me. And the
moment I started to do that, I was like, they're like, holy fuck, you're the real
deal.
Like you teach actionable stuff, not just focus on greatness and you will be great.
What the fuck does that mean?
Focus on lead generation, convert those leads into paying clients, keep them for a long haul,
ask for referrals, mother fucker.
That's the reason.
I'll give you that kind of detail, right?
And then I'll give you the how-tos.
That's much better than focus on greatness and you'll be great.
What do you feel about some of the,
I feel like there's a lot of this,
especially now with Instagram
and you name dropped a few of them,
a lot of fluff around the motivation shit,
man, it's just people just motivating,
motivating, motivating, and I feel like
motivation is so short.
Wake up, be the best, you're awesome,
hard, grind, like what?
We can't get motivated from Instagram or from others.
Motivation's just within, like I've got this anger
and this rage and this fire in my belly
and the chip on my shoulder.
I'm blessed to have that.
And I will keep stoking that fire.
I will tear more muscles to stoke that.
You know what, I realized sitting here,
maybe that's what I'm doing is I keep hurting myself
and putting myself through challenges and adversities.
I just keep stoking, fanning that fire.
Thank you guys just saved me $185 session.
You're the kind of, that's really what,
one day at the end of one of our sessions,
by the way, he's like, hey,
Bay Dross, because he's a horrible salesman,
because he's a fucking therapist.
And people, I always want to draw
what he looks like.
Einstein minus the eyebrows.
So my therapist, Kevin, God bless him.
If he listens to this, he's got no eyebrows.
And the first four sessions,
you're just trying to find the eyebrows. He's human face, he's eyebrows. But one day, he's got no eyebrows. And the first four sessions, you're just trying to find the eyebrows.
Human face needs eyebrows.
But one day, he's just being awkward and weird with him.
Like, and he's handing me the receipt.
It's time to re-sign, right?
Yeah, I go, Kevin, what's up?
So my price is going up by $20.
I go $20 a month a week, when?
It goes a session.
Okay, great, fantastic.
I go, Kevin, $40, $50, $100.
Like, you're helping me, you're helping a lot of people.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, the people call me $4.20.
I'm like, what am I doing?
I'm giving business advice to my therapist.
I'm here.
I'm here to get the help.
$20 it is, Kevin, like I gotta go now.
Right, like, time's time's money.
Yeah, but it took him like 20 minutes
to poop that word out, like the price is going up, you know?
I don't know what we were talking about.
I don't know, you know what I like you to bring up
because I think it'll create a very good discussion.
You were on, I think, on the flight over here listening to
an episode that we just recently did,
where we scared the shit out of some kid
who probably wants to do it.
We shit on someone's dream.
We shit on someone's dream,
which those are the people you typically help.
So there are ways to make money owning a gym.
Yeah, well, let's first talk about what the question was.
So somebody just recently, for those that don't know,
asked us on one of our Q&As,
what was our advice for somebody who was just getting
into the fitness industry and had dreams
to own their own gym one day, and without getting
into a long story about it, Sal, Justin and I,
nicely shit on that dream.
Yeah, you guys even went on to say,
Bradley Martin has his own gym.
He's got a million followers,
and I don't know if his gym's profitable and I don't know if his gym's profitable
I don't know if his gym's profitable and lots of followers don't mean that your gym's gonna be profitable trust me
I know that for a fact because I've got clients who go I got two million followers
I'm broke as we talked about earlier. What do you have a gym a supplement line? It doesn't matter. It's always the leader
But yeah, I guess some young and it was at the 54 minute mark in case you guys want to go back and re-edit that
but yeah, I guess some young, and it was at the 54 minute mark,
in case you guys wanna go back and re-edit that.
I'm not saying you, but I'm not.
Wow.
Well, no, I stand.
I'm OCD, you know what I'm saying?
I stand by when I say,
this is why I wanna have this discussion.
Well, here, let me defend it for a second.
So I've talked to a lot of trainers and people in fitness
who want to do something or start a business,
and the first thing I do,
because I was the opposite before,
whenever someone would come into my gym
and wanna work for me
I found myself closing them on working for me on how great it is and I didn't really work out that well because sometimes
I get people who weren't that sure and then they come work for me and then I was like, uh, why did I close that person to work here?
So then I started talking people out of it and then the fucking really hard core passion of people were the ones that stick around. And I'm wondering if that's where it comes from, because now when I, excuse me,
when I get that, I don't know, I got some of my thoughts.
I think you almost died, man.
Yeah, yeah.
I have my own ex-added attack.
Now when people talk to me like that, I do,
I almost like talk them out of it,
and then if they stick around, now we get to work.
Yeah, what do you think about that?
Well, I mean, here's what I think.
That young man who sent in that question
and said, hey, I think I went open
on my personal training gym, I'm a personal trainer, et cetera.
From where we all come from, remember,
I came from the LA Fitness World, right?
Big box gyms, you're absolutely right.
They're not there to serve.
They're there to take your money
and hope that you don't come in
so that they can keep selling more memberships.
Think about the big box gym that's in your town,
whether it's 24-ar fitnessfitness Equinox LA fitness.
10 years they've been there, they have 20,000 people.
They should put a sign that says,
we're full, can't come in.
But 89% of gym members don't work out after 90 days,
but you get to keep paying their memberships.
That's the model, right?
That's the model.
Anyone who wants to start that model, don't do it.
It's gonna cost you millions
and it's gonna take a lot of time to build it out.
And you're probably not gonna get money on this flip side.
We'll show you a boutique gym.
Well, you can, but don't do the whole, let me buy a shit ton of equipment, go to $300,000
in debt.
And I don't care if you're going to do your own boutique brand yourself, right?
Or if it's going to be, let me invest into an orange theory type thing or a Barry's boot
camp.
That's a lot of treadmills you have to buy at $8,000 a piece.
Now you're talking a $453,000 on average build-up
for an orange theory.
Guess what?
I'm not here to talk up FitBody Bootcamp
because you can start your own version of a FitBody Bootcamp
as long as you know how to market and sell and retain
and ask for referrals, so there's only four things you need.
But you open up a 2,000 square foot place,
light industrial or commercial.
Your rent is about $2,200 to $2,500 to maybe $3,000 a month.
You buy $13,000 of equipment, battle ropes,
kettlebells, plyo boxes, pull-up bars, bands.
You put carpet bonded foam on the floor
from a gymnastic center, right?
You buy that from Dolomar.
So now you're 13, 14, maybe $15,000 in.
And let's assume that you did a little fancy build out,
so you put a palette wall up, and so now all in,
you're probably $60,000 into a nice 22 to 2500 square foot gym,
that you can do group training in, functional workouts,
deliver results, sign people up at 147 to 197 a month,
long 12 month programs that are, you know,
auto-re, auto-debit or reoccurring payments, EFT electronic fund transfer.
And be the best at one thing, just do fat loss
or just do body building or just do functional training.
And if you do that and start using social media
as we talked about earlier, a platform to use it as a network
and position yourself as the leader in your community,
be the Jillian Michaels in your community.
Everyone just thinks that I have to have
a $400,000 buildout.
No, you're starting upside down, man.
You should be able to just max out two credit cards
and be a gym owner and then learn leadership,
not Maxwell, not Maxwell,
John Maxwell, right?
Jockel Willings in his book with Extreme Ownership
and maybe when my book comes out,
maybe they'll buy a man up on the wall.
But the point of this is its leadership,
it's marketing, it's building a good team,
it's having been focused on one niche,
spending a little bit of money now,
and then using that money to build out
a bigger, better gym in the future.
I love how you weren't vague, by the way.
I love how you were specific.
Like do this, buy this, buy that.
It's gonna cost you this much money.
You don't get that much.
You don't get that kind of advice normally.
Normally it's this really vague, you know, and-
Now it's creating the turnkey sort of idea.
Model four, you know, somebody going into that, where I think the argument where we were
presenting it was like, yeah, a franchise is going to have, you know, a more of a success
rate in that direction because they've actually created the model for the formula.
Yeah, the formula system, right?
Why do you think the fail rate so high?
The other thing that I think, the other thing that I think that I challenge that and I'm
playing devil's advocate here is that, you know, if you, and this is my experience and
again, I want you to speak up if you disagree, is that, you know, at all times I was managing
anywhere between 20 to 30 trainers that were on my staff.
And if you worked for me at this big box gym that was spending $25 million a year in
marketing and advertising, and you couldn't find your way to the top two or three trainers thinking that you were
going to go outside of a huge box like that and build your own. I've never seen it. I
literally have not. When I do see them have success, they're always the ones that had a
lot of success in a place like that. And even some of those fail because you know that's
a different monster having a company who's providing all those leads.
You walk in a fucking 24 LA fitness,
there's a thousand people on the market.
Are you fucking kidding me?
You walk out on the street and it's zero now.
Now you've got to find out how to get a thousand people
in front of you every day that you were used to.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Is it zero or is it now 50,000 people in the community?
See, and this is like the shoe salesman
that went to an island where they were all,
what do you call it? They're all villagers, I guess, or whatever.
Maybe they went to the,
some uninhabited place where there was,
well, can't be uninhabited.
An island where there's a whole bunch of tribal people.
No shoes, right?
He calls up the company, goes, oh my God,
these guys are villagers, they're tribal.
They don't wear shoes, send me back.
So they send the other sales rep in.
He goes, holy fuck, send all the shoes you have.
These motherfuckers have no shoes.
I'm gonna sell every motherfucker a shoe.
So it's the mindset that you go into it with.
So when I was in the LA Fitness, I'm like,
fuck man, the LA Fitness only signed up 300 members this month.
And I did the math at $400 per new member,
because that's the math that we used in LA Fitness.
$400 per new member, here's how much money I'm gonna make.
Fuck, that's not the commissions I want.
These guys are neutering the amount of income I wanna make.
I'm gonna go open up my own gym
because now I live in a town of 53,000 people.
I got 53,000 prospects.
Why later realized those are 53,000 suspects?
But what can I do to make them into prospects, right?
Lead generation, right?
Boxes, lead generation boxes at the local pizza store
and supplement store and taco shack, etc
Hey, if you want to lose weight and tell me how much fat fat you want to lose
I'll give you a free week of personal training you might win the drawing
So I'd start lead generating before there was email and social media and all that stuff. It's so funny lead boxes
We're such a right. We've all done that in here right?
Oh, yeah, there were a key component of lead generation. I don't think anybody does those anymore
No, no, well now you're not fishing with lead boxes. You're fishing with, you know,
click funnel ads and I mean, dude, we've got this one promotion in FitBody Bootcamp called
Drop Pounds Get Paid. It's a six week program for 300 bucks. And when you lose the 20 pounds,
we give you your $300 back. Oh, or we'll double the $300 and apply it towards the 12-month program.
So we get two to 300 people sign up on that program when we promote it for one of our
50-body locations and then about 50% stay.
So I mean look at the big conversion.
That's huge.
But now can they retain?
So that's the other formula.
Retention results, right?
And then referrals, the three hours, retention results, referrals.
And these are the things that trainers don't know,
haven't learned ACE and ASM,
no one's fucking taught us this stuff.
So we go open up a gym, go into debt,
and then have that happen.
Well, that ever happened.
Are you open to that with those various things?
The moment they go, hey, we wanna license your stuff
and put it into our certifications,
I will go, here you go, license it, license it from me.
I'm always open, but they always want to sell
more level one,
level two functional of this and post-eurogeum.
Why do you think there's such a high fail rate for gyms?
You think it's because guys go in there,
opening a gym, like, I like to work out.
So I'm gonna open a gym and then that's it.
I like to work out, I get, give my clients in 24-hour fitness
or LF- fitness amazing results.
Therefore, I'll be really good on my own.
Oh, and by the way, and the big box gym is the bad guy.
They forget.
As much as I hated the big box gyms,
those are the trenches and I'm eternally grateful
for them giving me the sales training they gave me,
putting the pressure on me like they did.
But again, it's a refrain.
They look at it as, they put so much pressure on me.
I look at it as, thank God they put that pressure on me
so that I could learn and ask what am I prepared for.
Yeah, exactly.
Going to battle without a rifle, what the fuck?
So they go into battle without a rifle and they go,
oh, what happened?
Well, you don't know how to sell.
You're a great trainer, but you don't know how to market.
No one's taught you a niche, what a niche is.
And you certainly don't know how to deliver results.
And by the way, results are not just fat loss.
Results are come from confidence.
See, most people think like trainers,
you gotta think like a coach
When you can become turn from a trainer to a coach in other words a trainer knows where the muscle originates in
inserts a coach knows Man, you know what sound doesn't look like he slept a lot a lot today
How can I get maximum calorie burn and effort from him today and then get him to come in tomorrow for another workout?
That's what a coach does a coach knows how to cajole you into getting a better workout a trainer
Just knows how to program a workout and hope that you follow it and stick to it.
So there's coaching. So results is showing them. Results is them coming in. Results is them
sticking to the program. The confidence of self-esteem, self-image. Results is getting referrals.
No one teaches that stuff and tell a trainer is like almost broke and they do that Google search
to find my YouTube videos or my blogs.
That's the only way they find me.
Right.
Wow.
I mean, I need them to find me in the certification like manuals.
Right.
Yeah.
That's why I was saying that I think that going through a big box gym is so invaluable for somebody who's just getting into the fitness industry for those reasons.
Because there's just not a lot of resources and places that you can find.
And even the ones that do sometimes still don't even make the connection.
I don't know how many conversations I had with trainers
on their way out the door and saying,
hey Adam, thanks for the two years of training
and teaching me how to be a great trainer.
I'm gonna go do this on my own.
I'm gonna be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pump your brakes.
Let me see your plan.
And I was always a guy like, I wanted to see that.
I wanted to see, I took a lot of pride in developing leaders.
And so I was okay with him leaving.
Even though that was gonna make my job challenging and I had to find another one
I like that. I like developing them seeing them go off and succeed
But many times they wouldn't and many times they wouldn't because they didn't realize what they were getting inside that
Facility and I don't think there's a lot of people that talk about that
And I too remember being a trainer starting and thinking that the end goal was having my own gym
But running just one gym and even the ones that make it, right?
You look, we talked about CrossFit, you know,
it's a great model of a low entry level to get in and start doing it,
and they pay, they charge EFT, you know, 75 grand a year, 50, you know,
maybe 100 if you're fucking really good at it,
and you're working six, seven days a week,
and you're in there grinding like crazy.
And then maybe you get that model running 70 to 100.
And so you think I'm going to open a second one.
Oh, there's a new mother fucking monster for you.
It's one thing to build your own little box that you're in and that you're a great leader.
If you don't have systems, man, you're screwed.
That's it.
I look at systems like an acronym and systems to me stand for save yourself time, effort,
and money.
And people forget to replicate themselves
through other humans, right?
It's like, how many times you get that email,
how much do you charge, and every time you retie that email?
You know, there's some called canned response in Google,
in Gmail.
You've typed that email out once,
saving a canned response,
and now you can have staff deploy that
instead of you having to retie it every time, right?
Same with, how do you answer a phone?
Whether the top 20 questions you get over the phone, write that down, record it, and teach
it.
This is why franchise have a high success, right?
Because we just systemize the fuck out of everything because a federal trade commission
makes us.
Because if we have a high failure rate, like Quiz Nose, which is why it's going out of
business, they can't sell in more franchises. I would not be allowed to sell more franchises
if I have a high failure rate.
So, FitBody Bootcamp's can't fail.
We only have a 2% failure rate
unlike the rest of the industry, which is an 8%.
Only a 2% failure.
How do we not cover that?
Holy shit.
Wow.
Now, okay, so at one point, you were 640 upside down you said
earlier, and I'm assuming that you didn't have
a 2% failure rate at that time or did you even
at that time?
We had a massive failure rate because we were teaching our owners here, go do this, run
this Facebook ad.
Well, we don't know if they ran it.
We don't know if Facebook stopped that ad and they didn't try again because they don't
have the emotional resilience we want them to have.
So it went from go do it yourself to done for you.
So now we have a in-house marketing campaigns
that we run for them.
We drive the leads to them.
We teach them how to do the selling and coaching
and marketing and retention and all that stuff.
It's all as much done for you as possible.
Now if we can go there and train their clients for them,
we would, obviously we can't,
but we drive the leads for them, help them sign their leads
and negotiate their leads, the leads the build out the equipment everything
Wow, you have a coach a business coach step-by-step with you throughout the entire process
We have someone called the RSG program ready gets that go when you become a franchise eat so that you don't fuck it up and
Open up a 6,000 square foot location when you only need 2500 square feet and all those things help contribute to the success factor. So what was okay?
You're 640 in debt, your fail rate is much higher.
What did that transition look like?
How long did it take?
So the transition looked like this.
It took us three years to start breaking even, right?
So in 2011, we were $640,000 in debt.
I was a horrible leader, had a business partner who I didn't share a vision with.
We had a very tense relationship.
I had five employees who at best, at best, I was lucky if they showed up on time.
I was really lucky if they clocked out at five o'clock and not four or forty-five.
This is a reality, man.
I was a horrible leader.
As my leadership changed around 2013-14, the business began to change.
As I parted ways with my business partner and as I started hiring team members and training
them to become team members instead of employees, employees clock in a little late, clock
out a little early, do the bare minimum to maintain employment.
A team, they go, hey, that's our opponent.
We're a unified team with one unified outcome, which is to win.
So I have team members, right? So for example
If after this I'm going to Arizona, but let's out with with the family
But if I was going to Arizona to go film something everything that ed their captures here, right?
I've got a videographer with me for those listening
Everything that he captures. He's gonna go and edit while the other videographer would meet me in the airport
And we've done this before Jonathan would meet me at the airport then we'd fly out to
Actually St. Louis. We went to St. Louis.
And so I've got a team members who don't give a fuck
if it's a weekend.
They are as determined to have chips on their shoulders.
I hire people who are underdogs now,
and I train them to become fighter jets,
and we give them a rope, and we go build a ladder,
because if you don't, you're gonna build a news
and hang yourself.
And you can ask it right now or after this,
like I have high performance coaching days
for my team members, not just the stuff
that I teach my coaching clients who pay me 50G's,
I teach them, because I need them to become
the tip of the spear in videography and operations
and sales and marketing and compliance, right?
And so we started creating these really badass systems
and that allowed our success rate to go through the roof.
And we started raising our price.
Franchise price went from $5,000 by infy to $25,000 by infy.
And by the way, the more people pay, the more they pay attention.
And so we're getting better qualified owners on board.
It's not funny.
Yeah, you know that, right?
I remember charging more as a personal trainer and getting clients that were more serious.
Absolutely.
What the hell's going on here?
When we interviewed Ben Pekolsky,
this was something I kind of dug in on him a little bit
and I picked up on it real quick
because he had said some things real somewhere to you
and I know stuff that I challenged with.
Was when you're kind of the underdog guy
and you've got this chip on your shoulder,
a lot of your success has been on your own fight,
your own, you've learned to be successful me.
I could get into a gym, I could go into any gym,
I don't care if it took 20 trainers around that facility,
I'll get the whole fucking goal by myself, boom.
And if you either run with me or you get ran over,
and so much of my success was that way.
Now when I started to have to scale
on a head multiple businesses that I was running at one time
and all these different employees and different goals
and visions, I fucking was failing all over the place. Seems like I was just kind of plugging holes everywhere. And it really
took me developing my leadership skills. What would you say is that the single best advice
for someone like that, and I'm assuming you're someone who went to this similar transition
where you probably kicked fucking ass by yourself for so long, but then at one point, you've
got to learn to run 40 fucking employees. Right. What did that look like? And what is some
of the best advice you've had?
That looks scary because I just figured,
gee, everybody else will be as motivated as I am.
They know we have to sell for, I know it's your laughing.
The, I signed that.
We all think that ever.
I signed the front of the check.
Of course, I'm gonna be more motivated.
They signed the back of the check.
They're not as motivated, right?
That's just the reality.
My name's on the lease.
Their name is not on the lease.
I have more to lose.
They don't have as much to lose. But it's silly and I never thought of that.
I just figured, I'm going to pay you. You're going to work as hard as I do. That wasn't the exchange
that was happening. We just instinctively look for how can I cut corners? It's just a human way.
But as a leader, I later learned that I have to set expectations and then maintain those
expectations. And then there has to be consequences if the expectations aren't met. Consequences can only happen if we're willing to openly communicate
instead of having this passive-aggressive relationship where you didn't do what I wanted or you showed
up five minutes late instead of me actually giving you feedback on it, me being huffy and puffy with
you. And therefore you're like, what the fuck is up with Badros? He's obviously on edge. So,
fuck it, I'm going to work less effectively instead of more effectively, right?
So communication, become a better communicator,
be more decisive, I make faster,
better decisions these days,
because like anything else, decision-making is a muscle
and you can improve it.
People go, how do I make those big decisions really well?
Start with the little decisions.
Like, if you and your honey are gonna go on a date night
tonight, don't go, well, where do you want to eat?
Where do you want to eat?
Should we see a movie first or dinner first? Make a decision, we're, hey honey, we're having sushi at eight o'clock and then honey are gonna go on a date night tonight, don't go, well, where do you want to eat? Where do you want to eat? Should we see a movie first or dinner first?
Make a decision.
We're, hey honey, we're having sushi at eight o'clock
and then we're gonna go see the expendables after this
because I'm a sub-restor still on fan, okay?
And if she has a problem with it, she'll tell you
and then I don't want sushi, it gives me diarrhea.
So I'm gonna have steak or whatever, right?
I've got a twisted sense of humor.
So, yeah, it would be the wife who would have the diarrhea,
not you.
Um, so, but that's a small decision. Or you're in a group of humor. So, yeah, it would be the wife who would have the diary. Not you. Um, so, but that's a small decision.
Or you're in a group of friends,
hey guys, who's gonna call the lift or the Uber?
Fuck it, I'm gonna call the lift and Uber.
I'm gonna call it, do it.
Someone, make all the little decisions.
Your subconscious mind doesn't know
that you're making a little decision or a big decision.
It just goes, he's a decisive motherfucker.
So when big decisions come up,
you're still making decisions fast.
Am I going to wear a hat today? Am I not going to wear a hat? Make a decision. Don't
him and Haad take forever. Just make a decision. Tomorrow is another day you can wear a different
hat or no hat, right? But it's so it's great communication skills. It's being open to
give and take feedback. It's being decisive, having clarity of vision. I know I want 2500,
50 boot camp locations by the year 2020
with less than 1000 owners.
That means each owner has to have two to three
Fibotid Boot Camp locations.
Because I don't want to serve a lot of owners
which means I have to have a big bloated team, right?
I want a small team of 40 or 50 team members
serving 1000 owners who own 2500 locations collectively.
And I know the date that I want to buy and I know the path that we use to get there, which is Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
those are my marketing platforms. And so clarity of vision is very important. And finally,
you have to develop a team for you to develop a team. You have to be a want to leader, not
a half to leader. So I'll finish off with that. I want to leader is someone that, for example,
if I'm working for you guys, I want to make you happy. I want to please you. I have to liter is, oh, fuck, if I don't vacuum, South's going
to get upset and get mad at me. So, right? I have to be in a place where I don't want to
let you down instead of I fear you. So many people run with the iron fist, right? Because
they're passive aggressive. They hold it and hold it and hold it in,
and emotionally go off it and employee,
and the employees now walk in on the next shows.
Do I have the Dr. Jekyll?
Sal, or do I have the Mr. Hyde, Sal?
Right?
So all those things matter,
but you have to develop your leadership muscles.
You can't just overnight, it's not a light switch,
it's a dimmer switch.
And it took me three and a half years
to develop those muscles.
That's awesome. How much are you enjoying the podcast space?
Man, I am really digging it.
I was a little awkward at first.
I spoke very fast when Craig and I did our first maybe dozen or so podcasts.
Like anything else I went right back to just blah giving content.
I'm like, wait a minute, this is just like when I'm on stage.
Let me take my time.
I've got all the time in the world,
we can edit it out to whatever minutes we need it to be.
And as soon as I got comfortable,
it went back to point, story, metaphor.
It was awesome, but it was pretty nerve-wracking, man.
Like, oh man, we're on camera, what's gonna happen with this?
I am enjoying it, the feedback that we're getting is cool.
You finding it, I find it therapeutic as hell.
It's one of the most therapeutic things I've ever done.
The one that Craig and I do is very,
like we're gonna talk about this one specific topic.
So there is none of this stuff,
which is why the BK podcast that I'm gonna do
at my gym that I'm opening up, BK Strength,
is gonna be very much like what you guys are doing here.
We're gonna work out together,
and we're gonna film and record the whole workout.
And they're gonna finish off in our lobby
as we're eating a high protein meal,
like final thoughts. And it'll just be people
who fascinate and interest me from high performance
entrepreneurs to world class athletes
or Navy SEAL friends that I have or whatever.
Yeah.
Do you have a favorite podcast that you've done so far?
A favorite podcast that I've done so far.
Yeah, or good interview, Clash.
Any good interviews that you've done?
Yeah, yeah, the model health show, because Sean just somehow, he's a great listener.
He doesn't wait to talk, and I've been watching, right?
Like, because I'm trying to get into the podcast space myself.
He's a great listener.
He doesn't wait to talk.
The ones that I don't like so much, Lewis House, great listener, asks wonderful questions.
As my experience here with you guys, amazing,
and I'm not just saying that honestly,
I would be very honest with you guys.
It's four dudes bantering and you wait to,
you listen, you don't just wait to talk.
The ones that I dislike was when you're coming up
with the point and then the host is like,
yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
And then they go off on our tangent and like,
why did you ask me to buy your shift gears to it?
Yeah, or they're always having a dick measuring contest
with you on the podcast or whatever.
Why are we on, okay, if you're better than me,
then why are we here?
Yeah, so I've learned a lot.
I've learned a lot of what not to do.
And I've learned a lot of just how to chill.
Like what you guys were doing here,
which is why I asked Ed, like,
hey, remember this scene,
this is how I want the BK podcast to be like.
The one that I do with Craig, we're standing up,
we're looking at the cameras, we're teaching for 18 minutes,
and that's it, you know.
Totally different vibes.
Totally different.
Like this vibe is something that I want to do
for my own personal podcast,
and I've learned a lot just watching you guys
and listening to your podcast.
Yeah, the best conversations are when everybody's relaxed
and they feel like they could just open up
and anything that we learned, Jordan Harbinger, highly recommend you,
listen to his podcast.
He used to be the host of the Art of Charm.
Now he has a Jordan Harbinger show.
And he said something that was just,
recently we had him on,
and we sucked that interviewing for a long time.
We were really good by ourselves.
As soon as we brought someone else in on the show,
it was like, we lost our chemistry,
and it became like, it became like a job interview.
Like, okay, question one, question two,
it just wasn't good
and we slowly started getting better
and then Jordan said something that was fascinating.
He said, you know, cause I asked him,
I said, God, sometimes I find it hard to ask
the tough questions because I want to be,
yeah, cause I want to be respectful.
Like it's a guest, it's like they're in my house.
Like I don't want to ask this guy about, you know,
why he cheated on his wife or, you know, the drugs he's used or that kind of stuff because it feels disrespectful
And he says you're not doing the show for him you're doing the show for your audience and in ride a whale
I get like a light switch went off and I was like oh shit like if I have a question
I'm just gonna ask it and if the person gets pissed off well, we got a viral gorilla in the room
Talk about it. Sal pisses off bedros. You know
We're posting that shit.
I'm on my way out.
No, one more ice coffee please.
Yeah.
Is that nitro, is that nitro-brood?
Absolutely.
Anybody you have your eye on in the fitness industry that you're not working with, that
you see in your thinking, oh shit, this is kind of interesting.
Oh, good question.
You know, I really wish a lot.
There's no one specific,
the fitness motivation influencers
that have half a million or more followers
are the ones that I have my eyes on
because I know that's like the opportunity there.
The opportunity and I know I just need to peel back
a few layers and boom and teach them a few things.
I teach them to think bigger, act bigger,
get more disciplined and organized.
I get it.
It's also, I don't know how much money Simon pandamakes
or any of those guys, right?
So I'm not saying like,
but I look at what Simon's doing,
you know, pushing e-books and digital programs,
that's fantastic.
Like how do we think bigger, scale, multiply,
franchise, license, right?
Let's go there.
Let's go there.
Let's just explore those things.
Because it goes back to being curious, curiosity. Let's be curious about what are
the things you have in your wheelhouse. But it again, it takes, maybe they have a
huge following, but if they're dim bulb, I can't help them. So I don't know them
because I just see them like everyone else does on Instagram. But I'd like to get
a whole room of them in front of me and then start asking a lot of questions and
then saying, get out, get out, get out get out get out and then everyone who stays
Let me work with you for three years and watch what happens. Is there a way you're you're targeting these guys right now?
I'm not I just wait for them to all to come to me. I don't target anybody. Okay anybody
Yeah, you made a name for yourself by now like if you're not and you probably don't want somebody that you have to go chase anyways
I want them to not ready
Yeah, like Pukalski Del Monte
I want them to come over. They're not ready to come over.
Yeah, like Pukalski, Del Monte, Jason Phillips,
all these guys send me so many great coaching clients
because they talk me up to them.
And that's how I want people to come to me
versus like, hey, Batre is just trying to sum
his coaching program, his name dropping,
but I don't know if I want to work with him.
Like if the resistance wall is up, I don't want to deal with him.
And I'm going to place my life on my mic.
You don't have to have money, I don't have to.
Yeah.
It's, you know, I'm not going to lie.
I had heard about you in the industry.
Wasn't, you know, there's so many of these like hype,
you know, motivational speaker type people.
I knew nothing about you.
So I can, I thought maybe you were like one of them.
Then we heard a lot of good things about you
from mutual friends.
And I'm glad, you know, we had, we had you on the show.
Definitely a lot way more substance
than those motivational,
kind of raw, raw, raw, raw type speakers.
Lots of substance, you get very specific.
I really appreciate that in our space
because I don't think a lot of people are doing that.
So thank you, man. That means a lot.
True, yeah. I've wrought truth, man.
Absolutely, yeah. Thanks for coming on the show, man.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Appreciate the opportunity.
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