 And I think collectively we can all agree is we wake up every day and we try to make the most of it and we make decisions that are going to move us forward today and in the long term. And we don't look into the future and say, like, this is where it's going to be. Because if you get caught up around where you're trying to get in the future, you're never really going to get there. But if you win today and you win tomorrow and you're going to keep winning, like, and it's just like nutrition, right? And I think there's so many parallels to nutrition and business. Like, I don't need to worry about if the scale is going to be any different in a week. I need to make sure that when I put a big Mac in front of you today or I put a salad in front of you, you make the right choice. And if you consistently make the right choices at every meal throughout the day and, you know, when you go home and you get the right amount of sleep and you control your stress, you have to win. Like there's no choice. And so from a business perspective, you go through all the things we said today, right? You have a good offer. You understand that, you know, retention is sometimes better than acquisition. You know, you get out of the transactional mindset, you build systems and you do this every day and you create one micro win every day. You're going to win long term, man. Oh my goodness. Here's the giveaway for today's episode. It's a big one because this is a special episode. Our friend, Jason Phillips is on it. The super bundle. What's in the super bundle? Maps, anabolic maps, performance maps, aesthetic maps, prime maps, anywhere, all those programs in the super bundle. And you can win it for free. You just got to do the following. All right. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. Do all those things. And if we like your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to that super bundle. Also, we have a sale going on right now. The starter bundle, which is maps, anabolic maps, prime, intuitive nutrition guide is 50% off and maps split. This is the bodybuilder style. How high volume maps program is 50% off. So you can get half off either one of those. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code may special for that discount. All right. Here comes the show. Jason, welcome back, bro. It's always good to have you on. Did it. So I wanted to talk about something interesting because, um, there's this interesting situation with the fitness space, or at least with trainers, I should say, on the one hand, you have this, the fitness space continues to grow. It's actually quite resilient. We just came out of a pandemic. And although gyms got hit quite hard, fitness in general did not. It actually grew in many areas. And one aspect of the fitness industry continues to grow year over year over year, as long as I've, um, tracked it for the last two decades, which is the personal trainer slash coaching segment of this. So this, this just continues to grow and it's quite consistent. I don't think there's been a year where we haven't seen growth in that. So there's a huge demand and there's actually a low supply. If you look at the demand for good coaches and good trainers, there's a low supply of people who really do a good job. However, a lot of trainers and coaches out there are broke. Like a lot of them out there just aren't able to build a business or at least sustain themselves doing something that they enjoy so much, even though high demand, growing industry, uh, low supply, like what's going on? Like what, why are so many trainers broke? Why are so many coaches who get into the space who want to help people who have a passion for health and fitness unable to support themselves to make this into a career? Yeah, it's interesting, man. I mean, when I got into it, I struggled and, and I think probably all of us did. I think our, our very first exposure to health and fitness was not met with a lot of success. And, um, some people just aren't patient enough to see it through. Um, some people aren't good enough at what they do. Some people don't understand business. And I think it all comes down to, I don't know about you guys. I don't know where your certifications came from. My first one was NSCA and I left NSCA and I was like, oh, I'm so smart. I know all these things. And like, I remember getting on the gym floor and there was like this little imposter syndrome where I'm like, are all the other trainers looking at me like, what the fuck is he doing? Um, but I also was like, you know, is what I'm programming right? And am I going to create results? And is this what the client wants? And you don't really have any practical experience when you come out of a certification. There's no, there's no internships. There, there's no like mentorship there. Uh, there's no discussion of business. There, there's just like, well, here's your certification and go get a job. And, uh, yeah, I was very fortunate. My first job at Gold's Gym, um, my fitness director at the time, Matthew Davis, like I always shout him out. Like he was, he gave an anorexic kid a chance. And, uh, you know, he always taught us that side. He always taught us the importance and set very clear monthly targets and really helped us achieve those things. And you know, I don't, I don't think he taught business per se, but he certainly had very clear goals around growing that department every single month. And he, he made that known to us. And, and so I think that subconsciously I had this early exposure to the business side is very important. Yeah. Cause when you look at the, like, cause there are trainers and coaches that are very successful and it's almost like you're either really good or really successful, or you're just, you can't make it. There's also really good trainers that are fucking broke. And, and I mean, I, I've seen it all the time. I mean, I, I worked with the trainer in Virginia where I live right now. And he's amazing. And I remember asking him, I'm like, you know, like, what are you doing a year thinking quarter million and above, like kind of like quarter million being the floor. He's like, oh, you know, like a hundred grand. And I was like, wait, you're working 10 million hours and you're only doing a hundred grand. I'm like, that's fucked. And, and when you think about it, the pandemic should only illuminate the importance of trainers. You know, we not to get into the political discussion, but obviously like health status and improving health status would have probably been our fastest way to decreasing the effects of the pandemic. I think we can all agree on that part, right? Whether, you know, shots, blah, blah, blah, right? Let's, let's not talk about that side. But if everybody was healthier, we know that being healthier protected you the most against COVID. So our jobs are really fucking important. Not to mention all of the things that come with it. I mean, I look back in my journey and being an anorexic had there been really good answers at that time. And I wasn't anorexic. Well, I would have avoided suicidal tendencies. I would have avoided an eating disorder that has plagued me for 18, 19 years. I mean, I've overcome it. I've done a lot of things in my life, still at 37 years old. Man, I look in the mirror sometimes and I still bad, I still battle body image things. You know, we were having a conversation off air about hormone replacement. I'm still on hormone replacement. I still have to deal with the effects of that and the way that I have to manage that, right? And constantly making sure it's the right dosages and the way that affects future decisions. Obviously I have a child, but what if I want more children? How does it affect those things? There's a lot of, there's a lot of things that our industry is responsible for. And I believe trainers and coaches are really the foundation of all future change. And there's just not enough education and the education that is out there, in my opinion, is very improper. It's very short-sighted. You know, one of the things we've obviously done with our business is we've looked at this is a very longevity driven, you know, pursuit. I think that, you know, there's a lot of hype in our industry now like, here's how to make $10,000 in a month. And I don't think it's that hard as a coach to make $10,000 in a month, but I do think it's very difficult as a coach to continue to make $10,000 as a month and to get to $100,000 in a month or a million dollars in a month, all of which are very feasible. But the game of making 10k in a month versus sustaining 10k, very different. And I think that's just overlooked. I think they're, I think they're broke because for the most part they suck. I agree. You either suck either as a trainer because of your lack of knowledge and experience, or you suck because you don't understand the business side, right? So you get the, you get one side, at least this is my experience of hiring and training trainers, which is what I did for most of my career, is you would get, you would have either one would come in and they had like the raw talent, like maybe they had the gift of gab and they're not afraid to go get leads and go approach people, but then they had like no knowledge. So if you weren't doing anything correct, right? So you're afraid they're going to hurt people or their programming was terrible or they had no nutritional knowledge, or you had to flip. You get the kid who went to college and then got a couple national certifications and is, you know, has all of this information that they've consumed for the last, you know, five years or so before they got to you, but then just no concept of how to build a business. So I really think that we all sucked. They all suck. You all suck when you first start and the ones that make it are the ones that kind of accept that and realize it. And then, and I'm like, okay, I know I suck right now. Here are the areas that I need to, you know, I want to speak to that because I think there's a misconception that a lot of people have when they first become coaches and trainers, which is, Hey, I know how to train myself. I know exercises. I'm just going to make people sweat, make them sore and, you know, get people results. So they're all going to want to hire me. And it's not treated with the same respect as other professions, you know, where you're like, Oh, I got to go in. I got to learn. I got to learn all this stuff. I got to be really good. It's like, Oh, it's fitness. Like I know exercises and I don't know how to teach someone how to do a squat, a bench or a trance off. Well, dude, I'll do that. Dude, imagine the medical community where, like imagine if we put a surgeon in college and we're like, here, here's all this student loan debt and you come out of that. And we're like, cool, you learned the knowledge of how to perform surgery. Now here's someone who's going to die. And if you fuck up the surgery, they're going to die. And if you somehow get it right, they're going to live like, we don't do that. They don't do that in that industry. Yet in the health and fitness industry, we're like, well, get all your national certifications, get your degree, come out with student loan debt, pay all this money and well, there's a client. Go sell them. Number one. And then number two, just go do what you know, like it's completely fucked. And so that was actually the impetus behind why we built NCI, you know, I was, I was in a room and someone's like, well, you need to help trainers understand what you understand. And I was like, I don't even know what I fucking understand, right? Like I think that I was creating results at a very high level. And what this person was trying to get me to understand was I needed to help other trainers create results at a high level. And so I left that room one day and admittedly in the nutrition space, I was like, there's this other certification. They're the gold standard. Like, how do I, how do I rewrite a book on physiology, biology, metabolism, all the things that go into nutrition? I'm like, science is science. Like you can't skew science. And if you do, you're a dickhead, right? And so I was like, how do we do that? And that's when it hit me. I was like, it's not about more knowledge. It's about the fact that I've somehow bridged the gap of understanding knowledge and applying it to a very diverse set of individuals. I mean, at that time I was working with fighters. I mean, the very first time I came in here, we talked about weight cuts and we talked about, you know, guys that I've worked with in the UFC, the NFL, and, you know, Mrs. Jones, mom and pop people that just want to lose weight, no matter what, I was known for creating really high level results continuously, right? And consistently. And so I was like, what if I could bridge the gap and explain that side? And that's when we understood that the game wasn't about getting more knowledge because we all know people that are academic as hell. They're like, well, I'm going to go get this certification and I'm going to learn this and I'm going to learn that. And but they couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. They couldn't help anybody in the space. Like when they come in and we're like, that doesn't serve the population. You're not out there truly creating impact. Sure, you're really smart, but you're not actually demonstrating success. You're not showing the fact that you're a good coach. You're just a smart coach. And that's when we tripled down on application over everything. If you can take your knowledge you can apply it, you're going to create results and aren't we all graded on our ability to create results as a coach? That's it. That's 100 percent. Yeah, I was thinking about that in terms of like, you know, a lot of trainers coming in and the biggest thing that I noticed was this inflated kind of expectation of like, I'm going to make money right away with this, like just like any other job you got hired now all of a sudden I'm going to be able to kind of work my way through this, make some money. But I mean, there really is this internalizing this as your own business and you focusing on how can I improve like my clients results? And this is where I need to focus most of my attention like immediately. So that way, everybody else around me sees what I'm doing, but also makes it easier for me to get leads, makes all that other parts of the business, you know, start to flourish. But it's like you said, it's the application part. I think that's, you know, the disconnect there from a lot of the education that you're getting with your certifications from your school is like, yeah, I have a lot of knowledge, but I haven't I haven't figured out the timing. I haven't figured out all those different variables that like somebody's just coming in, like how do I now put this on to practice that there's just not enough emphasis on that. Well, the crazy part with that is if you if all the coaches listening to this right now, right, if there's trainers out there or even if you're a client and you go through your certification, I bet if we surveyed all the coaches that are struggling and we were like, why are you struggling? They're going to say something along the lines of they can't sell or they don't know how to get leads. But then if we ask a follow up question and we said, well, if we flooded you with all the leads of your ICA and you somehow closed all of them, could you create success at a 90 percent rate or higher? All of them are going to be like, oh, shit. Yeah. And like, that's the real root of the problem is subconsciously you will sabotage your own lead generation. You will sabotage your own sales because you're like, well, fuck, I don't even know if I can deliver results. And if you can't deliver results, you, you know, you should be an ethical human being. You shouldn't be a sociopath. You want you're not going to take money for something you can't truly deliver. And so you're just self-sabotaging the whole way. You claim you have a marketing problem. You claim you have a sales problem. Really, you have a fulfillment problem. You don't even know how you create results. You don't even know what your keys to success are. And you fear the fact that if somebody hands you their hard earned money, you're not going to deliver on your promises. You don't want to look like a dickhead long term. So you're like, well, I suck at marketing and sales. Well, no, you just suck at your craft. Maybe you need to get better at your craft. Like how much social proof do you actually have? I know we've all talked before and we're like, you know, work with people for free in the beginning, but hone your craft, get really fucking good at what you do. This podcast, you guys wouldn't be here today if you weren't really good at what you do. Obviously you can all talk and you're fun to be around and people like to hang out with you. That's great. But if you weren't putting out fitness advice that actually was relevant and that actually helped people, you wouldn't be selling programs. Yeah, but we still had to go through the same exact process. Even with our two decades of experience. I'll never forget, matter of fact, we remember having this conversation very vividly with these guys in the very first studio of, you know, what if we got Joe, what if Joe Rogan had us on a show, right? Like when no one's listening. Bro, I think when I first came you guys had just talked to Brendan and you guys were actually like, we're going to get to Joe. Yeah, there was this, you know, this thought of, you know, what if, you know, we get into Joe and then you explode. And I remember going like, I don't want that. And the reason why I didn't want that is because exactly what you're talking about right now is like, what if someone all of a sudden just gave us 10,000 leads? Like you think that would be amazing, but could you really service all those people? And would they ever come back and buy anything from you ever again? Sure, you might make a big windfall of money for the next 30 to 60 days and celebrate and high five. But do those people become lifers? Do they come back and buy anything else from you? Do they go tell anybody else about how amazing your service was? And we just weren't at a place yet where we didn't have the systems in place. We didn't have enough stuff in place to support that amount of leads to come in. And so that when people would ask me like, you know, would you want to be on Joe? No, I don't want to be on Joe Rogan because we're not ready for that yet. We haven't got to a place where we could fulfill that. Listen, we live in the age of information. OK, so I remember talking about this years ago as an early trainer, like, oh my god, if we just had access to all recorded information, we'll solve every problem. Well, here we are and there's more flat earthers than ever before, which I think proves that that knowledge is a part of what's important, which is wisdom, which is how you apply, right? It's like, I think what Arthur Brooks said, he said, you know, knowledge is knowing that a tomato was a fruit, but wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad or something like that, right? So and it's very true. I used to tell trainers this all the time. It's like you if you really look at the knowledge that you apply to 99 percent of your clients, it's not a lot of knowledge. It's it's how you apply it to each individual personality is what will make you successful. How do you get adherence? How do you make it stick? How do you really get somebody to understand what you understand? It's not the knowledge. It's how you apply it, how you communicate it. That's what the real value comes from. And if you don't understand that, then you're just glorified Google, really. And there's a reason why there's a lot of scientists out there that like know a lot more than we do, but they don't have a podcast as big as ours. We communicate the way we learned how to communicate to clients. We had to figure it out. We had to figure out this works and this doesn't work. Well, dude, on on day one of our certification, I openly say like in the opening remarks, I am not going to teach you anything today that you can't find on Google. And the crazy part is I mean, we've made tens of millions of dollars at this point in our business, all by the fact that almost everything that we teach from a knowledge and science perspective can be found on Google, can be found in textbooks. Our genius is that we've synthesized that we've made it very easy to understand. But more importantly, we've bridged the gap and helped you apply it. And when you start applying it, I mean, we all understand, I mean, we've all seen lots of success in our own industries. And we all remember the training days when we were helping clients, seeing a client succeed, getting the text message in the morning of I lost X number of pounds or oh my God, I put on a pair of pants that I haven't put on in five years. And we know the gratification we get as a coach, but we also understand the confidence that gives us as a practitioner because the more success stories you create, the more confidence grows, the more confidence grows, the more willing you are to actually do the work that creates success in your business. And so 99% of time in the very beginning anyway, it's not a knowledge or I'm sorry, it's not a marketing issue. It's not a business issue. It's a practitioner issue. It's you're not very good at your craft. And that's a harsh reality for a lot of people to hear right now. I mean, I could tell you have worked with businesses that are trying to scale, doing 50 and 60 grand a month, where I look at like what they're doing. In fact, I could tell you there's a business that we've recently come across that's doing $100,000 a month. And I looked at the results and I'm like, getting the 200 and 300 is only a function of you guys creating better results. $100,000 a month, $1.2 million a year. And I'm like, all you got to do is get better at what you do. It's not a marketing or sales issue, it's not even a scale or systems issue. Just be better. My shirt says be better. Like that is a rallying cry of what we tell coaches to do. By the way, the litmus test of this, if you're a coach and you're questioning whether or not you're good enough at what you do, ask yourself one simple question. If we took away all marketing channels, if we took away social media, if we took away paid advertising and all you could do to grow was rely on your clients to talk about how great you were. Would you succeed? Would your business survive? And most people are like, shit, right? Because I've asked that in a room before, and they're like, fuck. And the truth is, if the answer is no, get better. Because the virality of your product is the fastest way to ensure that you grow. I mean, our company, we have a money back guarantee. If we don't deliver on our promise at the lowest level, if we don't double your $10,000 investment at the highest level, if we don't double your $35,000 investment, I'd give you your money back. I'm so confident in what we do that if I can't deliver on that promise, I give you your money back. Yeah, it's it's funny you say that because I know all three of us experienced this like we didn't market. I didn't market at all. At some point. It was all organic. It was all worth it. You're just good at what you do. Imagine that. I was totally booked. And if I needed an extra if I needed a client, I would tell my clients have another space open and literally within a few days, I'd get a referral and it wasn't even a question. It's crazy. You know, we mentioned sales and leads. And we took some notes before the episode started because you listed a few things that you noticed being big challenges. And one of them was leads versus sales. So explain why what that means, what you mean by that and why that is why some trainers are broke as a result of not understanding the difference between the two. Yeah, I think that oftentimes we think about our inability to close and people are like, I don't know how to sell or I feel sleazy selling or that means having someone in front of you selling them training actually being, you know, for a digital coach being on a sales call for an in-person trainer having that in-person consultation, right? And they're like, I just I don't know how to close. I feel bad asking for money. I don't know how to price my service as well. It's all about the product and the ability to get the product across the finish line and actually collect the cash. But the reality is collecting the cash is the fifth stage of any kind of conversion. And the very beginning of that is getting leads. And so I'll, you know, I'll ask the same question. Well, if you suck at sales, cool, how many sales conversations are you having per week? Two things happen. One, they don't know, which is a problem in and of itself. But second is if they do know the number is very low. And so if you're 0 for two in a week, well, you're 0 for eight in a month. Chances are, even if you have a 10 percent conversion, what if we got you to 10 sales conversations a week? Well, now you're converting for a month. That still sucks. But at least it's four instead of zero, right? I mean, that's a terrible conversion rate, but at least it's something. And the very first thing I think people need to understand is lead generation matters more than sales initially, right? You have to be able to produce leads. And and I think so many people are so focused in our industry is so focused on sales. I can't tell you how many people come to our business all the time. Well, do you have a sales script? Yeah, I got a sales script. But do you have leads? Well, no, but I just need a sales script. No, motherfucker, you need leads. You know, there's a part of this I want to touch on. I've brought this up before and I've talked to other people who come from our space and other spaces and they all agree. So obviously coming from the gym business, I've known a lot of membership sales counselors, trainers, fitness managers, general managers. And we're talking now well over two decades. I started as a young kid and Adam and Justin, same thing. And I know a lot of these top membership sales people back in the day or general managers or trainers today, a lot of them not in the fitness space. Some of them are, but a lot of them are not. But they're they're millionaires in other industries, whether it's real estate or, you know, home care services or or tech or banking. And I was talking to a buddy of mine, I said, you know what? I the reason why I think all these membership sales people are so good at sales, no matter what they did, was because in a gym, if you're in a busy gym in a busy club, you're going to, if you do a good job, you're going to do at least 10 presentations a day. So 10 new people a day, you're going to try and sell them a membership or training or or both. It's a lot of practice. You practice constantly. And it's a short sale cycle. So if you are selling membership for two years, you've practiced so much. You've gotten so good at sales that you're as good as like a real estate agent who's been doing it for 10 years because the sales process is much longer. So that's the other aspect of it. Your sales, your closing percentage is 10 percent. You're only seeing eight people a month. It's going to take you a long time to get good at sales. Like what if you can see eight people in a day? You're going to within a short period of time just through that practice process. And people don't like that because they hate to fail. But I tell you what, man, you put someone in front of people all day long. Within a month, they're they're experts at it. Well, dude, let's just play out the scenario. Let's snap our fingers right now and let's say we impart Tony Robbins, NLP and Sales Ability in you. Right? Yeah. You're you're the one of the best salespeople in the world. And you guys talk to Tony clearly do it's powerful. All right. I mean, I remember I was texting with you. You're like on real experience. Yeah. And and it's like, let's give that to you. Now let's put you in a lecture hall that seats 5,000 people and you present just like Tony. You're like, you just fucking crushed it. How many sales are you going to make? You would think like 5,000, right? Here's the caveat. Nobody was in attendance. How many sales are you going to make? Zero. Zero. Yeah. The problem isn't your ability to present your shit, right? You got a really good product. You know how to present your shit, but no one's listening to you. Nobody's paying attention to you. And today's crowded marketplace. That's a problem. I mean, let's be honest. I run NCI. We certify over a thousand coaches a year. We're adding to the competitive nature of the marketplace. And it's only going to become more competitive because people are starting to see health and fitness as a bizop. The pandemic moved people online. We saw people leave these like these micro gyms. We know the stats as 30 to 40 percent of micro gyms shut down during the pandemic. So that left, yeah. So that left people with three options. Go to a big box gym. Not that exciting, right? Go online or quit the industry all together. So you saw some people quit, get new jobs, but you saw the majority of people go online. And so the digital space is now extremely competitive. So what are we doing? Like we're all going online. And again, knowledge is a fucking commodity. So now it's like, well, who knows the most? Everybody fucking knows the most. Right? Again, we're putting out a commodity that lives on Google. So the question becomes, how do you stand out? How do you generate leads? And when we understand there's really only six sources of leads anyway, right? Earned media, owned media, paid media, referrals, partners and affiliates and outbound. Well, it's like, which one do you choose? How do we know how to create that? Well, we've done a lot of research and we understand and I have a very big prediction that I think direct response marketing in the fitness industry is actually dying. And I think that connection based marketing is actually what's going to explain the difference. Yes, the direct response marketing is more like I put an offer out you buy, right? And so for the longest time, the easiest illustration is paid ads, right? And so if we if we put out a paid ad that says, hey, I'm a coach, you should work with me. And obviously there's nuance to that, right? Like, hey, I'm a coach. Here's how I could help you watch the 60 minute webinar. At the end of it, I make you this offer. That's still direct response marketing. I send you an email blast. I give you value. I'm like, hey, you should work with me. That's direct response. However, I believe that the gap today because of the competitive nature, the gap that's being overlooked is the connection. And what you have to illustrate as a coach in today's economy is that people can trust you and that you know your shit. And so if we do that via connection, you're going to win. So I think all coaches out there should be using their marketing efforts to build community. I think if you go out there and you run your paid traffic or your earned traffic or you get your partners and affiliates or your referrals to simply get your, the community or your prospects to become aware of you and to showcase the fact that you actually know what you're doing. People will start wanting to spend money with you because let's be honest, the average person has tried five or six things in health and fitness and failed. No coach should be naive enough to think that they're the first solution someone's trying unless you're peddling like a nine dollar service because people value shop in the beginning. So why should people trust you? Who the fuck are you? And why should your product be the next thing that they buy? You can't showcase that purely in your marketing, right? And so people are completely destroying lead generation. They're forgetting that leads are simply a function of movement into traffic sources that you own. In, you know, in the Business Coaching Institute, we talk about leads, we identify leads purely as traffic that you own. Now that's a little bit like an overgeneralization completely transparently. But as a coach, if you understand the more media you own, the more money you can print. I mean, I can tell you today we own, I don't know, 50,000 contacts collectively. If I really needed to make $20,000 today, I could do it because we own that attention. We own the leads and we're able to go out there, create offers that we know will help people and it will win. You know, one of the biggest hurdles why I think coaches and trainers have such a hard time with that. And I don't know if it's a generational thing or just in general. Is there not willing to work for free or they're not willing to put themselves? It's like, I hear I talk to you got to say, though, it's not just for free. It's for experience, for learning. Well, you think free means nothing. Well, I was explaining this on one. Actually, I think it was explained to someone in the last calls with Jason is like, you don't need you may think you have this great business idea and model or this great thing to deliver to people. And you actually could be way off basis and you may figure this out by doing free shit to get to track people. For example, like, let's say you're a trainer and coach and you're like, I've got great training programs. I'm going to sell digital programs like mine pump does. And I'm good at writing programs and that's how I'm going to make all this money. That's my plan. And you're like, I have no leads. And Jason tells me, hey, get out there and fucking hit the pavement and work for free and figured out. So, OK, I started offering these free classes where people come in on Saturdays come come with me and I'm going to teach them, you know, some mobility stuff and then why I'm there. Hopefully I'll have an opportunity to maybe pitch my stuff or figure things. And what you find out is, wow, these people want this class from you or they're really interested in what your knowledge around mobility. And I'll give a shit about your weight loss program that you think you're going to sell to them. And you didn't even know that that's maybe not what people want from you, but you wouldn't have figured that out had you not put yourself out there and just started doing things for free to get that feedback. And that's why I also always tell people like to to love your ideas but not to marry them. It's important to have passion when we are driving towards these things. But I don't know how many times that I thought I had this brilliant business idea. And then I mean, we're sitting in that. I mean, this was something that started nine, eight, nine years ago when Sal and Doug got together and started writing something, Justin and I turned on our social media and said, we're going to build this e-commerce business. But I tell you what, it did not. I mean, none of us thought it would look like this. Right. None of us thought it would look like this. How long did you guys podcast before you saw the first advertisement? Over a year. And we had stuff to sell. A year. So like, so basically what you did is you demonstrated value to your potential advertisers. Correct. You said, and then I bet you what you charge today is significantly more than what you charge them. Oh, yeah, of course. Because back then it was like we still have shit to prove. Yeah. And I've I think I've told this story on the podcast. What what I love about you and the reason that I've always had immense amount of respect for you is the very I don't know if you remember this or very first conversation. You actually said to me there was an advertiser that the advertiser with you for a year and did not create the expected ROI. And you said, I don't have to do this, but I'm going to write him a check out of my pocket to basically refund some of what he paid to match up to effectively like a net zero. Right. Like so he did not lose money because we always want to deliver. Yeah. And I remember being like, man, that's that's fucking dope. You're betting on yourself. You're delivering value. And I was like, you know, at the time, man, like I think this was like November 2019. I was not in the position I'm in today. And I think that, you know, what I paid you was 60 grand a year. And it was like, I didn't know if I could afford it. But I was like, I have to do this. And you telling me that made me realize like, I have to do this. He has he has the trust and belief in what he's doing. And there was so much value in it that no matter what happened, you were going to make it right. And I was like, man, like that's fucking gold. How many people out there show that on a day to day basis? They don't you can you can marry the your overarching idea of like helping people like I want to help people and my expertise is health and fitness. How I do that, the market's going to tell me. Well, the people are going to tell me they want mobility classes like Adam said, or they want, you know, digital programs, or they want more podcasts or more blogs. But that's the part you got to be flexible with. And the only way you're going to know is you go out there and you test it. Otherwise, you're guessing. Well, dude, I'll give you two examples of how I've used this strategy to create a massive success. The first was I took a business zero to one million dollars in less than 12 months on this specific strategy. And basically what I did is I called gym owners CrossFit gyms at the time. And I said, listen, I will come and I'll deliver a seminar completely for free. I will pay my own hotel. I'll pay my own travel. I'll pay all my own food. All I want you to do is guarantee me that you'll have 60 to 70 people in attendance. You pack your gym. I will come in. I'll give a free seminar. On the back end will run a challenge together. We'll split the profit 50-50. So I want to give you money for letting me come to your gym. As long as on the back end of that, if people want to keep working with me, I can keep working with them. Gym owners like, that's amazing. We know gym owners want money, right? And we know we want their clients to look good. I did that 37 times in 52 weeks, right? Mind you, I hustled my ass off. 37 trips in a year is a shit ton. But by the end of that year, I had a million dollar business purely because it was value driven. I wasn't going and said, hey, man, like, can I pitch to your people? Like, no, like I want to come and fucking answer questions. Well, by the way, that's why Google booked me, right? They're like, I heard you do these talks. I heard they're really good. That's why I've been on some of these stages. Now, some of the business clients that we coach, there's a girl that she came to us. She had no attention. She had no leads. And I was like, well, do you know people that want free coaching? Well, yeah, I'm sure I could find a few dope. Why don't you go offer 10 people coaching for free for four weeks and see if who takes it? She had like a waiting list. And so each month, we would take on 10 new people. And I said, at week number three, I want you to have a real sit down with them and say, how is this going? Are you enjoying it? Are you seeing success? What success is do we still need to create? Because we know a month is not enough to actually create results. And people are like, I can't stop this. I need to keep working with you. And magically, these people are throwing money at her at week number three. Why? Because she demonstrated value. She showed people that like this shit actually works. And that's a way of generating leads is putting your service in front of people. Everyone just expects like money to flow in because you're smart or whatever, right? Like, if you haven't demonstrated value to the marketplace, who the fuck are you? Yeah. And now the next one that you had written down, which I think is perfect and connected to this is the difference between acquisition and retention, right? Like acquisition, meaning getting new people into my business and my system versus the ones that are already in here. How do I increase my value? How do I make myself even more indispensable, even more valuable to this individual? Like there's a difference between the two and you said that people focus too much on one and not the other. So explain that. Well, did what if you guys lost a thousand listeners every month and you were focused on gaining 2,000 listeners every month? Like, that shit's hard, right? I mean, obviously you guys do more than that, but it's like just to put it in perspective. Right. Like, what if you only had to focus on getting 1,000 new listeners every month and you just did what you did and what you did was really, really good. Like so many people, they think the game is new customer acquisition and you always have to have new acquisition. Don't get me wrong. But if that's all you're focused on in the back end of your product sucks, two things happen, right? You're literally just getting acquisition to fill in the gap. There's a lot of pressure on acquisition because that's how you maintain your revenue. But let's be honest, if people are leaving your business every single month, it's probably because you suck. And now the word of mouth that's out there is that your product sucks. And people are like, well, yeah, I went there, but I didn't stick around very long. Well, is that really good for referrals? Probably not. And so you have negative word of mouth. Instead, if we put on the back end, a really big emphasis on retention, not only are we creating better results, not only are we creating better word of mouth, we're also making more money. The longer somebody stays with you, the higher the LTV is, A, the more money you can spend to acquire them, but B, the less you have to focus on the front end. So if I have a customer that comes in and they stay, you know, we charge $500 a month and they stay for three months. That's $1,500. You know, acquisition costs, maybe you'll pay 30% of that. If we go out, I can only spend $500 or the amount of energy and effort equated to $500. But if that person comes in and they're expected to stay for a year, well, that's $6,000. Now I could put in energy and effort to $1,800, right, at the same 30% mark. And that's a significant amount more. I think Dan Kennedy said the way to get to the top in business is to be able to outspend all of your competitors to acquire a customer. And so when your LTV is super high and I can tell you like, you know, Alex Hormozzi, before he sold Jim Launch, I knew some of his numbers. His LTV on customers was upwards of $40,000. LTV stands for. Lifetime value, right? So your lifetime value of a customer upwards of 40 grand, what do you think you can spend to acquire that customer? Why do you think you see him everywhere on Facebook and Instagram ads, right? The guy could literally afford to outspend you because he knew he was going to deliver a service that kept you around forever. He's like, I get one. It's like the leaky bucket scenario, you know, filling a leaky bucket with water doesn't do shit. It's a lot of work, man. It's a lot of fucking work, man. And like we know acquisition is the hardest thing. That's why starting a business is harder than scaling a business for most people, right? That that whole what is the there's a stat out there and I'm going to completely butcher it, but there's a stat out there about like nine out of every 10 new businesses will fail, right? There's a reason most people only get to a hundred grand. They don't get to a million. And then, you know what? The percentage of businesses that gets a 10 million is so it's like what 3% maybe like the way to keep going is super hard because most people they want to do the sexy shit. Like what's sexy about putting in systems to keep a client? Nothing, right? Like how many gurus are out there? In fact, if you're listening to this podcast, scroll your Facebook, scroll your Instagram, find me an ad that says we're going to teach you how to keep your clients. It doesn't fucking exist, right? But if we sat down and we interviewed every high level business guru and we are like, why are you successful? They're like, well, people stick with me for a long time. They pay me a ton of money. And so what are you going to do? Are you going to raise your front end rate to a hundred grand? No, no one's going to fucking pay you that. But I bet you if you demonstrate value over the course of a year or two, you would get somebody to buy enough times to where they get close to that hundred grand payment. The most successful businesses have repeat customers, loyal, loyal, like Apple comes out with a new phone and all the Apple owners show up for it. I mean, complete transparency. You know, we just had a conversation with our marketing team over exactly this topic. And it's because we have such a high lifetime value of each of our customers. If somebody enrolls in one of our programs, the odds that they'll get three or four more is astronomical, right? So we want to continue to invest more in that and less in just getting more people in because we know that that's what that's number one brings real value. So that's our mission statement. We really want to help people. Well, that's how you're going to help people. And number two, that's how we're going to that's how we're going to win is by doing that. If you guys, you guys knew Drew Canole, right? Organic. Yeah. And like when he first started Russell Brunson used to use him as a case study. I was out. Doug and I went to an internet marketing when Drew was mentioned. He was there and they used him as an example. Right. That's how I first met him. What they talked about was he spent all of his time in the beginning trying to acquire customers. Yeah. And what he realized what what propelled organify in the beginning was not new acquisition strategies. It was once he had a customer, he was like, well, you bought greens. Do you just want to buy six more of them at a discount? And he couldn't believe that people would actually do it right away. Like he actually did not fathom the fact that like one purchase equated to multiple purchases. And he's like, as soon as I understood that back end purchases were really what was driving my business, he's like, everything fucking changed. He's like, because I now need to acquire less customers because they were all higher value. He's like, my, you know, my front, like my money spent, my overhead decreased and my bottom line increased. And I was like, holy shit. And so one thing that I recommend to every coach. And this is something we do in our program is that you have very strategic activation points in your business, meaning most people are not going to come in with enough inherent trust to buy two years from you, but you should have an early win in your program. And you should also have a very clear activation point, meaning at some point in your business, you know that you're going to have an upsell conversation. And so your program should be designed as such. So when somebody comes in, you're like, here's the wins I'm going to create for them. And this is where I'm going to have the conversation around what we've achieved and what still needs to be achieved. And when you've created the success and the trust that comes with that success and you showcase the long term plan, people are very likely to buy in. We've seen people add 10, 20, $30,000 a month in their business, purely from instituting activation points and stopping the emphasis on front and acquisition. The person who is OK to close a cold lead, right? So the acquisition part, you're like if you're good business, maybe 25% if you're crushing it, you know, most lower single digits probably to sell somebody who has already purchased something for you is like 80%. Amen. It's like night and day difference. So we're spending all this time on all, you know, getting this attention on something that is such a low closing rate when you've got four or five clients that you already close that are 80% more likely to renew or buy something else. Totally. I look as trained, look as trainers. And if you're a good trainer, you know this, like you get a new potential client, not a referral, so brand new person. The odds that they're going to get 60 sessions from you are way smaller than when your client's coming up for resign. Yep. I got a client who's been with me for a year. Resign's coming up. Oh yeah, she gets 60 sessions every single time or five years or whatever. Right. It's going to happen because why the value is there? I don't got to sell anything. I've already sold it because they've seen what I can deliver. This sounds like common sense, by the way. Someone listening might be like, well, yeah, duh. Well, if it's such a duh. Why are you doing it? That's the focus. That's the focus right there because then it's really easy. I also think that people are messing this up. Tactically. And I think that you brought something up when somebody's coming up for resign. It's the worst time to sell them. It is literally the worst time to sell them. And let's put this in a real life scenario. That's actually true. Right? If we all went out, we went to a party tonight. Right? We go out at 10 and then at like. Make it real as 8 o'clock. 8 o'clock. Yeah, we're dads, bro. Like we're going out at 6. We're planning to be home by 9. But let's say we go out at 10 and it's like the bar shuts down at 2. And at like 150, I'm like, bro, like I heard about this like underground party that's like still going. And like you're literally like paying your tab, you're like putting your fucking jacket on. Tired already. Bro, like you're like ready. Yeah, you text the wife like you're ready to go home. You're like, I'm not fucking going anywhere else. Right? But if I like midnight, I'm like, yo, I heard there's this rager there. Like I heard like 50 cents performing like a private thing. Like like let's go. You're like, fuck yeah, like let's go. Like the drinks are hitting you. Like you're you're ready to go. So you like you grab your shit. Like let's go getting people to do more is much easier in the midst of having fun or in the midst of seeing success. So why don't we take that and put that online? Why? Why are we waiting until someone's contract is about to expire to make them an offer? Plus they anticipated anyway. Absolutely. You there's always especially initially there's that anticipation. Like, OK, here comes the here comes the sale. Yeah. Right. Versus, you know, we're halfway through or not done yet. I'm seeing great stuff. I'm like, man, I love yeah, Jason Phillips. Like he's really doing a great job. And then you present me with something and say, hey, look, I'd like to work with you a lot longer. Here's this other plan that I have. I think we should do it type of deal. You know, we also speak about like the wins that would be associated with that. Right. So it's, you know, if if we're halfway through, let's just let's not just talk about duration because people don't buy duration. Right. People don't buy the service. I mean, as much as I, you know, want to be in the gym with a trainer, I'm not buying that. I'm buying the result that it gets. Of course. And so if we're going to sit down and we're going to have that conversation at an activation point, it's like, well, here's what we still have to achieve. And again, you've built that inherent trust because you've already demonstrated what you're saying is true. And that is so critical. You're leveraging the trust. You're leveraging your knowledge. You're leveraging the relationship you've built all in an effort to extend that value, extend that contract. And it works really well. Excellent. Now, the next point that you had us put down, and I've heard people say this before, but I don't quite know what it means is the comparison between someone who's an entrepreneur versus a solopreneur. So what's the difference between the two and why is it a mistake to be one versus the other? Yeah, I'll explain it in the way that I completely fucked it up. And so, you know, for the people that don't know when I started my journey, what really triggered me to go all in was I couldn't afford a cup of coffee. Like on Thanksgiving Day, I was on a vacation with my girlfriend at the time. And I went to Starbucks. Like some people know I have like a seven year Starbucks streak. And I went to get this Americano that's next to me and I get to the front and they're like, card declined. Now it was Thanksgiving day they were super nice really you can have it for free. But I'm like walking around the grocery store and I'm like, that's not a mistake. Like I'm fucking overdrawn. And I do it and I like check my account balance. I'm like negative twenty seven dollars like what am I going to do? Fortunately for me, like we call it the Thanksgiving miracle. By the time we walked out of the store, five hundred dollars had miraculously appeared in my bank account. Like I deposited to check the night before it's bank holiday not supposed to happen. But it fucking happened. And I was eternally grateful. I didn't have to like tell this girl I was dating that I was a degenerate like a degenerate and I suck at life. And so I was like, all right, we're going to want to pick Nick. Yeah. Hey, do you mind do you mind paying for the groceries because your boyfriend's fucking we're going to pick some fruit some natural fruit in the garden. Like surely I'm getting laid back. But it, you know, it all worked out for the best. But I was like, all right, man, I got to figure this shit out. And I feared that so bad. And I think a lot of early coaches, they fear being broke because they remember what it's like to not be successful. And so I was like everybody that comes in my business, I'm going to service them. And I love this. And you know, it's badge of honor like I'll never fucking burn out. And I got up to 167 clients. And I mean, like when I tell you I was working my ass off, like I was working 20 hour days. There's a video out there somewhere of me back squatting 405 while taking a client call. And I mean, that's the kind of shit I did. Like I would take CrossFit classes with headphones in and I'd be like talking to people. It was absurd. But I was willing to outwork the whole fucking universe. And I was a solopreneur. I didn't have an assistant. I didn't have help. I did all my own billing. I had no systems. I mean, dude, I had a Google spreadsheet, an Excel doc of everybody's billing day. And I would wake up in the morning and I would send PayPal invoices. Like I had no efficiencies in my business, right? And I was like, one of two things was going to happen. Either I was going to burn it to the ground or I was going to die and neither of which were good options. And I'm like, I need to figure this out. The real problem came when I needed to hire other coaches and I needed to stop working so much because this is the part nobody looks at is at 167 clients I was doing, I don't know, 34, $35,000 a month. And that's great. And I was all take home. I had no overhead. As soon as I started outsourcing some of those clients to their coaches, well, right off the top, I'm losing 30 to 40%. And the more that grew and I had to pay admins associated with it, I wasn't just losing 30 to 40%. I was losing 50%, 55%, sometimes 60%. And it was like, fuck. Like now I'm making a hundred grand a month, but I'm taking home less money. What the fuck is going on? Most coaches think that like it's this badge of honor to work with so many clients early on when that's just a job. That is literally trading dollars for hours. And that's, I wouldn't even know if I'd call it a solopreneur, but that's just doing things on your own. Being an entrepreneur is building something that over time can have enterprise value or at least is making you money passively. And so if you're going to scale and you're going to have other coaches, you need to start thinking from day number one, what is it that I'm selling, right? Not transactions. I know we'll talk about that, but like, what is it that I'm actually selling? If I'm going to have people working for me, like what am I paying them? What's required to go into that? What are my margins? Am I actually looking at my numbers? And nobody has any concept of this. They are literally only thinking how many new people am I putting into my business every single day? They're not thinking about taxes. They're not thinking about anything. We can we get on the tax rabbit hole. I mean, the very first time I realized that I got hit in the face of the $400,000 tax bill. And I'm like, fuck, I don't even know if I have $400,000 to my name. So that was a really scary time too. But nobody's thinking about those things when growing a business. I'll I'll go on record as stating if you're a coach and you're trying to grow a business and you don't just want a job. That's the delineation that I'll make. You should not take on any more than 25 to 30 clients. Yeah. And I think that is the cap. And I have thousands of data points that I could, you know, point to 25 to 30 is your cap. And over time, you should try to get that number under 10 as high level clients as you can work with, but you should be building other coaches because your business should be about impact, right? You should be trying to impact as many people and you personally cannot do that. Well, the difference between a good idea and a great idea is the scalability. 100%. I mean, you could and there's nothing wrong with somebody who wants to run a business where they work those type of hours and they make a decent income. Yeah, good for you. Yeah, a better person than I am. Yeah. And but if you have these ideas or dreams of building a real big business and enterprise like you're talking about that you've got to think about these things right now. Like, you know, can I actually scale this? And can I remove myself? I mean, luckily, we have the experience we had before we all got together, but I wish someone would have explained this to me in my 20s because I got really good at that. And my response, and I know there's someone listening right now has the same attitude like, I'll worry about that when I get there. Like, I just want I just need to get to a place where I was making money. And I got really good at getting to six figures, like really good. Like, I got to a point in my 20s where I'm like, you could strip anything from me take all my way. Yeah, I'll find a way. I'll get right back up to making 100, 150 grand a year. No problem in almost any industry. I felt confident I could do that. But then I would hit the ceiling all the time because I was maxed out. You didn't have enough hours. Yeah, I was I was maxed out and you were building jobs. Yes, you were building businesses. Yes, you were just building glorified jobs. And so now and when we all got together later, right? Fast forward to now in our when we started in our 30s, when we would even even when we were starting to scale this thing early early on. And when we had the time, we had the flexibility, we have four of us, we still would look at ideas and go like, wait a second here. Like, you know, can you see this 10x? And where where are you in that? Like, and how how is it going to still run without you in that? Because if if we're going to be, yeah, growing this business and making more money in this area, but then it requires each of us X more hours every single week, well, then eventually we're going to get cap there. And then sure, we might grow that. And now we're making X amount more, but now we're stuck. And now there's no other options for anything else because we're tapped out. At a super high level, are you building a cash flow entity or are you building enterprise value? Right. And if we ask coaches out there, like, what the fuck does that even mean? Right? Well, cash flow is like you're trying to pay yourself every single month. Enterprise value is I'm going to sell this for a very high multiple, both of which require, you know, I mean, enterprise value, your margins have to be reasonable. But you, you know, you got to be able to get a high EBITDA and ultimately able to sell on a good multiple. You know, cash flow, you're trying to rip as much money out as possible, put that away, probably invest it and then just retire without selling. Most coaches aren't even considering those long-term things. And a lot of it just comes down to ego, right? Very few people are willing to outsource. And let's be honest, as you're, as you're growing, as you're hiring, as you're scaling, finding really good talent is very difficult. And I think that if you were to sit here and you were to interview the Hormozies or you were to interview, you know, other people that are killing it out there. And you said, what's the number one skill that a really good CEO has? It's probably hiring and keeping really good talent, because those are the people that are going to grow your business for you. I don't know how you guys feel about this, but I think at the level we're at, you know, we're, I think like the last time I came here, we were probably a $4 million company, you know, now we're upwards of $15 million. The less I do, the more money we make, which is crazy. And I remember the first time I heard Taylor Welch say that, Taylor and Chris Evans that own Trafficking Funnels, they were like, the less you do as a CEO, the more money you make. And I was like, that's blasphemy. And like now I'm like, fuck, the less I do, the more money we make because the people that you put into the positions are so dedicated to that position and they want that position to crush. And the more positions you take on as the owner or the CEO, the less dedication you can give to each position. So now you've got all these positions that 60%, whereas each position could be at 110%. When you've got them at 110%, you've got a ship that can go to the moon. But otherwise, you're just fucked by yourself. And to kind of circle back to like the best time to start that. And, you know, Adam saying, well, I'll worry about that when I get there. That's a very hard position to be in when you're making X amount of dollars for all the hours that you're putting in. Now trying to figure out how to scale. You're already busy. Your hours are already taken up. Like how do I do this? These people already want to be with me. I've sold me so much, not my program. I know these people that you plan to be on. It's very difficult versus starting out the gates with that idea and say, okay, I'm starting this with the idea that I will be able to scale this much better. It's a much better approach. Waiting till you get to the point where you're making lots of money hourly and then saying, how do I switch this now to a scalable business? Very it's a hard way to turn to make. It's a hard way to do it. Well, I think that I think this kind of goes into the next thing we were talking about off air, which is transactions, you know, versus a system, what do we say versus having systems? Right. And so I think that inside of that, dude, I gave you as a stat off air that I want to share on air. In December, we held a live event and we had 270 people in the room. And I asked a question from stage, if I gave you $10,000 and you had to come on stage to describe how you create results for your clients, how many of you could do that? And I told you guys how many people raised their hands, but the number was three. Three people in the room could actually articulate how they create results. That's fucking scary. Right. Well, if you're reliant upon the fact that you're really good and that you could sit down in a room with somebody and you can diagnose where they're at and you can pick them apart and you can build their macros and you can build the training program. That's great. You're a great practitioner. You suck at business. Right. And so again, you're a solopreneur or you have a job, but you don't have a fucking business. Because the truth is, as you said, Justin, how do you teach somebody to do what you do? Because every good business, like if we go to an Apple store, we expect the same service no matter which Apple store we go, whether we go to the one in San Jose today or I'm taking a flight to Phoenix, whether we go to one in Scottsdale this afternoon, we should get the same level of service. Same product exists. Right. Now the personality of the person that sells us probably different, but ultimately we're probably going to pay through the same point of sale system. We're probably going to get the same price, the same whatever. Right. It's going to be the same from start to finish. That's how it should be in a service-based business too. Every customer should get the same experience. Obviously the personality of the person in like integrating or implementing will be slightly different, but from front to back, it should be the same. From the minute they pay, they should get the same onboarding. They should get access to the same materials. They should have the same check-in cadences. They should have the same accesses, the same availabilities, the system by which results are created should be the exact same. But nobody's thinking about these things. They're only thinking about somebody pay me, I deliver service. And then when that person's leaving, I'm getting another person. And that is literally the problem with online coaches today. They're only thinking about three things. Get a new client in the door, service my client, go find more clients. That's it. That's not a business, man. No, you're limited with that. I remember learning that as a trainer, as an early trainer. I was really good at selling myself. And then very quickly, my schedule got filled up. I think within a couple months, you know, I was very enthusiastic, charismatic young kid. And so handsome. But then yeah, super way more handsome than I'm now. But I'm like, how am I gonna, I want to be able to continue to sell training, but my schedule's full. And what I did, and you know, at the time, I don't really have anybody coach me this. I said, well, I have to sell the program, not me because if I sell me, I can't work with you. My hours are booked. So I have to sell the system. And so I really had to learn what that system look like, put that together. And then when I present to somebody, it's not sal's going to do this, it's here's what the system will do for you. And once you buy this and hire this, the system, I'll set you up with a trainer that can apply it. I think the main problem with this though is that and it's your last point, which is the lack of patience is, you know, it's and we're it's way worse today, too. Well, and we this by the way, it's never ends, right? So there's a lot of things that we're building out right now that it would it would be better, okay, for putting more money in our pocket to cut that side of the business completely out. I mean, we are we are spending so much money on contractors and editors and people to grow this side of the business and find ways to provide even more value for our customers, knowing that eventually it will work, work its way back to us. But right now, we're losing, we're in the red in that department completely. But outside person looking has no idea. They don't know that they don't know that we're losing month over month over month on that side of the business. But we're patient, we believe we believe in what will eventually happen. And you got to have that those patients in order to do that. It's hard when you're in that transaction phase where you're just trying to collect a paycheck and it's like, Oh, I have the opportunity to go from making six grand a month this month, I want to make 10 grand a month and you just want to get there or I can make four grand a month and teach somebody else how to do something else that I'm doing. And then it's going to take me another six months maybe to get back up to that six or eight and then I'm at that same option again, I can get back up to that 10 or maybe I can hire another person, bring me back down just to six this time. But now I've got two people there. So it's that the patients will the foresight to see that. I think one of the things that I always actually learned a lot from you just watching you in conversations that you and I have had privately was your patience in terms of finances. And I think this is also a problem in our industry is that coaches want financial success tomorrow. And they deem financial success is how much money they can spend. Not how money not how much money the business is making. Yeah. Well, first of all, one of the quickest things that I think almost every entrepreneur makes this mistake is in the beginning, you think the amount of money your business makes is the amount of money you could spend. Right. I'm like, I'll tell you admittedly, I fucked that up so early, bro. Like, I remember I was mine. Yeah, I was doing like a million dollars a year. And I'm like, I'm fucking rich. Right. I forgot about taxes. I was like, the business needs to reinvest in things. So like, you don't realize that only a percentage of that is your actual take home. And so most people are like, well, if I'm making $10,000 a month, you know, I want to I want to live a life equivalent to making 120 grand a year, except you should probably live a life equivalent to making like 20 grand a year. Yeah. Because the business, like your most powerful asset is your ability to invest and your ability to reinvest. And so many people, you know, one of the things you always told me was how little you took out of the business. You always share with me the investments you were making. And I was like, man, like, that's so dope. And I think that like, you know, now I'm very fortunate in our business in a position where we can make a lot of investments. And I pay myself very little. In fact, my CPA got on me last year. They're like, you don't pay yourself enough. Like the IRS is going to come after you if you don't pay yourself more, because I want to be able to reinvest in shit, man. Like, I know for us to get to like the level that we want to get to, we have to be able to reinvest. And, you know, I had to dude, I spent, I would never see the pandemic was a blessing, but it allowed me to get really, really still. And I remember I cut out every expense. And I haven't said this publicly. This is the first time I really said it. And I lived at my parents' house during the pandemic. I shut down every expense I had. I didn't have rent. I didn't have anything. Dude, I had fucking three insane vehicles going in the pandemic. I had an I8. I had a Range Rover and Escalade brought downgraded to a fucking like you got the CT5, you know, V-Wing, right? And I had like a fucking standard CT5 like $40,000 car. That was all I had. It was the only bill I had. I think my payment was like $650 a month. And did I put every penny away? It's awesome. Now I came out of the pandemic and we went into the pandemic. I probably had like a two and a half to maybe $3 million company. We came out of the pandemic with a $15 million company. Yeah, I wish I would. I didn't save $15 million. Yeah. Right. But I reinvested every fucking day. And dude, it was one of the most valuable lessons I learned in two years. I mean, bro, I'm 37 in the grand scheme of things. That's nothing. I still got a ways to go. How does somebody lose, you know, 60 pounds forever? It's a slow process, right? You lose it in two months, you're going to gain it back. Yeah. It's a slow process. It takes patience. And I think especially today with the internet and with social media, people believe it to be a faster process than ever before. The same rules are ruining it. They make you think that, right? And yeah, you can definitely do 10 grand in a month right away. 100%. But then can you keep doing it? Just like, can you lose 60 pounds real fast, but then will you keep it off? Well, dude, let's talk about that. Because tactically right now, the promises being made around the 10 grand months are such bullshit. We're talking about this off air, right? The strategy that is going around right now, and I'm sure everybody's seen it, open up your inbox on Instagram or on Facebook. And you've got tens of hundreds, maybe called, you know, DMs. Yeah. And people are like, hey, I see that you like fitness. You want to talk about your fitness goals. And like, first of all, if you're the person sending those, please stop. Like that must feel so douchey if you're the one sending that message every day. But second of all, like to the guru's teaching that strategy, they know one thing. Everybody has a hot network. Every human. I don't care who you are at this point in your life. You have expressed interest or you have shown desire around something you're passionate about. And for health coaches, it's about changing people's lives through health and fitness. And so when you actually make an offer, these people probably were too scared to invest in themselves, but they like you because your friends, they're in your hot network and they trust you because you've shown passion. And so they're willing to accept that offer. So you're like, oh my God, this cold DM shit, it's great. Everybody I talked to buys for me, except at some point you realize your network is only so large. And when you burn through your network and you go to somebody that has no idea who you are, and you send them that same message, you're not going to get a yes, you're going to get a middle finger or you're going to get something way worse, like I'll send you, which is like, yo, go fuck yourself. But like, at the end of the day, that's not a strategy to grow your business. And so we've got these gurus out there like I can make you 10k overnight and maybe they can. But why aren't we talking about what we can make you in a year? And I always say at NCI, I don't care what you can do for somebody in 10 weeks, I'm going to judge your results as a coach as to where your clients are 10 years from today. If your clients have still lost weight, if they're still successful, if they are still living a life that they are proud of and they're showing it and paying it forward to their families and their kids, you did a great job as a coach. And we should be hold our business coaches to the same fucking level of accountability. But we're not. We're only talking about results tomorrow. Totally. Jason, look, we said this earlier, we started the show and we did it for free. Literally, we all had day jobs, kids, families, responsibilities. We used to show up and I think it was Monday, I want to say Mondays and Thursdays. And it was like 8pm. So after work, after everything, you know, kids go to bed, whatever, we meet up and we record three or four episodes. We'd be there till 11 o'clock at night midnight and we did this for a year. And we didn't start monetizing the show until literally we were getting messages and people were knocking down the door saying, can we want to give you money for all the value that you guys provide? Do you have anything? Do you have t-shirts? Do you have? And that's when we sat down, we said, all right, I think we now have proved that we have a business. Let's start. But that's a whole year. How many people would work for an entire year for free? By the way, we got signs within that year that we could have sold stuff. But we still waited because we wanted to be patient. We didn't want to be that, you know, that flash in the pan. Well, what if we, what if we just ask, I always love to ask this question from stage, right? If I, if I could snap my fingers and say, Hey, here's 10 million dollars and you are, you get 10 million dollars five years from today. Are you going to take it? Yeah. And everyone in the crowd is like, yep, I'll take it, right? Unless you get some douche back, it's like, I'm going to make way more than 10 grand or 10 million. And it's like, dude, you're probably broke anyway. Like, shut the fuck up. You would take the 10 million, right? So, but like, somebody's going to take it. And then I'm going to, then I'm going to qualify that statement. And I'm going to say, here's the caveat. You only make 60 grand a year for the next five years. Are you still taking 10 million dollars in five years? Everyone's like, fuck yeah, right? I'll live on 60 grand to get to 10 million. Yeah. Well, why the fuck are you acting like you need to be a millionaire? I know why are your actions that you're taking on a day to day basis, stating that you have to live the life of a millionaire. The truth is they don't really believe that they're going to get that 10 million. Exactly. That's why. And it's like, dude, and if you're guaranteed they're going to get 10 million, then everybody goes, oh, I could suffer for four or five years. But the truth is that's that's part of this game. Most people aren't willing to suffer. Yeah. You guys are not a single wealthy person in any industry that woke up the next day after starting. That was ultra wealthy. No. The grind and the suffer and the sacrifice is part of success, no matter who you are. And I mean, dude, you guys have had the most successful people in this studio, and we could all all of us could sit down. And I think it's actually what happens. I mean, off air, when we're all in rooms, we don't really talk about our current success. I would argue most of the stories are about the shit we all work out. Of course. Right. Because that's what built us. That's the characters that that it's the character that we've developed because of the hardships and because of the learning. And I think that, you know, I think that's really the whole thing in mentorship to why I'm a big advocate of mentorship. I know collectively in this room, we've all spent millions of dollars in mentorship. It's you're learning from other people's mistakes. Yeah. Somebody yesterday, I was on a call with someone and they were talking about and they're like, man, like, you know a thing or two. And I was like, yeah, I know a thing or two because I fucked up like more times than my whole community combined. And I don't want you to have to make the same mistakes that I made. Like, dude, I did it all. And I wish people could like you said earlier, man, I wish people were telling me this from day one, but it wasn't discussion. And I think that's why we're here, man, to get the word out and to really make sure that people aren't making those mistakes. You know, I like to do, I like to communicate like this. So we talked early the beginning episode, we talked about application. Yeah. Part of that is being able to communicate what you know effectively. And here's what trainers and coaches understand. They understand fitness for themselves very well. All the other stuff they have to learn, but they know how to work out themselves. They've been doing it for a long time. And you go up to a fitness coach and who's very fit and you say, Hey, man, I want to look like you. What do I got to do? You know what they're going to say to you? Man, I've been working out for 10 years. I've been doing this for a long time. You know what? I was overweight or I was really skinny. And you know, you want to look like me like it takes a long time of consistency and I didn't miss workouts and I eat really healthy. Same thing. Same thing. It's the same thing when it comes to business. There's no different. Like you're not going to get super fit, jacked or ripped overnight. You're not going to be super successful overnight. It's the same kind of patients just like you did when you first started working out and you sucked at squats and you can only put a 10 pound weight on either side of the barbell when you were bench pressing and now you can bench press 300 pounds. It didn't happen overnight. It took years and years and years of sucking before you could do it. It's the same exact principles here. As you're saying that I'm literally having images of the first gym I worked out in when I back squatted 135 and I was so proud of the fact that I back squatted on wheels, weight, body and side. I remember being like out of place on each side. But like, you know, it's crazy because like two days ago I posted a video of me hitting four or five or 20. I saw that. That's right. Bro, that's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. So like, I mean it's five years ago, right? Yeah, it's crazy more. It was, yeah, I mean, dude, I started proud of hitting 135 and, you know, in my career I hit four or five for 20. And, you know, I did, I mean, did other stupid study like 190 for 100. And, you know, like, I'd ultimately at 186 pounds I back squatted 535. Like, you know, it's time. It's repetition. It's patience, man. I mean, if you would have told me at that time that I would have ever hit those numbers, I might not have believed it. And if I'm being transparent, man, on the business side of things, if you would have told me that when I was overdrawn and I couldn't afford coffee, that I would be the CEO of a business, one business that does over 15 million and also an investor in other businesses that collectively my portfolio does, you know, well over 20 million dollars a year. I would have been like, that's fucking insane. Yeah. And now I look at it and I'm like, well, we're just on our way to, you know, 100 million. And, you know, we're talking off air. I mean, you know, acquisitions and, you know, there's, there's companies that want to, you know, have conversations around investing in us today. And it's like, dude, I never would have. But I think what got us to this point, and I think collectively we can all agree is we wake up every day and we try to make the most of it. And we make decisions that are going to move us forward today and in the long term. And we don't look into the future and say, like, this is where it's going to be. Because if you get caught up around where you're trying to get in the future, you're never really going to get there. But if you win today and you win tomorrow and you're going to keep winning, like, and it's just like nutrition, right. And I think there's so many parallels to nutrition and business. Like, I don't need to worry about if the scale is going to be any different in a week. I need to make sure that when I put a Big Mac in front of you today or I put a salad in front of you, you make the right choice. Yeah. And if you consistently make the right choices at every meal throughout the day and, you know, when you go home and you get the right amount of sleep and you control your stress, you have to win. Like, there's no choice. And so from a business perspective, you go through all the things we said today, right. You have a good offer. You understand that, you know, retention is sometimes better than acquisition. You know, you get out of the transactional mindset. You build systems and you do this every day and you create one micro win every day. You're going to win long term, man. And I think that that's it's a place that most people don't want to look because they're like, I want to be fucking rich today. And it's like, maybe you need to look inside and ask yourself why you need to be so fucking rich? Like, why is your life so shitty that you need to be rich? Like, maybe this isn't the industry for you. It's all about, it's all about the journey, isn't I'll leave it with one statistic right here that I love to tell fitness people, statistically speaking, there are more millionaires or your odds of being a millionaire are as higher than getting a six pack. So if you're a coach or trainer listening right now and you got six pack abs, you actually did something harder than becoming a millionaire. I did not know that. That's true. It's true statistics. So I never knew that. It's very, very possible. It's just the same principles you learned through exercise and the patience and the journey is what it's all about. Well, I had my abs long before I had my millions of dollars. So I guess I did the harder thing first. You did. Now I'm doing the easier shit because I'm getting old, but that's right. Dude, it's I wish more people understood that though. And also, man, I think that, you know, I guess my parting words in this is I think there's we could all sit here and, you know, we're entrepreneurs and we could sit here and identify all the opportunities in the world to make a million dollars. And I don't think that outside of this industry we would create as much success as we have in this industry because we genuinely love it. And I think if you wake up every day with the passion that you have for the industry and you do it because you love it, you do it because you want to create a good result and you keep that as the emphasis, right? The money will come and you have to learn the business. Don't get me wrong. You have to learn the business side, but if you leave at the forefront your desire to create success and you build an epic fucking product which goes all the way back to the beginning of this podcast, you'll win. And I think more coaches need to be tripling down on that. Get the knowledge, get the application, give a shit about people, stop trying sleazy tactics and just fucking triple down on the right stuff. Man, everything else will fall into place. Excellent. Well said, man. Thanks for coming on the show. Dude, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.