 You are known as being one of the more successful trainers that's out there, uh, quite well known. My thank you. Trainers and coaches. I want to go back to how you started. Yes. You started breaking mortar like we did. Yep. And you've done that for a long time. Take me back to, and you start, you do this in one of the hardest markets. It was tough. In my opinion, in the world, in New York City. It was. Take us back to that one. It was, it was tough. I mean, so I went and worked for Equinox back in 99, spent a year there, saw it get taken over by the first private private equity firm that bought it from the Eroco family. So I think six months in this firm came in and bought it from the Erocos for like 150 million bucks. So I actually saw Equinox go from a mom and pop organization to corporate, which is one of the most valuable things I've ever witnessed in business. And I come from a catering background. My family, you know, Bar Mitzvah, sweet 16s, I was sweeping floors at seven years old. It's like, I was always in that blue collar mentality. And I think that's why I love to work hard watching a GM walk into the room one day though and look at all of the trainers and go, you're all expendable. It was the first words out of her mouth and my jaw hit. My jaw hit the floor. It was probably one of the worst deliveries I've ever seen, but also one of the best messages I've ever received. Not something you'd ever say to an employee, especially 40. No, but I've done something like that. That's why I'm laughing over here right now. Cause I'm like, I fired people on one day like that. Yeah. But for different reasons though, because we experienced something similar. We started with 24 fitness and we saw them go from their heyday to getting purchased by these organizations that do nothing about fitness. Yeah. And there was a common thread. This is interesting. They saw the trainers as not being valuable. Now those of us who ran gyms, right? Ran gyms for a long time knew that the trainers were like, that's the most valuable, some of the most valuable people in the gym by far. So they came in and they said that to the trainers and what happened? Yeah. And I don't, I don't, I don't get it. I still to this day, the trainers are your lifeline. They're the people that are in front of your clients the most amount of time. They're the ones that have the most amount of touch points with the members. Like, I don't understand how they keep devaluing them or paying them less. And it just makes no sense. A complete other conversation. Well, it's crazy. I mean, we had, I don't know if you guys had these stats, but we have. I remember when I first saw these stats of a member who does not get a personal trainer, the average falloff rate was within the first three to six months. That person stops coming to the gym and they keep paying for about another seven months. That was, that was the stat. If they saw a personal trainer for just five sessions, that the average client would go for three plus years. That's huge. Big, especially when you have some monthly paying every single month. Like, so the fact that somebody would think that the, the trainers are something that you could just get rid of in a gym businesses. You know, what it was, you know, what it was is that, uh, people who used in the model and the current big box model, people who use the gym a lot costs more money because they use the equipment, they show up, they crowd the place, they're paying 20 bucks a month. Like the other guy who's paying 20 bucks a month who doesn't show up, except for maybe once a month or never. And they don't crowd the place that you prefer you not to show up. That's, that's the model. That's what happened. I get it, but I want people talking about their experience. I want them happy. I want them walking into a party set and have everyone saying, Oh my God, look at you. You look amazing. What are you doing? Yeah. It's so, yeah. I mean, I, I, I think from a business standpoint, I get it, but I also don't. It's the one thing in fitness I just don't agree with. I think we got to put more love into the coaching. We got to take better. So what was the outcome? What happened after I started seeing that the trainers just started breaking off and they started getting rid of a lot of us. Um, I was let go six months later. Our price points were too, too high on those coaches. They ended up actually hiring me back. I think a month later, I got a call. I think that GM was let go and they hired me back at that point. I was already making triple what I was making at the club. And I was like, Oh my God, this is great. I control my schedule. I was, you know, at a one-on-one facility. I went down to the Ritz Carlton Battery Park. I had a client of mine who built that one, that facility. And I went and I became the head trainer there, the only trainer there. At Ritz Carlton? Yeah. At a Ritz Carlton down in a battery park in New York City. And I would pull my car up front. And I'd hair in the dormant 20 bucks. He'd watch my car for four or five hours. I was charging, you know, at the time, 125 bucks an hour, young kid. Well, back in that, that time, that's a lot of money. It was, I think when I was 22 years old and I could talk, I don't mind talking about this, but I think I made, I think I made 200,000 bucks when I was 22 years old. I did pretty well, but I was also, you know, like what you were talking about in your past life in business, I wasn't feeling fulfilled. There was this entrepreneurial piece that was missing. And at that time, there was no social media. There was like, there was no digital space. I mean, if we talk about what we're doing now here, 20 years ago, people would be like, what are you talking about? I'm running a podcast. I'm selling online programs. Like I've got a global reach on the web. Like none of these terms really existed, which I think is interesting. But back then it was opening a gym. So I knew nothing about the gym space, but I did know people. So I went, I went to Angels and I raised, I raised five million bucks. At 20, as a kid, no, at that point I was 25. You're a kid. You're still a kid. I open the young men. So then I started. So I didn't open my first club till 2005. So I think I was, okay, we said backup. So, okay, I mean, you obviously had to be, okay, a couple of things would come to mind right away from me is that you had to have been a hell of a trainer. Yes, because I'm sure that. And you also have to be. Yeah, I'll call it probably one of your superpowers is your ability to build relationships. Yes, but they wanted it. They wanted me, they wanted me to have my own thing. And you know, you have someone in your life that wants, that sees that you, not, I don't see the word deserve more, but you have more to offer than people start believing you and they start putting weight behind. Like it's like what you guys, like 10 years ago, if I told you be doing this now, you'd be like, what are you talking about? Like this is, this is the dream. I mean, it really is what you guys have created is impressive. 20 million downloads, I think is the dream. But no one 10 years ago knew what this was about. So I raised the money and I start going in and I'll never forget this is actually, I just, I mean, I'm embarrassed to even admit this because I've never said this once anywhere. But I remember going out with a broker, not dating, actually going out to look at space and he was showing me different spots and he's like, well, what do you want from a square footage standpoint? And I was like, well, the more feet I have, the more square footage, the more equipment I can fit in, right? And he's like, uh, so back then, like I literally like, I understood business, but I didn't know what I wanted yet. Yeah. So I ended up going to a term sheet with a broker in New York City, 1440 Broadway, it was Broadway. It was like, okay, this is great. And I ended up losing the term sheet seven months in. I think the guy was indicted and I lost, I think I probably lost a year and a half of my life when I came down and looking for the space, going to term sheet for someone and I stopped looking for the location. So I immediately started getting really smart. I was like, all right, I am never going to stop looking like even until it's signed on the dotted line, I don't care what deal. I don't care how much money is being thrown at me. I'm going to keep looking at them. I'm always going to pursue it. And I did that and I found 495 Broadway, which is a 15,000 square foot. Um, um, it started out as a golf fitness training facility. We had indoor simulators. I got a liquor license. Um, so wine beer or wine beer, a hard alcohol. We're really supposed to have it. We kind of did it. The balls to get a 15,000 square foot place. I don't know if it's balls or stupidity. I really don't want to be honest. Like they probably go hand in hand. No, I did think I was invincible. I was like, oh, I'm not going to lose, right? But so we started, I'm not going to lie. We were printing money out of this place because we were doing corporate events upstairs for Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, you know where I'm going with it. So like, I'm getting on the phone with real good to low-weight, real good to low-weight. Exactly, you know where I'm going. So I'm, so I'm sitting there. My brother and I, my brother was a professional golfer turned back amateur. We went through all TPI training. We were the first TPI level threes. Greg Rose, I don't know if you know who he is out of TPI. He was one of my mentors, but I went through their training 18, 19 years ago. So I wanted to take what TPI, the Titles Performance Institute did, and I wanted to bring it to York City, but I wanted to bring a little flair to it. I want to have entertaining. I wanted to start doing corporate events, bachelor parties, whatever it was. So we had the gym downstairs, which was doing well. But upstairs, we'd have a corporate, you know, a corporation walk in and host a three hour event. You'd make cash. Now it's all guys. Now I'm going, well, there's no women here. What am I going to do? So I do a deal with Ford modeling agency. I'm like, I'm giving 60 year models or 50 year models all free memberships, but I need them here on the state. So that all the guys start walking in. Hold on, this is what is just so brilliant. Yeah, it's so, but it's so stupid because I overdid it. Like, so all, all these guys from Goldman are walking in and I had like four rows of cardio and there must have been like 30 women gorgeous on the elliptical. Everyone was like, I'm sitting here like, oh, this is so obvious, man. This like everyone's going to know I'm a fraud here, but I was trying to fake it till I made it. So we went and we did this for a while. Then 0708 hit and I looked at my brother and I was like, holy shit, dude, like we got a serious problem here. I'm like, we got to redo our whole business. So we started. So anyway, back up, I want to know some numbers that it's so. At that time, like about what what is the gym doing? Where are most there is the revenue coming from? Overhead of a place. So I think so I think the rent. So I started at low 20s of foot and then with taxes, I could tell you my last year I was paying 750,000 in rent. I was paying 15,000 a month in real estate taxes. Big knot. And then I had my and then I had my overhead. So I think when I signed my I'm going to get these numbers wrong. I thought I was paying like mid three hundreds for rent when I signed, but you had your typical escalations in your real estate tax. Okay. So you got a pretty serious overhead. So as most the money coming from the monthly membership, so as the corporate things you're doing, where's the revenue coming from? It's like probably a half and a half thing, probably a little heavier on the corporate event side of it, which is why when that happened, you're like, oh, shit. Yeah, we're like, oh, shit. What's up, everybody? Oh, you're going to love today's episode. One of the best trainers we've ever talked to. We got to interview on this podcast. By the way, today's giveaway is Maps Prime and Prime Pro. The mobility programs. So if you want to win those two, here's what you got to do. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Also subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we will notify you in the comment section that you won. Okay. We're not going to tell you to text us or call us. Beware of scammers. We will tell you in the comments that you won Maps Prime and Prime Pro. Also, we got a sale going on this month. Maps and Ebola and maps split both 50% off. Okay. Very popular programs. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Here comes the show. Probably the dumbest decision I made in my life was we won PG on it. So we had a personal guarantee on it. So I couldn't throw the keys in. I had, I had to ride out the life of the police. So it was either, okay, hand the keys over fine. You're going to be on the hook for, I think at the time it was like a $3 million probably hook. So they were going to wipe my brother and I out. So 0708 hits, corporate events, go to complete shit. Excuse my language. And we start bleeding about a hundred grand in cash a month. So my brother and I had the idea to turn around and go to some of our really good members who had a lot of money. I mean, this is like the cream of the crop. And I said, listen, we're in trouble. I'm not going to lie to you. You love this place. We love this place. I said, could you front load your year? So if John Smith, I'm making that name up, comes in and train and spend a hundred thousand dollars last year. Would you give us a hundred grand? We'll give you the membership. You're helping us out. Bro, he did like a, like a 24. If it is flip, that's what they did. He did a flip right there. I pulled in a million bucks and I worked off a million dollars in training over the next few years, me personally. You just worked it off. I worked it off. I was doing 40 to 60 sessions a week. I was waking up at 3.30 a.m. to get into the club before four. I've trained over 40,000 one hour sessions in my life. I figured the math on it and I did this for a while. So when people are like four black belts, well, but when people like look at like you guys had to go through, I'm sure there were moments where you guys turned around and you were like, you know, am I doing the right thing here? Let me add something to this. Don't because people who don't train people for a living don't understand the difference between a regular 40 hour a week job and training people for 40 hours a week. Oh, yeah. When you're at a normal job 40 hours a week, you're really only on, you know, 20 hours, maybe 25 hours. If you're training 40 sessions, you're on the entire time. You can't relax or chill. You're with a person in front of you and you got to perform every single time. It's exhausting. It's like, you're not going in. You never want to say, oh, what are we doing in it here? Like, you know, you're gone and the, I mean, part of being a great trainer is the being able to be a chameleon to each one of them. So you got, you know, their energy. Oh, yeah. So each person, you're changing almost like your character and personality, you know, eight, 10 times a day. That's exhausting. So then we, then Hugh Jackman walks into my club one day and, you know, the story I told you guys earlier. Was he referred by somebody? Is he? He was training with a friend of mine and Hugh came over, started having a conversation with me, asked to work with me. And I was like, you're working with my buddy. And then my buddy came to me. He's like, no, I'm having triplets. I'm leaving. I'll give him props. His name is Rico, great guy, great, great coach. And I ended up working with Hugh for the year. There's no social media at the time. I was just some preparant to prepare. Yeah. For Wolverine. Okay. So I think it was Wolverine in Australia, which the movie Australia with Nicole. Cause this physique went viral. Yeah. Yeah. It was sick. Yeah. It was sick. Um, he came off the boy from us. He was 175 pounds. People want to say he put on 30 pounds of muscle. There's no way he put on 30 pounds of muscle. Let's be very clear here. He did not put on 30 pounds of muscle. I mean he put on muscle, but he also put on fat with that muscle. And, you know, he got bigger and he got stronger. And, but really the secret to our training was he had no lower body at the time. And I'm like, we got to build your legs. And he's like, but my upper body, like we got to build your legs. Like, so we taught him a squat. We taught him the deadlift, all the basic stuff. I really have more of like a power building back. I love power building. I love, I love the big lifts and I love doing mobility work. I love car. I love it all type of thing, but he needed lower body training. So we really focused a lot on that. We focused on his mobility and his body came and listen, we had food coming to him and I knew every hour he was eating, every hour he was sleeping and we, we built him up. Now, so you're responsible for that physique that was in the first year of training. I should say I was, I was, I was like to say, I was a part of it. Listen, it's, and again, I think it goes back to you're all expendable. Like I, I think that's why I've done well in this market is I understand that I'm expendable. And though I have some great relationship, like Ryan Reynolds just put a post up and tagged me on it. My boy for 14 years is like a brother to me. Like his, his wife, his wife's like a brother to me. And we always joke around cause she's like, you know, she's kind of like a dude, right? And you want to think that, but she's awesome. And I think there's always been this respect that even though we're friends, I'm there for a job and I'm there to help get them to a certain point. And I think what happens in the industry is people start getting too comfortable and they want to be in that world and they want to be next to that person and a part of it. And I'm like, don't forget why, why you're here and what you're doing. So when I started working with Hugh, no social media, it did not exist. And he, I remember him looking at me asking to do press like, let's do some press. And I'm like, no. He's like, what are you talking about? I look back and I'm like, what is I doing? I was like, idiot. But he's like, let's do some press. And I'm like, no, I'm like, we're getting you ready. Oh my God, I wanted to. Yeah, I'm like, no, let's get you ready for this role. This is about you. This is not about me. I also think it was that attitude that he also probably loved that too. And I think the next thing you know, I'm guys every single week, I'm not even kidding. Like, hey, it's Michael J. Fox. Hey, it's Sandra Bullock. Dwayne Johnson's working out in the club. Like all these people were coming in because they realized that it was a safe place. I saw a woman one time holding the phone low. See, what a great, you know what? What a great, I mean, we laugh or you kind of joke. Actually, that was smart. Yeah, you that, you know, oh man, what a dummy. I didn't do the, but really though. That was long-term thinking. Yeah, I could have played it a little bit though, to be honest. Sure, one article, no problem. But remember, we got to get back to it. I could have played it a little bit. But you know what, listen, you're, I'm also a kid at the time. I'll be 46 next month. So I've been in this business now 25 years. I mean, you, you learn what to do and what not to do. But, you know. So that, so training him is what introduced all these other people working with you. Now, what's it like working with somebody, you know, a lot of coaches and trainers. This is like a dream, right? For a trainer, like, oh my God, if I could train celebrity, then I could really get into it. They got to do what I say. They're getting ready for a role with her. Is it different than working with an average person, a regular person? And if so, how, and what are the challenges? I think how, because I get, the question I get asked a lot, because I've worked with a lot of athletes also, is what's harder, what's different. I was like, you know what? Athletes, we have a controlled schedule, right? Like we know when the games are, we don't know if they're breaking an arm during a game naturally, but my, my, my actors, like Ryan does a lot of his own stunts. Like I've seen Ryan break his back. I've seen him break limbs and get concussions. And, you know, so they get, they get hurt. What I, the reason why I'm going to say working with a lot of these actors becomes more of a challenge. It's cause there's no control over the schedule, right? Like I'm working with Lee F. Schreiber, who's Ray Donovan and he's got three days where he's shooting all day. And then Friday, Saturday and Sunday, he shoots overnight in Brooklyn. So suddenly that schedule is completely changed. He's got two children. His wife, his ex at the time was, was shooting a movie off in a, in another location. And that to me gets really challenging. When an actor of mine is on a, is on a, a set and a camera breaks down or one of the stars mom passes away and everything gets put on hold and they're two time zones away from their family. It becomes a challenge. You know, when you have to remove these people from their environment with their kids and suddenly put them off in Dubai for six months, it becomes a challenge. And their lives are so volatile, like volatile. They don't know what they're shooting in six months. They don't, they don't know the location yet. Like I'm training Ryan, I'm helping Ryan with Deadpool. Do they have all the locations? They have some of them, but they also don't have a lot of them. So I think there's this level of uncertainty when you're working with a lot of these actors that at least with athletes or regular people, you have the majority of the time. What about their motivation, right? Like I would think obviously if you're an athlete, you're, you're very motivated, especially a professional athlete, you're very motivated and to increase your performance. Actors are probably passionate about their acting. So do you, do you find yourself having to motivate them more to do the things you need them to do? Or are they equally motivated to come in? You know, I think, God, I mean, most of the time, I've been pretty lucky, I think, because when they're coming in, they understand this is part of their job and this is their level of being believable. And I think that's why a lot of the actors I've worked with, they don't want to walk around, you know, all, I'm like, you look great. Why don't you just stay that way? And like, well, I have to be believable and I have to be able to transition into a role. So I have to come down from this. Like everyone, like the most Brad Pitt and Fight Club, Brad Pitt and Fight Club, oh my God, enough. Like enough, right? Like in the fitness world, like in your world, like you were, you were a pro at one point, right? It's like Brad Pitt and Fight Club wouldn't have placed on stage, like it's nothing, but in the like Hugh Jackman and Wolverine, he looked good, no, no, I love Hugh, but like in the bodybuilding world, like who the hell? Like, okay, fine, he deadless 450 pounds. Like everyone in here can do that, right? But so I think some of them have this, you know, this switch where they're just like, I need this to be more believable for the role. Once in a while, you run into an actor who might be a little flaky and they're like, all right, well, what do I have to do? I'm not sure. And then you have to kind of hold their hand and kind of never had to fire an actor. You don't have to say their name. I wouldn't say fire, I would say separate myself. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. The reason why I asked that, because that's a very, that's a reality of training people, period. I mean, especially when you get really good and you don't need every single client, there comes a point where, you know, you have to have your own boundaries that you set and there's like your time is valuable and so you could be helping somebody else if you're not really truly helping this person. I had this conversation, I'm friends with Jeff Cavalier, you know, the act of that guy. So Jeff and I would, he invited me on something with Gunner Peterson last year and I was, I called him up one day, I was like, Jesus, he's like, what? I'm like, man, I'm just having a tough time, like saying no, like I just, I got a call, he's like, by who? And I told him the name and he's like, oh, I can see how that's tough. I'm like, I can't do it. I can't drive 90 minutes to work with this guy. Spend an hour with him and his wife, drive 90 minutes back. It's just not like, we're trying to evolve and we're trying to build something else. And there's another part of my life now that I'm really excited about. This is my past. So I got to hand these people off. Do you ever go through this? And he's like, Don, every day. He's like, every day I get reached. And he started dropping names of people who reach out online. He's like, I just, you don't have the time at a certain point, you got to make business decisions. And you got to say, all right, is my ego answering questions or do I believe in a specific path that I'm taking and I have to, you know, follow that path? And it's tough. I mean, you guys transition from coaches to building something that's great. And I'm sure sometimes you guys are put in the same situation. Yeah, it's time and energy. Are you, did you ever travel to like sets and locations? What's that like? A couple of times. I didn't do it a lot because, you know, at 29, I had, I'm sorry, at 30 years old, which is 16 years ago now, Jesus, I had my daughter. So I think, and I was also running Drive. And that was so for me to pick up at the time and travel with Scarlett Johansson over to, you know, wherever, over overseas for three months. It's not happening. I'm not going and doing that. But I would take short trips with people that I love like Ryan, Blake, like those are my people. Sebastian Stan, like these are still a few people. Like Seb, Seb's doing my next month's challenge with me. We raise money for the Ronald McDonald house. I think we've given away in two hours of Zoom calls. I think we donated like 50 grand, something great to the Ronald McDonald house. And we go to the house. So I'll do these celebrity challenges just to bring awareness to the person's favorite charity. And, and Seb, you know, I traveled to Atlanta for like two days. And Ryan, I, Ryan, I was in Atlanta also. I met, I met the rock there. That's where I met Dwayne Johnson. He was incredibly friendly, but it's fine. How is Ryan, is Ryan as cool and as fun, as funny as his personality is, like the character he has. He's been, him and his wife in business, in my career, they've probably been the single most important person to me. And I can't even begin to tell you how many things they do behind closed doors for charities and people and- They seem very, in term, I mean, in the context of celebrities, they seem like they're very grounded. Amazing. They're, for them, it's about their family. It's about charities. It's about building business, building opportunity. For them, business is really about opportunity. Can they give more opportunity to people? And I'm telling you, in the 25 years I've been in business, I've never met a couple like them. They're, they're, they're amazing. Ryan is definitely more, when in person, more business. Like he's, he's, to see what he's done with business wrecks them and to see what he's done with Mint Mobile and to see what he's done with Aviation Gin in a short period of time. I mean, he's a, he's a marketing genius, but, you know, behind every great man, you know, Ryan, it's Blake and, and Ryan will be the first one to tell you, Blake's probably half, half the ideas and her, her mindset is, I can't tell you how many great, how many great ideas. Actually, one funny story, I don't think I've ever even mentioned on, on air, but it was during COVID, they were, we were training a bunch, you know, through, through Zooms and Blake was like, I got this idea. You should do this funny skit. Everyone's doing these, all these reporters are doing in their underwear. They're like on the radio in the background, you see them in their underwear. You remember this? It's like, all right, let's do something fun. So she's like, all right, listen, man, like, you got to get some tanning stuff because your pills are going to go with something. So I'm like on Amazon or in tanning stuff during COVID, which actually arrived shockingly. And we set up this whole skit and I filmed it and out of nowhere, I looked down at my phone, spent way too much time on this. She spent way too much time on this. We're just like probably bored out of our minds trying to figure things out and look at my phone. And it says, Ryan's aim on it and I answer and his face is this close and he's like, listen, man. And I'm just looking at him. He goes, if I had someone years ago, tell me not to do Green Lantern and I trusted them, I would have listened. Don't do this. And I'm like, bye, click. And I just deleted the video. It's all I got out of this. I love that he makes fun of himself for that movie all the time. It's so great. It's brilliant. It's so brilliant. But that's them. Dude, I have to ask. So I had the experience of like training a professional athlete and kind of went through that process. It's just kind of a random thing that happened through network and whatnot. But what I found was just like the crazy experience, the snake oil type trainers that they had previous to me. And so I have to ask, like in terms of like that world, right, like, everybody wants to be a part of that world of like being able to have that opportunity and that chance. And then like, have you heard stories, at least from your clients, like of their past experience with somebody and just what kind of craziness is out there? I've seen it firsthand. I've seen it. I told some stories. I launched an app company about 10 years ago with Adrian Peterson, Dwayne Wade and Ernie Ells. And it was called Driven App. So I started getting into that world early on and I'm not saying it was them, it was not them. It was other guys. But I saw one athlete, a very well-known NFL player that I sat with and I said, how's your training? And he's like, it's good. I said, well, tell me about it. He goes, well, I train six hours a day. I go six hours a day. I was like, okay. So I'm just sitting there looking at him. And this guy is Pro Bowl. Pro Bowl. I said, well, what are you doing? He goes, well, I start my training. I start with MMA. I go into my MMA work. We go into the field. We do agility. We do our strength. And then I finish with power. And then I go, like everything is just a whole, like, and I'm sitting there and I'm shocked. And I remember calling up my buddy. Do you know Charlie Weingroff? Have you ever heard of him? Charlie's probably one of the most brilliant PT's I know on the planet. And he actually worked with me for 12 years. And I called Charlie and I actually had like a bit of a meltdown. I was so blown away that this marquee athlete had such poor direction. Then I was like, well, six hours. You're stopping for lunch, right? Or like massage. He's like, no, we bring like a pure protein bar out and I'm like chomping on everything that could have been went wrong, went wrong. How's your body feeling? He's like, I'm getting pain down here. Now I'm stuck for some reason. My shoulders hurt me in here. And I'm like, all right, all right, all right. And then a couple of months later, you saw this athlete go through some major hernia issues, AC joint issues, and you're sitting there like, holy shit, like what happened here? Well, now you obviously know what happened here. But that is more common than not. And I think it's because the players union can't, I don't get it. Like if I'm the owner, if I own the New York Yankees, sure I'm gonna bring in Eric Cressy. I'll bring in someone who's got a well-known name, who's gonna establish a well-known board team, call it what you want of strength coaches, and I'm gonna build it out there. You're investing $50 million, $30 million into a player, hundreds of millions of dollars into a player. You wanna know that what they're doing in their off season is good. The fact that they can't put their fingerprint on, for me, makes no sense. I don't care what the argument is. I'm going in and I'm paying my trout $400 million. Like I wanna make sure that he's not, he's a bad example. I wanna make sure that he's not training with some goofball cousin who's just running around. I don't know Mike's training. Let's just be very clear. I'm just using him as an example. But I think we see a lot of that in that to be the answer to questions at this point. Do you think it's more that they don't know that they don't know? That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Because I think you're, I mean, those are, you're talking about people that own these NFL and MLB teams. I mean, very brilliant, successful entrepreneurs that build, I think they're very smart guys, but they know nothing probably about them. But they're starting to know, because I'm good friends with Mike Boyle. He's one of my mentors. And when Boston hired Mike, I was sitting there like, and I hate Boston, I'm a New York guy, right? So let's be very clear, but Boston, people are like, well, you're gonna, you're gonna attribute Boston winning a championships to Mike Boyle. I'm like, maybe, I don't know. Like they seem to have been healthy. They seem to be in a good place. They're healthy every time he tells his team. Go pay one of the best strength coaches on the planet a million dollars a year, two million dollars a year. I don't give a shit what it is. Bring them in and make sure that your team has got the proper training, but they're not doing that. Every player on each organization is training with a cousin or a brother. I've met, I've met more pro athletes. Off air, we'll have to name drop with each other. Cause I'm so curious if that story, you just say, what if it's the same person? Cause I've got approval for, I remember the first time this happened to me, we were having sushi together. This is an, all I'll say is that Niner Pro Bowl guy, super badass, had some knee surgery. And I saw the video, I was actually having lunch also with his trainer and we're all hanging out. And he's like, you know, one of his high school buddies who, you know, got his kines degree. And like that's his, that's it. That's like his background. He's like one year out. And I see the stuff that he's doing and I'm going like, and you can't, I mean, I'm not going to offend the guy. I'm not going to say anything. So I'm just sitting back watching and I'm like, oh my God, dude, someone who's this valuable to the team that is this talented and you're getting trained this shitty, but that's what it is. It's always like some friend or a cousin or a brother who, you know, they got the credentials. And so it's just like, okay, I'm going to hire them, you know? Doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I think it's what you said. They don't know, they don't know because you're dealing with such a high level, a high pedigree of athlete, that their capacity is so high that their body can deal with so much garbage and they're already performing at a high level anyway. So they probably have the attitude, well, I didn't broke, you know, so it doesn't seem to be broken. But the problem is they don't know what they could be doing with proper training, you know? And you get away. Like I said, these, the, you know, working out six hours a day, the average person would know right away, this is too much. Someone at that level, it could get away with it for a while and what you could get away with is not what's optimal. I had a friend of mine, long drive guy, can't mention his name, but he had some of the highest numbers on, now long drive guys are, they're swinging the club, you know, 150 miles an hour. Like tour, like tour players, like Tiger's swinging at like 122, 150 miles an hour. Their ball speed is up north of 220 miles an hour. Dustin Johnson, when they had him in that commercial, I think it was at like 186. This is giving you some context on how big a lot of these guys are and how juice stuff some of them are also, it's pretty funny. But I had one of them come to me, that was like a farm boy, six, six ex-pitcher went through his numbers with me and I was like, Jesus. I'm like, so what's your program? He goes, I don't work out. So I'm looking at him like, oh, and he turns to me and goes, but I want to get on a program. And I'm like, I may not want to do that. I don't really got to fuck that up. I don't think I want to mess you up. You're like, it's just too good. Like we were, Charlie and I were laughing about it. Yes, there is something you can give him, but he went down south and he got on the wrong program and we just saw his numbers plummet. And just because he did stuff that strength coaches would be like, oh, those are good things, but he started doing too much of it, too much volume. You know, now you're feeding into the athlete or the actor who's like, no man, I want to work. I want to push. And I just text someone or I go, sometimes 100% is not going 100%. Sometimes you got to recognize that you're an athlete and that more, more, more, more is not the name of the game for you. Your golfers are tough because they don't have an off season. If you think about it, most of these players that are trying to make it, I'm not talking about the Tigers. I'm talking about the majority of the tour. They're playing 10 months a year. So when's their bulking phase? Like, what are they doing? You know, so they don't, so for me, those years of me trying to have so-and-so peak at the US Open, I threw that shit out. I mean, that's done. I wouldn't even try and progress a program for a year because suddenly they're on a plane to Malaysia and they get food poisoning and they're puking for two weeks. And I know, guess what? They missed that. And like, now what? Now they're in a bad mental spot because, oh, I ruined the program. And I didn't do like, all right, let's step off the ledge here, right? That's really cool insight right there. So share about what that transition looked like because we talk about people get questions and we call in and ask us about a sport and kind of how we would lead up to peak or like that. But that's such a great point. So a lot of these professional athletes, there is no real off season. They are playing at such a high level so much. A lot of them aren't. So how has that changed the way you look at the programming when you go to write something? I always set up, I always have a template, right? I have a program, but I explained to them that they have to deviate off of it. And there were years where I was using, have you heard of Omega Wave? Omega Wave is really probably the best way on the planet to measure readiness, but it's not like through my oaring who I've been working for where it gives you your readiness, but I pay more attention to it for its sleep. Omega Wave is your laying down for three minutes and they're putting a head sensor, a wrist sensor, a chest strap on, you gotta be in a dark room and it's basically, Omega Wave has figured out this algorithm that's gonna let you know where your readiness is for the day, where your CNS is for the day and then it can sign to you where does your training need to be? If you're a golfer and your readiness is here, well, maybe you shouldn't be working on driver today because that's more power. Maybe we need to work more on short game and putting. So now you're able to actually really determine where the practice needs to be for the day. Is that what Kelly started? Was you using it? Oh, I know Kelly well. I remember he was joking about how he would have his, he would go and he'd need to lay down right after he woke up. It has to be a Omega Wave. And his kids would come disrupt him and he'd be like, oh my God, get me to do it, man. He can't talk to me, he can't talk to me. He made a joke of it. You don't over again. I just spoke with Kelly out in Munich. I met him for the first time. He's awesome. They were just here, him and his wife. We had a great conversation. And he was sharing a story. I don't remember what tool he was using, but he made the point of like, he had to get all hooked up and lay still for a certain amount of time. So I made the mistake years ago giving it to one of my tour players and we started measuring their readiness. Now, years ago, what happens on a Thursday when they're waking up to play and they wake up and they look and they're in the red? Yeah, freak out. Mess with their mental. Come on, man. So these things can become weapons. Like when you look at whoop, when you look at aura ring, when you look at some of these other divide, and I work for aura and I love them, but I use aura for sleep. I use aura for trends. I use aura to be able to determine my behavioral change. How do I need to adjust things? And it's data. It's just... What a good point because a huge part of performance is your physiology, but you cannot separate that from your mental state and how you believe you're gonna do. And I mean, this is why athletes are so superstitious is because we're in the same socks or doing the same routine before the game helps me perform better. Well, he believes it or she believes it does. Then it does. How do you separate the two? How do you perform in spite of how you feel a lot of tension? Yeah, I would never let the... I would never give it to the athlete. I would only be able to read it and then I'd lie to him. Bro, you got to do 100 score in this. This is perfect timing. 100% shield it from 100%. That's what we end up doing. I don't care. 100%. I'm all in Morgan Hoffman who's my boy who's on the tour and he's like, how about your dude? You're glad. Dude, go shoot 60. That would be my line. I want to tell him he's great. I'd be, dude, you're in a great place. Go shoot 60. That's all I would say. Fires off in 80s. What is happening? Well, don't worry about it, man. Come on, we'll bounce back tomorrow. It's all about coaching at that point. It's all about this, right? It really is. My whole thing with athletes is, and I would use golf as an example because I think it's a great example. I don't care if the golfer hits the ball 320 yards or 325 yards. I don't see the, I honestly, I don't know the juice ain't worth to squeeze. It's not gonna, I want them to just become resilient. Like my thing with athletes is I want them to wake up every day with energy and resiliency and be able to wake up feeling in the best possible place. That's my goal with every athlete. Consistency, across board. When you work with celebrities, are you working alongside, because I imagine somebody signs up for a role, they're gonna have a trainer, they're gonna have a nutritionist, they're gonna have maybe a doctor that's gonna optimize their hormones or use peptides. They're gonna have, are you working together with a team? It depends. Some yes and some no. And it depends on the individual. I think it really is what, how do they want to approach it? Some of them it's like, what are we training for? Right? It's, you know, I was talking to someone last night that I'm helping out and he's preparing for a really big role. And I'm like, listen, man, you don't have to look like Pat Bateman in American Psycho, right? Like that's not what you're, you're playing a doctor. Like you're actually right there. I just need you going in this role in a good frame of mind, feeling healthy. You know, we don't need to go so overboard. Cause then it also gets to a point where it's like it's not believable. Like I've worked with actors where we've had to fatten them up. You know, we have Shriver for Chuck. That must be interesting. You remember the Chuck Wepner story? It was the whole Rocky story. Yeah. That's what inspired Rocky. He played that? Yeah. Oh my God. So he came in and I'm looking at him and I'm like, You don't look like Chuck Wepner. We got to stop training. We didn't stop training, but I was literally like, do you go out? Like you like those little burgers at the Royal 10? He's like, yeah. I was like, go have them. Go enjoy it. Want to put a vodka back? Enjoy vodka. Most radical transformation you've seen with one of the people you were, celebrities I guess. Probably Hugh would be one. It has to be Hugh Jackman. Yeah, he would be one. I mean, what's been cool about Ryan is you see his body over time getting better. Blake Lively, sorry. Blake Lively, when she delivered and then she literally months later shot the shallows in a swimsuit. She looked like a victim. Are they fitness fanatics anyway? No. Okay. Blake is it. Blake is like, Blake's not. Let's just put it that way. That makes it more enjoyable though, when they're really not and you actually get to show her. But she talks about it. She's like, no, I struggle with this. And she put up a post of me and her years ago. I was like, hey, I got my body back and only took me, I think she said like 17 months. You know, it's just like, and then I'm sitting there like putting a little smirk on the thing. I don't care. I don't sell quick fixes. I don't sell 20 day detoxes. I sell long-term approaches. I want to change someone's lifestyle. I believe in metabolic flexibility. I believe in carbs and fats as energy. I believe in calories as energy. Use FMS as a screening in the beginning. This is something I appreciated listening to some of your other interviews is just the approach, even with like actors. Because you think they're just in it for the hustle of getting ready for that one thing for the most of the time. How hard is that for you to sell to them that, you know, this is a lifestyle thing. And I'm going to try and fix your movement as well as get you looking good. I actually had an individual walk out of me once because I don't know about performance-enhancing substances. Guys, I don't know. It's just- Yeah, you're a lifetime natural, yeah? I'm lifetime natural. It doesn't make me any, I gotta go over it. It does not make me any better than anyone. I just have not had a need for it. It's, I'm not training for a stage. I'm not training for a powerlifting meet. I'm not training for something that I need that to be able to perform. I also understand that there are doctors out there that are really smart at this stuff. And if you have questions about it, go to them for it. So I've had no need for me to even educate myself on it. If someone asked me a question, I'll say, you know, go to Dr. So-and-so or this doctor and that's the person you should be talking to. But I just, it's not my wheelhouse. I believe in surrounding myself with a team of people and, you know, allowing everyone to handle their facet of the project. integrity. Are the performance enhancing substances as prevalent in the celebrity world as they are in the professional sporting world? Oh God, I don't even know how to answer this. I just, I'm not around it. I mean, I know of actors that are taking it. I just... You just handle the training. I just handle the training and, but I have had actors that I've worked with come up to me and they go, what do you think of this? And I said, well, for what you're trying to create, I don't know why you need it. And I try and talk, I had a really bad experience with my best friend and my head trainer. I found dead in his room back in 2010. He got addicted to testosterone and he wasn't getting it from a doctor. And I saw him. I met him when I was 21. And I think, so that was probably around 2000. So by 2010, I came home from Vegas. I was with my, visiting my in-laws in Vegas and I landed and I went to drive and he wasn't there. It was like 6.30 in the morning. I was, Tommy has a session at 6.15. Where is he? So like, he didn't come in. German guy, no family. I had to co-sign his cell phone, his lease. He had no one. Like it was, it was us, like we were his family. And I freaked out and we ran up to his room. We ran up to 23rd Street between six and seventh. And we had to let someone, the cops came. I call, I knew something was wrong. And, you know, I made the phone call by the time I got up there, the ambulance was there. Holy cow. So, and then when- Heart failure? Heart failure. He had tripled bypass surgery at 37. He was coming in to work, white as a ghost. I mean, he would be, you know, he'd be up with a woman all night, like trying to, you know, do his thing and wouldn't be able to finish up three hours. He was such a lunatic, he would take a break, 90 minutes in to go drink a protein shake. He'd be labeled a woman laying on the floor. Like he was just, he was mental when it came to this stuff. But his testosterone, I had to go claim rights to his body. So that was a two week process where I had to go down to city hall because what happens is if you die and you have no one claim the rights to your body and you're not getting a proper burial, they put you in something called plotters field which is for like the no names type of thing. Oh wow. He knew something was up a year prior. He's like, dude, if something happens to me, you got to handle this. And we were, I was like, nothing's going to happen. We're going to get you. And I hooked him with some doctors and we couldn't help him out. So two weeks, I had to go identify his body two weeks later, which is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. If you have to identify someone two weeks after they die, I would never talk to anyone about it. The only way I was able to identify him was by them showing me his teeth because I couldn't tell he was all green. And then we gave him a proper burial and his testosterone when he died was north of 3,000. Okay, so he was just cranking it the whole time. I was a nady at the time because we got tested months earlier and I was at like 700, you know? Like a normal healthy range, but just watching him go through that process. So when people ask me about it, I'm not quick to say, oh, don't do that. You don't need it. I'm quick to say, well, you know, maybe there's some lifestyle changes you need to make. Maybe it's the three hour sleep or the drinking six nights a week that's costing your tea to drop and you guys know this stuff. But I just want people to think about it. And I also want them to think about is at a young age, if you do it at 20 years old, what's gonna happen when you're 30? Is it gonna be exposing something in your body? Or is there something that's gonna, you know, is there cancer? Is there something going on depending on what you're what you're taking? I'm causing, I'm very broad right now, but I think you guys get where I'm at. Yeah, that's how we presented to people, especially if you're that young, if you're that young and you have low testosterone, you must check all the other boxes first. 100%. You have to check the sleep, check the diet, check the stress. Huge, it'll impact the huge. But do I believe there are great doctors out there and there are individuals that need it and you know, you're hearing all this, I mean, peptides aren't, they're very different. I'm really curious about the whole peptide thing now. I'm trying to get educated on it. Yeah, we're all going down right now ourselves. Yeah, it's like, okay, well, what is this? Like, okay, are there any, I had a buddy of mine, one of the guys I trained with who started taking them and he just started getting a massive amount of cramping when we'd be training. He'd be sitting down nowhere as packed with spas out on him. You'd have to stop training and all this stuff. So like, I don't know, but I'm hearing incredible stuff from him. You still want to work with a doctor. Unfortunately, you can buy them online as research chemicals and that's what they're doing. It's so, it's so crazy. Oh my God. You still want to work with a doctor. I had a professional athlete walk in once and start asking me questions. One of the most well-known baseball players in the world. That's all I can say. Oh, wow. And I just said, listen, man, I don't know what to tell you. I just don't, it's not my real house. And he walked out and never heard from her again. Yeah, if people only knew what they could accomplish without the use of any of that stuff and how big of an impact it actually makes. I think people may, I used to think that the difference between a pro and everybody else was that, but it's not. It's not that. It's the work, it's the genetics, it's the consistency. That's like 5%. The 95% is everything else. We're not looking like Chris Bumstead if we all get on what Chris Bumstead's on. Ronnie Coleman Natural was the top 10 Mr. Olympia before he became Mr. Olympia when he finally went on again. And the greatest Olympia of all time. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Mike Drown. So how did you make the leap from doing this to that to now going digital and building your business in other ways? 2020 rolls around. I'm trying to renegotiate my lease with my landlord. I caught him a check in, I wanna say March or April. So, Jim's were forced to close March 16th, Monday, before we get to the digital thing. I wanna know how you handled the 08 crash and how you had to kind of like. Oh, good question. Well, okay, so great. So take me from there. So I had to burn that down. So we burned that money down. We restructured our business. Now we started becoming more of the superhero, you know, body transformation, body comp, which is a way bigger market than golf. So I think if anything, it was a huge blessing because my brother and I, we knew what we knew. We really got into strength and conditioning. And we were trying to be like the smartest guys in the room at the time with, you know, kinematic sequencing and 3D swing analysis and doing all this stuff. But there was a small market for that. So I actually think it was, trust me, it was a tough few years for me. But I think it ended up being a blessing because then it opened the door to something that became very global. But it took us a few years to climb out of that. And it was tough, man. We were actually, God, man. I remember Hurricane Sandy hit. So what year was that? Hurricane Sandy was what? 12, 13? Maybe. This is how long after we went through. I remember even going to 12. All right, so I remember in 12. So that's four years after. I remember Hurricane Sandy wiping out our building that I owned a unit in downtown, a beautiful two bedroom. And I remember selling our apartment. And I remember my wife and I moving into a little, like small little guest house behind my parents house, rent free for a couple of years. I remember living off that money and not collecting salary because we were just at the end of pulling out of that. So there was this, listen, man. That's why now even listening to coaches, like, guys, come on, man. I've been doing this for six months. What are we gonna make it? Get on the floor, train, clean up weights. I don't care. Like, get uncomfortable. Take internship programs. Get your train people for free. Stop worrying about what he's charging or he's charging or he's charging. Get yourself out there. I don't care if you take less money. I turned to a coach once. He was charging 600 an hour. And he was like, I charged 600 an hour ago. How many clients do you have? And he was like, three or four. I'm like, great. Why don't you do this? Why don't you charge 200 an hour? And train triple the amount of people. Well, why would I do that and work more? I said, because working more is gonna give more opportunity. It's gonna put you in front of more people. And there's more. Right. So stop thinking, stop trying to think like this. Entrepreneur like work less, make more money. Like it's horseshit. Even now with my programs, I run challenge communities because I wanna be in front of people. And I enjoy being in front of people. And I want those 10,000 people who are part of my community become 20,000. I wanna put myself in front of these people more and more. So I got through, I got through 12 and now we're starting to run a real business. Now I'm go to renegotiate my lease. And I can't remember if you believe I remember these dates. It was December of 19. I went to my landlord and he just wrote back to me, rejected on an offer. I gave him a nice offer. I was in that space 15 years and he wrote rejected. I said, okay, fine. Then we start hearing about this COVID thing. What COVID? What the hell is COVID? We're like, nope, it's nothing, right? And then it becomes real. March 16th, Cuomo said, all gyms are closed. I sat up, my wife and I ran into living room like a tornado was coming into the house. Like we were literally ripping rugs off and pulling couches out. And we shot a four week body weight program. Dude, it's hilarious. I had like a sleeve, like a self-cut sleeveless shirt. My hair was like out to here at the time. And I'm literally, I built this four week program. We shoot all, we set up all night. We shot like 50 videos. I wrote the program, we put it on a template. The next day I start getting a call from every publication. Would you give an ab workout? Would you give a bicep workout? I'm like, I'll do better. How about if I give you a free four week program for all of your viewers? And they were like, really? What do you have to do? Just send them to my site to get it. So I collected 200,000 emails in four weeks. So that's when I turned around and I was like, all right, we might be on to something here. The next month I offer a free challenge. What does that mean? All 200,000 people that we now have emails to, I want you guys to join us for another month. And I'm going to coach you now. And I think I did it for free. So then I started converting people that every month the number just kept doubling, tripling. It was like, oh my God, by the time I roll around. So I kept, I got PPP money. I paid off my landlord $180,000. Done. Great. Have to leave the equipment in there September because we can't legally get trucks in there and move it out. And the entire time I'm like, man, I don't want to do this. I'm like, I'm literally, my whole life evolved like my level of significance evolved around these clubs that I had, I had another club too that I ended up selling. But all my significance I felt like was in this club and I don't want to go back. Like this is what I want to be doing. So I sat with the landlord to renegotiate on different terms. And I said, listen, we're going to have to do something on net profit. He didn't want to do it. And we moved on from there. And Dino Brands was launched. But I was proud to say that with PPP money I left the trainers on for probably at least six months. And I had them trying to do some work digitally. I left my manager on for a year. Was able to pay her for a year. She was with me for 12 years. My head cleaning guy I found two jobs for in November. Like we really wanted to make, my whole priority was to make sure everyone was set up and they're all doing great now. And ironically, like I have great relationships even with my coaches today. I'm sending them clients because I'm not taking clients anymore. So they love me because I'm calling them up every week like, hey, I've got someone for you. Prepping for this movie. They're like, oh my God, thank you. But they all hung with me and they did it right by me. So I'm going to make sure that I do right by them. So it's funny because someone like you who doesn't know this or people who don't know your story may be like, oh, he came out of nowhere. Look at this. He did this real fast. No, man. It's a 25 year process. Buddy might said, man, you're a 20 year overnight success. And I said, exactly. So it's 25 years. And listen, I mean, I had to go through what I went through. You guys had to go through what you went through, right? Like we have to and we can't erase that. Nor do I want to erase that. But even looking back on the moments of, you know, driven apps going to complete crap. And I mean, when I say we were printing money, I mean, we were number one in the app store at the time and like apps were becoming big. So we did the MTV of Cribs around apps and these athletes. So we were literally every day we're like, oh my God, oh my God. And I'm like, oh my God. And then the example I gave us, like when you're at the top of that roller coaster and you start like riding something down that hard is something that I hope most people don't have to do. How, how, tell me about the falloff. How fast was it? And like how dramatic was it? Oh dude, it was epic, man. Really? Oh my God. It was like crashing and burning. I mean, it's like when you hear these Wall Street stories of like businesses one day being gone, it was like, we were selling this company now for pennies on the dollar. And it was like, oh my God, all that work, all that money that we raised. I raised a million three and like five days for this project. It was so easy to raise money. And then it was gone. But the reason why that company did not, did not continue to grow was one word and it was called engagement. And it was at a time where you're dealing with these agents that they want their 10%, their attorneys want their 5%, they want guaranteed money. Anytime I even, I even talked to celeb clients and my call me up about deal structures. Anytime someone is trying to put like, oh, how many posts are they going to do a month? Like just, just forget it. Like it's not like Ryan Reynolds is not sitting there buying a company like saying, oh, I'm going to do this amount of posts a month. Like he's part, he's an owner. He's building that company. He's on the phone with truck drivers to get deliveries done. Like that's what he did with aviation. Like that's, imagine getting a phone call. Like, hey, it's Ryan Reynolds. Like, but to understand how many celebrity deals go south because their agents are sitting there going, well, they only want to do one post a month. It's done. Don't even bother. I've had brands call me. How do you think they only want to do this? I'm like, they're not your person. You need someone who's going to get involved and they're going to engage. They're going to sit there not asking, well, I hit my requirement. How can I over deliver my requirement? How can I be there more? And that's why that company did not continue to grow. Wow. So now you crush in the social media digital space and you're seeing all these people starting businesses in the social media digital space. And in my opinion, cause we all started breaking more like you did. In my opinion, there's a lot of misconceptions that somehow the old rules don't apply anymore. Like for example, we've talked to coaches and trainers are like, only have 3,000 followers. I'm like, you know, when I owned a gym, if I had, you put 3,000 people in front of me, that was incredible. That was amazing. You live off that. So yeah, their mentality is a little different. So talk about how it's all the same and you still got a grinding work. A friend of mine just put a presentation up and they showed 3,000, 10,000, 20,000 people packed into a stadium and what it looked like. You're like, that's a lot of people. I understand the importance of social media. It's been amazing for all of us. But I also think I call vanity metrics sometimes. It helps, but I really believe that the email list far surpasses the social media. Oh, it took us a while to figure that out. Sal had the biggest following out of all of us on social media and it's been, well, I mean, just recently back on, but it's been off of it for damage. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Where's the badge of honor? For almost, I don't know, 10 months or whatever it was and the business never slowed down its growth. Never, like it's a nice to have. It complements everything else we're going, but it's not. But figuring out this whole algorithm thing, like I wanna put up content that people value and they enjoy, right? I put up stuff that is phenomenal and I'm like, oh wow, that was a really good piece of information and it gets 300 likes on it. I got almost, whatever my following is, 300 something thousand. I put stuff on that's complete crap. A buddy of mine, Frank Seppi. Yeah. Frank's a very good friend of mine. We train a lot. One of the most photographed fitness models of the last few years. Oh man, I used to follow that guy back in the late 90s, early 2000s all the time. If you guys are ever out in New York, I want you to come by the barn and train with us. You'll have a blast, we'll feed you. You guys will love it. If you saw a picture, you know who he is. I guarantee you've seen him on Muscle and Fitness Flex the whole day. He's a monster. Him and I, one of our best performing posts is we got dressed up in like a Cobra Kai, like tight outfit and we worked out together into some stupid music. And I'm like, really? This is where we're at now. Like this is what it is as well in my life. But you also got to understand that like, am I chasing that or am I trying to build a business? That's him right there. So I'm sure you've seen him before. Yeah, he's been all over the place. Oh, see the righties in my gym. He's doing flies, wearing my elbow sleeve in my gym. But he gets the joke. I mean, he understands that he doesn't like take himself too seriously, which is what I love. But Frank's 51. Is he really? Holy cow. He looks amazing. Yeah, he does look great. He looks phenomenal. He looks healthy too. Because he was a pro bodybuilder back in the day. He was 315 pounds. Big guy. And he'll even talk about, like there was a time where he went natural, like he was on a lot of stuff and he said he almost like died at a show. And he finally turned around. He's like, I'm not doing this. Like I'm gonna, he's one of the few guys that I saw transition from being like, he won the Mets. He won, I think the Easterns or something. I mean, he won a few big shows. And he's one of the few guys that actually transitioned. Yeah, it's funny. And I mean, look what he looks like. I mean, he's healthy. He's in shape. He's, you know, he's a happy dude. He's funny by the way. That's incredible. Yeah, you know, back to the social media, you know, the other part of it is they have, it's like, you think you own your business, but you don't. They do. I mean, I got booted off Instagram and it wasn't any doing great. Oh, well, God, you know. Should we not talk about it? Explosive memes. No, you know, no, I mean, I'll talk about it. I mean, during the whole, you know, the last election, I would put up some political commentary. Nothing really crazy or anything, but obviously some people at Instagram didn't like some of the stuff I had to say. So I started getting throttle. I started getting restricted. Then next, you know, they went through stories, you know how stories disappear after 24 hours. I was getting notifications for stories that had posted two years before warnings. You can't do that. I'm like, this is two years ago. It's not even up anymore. So I knew they were coming after me and then they kicked me off. But if that was my whole business, it would have been over, right? Instagram would have kicked me. I would have been done. I had a friend who, their business revolved around Facebook ads and his business went from a few million dollars a year to they changed the algorithm to $75,000 a year overnight. So I tell people like this all the time, like social media is great, but you build it all around that. That's not your business. Whereas email lists, you have way more control. Way more control, but I still believe that you need to focus on relationships. Like in the beginning on social media, I took one woman who is almost 900 pounds. It was one of my biggest success stories ever. And I'm still working. 900 pounds? Yeah, 872. She was weighed on a meat scale. How do you train somebody like that? You teach them how to walk again. That's the training. You teach them how to walk again and then you start focusing on nutrition. That's it. I mean, she couldn't walk. So she just broke 400 pounds recently. Wow. She dropped to 360. She had a setback, went back up to 430. We got her back down. And it's a battle. I have a guy I worked with since May. It was 525. He's lost about a hundred since then. But he was walking four to 600 a day. Steps. Last week he got, I'll give you the math on it. He got over 42,000 last week. That's in 10 months. So yeah, in the beginning it's not rocket science. I'm not, but again, like that dual adjustable pulley that you saw Frank on, his workouts are starting there. Like, why? Well, you can't do legs. Like suspension trainer squats. Oh, the staircase. Can we get up and down there? Oh, it took five minutes. Yesterday he ran up and in 10 seconds. So now you start doing these, I call them non-scale victories. You start quantifying success through things that we take for granted every day. But someone like that gets afraid. Like his, John told me the other day, and I could talk about this. One of his biggest goals in life is to walk into a restaurant and not be afraid to go sit at the dinner table. Because he knows that he can fit in the chair. We don't think about that. No, you know, and the satisfaction you get as a, I mean, for me personally, the most satisfaction I got was when I started training people in advanced age because of that right there. So it wasn't like, they're not breaking records in dead lifts and PRs. They're not losing 30 pounds, getting shredded. It's like, oh my God, Sal, I could reach up into the top cabinet and grab a glass. And I wasn't able to do that before. Or I went up the stairs by myself yesterday. My daughter didn't have to help me. I was like, huge, like such a tremendous thing to hear as a trainer. So I'm sure you feel the same way when you. It's why we got into what we were doing, right? We didn't get into this business to become multi-millionaires. Like hopefully some of us can do that. That's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea. I think this is the worst place to get into to become a family. I have family members that work in tech and finance. Oh yeah. And then I'm like, okay, you guys are making money, you guys are not being impression. But no, we get into this because of a feeling. And you guys know what I'm talking about when they leave that session and then you know they're in a better place. When you do something that's life changing that individual and to this day, you guys still get that. Yeah, you know, you said something that we share in common of this obsession with wanting to get great at your craft. And it doesn't matter how much you're getting paid. They like, you've even shared, I don't know how many years you were like 12, 15 years into your career and had that huge hiccup and you still put yourself out there, give everything for free, train. Like, I mean, that mentality is the reason why we were really successful. Is the reason why you're really, because, and I was just, I just had this call with like, I don't know, it was like 30, 40 trainers on there and I'm coaching them and they get to ask me questions and stuff and they're all asking the wrong questions. I'm like, and I explained to them. What were they asking? I'm just, how do you charge? How do I charge? How do this? I'm just like, you know, how long have you been training people for? You know, oh, I'm in my third month. I'm like, go get your 10,000 hours. Yeah. So when your gym boss says, hey, do you want to work on Saturday and hold this webinar there? You want to do this? Oh, we had this corporate event and you're like, and if you ask questions like, well, how much are you gonna get paid? You have the wrong mindset. It's like, hell yes, I'll do that. I mean, that was our attitude when we started this podcast. We knew nothing about media. We all knew we weren't gonna be good at it. You know, we got 2,000 something episodes in and we're still only at 5,000 hours. We're still, I wouldn't even consider us good at this yet. So, and that was- I know you guys are good at this. Well, you know, and I was talking to a group of people that I said, you guys don't, I said, everyone in this room right now knows who I am, but you only know me in the last three to five years when we are getting better. But we, you know, you didn't know me when we were terrible and we were getting our reps in like, and that's what made us here. So that's where you should be focused. People do not understand the power of relationships. I've been on a dozen covers. The first time I was on the cover of muscle and fitness had nothing to do with my body. It didn't, because there are a billion people out there that probably look way better than I do with their shirt off. I can accept that, no problem. I'm fine where I'm at. But I remember reaching out to editors, becoming friends with them, bringing them in. All I was focusing on was their training. They went to pay me. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I got to do something for you. No, you don't. Don't worry about it. I just, I liked hanging out with the people. They were good people. We had good conversations. One of my good friends, Sean Perrine, who passed away a few years ago, the first cover of muscle and fitness I got on was the last cover he chose before he passed away. We had, I had a meeting with him. He thought he had pneumonia in October. He was dead of cancer in December. And it was the last cover that he chose. And that cover was not because I won, you know, classic physique, no, right? That cover was because they wanted to see me win. And they wanted to see me win because I went in there with a good approach and I just wanted to help people. That has been my business plan, seriously. And that's what most people are forgetting out there. They want, what's my session rate? Cause the session rate doesn't matter. I can go through my session rates. People would be like, holy shit. It doesn't matter. You charge $100, you raise your rate to 125. That'll wear off in about a year. You won't feel significant anymore. You're not going to be happy about that. There's, you know, with me, it needed to be more. And for you, it needed, you were making, you were crushing it, right? You were talking about it. You weren't feeling fulfilled. So we got to start asking ourselves, what are we doing this for? Otherwise you're going to be one of those coaches that's sitting here at 50, 60 years old, continue to do the same shit. You know what, Don, I got to add to that though because someone's going to hear you and they're going to hear, okay, so if I want to get more from people, I got to go and just give them free stuff. But it's got to be genuine though. It's got to be genuine. That's right. Because you're not going into it thinking, this guy's going to give me. I'm looking back on this now going, wow. That's right. So my buddy John, who's, I just told you 100 pounds. I'm not charging John. Why am I doing this? John can't give me anything. Laura can't give me anything, but satisfaction. The only thing they can give me is fulfillment for me doing that. And you know what? If something good happens, I'll be fine. That's not why I'm doing it. You're sharpening your sword. The way I said it in the meeting was I said, listen, I go with that same attitude with relational ability. I recognize I'm going to give the shirt off my back to 10 people and nine of them aren't going to do shit. That's just how it is. That's how it happens. And you got to expect that and not care because you're not doing it to get something in return. But one out of those 10 people, you fundamentally changed their life and they become your cheerleader for the rest. I just stole my line because I was going to say my batting average probably is terrible. It's probably batting under a hundred with the amount of free stuff I've given. But I'm fine. I'm fine with the nine out of 10 people. If you're not fine with it, then you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Because if you're going to sit there and you're going to be bitter that someone did not, just do it because you think that it's worth investing into. But let me add to that too, because that passion that you have, which resonates, right? That passion that you have is what drove you for those four years after 2008 when you went from crushing it to nothing. And someone may be thinking, how the hell did you last four years? And by the way, if you hadn't done those four years, you wouldn't be where you're at right now. Or now you're killing it, you're crushing it all over the place. What drove you was this belief and this passion and what you did. So that's the value. The value is it's going to get you through those tough things. And it's going to bring you that meaning into it. Otherwise it's worthless, right? I also had a lot of help. And that's something I think a lot of us are afraid to admit. Like, guys, I'm not self-made. Like I hear people talk about self-made. I don't even know what that means. Like I don't because every person I've ever spoken to, Calvin Klein, I can go through some of the biggest names that we know globally. They've had some sort of help. They've had someone believe in them. They had someone give them an opportunity. Maybe it was an uncle that lent them 50 grand to get something started. Maybe it was something. I've gotten a lot of help. But when I was in that trouble, the fact that a group of people turned around and gave me a million dollars, they knew the risk. They didn't do that because they didn't like me. So I got a lot of help. So along the way, it's okay. If you're, I've had coaches that have actually burned bridges with me because they've wanted to prove they can do it on their own. Cause when they left drive, oh, I can do this. F him, I don't need him. I don't know. And you know what? Fine, then I turned around at some of the biggest names in Hollywood. I didn't hand to them. And then they came up to me years later and they were like, I'm sorry. Dude, it's fine. Don't worry about it. Like we're all doing our best here, man. Like it's like, I made a ton of bad mistakes. I'm sure you, everyone did in this room. It is what it is. Yeah, the power of the, I mean, that's the thing we, you and I have definitely in common. I value relationships so much. And so much of the success of this business that nobody knows about on the scenes is built off of all the relationships that we have. And what's beautiful about learning this early when you're young is it compounds. So even though you're batting 10%, one out of 10 and nine people don't do shit for you, that's a lot of work for not very much return. But that one person becomes a lifelong cheerleader for you. And then, you know, you go through another 10 and you get one more of those. And then you get one more of those. And then 10 years goes by and you got a hundred of those people that are rooting for you and truly want to see you successful. And they don't just do it once, they do it forever because of how much you've fundamentally changed their life or what you've done for them without expecting anything in return. And then one day you wake up and you're 40 something years old and you got a lot of people that, you know, would take care of you. Yeah, hopefully it goes. Listen, we all hope it all goes, keeps going in a good direction. But again, listening to that line, you're all expendable. That left something in my head. It really kind of messed me up a little bit. I'm like, this might like, it's great now. Where is it in a year? And I think that's also what enables you guys to stay hungry. Like you guys have probably one of the best podcasts in the world, right? I mean, you guys built that. You guys should be proud about that. But I'm sure it's in the back of your head. All right, how do we keep building and developing this and moving forward and evolving? You want to evolve. So don't share with me, like what are the revenue streams look like for you? As far as like, do you do reoccurring? Do you do? Okay, so tell me how. And what I do is not what I recommend most people to do because a few things fell on my lap years ago. So I have an app. I'm partners in a company called Playbook and we've, Jeff Crahels, the CEO. It's been an app. It's been around eight or nine years. I was brought on as the chief science officer years ago. It's a fancy name. We're throwing it around. But that's your Netflix model, monthly subscription. And it's a clean app. We load about 10 workouts on a year. We got some engagement on that. The tech's amazing. Not my biggest revenue stream. My challenges is what I started during COVID. My challenge community is gonna be close to 10,000 people in April. I put a lot of my heart and soul in there because I can coach. So every morning they get access to a morning Facebook video where I answer all their questions. They get their workout. They get their nutrition. And is that live with you or prerecorded? It's prerecorded, but I'm answering their questions daily. So if I have 200 questions come in, I'm answering 200 questions that next morning. Got it. I put a like this morning. It wasn't 200 questions this morning. Thank God. But I was able to get a lot of that done. So that's two. Three, I sell programs globally like you guys do. Four, I'm partners in about a dozen brands that I help with strategy. And are you an investor too? Yeah, so I could be an investor whether it's sweat equity or my own money. It depends on the deal. I also, a lot of public speaking, we have our online courses that my wife who handles a lot of the backend, your wife's the one woman we were communicating with. Probably. Awesome. So my wife, Mel, is the one who handles a lot of the backend stuff, the computer stuff. We have a team at home like you guys have here. Cool, cool. Kind of doing all that stuff. And we have the barn. So I built the barn two years ago, which you guys have to come out to, by the way. Yeah, we gotta make it up to you. Next time you guys in New York, I'll have food, cold plunges set up, sauna set up, sick session, it'll be awesome. Yeah, I would love to do that. Are they pretty evenly distributed or is it like one or two of those is the bulk of the business? I'd say the program, I think the weakest out of them are probably the subscription. Yep. You know, that's why we didn't go subscription by the way. But it draws money for us, it does well for us. For some reason, people don't like committing to that number. Now I know Playbook does great and he's got a great formula and it's brilliant tech. You need a ton of volume. You know, I like you sharing this though because this is actually a belief for a lot of people. A lot of trainers think that this is the model is that you build up a little bit of a network and then you go, you transition right into this subscription model because of the Netflixes and all these success stories. Yeah, but that's Netflix, right? Exactly. And that's why I try and explain to them. It's like you're not Netflix. You're a good trainer and a good coach is helping out. Engage. Engage. Again, we're getting back to that word. Why am I putting a video up every morning because, and I'm answering a lot of the same questions or I'll bring on Dr. Gabrielle Lyon once a month or Dr. Dwayne Jackson or I'll bring on a sex therapist or a breathing coach or someone to talk about mattress quality. Like I'm just finding, so I do that. I try and engage, I try and add value. I'm hosting my third annual Don Con. I did not think of the name. Conva Con, get it. It's a natural fit. It's a natural fit. We rented an island off a port of Ayala last year. We had 70 people from over 15 countries show up. And this year we'll have 150 people from over 25 countries in two weeks this summer already committed. So that script seems to be a fun thing for you more than it is probably a major revenue maker. It does well. Oh, does it? Surprisingly for two weeks, it's like it does well, but it's fun to get everyone in there. And what I found out is that people come from all over the world and they may not have the greatest life at home or they may not have the most ideal situation at work. You get everyone in a room together. Everyone's got the same problems. Everyone's laughing, crying, doing their things. And we train together. It's all body weight stuff for two weeks. I'll be taking a boat to Port of Ayala till I try and get a couple of lifting sessions and maybe because I'll just be chat on my fingernails. But that to me was something that sprung up. I gotta pat my wife on the back for that because we committed to Costa Rica three years ago. 35 people, like 35 people are not gonna come to this rented place. We sold that in two hours. Shocked, blown away. So we went to Costa Rica. It was great. The following year, she's like, well, we got the opportunity to do 70 now, but we got to rent this island with six figures to reserve it. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, fuck it, let's just do it. But again, like risk or stupidity, it's like. That'd be fun to do together. That'd be a totally game. Tell us a little bit about the barn. How does that work? And how does that bring in revenue? So that's where I shoot all my content. I don't train any people out of there. Once in a while, I'll have like a big name come in and we'll do kind of an overhaul on them, but it's a 2000 square foot multi-floor. I hope we have any pictures up there. Oh, some guys are standing in front of it. I got to get good pictures from inside. Oh, that's it with the snow up there. But I literally built this house in my backyard. I love it. Life in this hammer strength came in. I mean, we got dumbbells up to 150s. We got kettlebells up to 48 kilos. We have a full cardio, curved treadmills, motor treadmills, step mill, everything. Downstairs, full line of hammer strength, power rack, leg press, hack squats, coming in extension curls, shoulder press, everything. I mean, dude, we have preacher benches down there. It doesn't matter. I've got, oh wait, this is it. Is it going through right there? I mean, this thing is sick. I've actually seen this already. Jim Cribs? Tell me, okay, how much total invested in this thing? Because I would love the bills. Or did they give you all the equipment to get featured? Yeah, see, there's the wink, that's what I thought. So, yeah, so we just kind of jumped off on the call. Yeah, so no, life in this has been a great part. And we actually have a couch there right now. It's changed a bit. It looks a little bare. But so yeah, so I think to build out the structure, I think it cost me like a half a million bucks. And then I got about 300 grand in equipment, probably a little bit more. So yeah, I would have figured about a million dollars what I would have got. And the idea is for media. Yeah, it's for media and for me. And for me, like, honestly, what we love it for is like if you three were to come in, like it's red carpet, man. Like I have a huge ego with this stuff, like catered breakfast. You guys are coming in training. What music do you want to listen to? Do Cold Plunges? Bro, we're coming now. Three, four hours. No, no, no, I'll send a car for you guys. I don't even care. But it's one of those things where I like people that I love being around, having great experiences and just establishing. This is, by the way, this is like, so every trainer, fitness person's dream is to get successful enough to own their own gym. You drop a million dollars on your gym gym. Look at the medicine ball. See how they're out of line? That pisses me off. That curve treadmill's gone. Hammer Strength has a step mill in there now. There's so much more equipment in there. Did you design this yourself or did you have someone design it for you? My wife did the reclaimed wood and she did the beans. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. The equipment, Lisa Wild at Life Fitness and Hammer, that curve treadmill's gone now. Oh, there's a step mill. And yeah, man, we've got that new air, that air bike's gone now from Schwinn. Hammer Strength got me a whole bunch of new stuff. They've been a great partner. How did your personal relationship with fitness develop just for yourself? Wow. You get materialized right now. I think we have a lot of similar things in here. Yeah, that's why I'm asking you. It started with some heavy insecurities. I had a terrible stutter problem. I had a terrible hearing problem in the second grade. Even now, you'll hear the stutter go on me a little bit. I embraced it. I actually love it. But I think second grade, I remember coming home and I was having a tough time. They put us into a special ed class with like five of us. What were they thinking? Like they put five kids into a class every day at lunch. They have the same five kids rolling out while all the classes are coming at the same time. You can imagine what we had to go through. So my father was a big baseball player in high school and growing up, started having cash with me and I became in love with baseball. It was just my thing. And it was our way to connect because he was in the catering business working 40-hour weekends, you know, weddings, bar mitzvahs, you know, I was working in kosher kitchens at, you know, 10, 11 years old. Like I just understood that whole entertainment. And but my also understood that my father wasn't around for games on weekends. So then I started playing a lot of ball at my dad, got into a little league team and then started going to the school. We started having pickup games and I remember coming home and being like, mom, like better than everyone. Like it's like, I'm good at something. She's like, Donny, you're going to be good at a lot of things. And I think that's when the drive to become, so that was what allowed me confidence. So that I felt like I didn't have it in school at the time. I felt like my, whatever, if there was a disability or not, I have no idea about my hearing problem, my stutter, all these things that were, you know, working against me. I started using baseball as my, you know, thing. So I went off to play college baseball. I played division one baseball. I had a great four years. I was a two year captain at my university. I loved it. But when I was at school, I was training, it became like the major. I was majoring in business, but I was, I remember one time we had a game in Albany where we had like a four hour ride. And I remember going through a full squat session before the game, getting out of the van and like literally like dragging my feet to home plate. I'm like hitting third. My coach is looking at me like shaking his head. He obviously the only guy that didn't have to work out with the team because he just knew I was nuts. So when I had a bunch of tryouts afterwards, Mets, Mariners, like I picked up to play over at some team in Italy and I already had my job in the city. And I was like at that time I didn't want to go. So I didn't go. I like my love turned into fitness. It's the only thing in my life I felt like I had complete control over. I don't care how much I hit or how good of a player I was. I saw Griffey strike out three or four times in a game. I just felt like you couldn't get that return off of anything that I could do with my fitness. So I felt like, well, the better I ate, the more the better I slept, the smarter I train, the outcome became better. Wow, like this is special. This is kind of cool. And then I was like, well, how do I do this for work? I didn't know about trainers in 99 when I graduated. I'm thinking about becoming like an FBI agent or a cop because I'm thinking, well, they have to train. My mom looks at me and she's like, oh, they have these trainers. And I'm like, they do, but they don't make money. She's like, don't worry about the money. I told you this when you were younger. You'll be good at anything that you do. So I literally like that day I drove into the city and I drove all over the city. New York Sport Club, Crunch, this place Equinox opened up, this place, La Palestra, Pat Monacchia, very smart, very smart fitness guy hired me and I decided to go with Equinox. And that's kind of where my past started. And at that point it was just this whole thing, but this all derived from my insecurities and the things I went through. I saw Michael Hearn on a cover when I was 13, 14 years old and I was like, that guy looks awesome. And then I'm training at Bed Francis powerhouse and I'm looking at this guy 300 pounds who just moved well. He was big, but he just moved well, Frank Seppi. Mike and Frank, I'm like good friends with. I train with them both now. So it's funny to see some of your like your long time idols turn into friends. I was just on Mike's podcast. I grew up reading about it. It's a lunatic. And the bodybuilding magazines. And then I'm sitting in front of him and he's interviewing me. Like, this is weird, man. I told him. I used to read your articles and shit and train like you. It's really weird. No, Mike's a lunatic, but Mike's also a freak. I mean, look at the guy. That doesn't make no sense whatsoever. Especially when you hear what he did when he was like 16, 17, his lifts are like, okay, this guy was, he's a mutant. He came out, worked out with me at drive one day and he was like, I'm off this week. I'm like, you're off. Like what the fuck is, like I'm just, I'm taking him. Like when we're all taking time off of like you commit to it and you're in. What do you mean you're off? He's like, all right, man. Maybe I'll do arms with you. I'm like, cool. That's two arms. He, he unwrapped 315 on a close grip reverse grip. So I was running sets of like 15. This is his off day arms. I got you 25 on it. I'm like dying. And he's sitting there with 315 for sets of 15. Yeah. So he's going to come out. He's going to try and come up here sometime in April. He's like, we'll get a workout. Like, no, my ego can't handle it. He's evolving a lot now. He's not, I, his stuff's, you know, Mike, I love you, but he, Mike's full of shit. Like I know things are evolving now and he's starting to do some different things. I see some of the movements he's doing. And I met his wife. She's amazing. Oh, Mona, Mona's great. Mona's stronger than him. She'll kick my ass. I told him that he's like, you can work out Mona. She'll kick my ass. Yeah. I'll work out, I'll work out Mike. I'm not working out Mona. That's good stuff. That's a good deal. Yeah. Fitness is a great vehicle for personal growth, you know? Cause if you stayed insecure through it, it would have never worked. You had to kind of work through that through fitness. I talk about this all the time. When I used to train kids, you know, 14, 15 years old cause their parents would bring them to me. I remember he used to blow me away cause I'd train them with exercise and then they'd do better with the school work. They'd start making friends. They'd start becoming more confident. And it wasn't cause their bodies were changing. It was because of what you just said. Like, and I used to point it out to them. Like, you did five push-ups last week. Today you did six. You know what that means? That's awesome. I'd say you're a different person. You can see the lights go off and they're like, I am a different person. That's a great line, by the way. I've never heard anyone use that. Oh yeah. I used to tell the kids that. And it would blow them away. And you know, and so fitness is just a great vehicle for growth. I know Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about how that led to his success in business, but it's the same principles. It's exactly the same business. It's ironic sometimes when you look at someone who's so successful in business and how they got there and they can't do it in health. Exactly. It's like, well, did you just, I'm sure Mike Bloomberg didn't wake up one day and was like, oh, I'm going to start a business. I'm going to start Bloomberg again. You know what? We'll just see what we have today. Like he had a plan. He surrounded himself with a team. And in the beginning, and I wanted to say this earlier, but the most people don't know. It's not their job to know. They're looking at influencers out there and they're like, that guy's got to grab them. He's got a great body. It's not their job to know, right? And I think that's why a lot of people are misled. And that's why it's important for me to see guys like you doing what you're doing. I don't mean to sound like an old man here, but like, you know, you guys are leading, but you are because there is a lot of crap out there. So I think now, now in the industry, when I talk to people like shallow or Gabrielle or people who are really good at what they do and they take pride in what they do, when you hear them talk about individuals, it's the same thing. I'll create as people. My pump guys don't do the best. Like you got to hook up with them. And it's because we want to now see that message be portrayed more. Because we want that example to overflow. I mean, I think all of us, old guys, were, you know, slow to the party, but I think we're starting to arrive. Like I think the young generation adopted the social media platforms first and early. And there was a lot of early success if you got in early for the way you look. But and a lot of us old, funny dutties are trying to figure out how to do all this stuff. You know, like, how do we communicate to all these people all over the world? And now that we're kind of figuring that out, we know that the message I think that we're all presenting is a better message because it comes from a better place. I think that. But it's your message. You're not like trying to create something that's fake, right? And that's why like, you guys are coaches. You guys have great coaches. This is what you've always done. Like just tell your story. And I think that's why you guys are successful because it's actually, I'm not saying it's easy, but it kind of is. Like you guys are on here. It's like, all right, this is what we do. Well, you know what makes it easy is checking the box and the stuff that you talked about earlier first is putting in all the hours of the practice and sharpening your sword. Because a lot of the success of the show is sharing all the shit we did wrong. It's opening up and being vulnerable and being like, I thought this was a good idea. I thought this was a way to train. And we share all that. And together we learn. And I think that none of that happens with three months of figuring out how to hack an algorithm or posting awesome. It's like, you got to go put those hours and you got to go work. You got to go fall on your face before you get that. It's fun to sit around people that want to see you win, right? I've had plenty of questions about things in the industry where I'm like, well, digital. Dennis Heenan, Kelsey's, I don't know if you guys have heard of the Daily Kelsey. She'd be a great guest for you. She's dealt with some eating disorders and she's built an incredible online business. But her husband, Dennis, is like a marketing. He's like a, he's a genius. He basically was the one who taught my wife everything she's doing now. And now we're trying to add as much value to their life as possible. Cause they've done, we're hosting a course together this Saturday with Luca, host of her. And we're, we're going in and we're going to have fun. Are we making a lot of money? I don't even know what we're making off of it. I don't care. Like we're going in there to educate. We got 20 coaches coming in. We're going to try and give them all the nuts and bolts, things that we wish we were taught 15, 20 years ago. I wish I had a podcast like this to listen to 15, 20 years ago. I was, you want to listen to? I was listening to Paul check, talk about organic farming. I was listening to the polyquin. I was reading stuff on Arthur Jones. I was, you know, from the models. Yeah, so I was, you know what? Yes. I was reading T nation 15, 20 years ago every morning. I could not get past breakfast without sitting there, eating my oatmeal, you know, reading T and you sit there and you want, you know, that type of information. Now the fact that young kids have access to this. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, uh, unfortunately it was all mixed in too for me cause I would read those guys too, but then it was mixed in with like muscle and fitness, flex magazine, Iron Man. I still did that stuff here. So I did a lot of the wrong shit. I probably took every supplement. I'm sure I've spent, I don't know if it was wrong, but I mean, you can also say that you did certain. Like I've done some crazy training, like volume stuff. That's, that's nuts. I would never have anyone do today. Um, I'm glad I did it. Yeah. Don share, share with me your, your journey with money. Uh, you've, uh, you obviously have had tremendous success. You've also been struggling, you know, to get by you and listen to you talk and communicate, uh, your passion for health and fitness and the way you are that you don't, that you don't do a thing because, oh, this is going to return me X amount of dollars. Right. How did you get there? What was, what is the evolution of your relationship with money look like? I really think it came down to my grandfather. I, I started with him. I mean, I used to roll my eyes to things when I was 12 years old. He'd be talking to me about, you know, in the restaurant business, you know, he was an Italian who lived in the attic of the catering hall that, that he started cause his mother sold the house for them that $5,000 to start this restaurant with him and his brothers. And you know, that's whole story. They're all living in an attic together. You know, they, they, they all, even to the day he died, my grandfather was the fastest year ever. Grandpa, slow down. Holy shit. My grandfather just passed away. Same thing. You're not even going to say that? Three, oh no, three, three, three bites and he would eat a whole bowl of really piping hot pasta. I thought his mouth was made out of his best. What was his reason? Well, so. Yeah. Share it. Share it. He tells us he tells us he tells us he tells us he tells us he tells us he tells us it's the same. I don't know if it's the same, but my grandfather, the reason why he ate like that, he grew up very poor. So he grew up poor in Sicily. And whoever finished first got second. He had to eat it fast because if he didn't, he didn't get no food. Dude, I can hug you right now. Wow. The honest, the same, same story. Wow. Same exact story. So he'd be sitting there like, like the, like the beast from Beauty and the Beast, like, grandpa, slow down. He's like, it's my whole life, man. He goes, he goes, I had two brothers. We were all around the same age. We only had food. Whoever finished first can get seconds. That was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, my, my grandfather, and he could not, he did not know how to eat slow. No. So keep going. So he's, so he's obviously made a huge influence. He would tell me all this stuff and I would, I would look. Did you think he was making shit up half the time? No, but it's like, you're a young kid, like Don, you know, as the wealthiest man in the world, I go, who, he goes, the man who finds peace of mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm sitting there like, Okay, no, no. Is that a poster somewhere? Then when I'm like bleeding money back in 08, I'm thinking, God, God, please. I just want peace of mind. But peace of mind. Just give me some peace of mind. Peace of mind means financial success, health, my gym's good. Please, peace of mind. I think he instilled these things in me that it did not click till later on. If you were to drop a billion dollars on my lap right now, I probably wouldn't go buy a Ferrari. I wouldn't be my, it's not my thing. Like I have a boat, it's arriving in a month, I'm sorry. It's like, you know, I have some little things like that. I've got a beautiful home that we're renovating. I got my barn. When we travel, we travel well. That's, that's it. So do you remember moments though, when, when the old wisdom started to click for you? Cause I have, you know, I'm, you could have told me anything that was full of wisdom around money when I was 16, 17, but because I came from very little, I had this, I had to go figure it out for myself. So did you have a similar thing where like you were driven that way? When things went to shit. Yeah. Not gonna lie. Most people are in church when things go to shit. Yeah. You know, it's, it's the truth. Like I listen, I try and go to mass every Sunday. It's, it's something that my mom instilled in me early on. I usher at my church, other story. I don't want to pat on the back for it. I'm not a goody two shoes, but these are, it makes me feel good. But man, when things were tough, I was going every day. Swear to God, man. I was walking in every day. I was sitting in front of Mary and praying like, please get me through this every day, coming home from the train. Cause I drove by the church. It was scared. I was scared shitless. I was going to bed at night, scared shitless, my heart racing. And so it took that, that scares you shitless. Then you, you come up again. And on the come up, are you, are you telling yourself, okay, when I'm coming up this time, I'm going to invest differently or I'm going to save differently? Are you thinking like that? Or maybe I'm going to take less huge risks. Like what's going through your head? No, what's going through my head now is I'm like, I'm going to be all right. Yeah. Oh, I see. I can, I can handle. I can survive. I'm going to say, I'm not saying, oh, I'm going to put away this college. No, I'm going to be all right, man. Cause you know, at the end of the day, we're all, we're all, every one of us in here, 50 years, man. Yeah. Yeah. But like we're not, Steve Jobs didn't get married with his, buried with his bank account in this tombstone. It's like, when it's over, it's over. Like let's go for it. That's my thing. Like I'm going to, I am going to take risk, but I'm also going to put, I'm going to also minimize the risk as much as possible. Like if I believe in something and I'm like, okay, this is not putting my family in harm's way. I got to call the go heli skiing recently. I was like, all right, no, I'm going to Austria in a week. That's fine. Be snowboarding in Austria for a week with a buddy of mine. But there's certain things I just don't need to be doing right now. So Don, you're also a father. Yeah. How do you teach these, cause your kids are growing up, successful dad, you know, the privilege in that sense or whatever. How do you, how are you instilling some of these things in your kids? They still think their dad's a trainer. Okay. So when people ask them what their father does, they're like, oh, he's a personal trainer. They think their dad, He's broke. Hold on, they haven't had anybody show up yet. Hey, is your dad on the internet? No, no, no. Not yet. They get it. I mean, they, you know, they, they get it. But they also understand this blue collar type mentality that I have. They understand that I'm on calls at a certain time. But, you know what, man? Like I just took my son to the University of Louisville. He's a baseball fanatic. We had a weekend together. My daughter, you know, we're prompted a shop in the other day, you know, where my family is my, it's my number one. That's it. But they also understand that their dad's not sitting, you know, no offense behind the desk at a bank, you know, we're in a suit every day. They know that I'm in the service business. My son, the other day came in to do a session with me in Blake Lively. He sees me running around, grabbing weights, doing the things that trainers do. And I'm glad. I'm really happy about that, you know? And I try and teach him the value of the dollar. And I also, with your kids, I believe you got to lead by example. So when a parent calls me, they're like, I can't get my kids to eat good. How do you get them to eat good? You got to eat good. Yeah. It's fucking, look what you're doing. Yeah. But he might call me up to the day. He goes, my, my kids commented on my drinking. So, so what's that telling you? He goes, Donny, I got to stop drinking. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so kids are smart, man. His 10 year old's telling them, Hey dad, you should probably get rid of the booze. So this goes down a little bit. You have for your 10 year old. He called me up all pissed off. You know, he's whatever. But yeah, I think children, it's, I think we got to lead by example. How's your parents must be pretty proud, huh? They are, they, they both have COVID right now. I called them this morning. Right now? They're in, they're in Florida. They're doing, they're doing well. They're, they're 77. You know, I think they're in the chapter of their life right now where they're really starting to think and differently. And, you know, I love them to death. I haven't seen them in a couple of months cause they're down south, but you know, we live really close to each other. They're probably three miles from my house. So I get to see them a lot. I try and stop it as much as possible. And, you know, I, I think I could look at my life so far and say I've been a pretty big son. I probably scared the shit out of them a lot, but, you know, they are proud. Yeah. That's good, man. Great story. I'm glad we had you on the show, Don. Well, listen, man. This is, this is great. I mean, there's not, I flew in a day early to see you guys. Obviously I think pretty highly of the three of you. So keep doing what you're doing. Keep leading by example. And you guys are in New York, man. Please come, come be my guest. 100%. Yeah, we're coming now. The whole gym talk, you spoke to my soul. So we're coming by. Thanks, Don. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the work part. Yeah, it was for me. It was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.