 I'm Jason Leduc, founder of Jason Leduc Leadership Consultants and host of the Leaders Mindset podcast. What you're about to experience is an episode of the show that we recorded before we went through our rebrand. But we still wanted to share it with you because we loved what the guest had to say so much. So thank you for sticking with us through the changes. Enjoy the episode. Welcome, I'm Jason Leduc, founder of Evil Genius Leadership Consultants. We're here at Cooperate at Blackfire. They've been gracious enough to let us use the co-working home of Evil Genius Leadership Consultants. They've been gracious enough to let us turn a small corner of their space into our little corner of the world to be a studio so we can do some interviews. And we're interviewing friends of mine, people I respect, people I admire, and people who are having an impact in our entrepreneurial and business community here in Las Vegas. Today, I have with me Michael Trollen, founder of Lasertag Fitness. And I wanna talk all about Lasertag Fitness in a bit, but really what I wanna hear about first is how you came to be in Las Vegas, what your journey towards entrepreneurship was, and still is, and then we'll talk about how cool Lasertag Fitness is. Great, sounds good. Well, glad to be here. My journey to get to Las Vegas, I actually have only been here for about a year and a half and I lived in New York City prior to this. I was born in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. But New York City, I lived in for a long time, but it was sort of going in a different direction lately that isn't as nice for me to be in. So my fiance and I actually traveled across the country. We stayed in 17 different cities on our way, trying different cities out, seeing what's gonna be great. And to my great surprise, Las Vegas blew them all away. It was by far the most interesting city for us. Our second choice was Nashville. Our third choice was Miami to give you some context. I hear that list a lot, and Vegas is one of those places, I think people know right away, either they love it or they hate it, and they wanna be here forever, or they gotta get out of here. And then Nashville and Miami are very, very similar cities. I hear on that list that people, of places people are going to. That's a good point. Yeah, it's sort of a love it or hate it. Same thing with New York City, love it or hate it as well. That's a good point. I used to always think Vegas was just some casinos in a desert, but it's not. It's 24 seven businesses, it's festivals, it's concerts, it's shows, it's conferences, right? What, 20,000 a year, 50 conferences a day average. For somebody who loves conferences and the business world and entrepreneurial stuff, Vegas is just, it blew me away with how amazing it is. And high quality food too, right? It came from New York City, Manhattan, some of the best food on the planet, and Vegas has similar quality food. You've got, what's the celebrity chef that has all of his own TV shows, Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon Ramsay has five restaurants here, right? About to open his sixth. And the tons of celebrity chefs through here. So it just blew me away that it's not just a bunch of casinos. So those are all the reasons you love Las Vegas. Also, we have this fantastic growing startup community here that you're having a big impact on. Yes, and it's fun. I showed up, one of the first things I did is let me see what's going on in the startup community. I ended up at startup Vegas, one of their events where they have entrepreneurs on stage giving their pitch, getting feedback from the audience. And I thought, this is awesome. I saw your pitch. Yeah, that's right. One of the early ones, I got lucky enough to have been on stage and give a pitch for Lasertag Fitness. In fact, I gotta tell you, my favorite moment of that was when I said the name of the business and the room gasped. Yeah. That's just, you know, it's a cool opportunity to have a startup that just the name is all you have to say and people get it. They get it right away. So explain Lasertag Fitness to us because it sounds pretty obvious, but I found that what I thought was the obvious idea for Lasertag Fitness is not what Lasertag Fitness is. So tell us all about it. Yeah, very simply, I went and did Lasertag maybe 15 years ago with my girlfriend at the time and I had a blast. 45 minutes of running around, up and down the ramp, shooting ducking around corners and I was drenched in sweat afterward and I wanted to keep going, right? And ever since then, every time I get on a treadmill, I think, why can't this boring workout be like that? And after 15 years, nobody's done it. So I decided, I guess I'm gonna have to get this thing going. Yeah, so you've really embraced the tech piece to make sure that everybody gets a great workout at Lasertag Fitness. Cause I think without that tech piece, you might not get the commitment to getting the workout in or at least the incentive to get the workout in. So tell us about the tech pieces. Yeah, I'm trying to. And also the gear itself, which is really, really high quality. Right, so I went out and checked all of the existing Lasertag equipment. As you can imagine, there's a Lasertag for kids studio in every city, right? There's a new thing called Tactical Lasertag, which has geared more toward adults. It has a lot more tactical elements to it. And some of the gear coming out of the companies that make that equipment is awesome. So one of the things that I wanted to do though is I structured the game so that's a hell of a workout, right? You have to run all the way out to the middle. If you get tagged, you have to run all the way back to the beginning to spawn back in and get back in the game. So there's a lot of sprinting, ducking, dodging, weaving, it already alone is a great workout. But in order to make sure that it's got longevity and you are in fact focused on the fact that it's a workout, I have incorporated heart rate monitors and the goal here, we don't have this yet, so we're still on the MVP stage, but the goal here is that your heart rate, being in your cardio zone, will increase your score. You'll get a bonus multiplier to your score. The idea there is the beauty of it is that you can start from the couch, right? If you haven't worked out in five years, you can still come do Lasertag fitness, you can start out sniping, barely moving around. But we don't want people sniping and barely moving around long term. So the heart rate monitor with the bonus encourages you to get moving. And that's what I think is so fascinating about the model behind what you're doing is that it's not getting a workout playing Lasertag. It's a workout primarily and everything around it, even though Lasertag is part of it, is built towards getting you a workout. It's not just kids running around and also getting a little bit of exercise. It's folks who are serious about their fitness routine can add this in because they know, if they're serious about it, they can stay at those cardio heart rate levels, they can burn those calories, they can develop that muscle, they can do all of that. It's a serious workout for serious people if they want it to be. Yeah, 100%, right? I get a lot of soccer players coming in because we're currently using an indoor soccer field as the location. And they say soccer gets you in great shape. If you've played soccer before, the first time you do it, you're just exhausted after three minutes and it's upwards of a 90 minute game. So the people who work through that and they're in shape, they come and do Lasertag Fitness and they say, my God, they're dressed in sweat too. They're saying this is even more of a workout than soccer. And the reason for that is you want to win. It's a team game, five versus five generally. We can go bigger, smaller than that. But you're trying so hard to win that you're just sprinting back and forth, ducking. Like I said, ducking, dodging, weaving. So you talked about how it's a workout first. That's my perspective. I'm trying to make sure it's a workout first. But the beauty of it is when somebody comes and does a Lasertag Fitness workout, to them it's Lasertag first. It's the competitive side of it first. I have people that after an hour of working out, they want to stay for the next hour workout, which is basically unheard of in a normal gym. That's fantastic. And you had a little hiatus for a bit, but now you're back in your old location, with a little bit of a new model. Right, yes. What I'm doing is I'm partnering up with the owner of the soccer field. He's trying to add a lot more programs and elements. And I realized I'm trying to build this thing up on my own, but he's already done a lot of launching programs and he's got staff and so forth. So he and I have been talking about partnering up lately. That's my new model approach. That's the way it is with startups, right? You're always pivoting. If you see a different way to get there, the idea is just to get there. No matter what you do, you're always trying to figure out what's the fastest way. So that's fantastic. It's the perfect lead-in. What's the there? Where are we taking laser tag fitness over the next 12 months, 24 months, five years? What's the plan for world domination? Yeah, nice. So I'm following the kind of standard startup entrepreneurial model. First thing I did was an MVP. I just wanted to see if this would even work. I got some equipment. We went out to, I made a deal with the city of Las Vegas, used their outdoor football fields and just proved that it's a workout, right? Measured heart rate. We counted 12 calories per minute, which is right up there with rowing and some of the most intense workouts that you can do. So the MVP was a success. Then I went for the minimally marketable product. So just to prove people are willing to pay. And yeah, people are wanting throw money at me, right? All their friends. Yeah, I'll pay for this guy. And I want to stay for two, like I said. So that's where we're at today. We just finished the MMP. So the goal moving forward is I want to, first of all, get it running full time so that people have slots they can choose from throughout the day to do a workout. I'll be doing that at this indoor soccer field. And then say 12 months from now, I'd love to have funding to open a facility. I'd love to have a actual standalone gym here in Vegas who driving down the street. You see laser tag fitness on the sign of a building. You think, my God, I want to do that, right? And then long-term, my long-term goal is to have 1,000 locations. I love it. I love it, one in every major city in town. There'll be five in every major city. I love the idea. I used to be stationed in the Air Force in California at Edwards Air Force Base and used to come up to Vegas like every other month. And if you've ever done that drive, I don't know if it's still like this, but it used to be all the billboards for everything in Vegas all the way down the road. I still like that 100%. I would love to see some laser tag fitness billboards up along that road. When you're driving up, after you get yourself through Baker and into really nothing for an hour or so, would love to see laser tag fitness. As soon as you hit the south side of Vegas from maybe M Resort going north, it's just billboard, billboard, billboard, billboard. I know that because when we first moved here, I was riding down and photographing every billboard to see what there is to do in the city. So yeah, exactly. I'd love for one of those to be laser tag fitness. Very cool. I can't wait to see it. So that's the plan to world domination. That's the goal. What are the challenges you see yourself having to face to get there? Sure. This is a classic entrepreneurial and leadership challenge, which is figuring out what are my strengths and what are the areas that I need help, right? And like a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm a little bit broad in my knowledge. I've got a lot of depth in technology. That's my primary background. But I noticed that when I try to do marketing, I can do it, but I'm not thrilled about it, right? I'm thinking, oh, I gotta get enough participants for today's workout and I'm stressed about it. I think for some people, that would be fun. Like for me, the tech is fun. I'm not stressed at all. Figuring out how can I incorporate hearty monitors into the taggers? How can I build these scoreboards and have achievements players can unlock as they play more and more, setting up leagues? All that sounds so easy and fun to me, I'm not stressed at all. But marketing, I'm finding myself a little bit stressed by. And the other one that gets me, I can do finance, I can do tech. It's marketing and oh, operations. Setting up the field every time, right? Dealing with all the, I can do tech bugs, but just dealing with staffing, things like that. Those are the sort of near term challenges that I'm facing. You almost need someone with an events background. Oh yeah. To go and figure out, what are the achievements that are gonna get people not just coming in to get the achievement, but coming back to try again if they don't get it, right? What are the, you almost need someone with an events background who knows how to bring people in and keep people coming back? That's a good point. Yeah, they'd be used to filling seats. Yeah. Which is effectively what's going on. I've got spots that need to be filled. Right, currently there's a minimum number of players. Anything less than four versus four is, it's hard to balance the skills between the players. So my long term idea is to build out a sort of obstacle course, right? Like police training or military training where one person can be shooting moving targets that appear and disappear and be running from spot to spot. So there's still a nice workout to be had if you come alone in some off-hour workout slot. I love that. But I don't have it yet, right? So I'm still trying to fit the minimum number of slots in somebody who does events that actually could be a really good fit. That just occurred to me. I mean, I know we've talked about this before, but that just occurred to me. Someone with an events background could really be helpful to you. And that's what I wanted to get into next. We've kind of already gotten into it is, who's on your team now and who do you feel you need on your team? Oh, right. So I think we kind of talked about that. But if there's any one person you could get on your team, whether it's by name or just the kind of the background and skills they have, who would it be? Interesting. Yeah, I mean, really it's just those two areas that I talked about. Somebody who's got great operations head but also likes marketing and finds that to be a ton of fun. Because those are the two things, like I said, I wanna be able to split the effort on the job, right? Rather than having to do all of it myself. So, who's somebody famous that's great at marketing and operations, I want that person. That's the person you want, okay. Well, if you're good at marketing and operations, contact Michael. So, so what is, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through this because you come from a corporate background, working in tech, now you're an entrepreneur, you're building your team for the first time. What is your approach to building your team? What is your approach to leading your team at Laser Tag Fitness? I'm glad you asked that. One of the people I had working for me when I ran my first ever technology website building business was a guy I hired to be my project manager. And he had various other projects of his own, very entrepreneurially minded. What I noticed he did is he roped everyone around him in to what he was doing. And ever since I met him, I've been doing the same thing. Everyone I meet, I invite them to get involved. I try to build my team that way because you tell somebody an idea like Laser Tag Fitness and everybody says, oh, let's talk about that. I'm excited. And if you miss that opportunity, and I feel like you've missed it, but if you grab that opportunity every time and try to get them involved in what you're doing, then you can build a big team faster. What is unique about working in the fitness space from what you've done before and also with this entertainment component to it, this game component to it, what have you found is unique working in this space with the way you're approaching it. So yeah, fitness, fitness is interesting, right? You asked what is the plan for world domination? A thousand locations is one thing, but if you look at a lot of these new fitness ideas that come around, like CrossFit started just 20 years ago, Orange Theory Fitness started about 10 years ago. There's one called F45 that's very popular right now. Those are all at about the 1,000, maybe 1,500 location stage right now. They all have about a billion dollar valuation. Orange Theory, last I looked, had a billion dollar valuation. But what they struggle with, if you listen to their founders talk about the fitness space, is you have to avoid becoming a fad, right? How many times have you heard about various workouts that now you never hear about them again, right? And that's very common because people want to do something new, but if they're not getting results, if they're not, and really it comes down to that, if they're not getting results, then they end up sort of abandoning it and moving back to what they know, going back to traditional stuff. So you'll see the meteoric rise of a new fitness concept and then the steady decline down to nothing. So the trick is to avoid becoming a fad. All right, so what's Michael Trollen gonna do, and his team, because it's gonna take a team, what is the laser tag fitness team gonna do to make sure laser tag fitness isn't a fad? Right, and I actually hinted at it a second ago, it's a great question, is the question for fitness business to answer, it is to give people results. If they feel like they are in fact seeing results, they'll keep coming back, like CrossFit, their growth has slowed a little bit, but it's still increasing, right? And the reason is if you go to a CrossFit workout, everybody's got a six pack, everybody, they'll show up to their workout, feeling like they've had an awful day, excited for their workout, because they know afterward they're gonna feel like a million bucks. Those kind of short-term and long-term results are what keep that colt like is what people describe CrossFit. It's what keeps people coming back and community, actually, one of the great things about laser tag fitness, with leagues and tournaments and teams, there's a built-in community that you just don't get at a normal gym. I think that's fantastic, I think you're well on your way. All right, so let's play a game. All right. Let's play a game. All right, you get a choice. So we're gonna, this game is called Rapid Response. So you're gonna get a choice here of which list you're gonna need to work off of. But the important thing is no matter what the question is, you're gonna respond with the first thing that comes into your head. Okay. It's a rapid response game. So you get a choice. You can either do a round of this or that, where I will give you a this or a that. And you will respond with the first thing that comes into your head. So either this, that, or whatever pops into your head. Or I have open question-free response where I won't give you a this or that, I'll just ask you a question. So would you prefer this or that or free response? I say let's do this or that. This or that, all right. Michael Trollen, rapid response round. This or that, are you ready to begin? I'm ready. Starting now. Digital or analog? Digital. New York or LA? Ooh, New York. Ocean or lake? Lake. Art or science? Science. Dogs or cats? Dogs. Sweet or spicy? Spicy. Yankees or red socks? Yankees. Incorrect. Dress up or casual? Dress up. Sunrise or sunset? Sunset. Downtown or the strip? Downtown. All right. So excellent job playing this or that in our rapid response round. Unfortunately you win nothing. However, you have been a great sport, so thank you for playing. Is there a personality result that comes out of those choices? No, this is just something to kill some time. Oh, nice. I like it. Something to kill some time and let us find out a little bit more about you. Like dress up instead of casual. What's the story there? Yeah, what's the story there? But that's a story for another time. Okay. So. Yeah, every one of those I could talk 10 minutes about. Well, we'll have to have you back for that. Nice, sounds good. So what have you learned about leadership starting laser tag fitness? One of them I mentioned a minute ago which is play to your strengths, right? Many years ago I did a test called the Strengths Finder. Gallup puts that together. That has just stuck with me ever since. Knowing what things I'm strong at and ultimately as a result in joy has been really key and trying to get help from people who cover for your weaknesses, right? If you're spending all day trying to fix your weaknesses rather than playing to your strengths, I feel like you're slowing yourself down. And one of my favorite quotes, I mentioned I worked in the corporate world doing tech for big ad agencies like Ogilvy and Maylor based out of New York City. And Ogilvy, who founded the company, he once said that if we hire people, constantly hire people who are bigger than us, AKA smarter than us, then we'll be a company of giants. Yeah. I've always stuck with that idea. That's fantastic. One of the things I see entrepreneurs often doing, often trying to do, because entrepreneurs are smart, talented, driven people, is when they aren't good at something that will try to learn how to do it. And that's good in the beginning. It's important to learn things in the beginning, but there's a really important point as an entrepreneur where you have to recognize where your time is more value-bly spent. And so you are perfectly capable as an entrepreneur of learning some of these things, the marketing, but is that the best use of your time? And a lot of entrepreneurs go through that of having to go through the growing pains a little bit of, well, I'm a smart guy or gal, I can learn how to do this. And then saying, you know what, not the best use of my time. And it sounds like you've already crossed that bridge. Oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, I have a few thoughts on that that I found very useful. One of them is I did management, I studied management at Harvard. And one of the things they teach about Harvard is that it's all about process. Don't think about management as having to figure out people's personalities and being responsible for their limitations or concerns or challenges, no, no. They teach that if you set up a bunch of processes through which they're set up to succeed, then you've done your job, right? And so to me, being an entrepreneur, it's a process of setting up each department, each piece of your business. If you sort of do a deep dive in each thing, like marketing, I did a deep dive into marketing, came up with a whole plan, what are all the places we can market? How can we set up each one? I started setting up each one. And then I hired somebody who's an expert at it, got them set up and equipped so that they're starting to run with it. Once I feel like that is off and running, that one system, now I can move my focus to the next system, right? So it's just basically setting up processes for each thing, rather than going nuts doing all these thousands of things, I can dive into one at a time. That's awesome. Which I find to be useful. It's very similar to how we approach things in the United States Air Force. We're always looking to set people up for success, right? Have that, whether it's a process, whether it's inputs, whether it's a team around whatever it is, set that person up for success and not just for the task they're gonna do or their job they're doing today, but how are we setting them up for success in their career later on? How are we giving them leadership development, career development, personal development so that they will be able to set other people up for success in the future? Nice. Oh, that's great. It reminds me of my absolute favorite quote about delegation. They say give your people as much freedom as possible without setting them up to fail. I just, that to me encapsulates delegation in one sentence. Have you found, as an entrepreneur, have you found delegation to your team hard? You come from a background with a little more leadership development than some already have when they get into entrepreneurship, so maybe you've got that locked down, but I have found that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with delegation. Yeah, I mean the first thing is you always feel like you could do it better, right? And that to me is the absolute, that's the impulse that you absolutely have to try to avoid. I like to think that my job is to get the results through my team rather than to do it myself, because I absolutely have that urge to just dive in, I can do it better, let me just do it. But you've gotta stay focused on 1,000 locations. Right, exactly, yeah, the big picture, right? If I get lost in the weeds of doing little things, then I'm not building those systems, those processes, I'm not setting other people up to succeed. All the things we just talked about, I'm not getting in the way of that if I'm not delegating and trying to achieve results through people. So what's your approach to delegation? Any advice for entrepreneurs out there? That quote I just said is the biggest one, right? Give people as much freedom as possible without setting them up to fail. And that second part I think is worth unpacking a bit without setting them up to fail. You have to have a bit of an instinct to know if I just let them run with this, are they gonna succeed at it or not? And if not, what can I do to help them succeed at it? Yeah, right? Like one little simple practical technique is when somebody's struggling, I try not to take on their problems. I try not to say, oh, I'll make that phone call or I'll take care of that for you. I try instead, first ask them, what do they think is the solution? It's nine times out of 10. The thing they say that they think is the solution is very clearly the solution. They just need somebody to say, that's right, you're on it, go do that. Sounds great to me, go forth and do great things. And those we call them vector checks in the Air Force of, hey, how are things going? And you find out things aren't going maybe as well as you'd hope they were, but well, let's talk through it. Let them work their way through the problem, talk through and then say, yeah, it sounds great, go forth and go forth and do great things. And now they don't feel like they're out alone and unafraid and running away with things. And also it gives us a chance as leaders to check in without being overbearing about it. Nice, nice, I like that. Vector, sort of like just, are they on the right path in the right direction? Oh, that's cool, I like that a lot. We use a lot of flying in Air Force metaphors around here. I believe it. So who is someone either as a leader or someone in business that you admire? Oh, that's interesting, a leader or someone in business that I admire. Of course I watch Shark Tank all the time, right? I think everyone in this room does. Yeah, yeah, all the sharks always, you know, there's always things that they say or do that really inspire. One that always sticks with me is Mark Cuban saying that business is a game and how much money you made is how you keep score. I love that one. Because to me it takes sort of the seriousness out of it but also keeps you focused on the measurement point which is money, which reminds me actually of another great maxim. I don't know if I got this from one of the sharks or somewhere else, but in leadership, you get what you measure. Yeah. Right, which is both good and bad. If you're measuring for something and people are sort of adapting in a way that's not productive to your business in order to put out those numbers then you can actually hurt the business, right? But on the other hand, if you're paying attention, right? I know you do Toastmasters, for example. Toastmasters nailed it with their, do they still do the 10 point program? Right, it's so good. They still have it, yeah. They wouldn't change it. It probably has not changed since you were in Toastmasters. That's right, yeah, I'm sure. It's been a little while since I was in it and it just, I loved operating on that, trying to accomplish those goals. And if you're just trying to accomplish those goals then you're actually helping all these leaders to grow and all these communicators to get better without you focusing on that one piece. It's a fantastic system. And for those folks who aren't familiar with Toastmasters, what they have is what's called the Distinguished Club Program. And that's a list of 10 measurements that you get awards if you meet certain numbers of measurements, but that's not the important part. They are 10 measurements designed to tell you as club officers how healthy your club is. So it's about your membership. It's about our people moving along their educational paths. It's about, are you doing your administrative tasks on time or are you doing your financial tasks on time? Attendance. Right, all that kind of stuff. And so it's very carefully chosen to help you understand if you've got a healthy club or a club that needs some help. That's what I love about using financials in any business as a way of measuring the success and health of the business. And this isn't something I understood until I did my MBA and then it clicked with me right away of, oh, I can see how healthy the business is by what's going out, the financials, by comparing the revenue to the gross margin, by comparing that to the expenses and just looking at those things. And if you approach it the right way, if you look at those in a certain way, those financials in a certain way, it tells you a lot about how your company's running more so than maybe your personnel metrics are telling you or telling you if your personnel metrics aren't telling you the whole story and maybe you need to adjust your personnel or admin or operational metrics so that they're a consistent story with your financials. That's a good point. Does it also help to uncover some of the things like personnel, things along those lines? It can. It can if you, it can tell you a lot, especially if you dig down into each expense, broad categories of expense, what you're spending money on in terms of the percentage of revenue. It can really tell you a lot about what's going on in your business that may not be bubbling up to the surface in day to day. Right, we mentioned Shark Tank earlier. Anyone who watches Shark Tank knows those are always the questions that come up. And a lot of times after the fact, it ends up not being a deal because they did the deep dive and they found out that there's even more. More often than you think with Shark Tank. Every time there's a show that's over, we go and look up everyone who was on it to see who did well and probably half the time, the deal that they handshook on ended up not becoming a deal. Really common once you get into those details. There was something I wanted to say about Toastmasters. We were talking about the metrics. Oh, I was going to tell you, one of my favorite things is to reverse engineer the Toastmasters metrics to find a good club. I would always go and see what clubs are hitting all 10 of those and out of those, which ones are hitting them the best. And inevitably I show up and what do you find? Great leadership, right? And who do you want to be around? Great leaders. It's a perfect way to find a good club. You are thinking like an investor when you were looking at Toastmasters clubs because that's what investors are looking for when they're looking at your business plan and your financials and your pitch deck. They're looking for that. How healthy is this business I may be investing in now and how far can we blow this up? Right, right. And probably the same thing. When they get there and they meet the founders, what do they find? A great leadership, great team. You hope so. Right, yeah. Well, I mean, my goodness, if it's an idea that's taking off with an awful team then you've got an idea that's gold, right? But investors can even fix that, right? You can, if you've got founders who aren't up to the challenge, you can keep the founders but bringing a great team around them to really shore them up. Nice. And then when you exit later on, everybody makes a good bit of money, right? Right, right. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because one of my things when it comes to leadership is I mentioned earlier when you're delegating you want to give people as much freedom as possible without setting them up to fail. But all the people around you, people who are at the same level or when you're managing up, you're always trying to help them to succeed and looking for ways that you can help them to succeed, right? Thinking, I don't know, I can't think of an example of it but I'm always, when I'm thinking of my boss, I'm thinking, how can I equip this person to succeed at their role? I believe the same thing and I'm glad you brought up managing up because it's not something we talk a lot about with our guests when we interview them but it's so important either as an entrepreneur or as a founder to make sure that your people, the people on your team know they can manage up a little bit. One of the things I learned in the Air Force and it didn't always make me popular with my bosses but I think it helped my bosses out, my commanders out in the long run is, have you heard the saying bad news doesn't get better with age? I don't think I have heard that. Okay, well what's that one on the whiteboard? You want to tell them real fast, immediately. Yeah, and that was always my philosophy is I owe it to my commander, I owe it to my boss to tell them what's going on and how I'm trying to fix it, not just pointing out problems but if we have a problem I owe it to them to either tell them we've got this problem and I can't fix it on my own or we have this problem and I did fix it and here's how or buckle up here it comes so that they're prepared and they can do things at their level back to setting everybody up for success later on. Didn't make me very popular all the time but in the end I think it was the right thing to do. Yeah, it's funny, I've run into that where I'm trying to give people the news ASAP so we as a team can collectively work on it and I've yet to find the magic in every scenario of how to not be shot as the messenger but I still believe you've got to uncover that as soon as possible because I'm trying to get the team to succeed. That's my number one focus, myself is second. Team succeeding is number one and managing up is definitely a key part of that. You actually just gave me a new idea which I've never really thought about. How do you manage up and work with your manager to be managing down so that it's sort of a cycle between the two of you? If you're transparent and authentic about the fact that you're managing up it might actually open up some dialogue where the two of you are actually working together. Actually building a relationship of trust between two people, what a concept, right? And you imagine, and that's exactly the answer I think to your self-imposed question is either as the boss, come in and talk to me. Let's talk what's going on. What are you struggling with? How can I help you? Have you thought about this? Good talk, let's do this again in about a week or two weeks, right? And as an employee, as a subordinate, it's a little harder, but if you've got a boss that you need to build that relationship and trust with, hey, can I come in and talk to you about some things? Right, good talk and we do this again in about a week. That's the key, right? Coming back to process I mentioned earlier, right there you're setting up a process where we just know every week or two that we're gonna have a heart to heart conversation. This is the relationship that every commander and director of operations at a squadron level in the Air Force has to have. The director of operations is the second in command of a squadron. So I was that to a commander in Colorado and this is the relationship we developed and it's the relationship that any two closely working closely working people have to have. Nice, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, managing up has been something that's helped me out tremendously to succeed. It's an incredible tool and if you approach it honestly and with the best intentions of looking out for the best interest of the organization, it can only go well from there. Right, yeah, especially if both of you share that, what's in the best interest of the organization and get the whole team on board with that? It's, I found that to be very powerful. So what's coming up for laser tag fitness? What are you excited about? Oh, all right, what's coming up? So like I mentioned, we're looking to launch a number of morning workouts and just basically have availability throughout the day. One of the dreams is to live the Las Vegas lifestyle where we've got basically almost 24 seven workouts available because if you've ever been to a gym concept like CrossFit I mentioned earlier and they don't have your time slot, it's really hard to fit it into your lifestyle. So that's one of the things I'm excited about. Also the tech, right? Right now, we're still in the minimally marketable product stage so it's really, you're doing that five versus five workout and it is a great workout but we're not yet providing the bonus to your scores for your heart rate. We're not yet giving the unlockables where if you get a headshot 20 times in a row or something that should be a medal that goes on your profile. Just like a video game, people go crazy for those achievements on video games. Exactly, I had one of the local gaming companies, they have their QA department headquartered here in Las Vegas and they love the idea of getting the entire QA department, 50 people to be doing this because they love video games but they have a hard time getting them to go to the gym and just stay healthy as an organization so they're pumped about laser tag fitness. So we gotta get you set up so you can handle 50 people at a time. That's right. Okay. That's right, as funny as you can do that. I can have 80 versus 80 I think is the technical cap currently, that's probably just a database field limitation, right? That could be easily increased. I'm willing to bet you could figure that out. Yeah, exactly. And if you put them on a full-sized football field, right now I play on a quarter of a football field. If it's full-sized football field then of course we can have a ton of participants and who knows what challenges that'll unlock but it'll be a heck of a lot of fun. And that's what I wanna get into next is what are the challenges coming up and most importantly what are the big challenges that make you nervous? What are the big challenges that's coming up for you that keep you up at night about laser tag fitness? As you can imagine, funding is one of the number one challenges, right? You're always wanting to do big things and it takes money to build a lot of this stuff, right? You need to be able to pay the staff. You need to be able to buy more equipment. If I wanna do 80 versus 80, well I need 160 taggers. Minimum. Right, that's right. Exactly, we need some that'll be repairing, some that'll be charging. Minimum of 160, so funding is definitely always the challenge. So I'm very focused on that now, trying to network, trying to get to know people who see the potential for this organization to see that it would be the next billion-dollar business. Well, I've seen your pitch, I think it's great. I think you need to add in the 80 on 80 concept, the football field concept and because what investors are really looking for is show me the opportunity, right? And if you show, hey, I've got a path. That's a good point. This is where I'm headed next. Whole football field's going at once. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe you have the world championship of laser tag fitness and allegiance stadium one year. That's an idea that a number of people have brought up. They say, if you look at some of the successful brands, including the NFL, right? They have the Super Bowl, right? All the other competitors, the NFL have struggled because people are watching the Super Bowl. They're not watching anything else. CrossFit has CrossFit games, right? A number of these organizations have these big national competitions and there's no reason. Toastmasters too, right? Has the world championship of public speaking. That's right. So we could have the world champion laser tag player. I think that'd be a lot of fun. People would love to do it and it'd come from all around to see that happen. So if it's established as the championship, then that could be a great way to have a defensible business because people recognize that brand, they don't recognize the other competitions. Well, it sounds like you see plenty of opportunity and some challenge, but nothing that's really keeping you awake at night. I know funding is hard for entrepreneurs, but I think you're gonna get there. So we all have bad days sometimes. What do you do to stay calm and centered? What do you do to stay motivated on the days you don't really feel like getting up and doing laser tag fitness? Yeah, that's a good question. There's a number of things I do. One of my biggest lessons lately is to pay attention to the systems and the foundations that you build in your own life. If I spend a bunch of time, that's a good example of this. I mean, right now my fiance and I are working on getting our personal assistant to be able to help us out with more and more things. Because if I'm trying to build laser tag fitness and I'm stopping to unload the dishwasher or go pick up our packages or things like that, that's something that somebody can help us out with. And when we get them trained and they're just doing it automatically, now I've got another layer to my foundation that I don't have to think about these things, right? Or when I move into a new apartment, as I did here in Las Vegas, have a new condo by the strip actually, funny enough. And we spend all this effort getting it all furnished and getting the layout just right so that it flows nicely when the evening mode hits and we wanna switch to evening mode, the lights literally change temperature to a much warmer temperature in the space. And we just hit one button, all the lights change. All these little things, these little systems that you put into your life, if you pay attention, it was actually a lot of work to do. But if you don't appreciate that those systems build up and pay attention to how they all combine so that over time you've built up more and more of a foundation, then I think you'll find yourself running into circles. You have brought up a really excellent point is that the people on your team are not necessarily just the paid employees in your company. Your personal assistant, the folks who you rely on to get your packages to you, the folks who you rely on to do the maintenance in your apartment, all that tech that goes along with it, that's part of your tech stack that makes your life not just workable, but enjoyable, that's all part of your team and your tech stack to make your life successful, which will help make your company successful. 100%, right? And you listed a few of them, but business coaches, leadership coaches, a therapist, counseling between you and your spouse, whenever you have an issue that you've tried to work through and you just want a third voice to listen in, all those sorts of things. Your accountant, all these advisors, financial advisors, this whole team, everybody, it takes time to find somebody good, takes time to build a working relationship, and if you're too quick to start over, that was sort of my thing, right? I love starting over, I love learning new things, I love- Clean slates are fun, aren't they? Yes, clean slates are so much fun, but I've started to learn that over time, that you're taking two steps back every time you have a clean slate. So I've started to appreciate keeping the team that I've got and building upon what they're doing. Yeah, everybody's got a team around them, whether you are an entrepreneur and a founder, or you're just living your life, you've got a team around you, so be the leader of that team. Nice, yeah, totally true. Family, friends, even friendships, I pay attention. There's a great book I read called Vital Friends. The concept is that people who have friends at work are much happier and much more productive if you feel like you're working with friends, rather than just a cog in a machine, and they went so far as to identify what are all the friend personalities that you need in your life? Like one person's a cheerleader, like you got this, go get them. One's an advisor, you go to them when you have a question, you can't figure something out. One is a friend that you have fun with. So even making sure your friend circle is fully supporting you like part of your team, all this stuff just builds up that foundation. Well, we always love book recommendations here, so it's called Vital Friends. Vital Friends. Do you know who writes it? I don't remember the name of the author. We'll find out. We'll find out and let everybody know. So we're coming to the end. What else should we know about Michael Trollen and laser tag fitness that we haven't talked about? That's interesting. What else is there to know? I feel like I may have covered most everything. Things that people, you know, there are some things that people often ask or envision when they hear about laser tag fitness. And it's nice for me to talk about how it's different than a standard laser tag, right? A lot of people immediately think, smoke machines and they think dark rooms with black lights and things like that. And laser tag fitness is a very different feel. You want to think more like the gym, right? More like an orange theory fitness, right? I'm very much admire the work that they did to build the gym system that they have. And that's more like what laser tag fitness feels like. It's also adult oriented, right? I imagine actually that we'll have 18 plus as the standard age. Occasionally have kids come. In fact, some of my favorites are parents that bring their kids because the only way they'll do a cardio workout is if they do laser tag fitness, right? They're happy to lift weights, but they don't want to run, they don't want to do anything cardio. So definitely we'll hit all ages, but it's not your standard kids running around. It's not your standard smoke machines. It really is more fitness oriented. And I'll be honest, that was the misconception I had when you and I first talked about it. And then after we talked a little more, I was like, oh, orange theory, I get it. I get it now. And it opens up the space of what your mind imagines it could be when you understand that. Right, which actually I didn't mention earlier. One of the big challenges of this is I do have to, I have pro and con here. The pro is I say laser tag fitness and people largely get it just on those three words, which is amazing. None of my competitors have that. What is CrossFit? I don't know, what's orange theory fitness? What is F45? What are any of these things you have to explain it? I don't have to explain it. And they get, say, 80% of the way there. But that other 20% are people who are envisioning the smoke machines and so forth. And I have to sort of break that mold. Everybody says, oh, kid's birthday parties, that's great. Sure, we might eventually expand into that, but initially it's about adults getting a great workout. That's great. So who or what is something or someone you are grateful for along your journey through life? You know, I'll go with the classic my fiancee, right? Having somebody right there that I can throw an idea by and she'll be extremely blunt with me about it, right? In fact, she was, there was an idea I was telling her recently about laser tag fitness that was gonna increase the expenses and the look she was giving me was all I needed to hear to think maybe I should just make sure I'm really confident that this is the right way to go spending money on this item. So my fiancee has been by far the biggest person for me. She's my best friend. She's always there supporting me. She has all her own businesses, which we keep separate so that it's never messing with the relationship and it allows us both to have that totally outside view on each other's business. Well, that is a podcast for another day, but I think that those are some smart moves on your part. Oh yeah, I could do a whole podcast on relationships. We'll come back and maybe we'll bring your fiancee. We'll talk about that. We'll do a little of that relationship counseling you talked about. That'd be fun, I'd love that. Last question before we say goodbye. Thank you by the way for being here. Is there any advice you have for young entrepreneurs, young leaders, or even if you could go back in time and give your younger self some advice, what would it be? First thing that comes to mind is the idea of always be growing, right? One of my coaches, he calls it student of the game. Whatever it is you're specializing in, whatever it is that you're focusing on, you always want to be a student of the game, making sure you literally carve out time figuratively, carve out time every week to make sure that you are growing in your depth of knowledge, right? It's too easy to get caught up in just doing the work and dealing with the issues and putting out the fires, et cetera, all day, every day. But if you don't take time to grow, read the latest articles, read the latest thinking, maybe give talks, right? See if you have an opportunity to be on a panel, be on a podcast, right? It's a great way to step back. Please be on our podcast. It's a great way to step back and be thinking about the way you're doing things rather than just doing them nonstop. Michael, where can everybody find you? Look in that camera and tell them where they can find you and how they can support Lasertag Fitness. Great, so yes, Lasertag Fitness can be found at lasertagfitness.com. It's as simple as that. You can get on there, see what it's all about, register for upcoming workouts, and contact me if you have some ideas for how to grow. You'd like to try it in your own city, your own area, or you are an investor looking to ride this wave to 1,000 locations. Awesome, well thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you to Michael Trollen, our guest from Lasertag Fitness. Looking forward to seeing you and working with you some more in the future. Thank you to Cooperate at Blackfire for letting us use the space for our studio today and thank all of you for watching. I'm Jason Laduke from Evil Genius Leadership Consultants. The future is out there. Lead the way.