Have Your Gym Become "5 Mile Famous" with These Principles

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Built to Last Gym Podcast. The only podcast helping you build an MBA, a masters in business for gym ownership, hosted by two coaches who have become gym owners and have done it successfully for 45 years combined and still doing it to the highest level. Giving you the real world insights of how to build a gym that you love, impacts clients in the community and makes you the money that you deserve. Let's go. (upbeat music) What is going on? We're back with an exclusive, this is one of the other exclusive podcasts that is coaching and gym based. I said coaching gym based 'cause we got a bunch of topics we wanna discuss and it's gonna take us wherever it may. But I promise you this is gonna have a lot of value. And one of the things that, by the way, my brother, Andy McClood. (laughs) It's like I'm saying it like you guys don't know. - I'm like you're because, no, you know. If you're listening to this and not watching this on video, Andy's here inside of the studio. - Indeed. - But I got a couple of things that I wanted to bring up. We might go on some rants, some tangents, and that's okay. - That's always like it. - We like doing that. But when I saw a thing that popped up on social somewhere and it was Brett Contreras talking to somebody and it was a point that I actually really wanted to dive deep into. And it's, number one is people learning from people about training, coaching, transformations, performance, all those that don't coach people, right? So, and I think this is important 'cause, you know, we do a bunch of different things. We coach, obviously we own gyms. We have a lot of coaches on our teams who we develop to coach other people to get results. So, obviously this is a big part of our life. You know, we also educate coaches on becoming great coaches. So it's a very, very important factor. And like, I want to hear your thoughts on this. I've got plenty. So we can go down the rabbit hole. But because I think, I really want to talk about the, kind of the lost art of, you know, interning and learning and learning in person more than anything else. But like your thoughts about where we are today, because you know, that's the other thing I want to talk about, too, a device of coaching and gym ownership. Like, look, 10 years ago versus five years ago versus today. I mean, some things are going to stay the same, but some things are very different, right? But I would like, what are your thoughts around that? And how do you go about developing coaches, right? Because I think it's become somewhat of an issue. I mean, I get folks to say it to me. Like, I mean, I saw this from this person. And I know that said person coaches is zero people, right? Now, they're in great shape. You know, they're essentially a educator on social media. And they, not saying they don't know anything, that's not true, you know, they probably studied stuff or they have N1 results of themselves, but they don't coach people, right? So give me some insight from your perspective around now. Yeah, I think I remember the piece of content that you're talking about where I was, he's had two kind of bangers recently, but one of them where he was being interviewed about kind of this world of online training and kind of what it's become. And what he referenced is how things used to be, right? So if you've been in the gym business for 10, 15 years, you used to have to make a name for yourself, like as a coach, and then as a coach because you built a business, you developed a pedigree, you mentored other coaches, that led you developing this like respect and following. Nowadays, I think people are trying to skip that process. They're trying to go right to making you believe that they've had a lot of success and that they deserve a following. And I just don't think that we've seen enough evidence that this really works. And what's funny, I made a post yesterday of the day before I reshared something, I'm forgetting who it was, but I remember Dan Swinsko commented. And he was talking about how you're the like, the unique type of person that has developed a following and really focused on developing a content-based following, which are also a really, really good coach. And I think that is a very rare thing today. In my experience, the best coaches and the best gym owners that I know, they all spend a lot of time working on the craft. They spend a lot of time developing themselves. They spend a lot of time developing others. And what we're seeing now is that people kind of want to, like, hack their way to the top of your newsfeed and they want to go viral and they want to be influencers. But what I think it's a little short-sighted because if you do all those things that's been proven to work that you've done, that I've done, that a lot of people we know have done, like, you have influence. And then you've got a much better platform to build from. I've said, I think your Instagram is probably the best fitness content Instagram channel out there because it's matched up with, like, real world knowledge and experience. And then you also understand the social media game at a really high level. And I just think that's lacking in today's world. And it's transparent to us because we know. But I think a lot of young coaches, a lot of young gym owners, they're misinformed about the best way to do this. - I mean, I completely agree with that. Because if I put it in buckets, right? Like, and the buckets are, you know, I mean, look, let's be real, by the way. You could position your gym and do great marketing and do all that stuff. Initially, like, people will stay for a community, but they're not gonna join for a community, right? Like, let's be real. And I think, you know, Vigor and BCI both have this incredibly strong community. I mean, it's, you go on our Google reviews and it's just like, that's a big one, right? But here's the thing, you know, that's a big one, but I'll look at like, oh, this person's been here for years, this person's been here for years. The person that's been here for years will have a different view than a person that's joined. Like, hey, join six months ago, man, lost 20 pounds, that you know, whatever, right? People join for results. Now, do they wanna feel like it's kind of a safe space and it could be their place, absolutely? But they joined for results. I can tell you like how I became known locally. I got fucking amazing results. - Yeah. - Look at over and over and over. Like, and because I was obsessed with the craft, right? Meaning, programmed design, nutrition, lifestyle things, you know, training people on person, getting the most out of them, you know, getting them to keep coming back. So call it motivation, call it accountability, call it all those behavior change factors that play into it, right? And then people were like, oh man, is this weird fucking Eastern European guy? Like, he gets great results, go there, right? Be, you know, pre, pre, remember, Facebook kind of came on 2012-ish, I think, is when I started using it somewhere around 2011-20. But it wasn't like, blown up to where, that would drive people to businesses yet, right? I started the gym here in 2008, right? I was coaching from 2005-06. So all of that was built through getting in front of people, word of mouth, referrals, the old school shit that some of it still was coaching. That, but it was, but it was like, even when I worked at big box gyms, like no shit, it was basically like, people that were training there or coached with other, you know, coaches before, 'cause you know, like big box gyms, a lot of times people might buy six sessions, right? They ran through, you know, they run through six sessions, they don't re up, and then they're doing their own thing, and then they're like, man, I see the clients of that guy in like two months ago, like, they look different, you know? And then they go like, hey, it was good. Well, yeah, I'm looking down at 18, 19 pounds, you know, in the last couple of months or three months, all of the training, then they buy more sessions, right? They don't buy a membership like we do with our gyms now, but it's like, they get some sessions, they love the training, then they re up and whatever, right? Like that's the game, and the thing is, I still think that is still the game if you're in a coaching gym business, right? Like in, I think that's why we're so strongly bought into like our compass, the number one thing in our five like values of built to last is coaching first. Yeah, right? And by the way, like I actually wanted to, because people have reached out to us kind of, yeah, what do you mean by that, right? Like, what do we mean by that? And I'm asking you like, because I think we were just talking about this before we kind of press play. That because it's not like we're big on business. I mean, holy shit, like we, you know, we follow the traction system, marketing, sales, we have systems for everything, right? But like, and those are important. But why is coaching first number one thing on our compass? Yeah, I think this is one of the things that me and you always were aligned on is the importance of coaching and being a great coach. To me, coaching is the master's skill that everybody needs to develop. And the reason I say that is one, it helps you develop the results that you talk about. You prove that you can get results with clients. That's step one. But once you've done that, I think that expands into business operations. Now you attract other coaches who want to work for you, because they know you're a good coach. You also have a specific skill set that allows you to break down what you do and teach them how to do it. As you start to delegate and kind of move up in the org chart and hire people to fill those gaps, whether it's hiring a salesperson, a marketing person, an admin, bringing in interns, your ability to coach makes filling all those buckets a whole lot easier. Because you know how to take these concepts, break them down and teach them to someone else. And I think I've had a lot of conversations about coaching first with people too. And what I definitely don't want people to think is that we don't really believe in the blocking and tackling of business. You need to have targets, you need to track data, make decisions based on that data, you need to have systems and processes, you need to know sales, you need to know marketing. But if you don't know coaching, You're a bitch. to apply those things inside your business and at scale, I strongly believe will be limited. There are a lot of people that can get on chat GPT or they can borrow somebody else's done for you system and be completely unable to actually apply that in their business. And I would have you consider the limiting factor there would be your ability to coach other people on how to do it. Man, you know what's so crazy when you're saying this? All right, consider this. Like, how do you get buying about a thing, right? It's like, if I were to go into a mechanic shop and his person's just a whiz, you know, like doing their shit. Like, by the way, like, craft, I've always been a person that's been very attracted to mastery. Even if it's things I don't give a shit about, right? Like, so that's why I watch every chef's table and whatever, you're a lovely sushi. Yeah, but yeah, because you're just like, holy shit, how are they doing this? This is incredible, right? But my point being is this that, first of all, you know, Mark Rooney would always, you know, what is enthusiasm, right? It's like to be enthused, to be full of energy, to be, but he would always say, what are the last three letters of enthusiasm, ISM? And what do they represent? I am sold myself, right? ISM, I'm sold myself, right? And I never heard Martin say that. That's great. Listen, I've been, yeah, it's exactly. I was just doing an in-staff and I was like, I think it was the, my first million guys were talking about this. They're like, man, enthusiasm is a skill. It's a super valuable skill. Imagine working with somebody. There's always enthusiasm. The only people that are be pissed off at him, by the way, are people that don't do shit, 'cause it creates contrast, right? And like, oh my God, there's always enthusiasm. I'm like, how's that a fucking downside? Right, right? But people with enthusiasm, it's a trap, like people want to be around people with enthusiasm. It's a skill, you develop that skill. But to me, it was always like, that really kind of sold it. Like, I'm sold myself. But I'm sold myself on vigor training, on what we do here. Like, I'm sold myself on strength training, on power training, on conditioning, on eating, right? Like, I live it. It's changed my life, coaching's changed my life, legitimately saved my life, right? And then, me, like, I started this business, and I live it. I'm enthusiastic about it. So I can now pass and be contagious with that to my team. How can you fucking do that? Like, you feel me? Or you, or you're, you know, and by the way, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that is just not what we live or believe in. Hey, I don't know, I buy orange theory. Like, I'm a business owner investor. I want my, you know, 22% net per year, whatever return. But, and there's a manager and a manager hire somebody else, but then they're just running systems, you know, a lot of turnover, whatever. My point being is like, somebody has got to be the enthusiastic person that sold themselves, that sells everybody else, right? And like, I think that's such an important factor because, you know, why does somebody go work for the number three restaurant in the world? And they do anything to get there because they want to work long as fucking 80-hour weeks under this master chef, you know, and it's like, "Yo, chef, you know, even if you're the owner operator that doesn't align with this idea of coaching." Like, you're getting into build a gym because of the investment and the return. Like, that's more appealing to you to be a builder and be an operator. The reality is what you need to make your gym boom is a coaching first person. You need somebody in your gym who does align with this idea of coaching first. So, whether it's you, whether it's your head coach, there's no way escaping that coaching is the most important thing because the coaching is the execution on the product. The product is what matters most. And I think what we see in what I call commoditized fitness, which is kind of the orange theory to F-45s. I didn't even put CrossFit in here. And I would even say, like, what we're not talking about is membership gyms that just rent equipment. No, no, no, no. We're talking about coaching gyms. Like, any group training, personal training, after we've trained in sports before. Like, where you are, like, where made your main thing is you get results for people and that's why your gym grows. Yep, right, essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, like, here's, I've been, it's like, when we go down this rabbit hole, I get fired up, obviously. And it's coconut water. So it's like, there's no caffeine in here. I'm just fired up. But my point of being to this is that, like, you know, every, like, there's competitive advantages to gyms. There's customer service, there's good marketing. There's, at the end of the day, you got to eat the food. What I mean by that is that you go to restaurant, food and service or the things, right? You go to the gym. It's going to be coaching service as well. And I got some insight. Actually, I'm talking about this in a mastermind this weekend that I do want to touch on. And things that I used to say, and I'm kind of reeling it back in a little bit, which is delight your clients. And I'm kind of pulling back on it, based on data and research. And even thinking through the history of the gym business and figure. So people will share, here's what's crazy. So the data on this is nuts, right? If the product is great, 60, 70% of people will talk about it a lot, right? But if the service is great, it's a lot much smaller percentage. But if you have to have customer service because something went wrong, now a really high percentage of people will talk about it because it wasn't good. And if you do have to do customer service, meaning I fucked up, right? People just want it fixed fast and efficiently. That's it. They don't need to delight the customer and do all this above and beyond shit. They just want to fixed, right? And I was reading about how some companies invested tons of money into delight the customer and the return was there zero, right? And so, and again, this is not. Some companies, absolutely, that's such a competitive advantage that they'll do those things. But for most, it's now. And my point being is this. So we had a quarterly meeting and we were kind of going like, man, what are the, what are the couple of things that if we do, like we'll do great? And I'm like, retained. So low attrition, meaning we do a great job with the people that we have. And if we do that, we'll get more referrals, more word of mouth, which solves a lot of shit, right? So that means that like we have to coach at a high level, right? And we have to be great to our people. Now, great is like the customer service. But again, it's not like these extraordinary things. It's care about people, appreciate people. Like do the job, get them results, you know what I mean? Do do a good job. Like I honestly say, like I don't, I mean, it's not embarrassing for me to admit this. It was just where I was as a coach. I got to be honest, I did not care about customer service at all. The first 10 years I was in business. I jokingly said before, like I don't think I ever even returned a voicemail from anybody. Like I just, I was just out actively working and trying to do a good job. That's what mattered most. It was like doing a really good job, treating people the way they deserve to be treated, coaching them at the highest level I was capable of, and then kind of paying forward the lessons that you can find inside the training process. I did that for a really long time without ever caring about customer service at all. And that's not to say customer service doesn't matter. But your ability to actually serve the customer through the lens of coaching is the most important thing. Absolutely, and I think that what's happened with this because people want to take and get an advantage in the marketplace with marketing, the promises are so big now, right? That it's just like you're over promising. It's so difficult to deliver on just what you promise that it's much better, you know, we talked about the coaching and I said it to the team. I said, guys, I'd much rather that you're good, good to very good every day. Day in and fucking day out. Then like Monday or excellent, Wednesday or excellent, Tuesday or your, you know, then three days are kind of like not really present than Saturday or excellent. Like you're a rollercoaster, right? That clients don't want that. They want reliability. Like you're going to show up at a certain level at a certain standard and you're going to be that very, you know, so it's not like he's the best in the world. It's like, man, that guy's fucking very good, but he's there every day. I know what I'm going to get. You know what I mean? Like that and same thing is like they said they're going to do this and they do it. Now they don't say, listen, when you come in, I'm going to give you a cold towel and spray you down. We don't do that shit at all, right? But then it's like, now the problem is that you fucking said that. You got to do that every day. If you don't do it, it's a problem. So note, like know who you are, know who you serve, do what you said you're going to do. Be very good. Do that every day. A lot of slight edge. And by the way, like that's rare today, right? Very rare today. And I would even say really quick that it's one of the things that as long as we've been doing this, it's still something that we struggle with at times as a company. And I'm totally okay with admitting that. There are times that that slight edge works for you and it works against you. But I think one of the things that a lot of people don't do is define what that standard of coaching actually looks like. When the standard of coaching has been defined, at least now you have something to always reference and go back to. And like before I came out here, I had to talk with my training director because I had eyeballs on a couple sessions. And he and I both agreed. They just were not up to standard. And we've got really good reasons why they're not. We're understaffed right now. We've got a lot going on. We've got some very young kids that just moved into certain groups. But what we have to do is use what we know about coaching to solve that problem instead of defend the problem itself. And I think again, kind of back to this whole coaching first thing is if you understand coaching, if you are a high level coach, it allows you to make course corrections inside your business and hold that standard. Where I think a lot of people go wrong is they don't understand coaching well enough to know what excellence looks like. So they don't know how to pull things back on course when they go off. And the reality is if your expectation is for your purpose. to be perfect all the time, you're gonna be very disappointed. Our product does this at times, right? And I think for those of you that are listening, I'm doing a wave with my hand. And what we want is those waves to go from this, right? To maybe-- - Like that. - Right? Now all of a sudden it's shorter, it's smaller. - And we catch it faster. Like we know, like, I'll wait a minute, that slight edge, we see it setting in a little bit. These are the problems we're dealing with. Okay, let's see, immediately get into that relentless solution focus mindset. Like now, how do we solve that problem? Instead of living in this problem-centric thinking that a lot of people get into, they defend why their product isn't the way that it should be. - And so I want to extrapolate from what you just said a little bit because I just like, we're using big words feeling smart sometimes, extrapolate the fuck to go. But it, one is like, you have to know what great coaching is, right, you trickle that down to your team, right? And then the feedback you're what you're saying is like fast feedback loops. You can catch it, right? Like if I see like a RD org on wrong, or like my whole body gets a visceral as like, I'm coaching it up, you know, team meeting, just that the other, but like that's one of the things we went in our quarterly where like came in a big focus for us has to be that like all the new coaches up to standards. So we're gonna up the frequency of the meetings of the, you know, we all agreed on like, hey, I did a presentation on, you know, the standards of group training. And there was a lot of talk, it was great stuff, but, you know, thankfully even like our kind of, I was like coaches that are, let's call them senior coaches. We're like, it was awesome, Luca, we need more hands on. Yeah. Let's go to role play. Let's go to role play, let's expose the coaches. And not like it's like, hey, now you go do this, right? Let me see it, right? Like the two things I always love from Pian is when, how's that working for you, right? When people are like complaining about shit, or they're like, ah, but y'all really need it. How's that working for you? Not that well. And number two is show me. Oh yeah, I know how to teach Delif, right? Show me how to do it, right? Actually, matter of fact, here's our team training session on the board. I'm going to set the timer, I'm going to video you, can you go through the eight exercises, coach them up, regression progression, be clear and concise under three minutes, three to one go? Yeah. Right? And it's like, what are the things that's done? It's okay, that was six minutes, 20 seconds. Everybody's been standing for six minutes, 20 seconds after the warm up. Get it down to three. How do I get it out on down to three? I'll tell you how I did it. I'm putting up the phone. I'm recording myself doing the fucking thing until I get it under three, right? 'Cause I need to do reps. I need to do practice, right? So, but here's the thing. I can teach that because coaching first, right? I can teach that because like, I know what a standard needs to be. And I think that any craft's person, coaching is a craft, right? Like the chef that wants to be great, he's not doing the same shit for eight years ago. He's trying to be a little bit better. He's trying to figure out a new way and application of, how do we use smoke, fucking, who knows what, right? He goes and does a course and hands on and brings it back and gets it better. So there has to be someone, right? Like, that is that driver. Now, eventually, you can have a head coach in this step, but it's got to trickle down from the person. And like, we've always talked about this as far as we like to work with people. I think this is just an important thing that I'm gonna throw in here, right? That Bill Jim's that like love coaching, right? It's like coaching first. I like being coaches because it is a distinction. I mean, we know, 'cause we've had people head us up. And it's like, man, I just wanna get out of this fucking thing. I don't wanna coach ever again, you know? And it's like, I don't know if we're the best people, we help you, man. Like, we could, but that's not who we work with because we love this industry. We love coaching, we believe in it. Like, I mean, again, I shared my story plenty of times that this was the thing that changed my life, right? And I really truly believe is like, how do you coach something at a certain standard if you don't know what greatness is, right? And somebody to push that. And, but here, I wanna ask you this because I said that we'll share shit that's gone wrong, right? And in my 19 years of gym ownership, 21 years of coaching, you've been in gym business 23, 25 as of 20, 25 as the next year, right? Years in business. Like, if you tell me that like, you know, and this is another issue I have sometimes with marketing and social and all these different things, right? 'Cause it's like, tell me about the stories that went wrong, right? But actually, I wanna ask you like, on the side of developing coaches, like right now, 'cause I know what has been a bottleneck and what are you doing about it, right? Just because it relates to this topic. It relates to the topic of developing coaches. You say, hey, I saw something. I didn't like, man, like, this is not good enough. This is not to our standards. Like, how do you solve that? How do you solve it? How do you approach that? - I think one of the bottlenecks is an inability to define your training system and what excellence in coaching looks like. So one of the things that has really helped us is we've laid out training rules. These rules govern how a session is run, how we coach, how certain exercises are executed. And we put a lot of thought into this. So if our coaches actually follow these training rules, we can guarantee to some degree that there's gonna be a high quality coaching session that happens over and over and over again. I don't think a lot of people have rules for their training. They don't have rules for when do you make an exercise substitution? They don't have rules for when you include more variety or when you stick to the script for a long period of time. If you have rules for these things, it's easier to evaluate the system. I think most coaches that I've talked to when we talk about their training systems, they tell me about it, like tell me the principles that govern your system. And people will come back to things like we use conjugate periodization. And like that's not really what I'm talking about. - Or we use progressive overloads. - Yep, yep. - And that's a principle, right, that matters. But what I'm talking about is like, what does it look like in action? So the other night, one of the things we talked about is that we believe in 360 coaching. And that what it means is we should always have our eyes on what's going on. Nobody should ever get behind us, nobody in a group ever. Well, that was one of the rules that was being violated in this training session. I could tell that the coach, we had a young coach running this session, he couldn't see everything that was going on. As good of a coach as I believe I am, I would struggle to coach that group to standard if I don't have eyes on everybody. The other thing that we saw that there was not, there was a disregard for tempo. We programmed tempo for a reason. If we see athletes not adhering to that tempo, you stop the group, you reorganize everybody behind that principle and that rule, and then you get back into action. Without those things, things can kind of get chaotic at times, depending on the model that you run. Now, if you're running groups of one to three people, it's probably not getting that way. If you're at six and up, things can go haywire if you don't have things like this. So if you as a coach, if you as a gym owner don't know how to define what that looks like for your team, it's going to be a lot harder for you to have a quality and repeatable product over and over. - And the thing is it's like, depending on what you coach, like for example, our businesses are pretty similar. I think differentiator is like, we have semi-private, it's like one to four, one to five people, small group is bigger, it's like 15, 16 up to, team training is really big. I mean, it can be anything, right? - 25 plus for y'all, right? - And so then, each one has a rule, right? 'Cause it's like, okay, any of the group stuff this will be going through, right? Individually coach each person three times within a group, right? I say everybody named six times, these are standards. You need to have two regressions, baseline exercise at eight progression, right? Okay, cool for everything. In semi-private, never have two people doing very technical exercises at the same time. Unless, right, they have a spotter, unless they're really like there's dot, dot dots, right? But these are all the different types of rules, like knowing when to sell an exercise and like having a continuum for squat, for example, right? It's like reaching squat, played over the head squat, goblet squat, double KB squat, and then you have like front squat, safety bar squat, but then if you have, if you have the equipment, you have a pendulum, a hack, right? If all these, and it's like, okay, here's the continuum. And being able to go to the team and give them scenarios, hands on, all right, cool. This is happening what you do, right? It's gotta be like, roll. I mean, they're gonna get their reps in, but it's like, I believe that there's a person, a leader that needs to teach them how to do things. So that then, you know, the standard, they're gonna keep improving and get it to a certain place. Like if you get a new person, make your mistakes, but it's like, make new mistakes, constantly get better and have a way to progress. But I think that's such an important factor. You know what's interesting is like, we have an intern right now, has a bachelor's of science and exercise, science, technology, his coach before, so on and so forth. And, you know, gone through kind of some big box jins and stuff, the other. And you realize like there are no rules, you know, because you go, well, what about in this scenario? Like, you know, what about, what would you do here? Hmm, let's break this down, right? Like, and it's like, wow, this is holy shit. Like, I have some stuff to work with. I have some heuristics, right? Like that can make decisions based on, and that doesn't happen a lot. Well, listen, but that is the value of a coaching gen, right? For people, I mean shit, like, what are you, for the expertise? Like people knowing, you know, if it's nutrition coaching, knowing that there's, they're good, they have the experience, they can help you make a decision to, you know, something that's, that's simple and not too stressful for the food that you'll eat, so you get the results. In training, you're like, ooh, you know what? Maybe you should take your shoes off. Like, you got hokas and you're collapsing in your lens, [BLANK_AUDIO] Like, oh wow, that doesn't hurt my knee, right? It's like, I mean, shit, like, that's what the foundation of success is in our coaching businesses. And the reason why, like, you know, I wanna bring it up because kind of funneling back to this idea of, you know, social media teaching. And I think if you follow the right accounts, you can get value from that. I'm not saying that, but like, when we started, I think Brett was mentioning this as a couple of other accounts that were making a really good point. All I did was like, I had to be in person to do the thing. And I still do, I still like to do that, right? But like, you couldn't really get digital courses, maybe on a DVD, right? But it's like, man, we'd go to, you know, I went to perform better 14, 15 years in a row. I would do probably seven or eight live events per year going to learn, right? This certification, that certification, this internship, this mentorship, this, right? And it was like, the amount of feedback loops that I think the first time we met might have been at a Mike Robertson thing. I'm pretty sure, Indianapolis, right? Like, and it's like, the amount that you can take away from that because there's so much hands on, there's so much watching and doing and training together that it was like, well, shit, like a long weekend is equal to, I don't know how much learning, right? It's like, all these faults that I had been corrected and coached and in feedback loop to where I'm coming back better on Monday. When you come back better, you can pass that on to your team. You can pass that on to your team, right? And one of the things that I've, like, when you talk about exercise substitution, I almost stopped you earlier when you're talking about the eggs. I thought that's a great example. Young coaches, a lot of times, will allow certain exercises to be done incorrectly because they lack a foundational knowledge of what right actually looks like and then how to improve it. So kind of back to, like, a heuristic or a training rule that you can use is what we talk about to make this simple on young coaches is demo, cue, venue make a decision about regression. There's a lot of talk now about baseline regression progression, salute to the certified functional strength coach guys. I'm gonna say that they kind of popularized that. I think Boyle's done an incredible job of like creating that strategy for people. But you can write out your exercise pool, you can write out your baseline, your regressions, your progressions, and then hand that to a young coach. And then still not have any idea actually how to implement this. So what we came up with was a simple strategy. If somebody's doing something wrong, you stop them and then you demo it for them. You show them what right looks like and then say, okay, now what should you do it again? All right, that doesn't work. Now we can go to a handful of cues, an internal cue, an external cue, a kinesthetic cue, whatever tool you need to use or do you feel strongest. Now again, I think this should be laid out for coaches and you can bucket them in that way. Here's a list of internal cues. Here's a list of external. Here's a list of kinesthetic. But sometimes that still doesn't work. A lot of people, especially really young athletes, have very poor body awareness of how they're moving. So at that point, we've demoed, they can't do it. We've tried to cue them out of it, they can't do it. Now we regress, right? If you don't have frameworks or things like that inside of your coaching system, you're making it a lot harder on younger coaches. But to kind of tie all that back together, this is why you as an owner or the head trainer of your company, you need to have a high level of coaching pedigree. Because the way that we came up with that was one, probably, I probably learned pieces of that from really, really smart people. But the way we came up with that order of operations, which from years and years of me coaching on the floor with a ton of kids, where I didn't always have time to give them the perfect cue. But I could say, "Hey, it should look like this. Try that." And it immediately got better, right? So I knew, like, demoing is low-hanging for-- - To get a fling. - To get a fling. Yeah, I think demoing is critical, which brings me to this as a coach, right? Do you want to teach the clean? Do you not a clean? - Can you not as look? - You clean, can you make it look the way that you want them to do it? - High knees, skips, double a skit. I mean, running drill, listen, man, I'm speaking from the last four weeks of seeing a shit, right? With a coach, very quickly demonstrates because they're not good at the drill and asks them to do something. And a client, first of all, goes, "Tries to do it." And the process of teaching them is much longer 'cause I can't go back now, like, no, like this. Like, the sandwich method, right? Do it like this? Not this. - Yeah. - This, right? And so that means you have to be able to-- Now, you don't listen, you don't have to be the same ball, you don't have to be this dad the other, but you have to be able to clearly demonstrate the exercises you want people to do, like, and a lot of times, that's not happening. - Yes, you know, but people listening may not know. I've got two titanium hits, all right? I'm 46 years old, it's 32 years old. - Well, I need it to over read. At 32, I knew I needed them, replaced, I just, my business wasn't in a place where I could take the time off to do it, okay? So for the next, I guess, five years 'cause I think I got them replaced. - I was a little bit older. So anyway, the next five-- - I was living in years. - After the Slovenian in 2018. But, like, the next five to seven years, I was dealing with this, like, I can't physically demonstrate these exercises. That really actually helped me in a lot of ways as a coach. But what I had to start doing was I had to get other athletes that I knew did it really well to be my demo person. So because I had a physical deficit and couldn't do it really well, I had to come up with another strategy of how to show people what right looks like. So even if you're a coach listening to this and you're like, man, I can't really power clean well, but I believe in the power clean and I wanna teach the power clean, you've got two jobs. One, keep working on your own power clean. Like, you should keep doing that. But two, you need to know what right looks like and you need to leverage that. If you can find somebody inside of a group that can show an athlete how to do it, that's your next teaching tool, right? So it's not like you have to be great at this stuff in and of yourself because, I mean, there's times I, I couldn't do a lot of things that I was asking my athletes to do. And I had to develop ancillary skills, verbally demos to get that quality of work to be done. - Actually, you know, good point because another way to do that is video, right? Pull up a video and now we'll, I mean, it's rare, but like, because I like to demo a lot of stuff and get coaches to demo it. But yeah, if somebody's new, like for example, I try to get my coaches to go through different certifications. So let's say kettlebells and it's like strong first or whatever it may be or PPSC stuff, but they're not really versed yet, but they're gonna put a single arm swing in there, right? Like, I mean, first of all, I try to coach my coaches on all these things, right? But that's when I'm like, pull somebody up, the nose out of do it. Two, pull up on a phone, but the thing is you gotta know what's a good video with a good form, right? - Yeah, you pull up a bad video. - Pull up a bad video and it's like, there you go. And it's like, you still, so my point being is it's like, there really is like the nuances of this stuff because I get pretty pissed off when I talk to people and some people will be like, ah, well, you know, training, man, all you gotta do is blah, blah, blah, you know what I'm saying? Dude, that's like the equivalent to this going, oh, like, you're fine with going to the YMCA and playing pick up ball with just a shooting group with people and sucking there, but you're saying you play basketball versus your NBA finals, your MVP, and you're winning the championship, right? Those are two different universes. But like, this one is being a pro. This one is being like, there's, first of all, there's no way you're gonna impact lives. There's no way you're gonna be successful as a coach. There's no way you're gonna build a business. There's no way, right? 'Cause there's so much stuff to this and I think that's one of the things we try to always shine a light on. And like, man, you don't get away from, you know, making sure that you're a product of your product and your business does the thing that's the most important, which is coaching. - Absolutely. - And now, this is the other thing that brings me to, because when we talk about this, it can seem so much like what you said. Like, we're geeks about entrepreneurship and business. And look, by the way, you don't make it 25, 21 years, you know, by like not being good in business, right? And also eating a lot of shit, but it meeting from a standpoint of like, you know, falling down. - Falling down. - Falling down. - Falling down, gaming back up. - But, you know, when we talked about like, there's a lot of people online that, you know, talk about training, but don't really coach people in this different world. But I've seen, you know, the other side of that too is like, folks that don't own, I mean, look, you can learn from any business person that's built a successful business in business, right? Like, somebody got a plumbing company, they're crushing it, I can learn from them. But in a gym space, there's a lot of this, right? Somebody had a gym, they shut down the gym, they start business coaching. Now, most of the time, 90, probably eight to 99% of the time, that gym, if it was sold, it was at a loss or like, not much of a profit of any profit. Why do we know, 'cause we know salt, like, I mean, this is what we study all day long, right? And if you have a profitable gym, sure, sure, you might want to get out of it. Like, very few people sell it for money that's like, oh, this is changing my life, if I can invest and just live off of that. Most of the time it's like, man, I want to get rid of it. Right, like, I'm done, I'm done. And then I'm going to go start talking business coaching about the gym. Like, so the reason I bring this up is because, like, operating a gym, and by the way, if you ran a gym seven years ago and today, those are two different times, indeed. Right, like, very different times. What are your thoughts around some of that? 'Cause I know we talk about it off camera, but like, I wanted to kind of bring the conversation into the show because it's just a real thing. And like, I think it comes back to the same thing as somebody that doesn't coach people talking about, you know, which-- you should do to get results, but you don't even have real world experience of it, right? I find it to be an issue. - I think what you said, there is that like 10% outlier, right, but it is 10%. - And I think you're being generous, but okay. - I mean, I probably am. - You're rounding it up, but that's okay. - Right, you're rounding it up, that's okay. - There are people who can do a good job of that that no longer own a gym. But my thing is if you're running a profitable business that pays you what you believe, you're worth, you're building a team, you're making an impact, like if you're checking all those boxes, it's really hard for me to understand why you would want to get out of the gym business. Because to me, that is what validates you as a business coach. If you have a business that is running well, that you are in charge of, you have real perspective. The further you get away from running your gym, you're operating off of perception. And I think you can continue to teach business basics because they don't change, right? The blocking and tackling, the exes and oes of sales, marketing, creating offers, follow up, like, that stuff is pretty standard. And if you were in the gym business for a significant amount of time, you certainly have information to share. But the thing that I come back to is like, if you've lost the love for the gym business and you no longer want to be in it, I personally would not want you as my coach. Because this is a very hard business. And I personally want to work with people that are in the trenches, that are fighting, that are a part of this. And they're still actively trying to develop gyms that make impacting communities. That's a personal preference to mine. Because I just want people that are connected to the experience that I'm dealing with. One of the quotes that I repeat over and over and over is pain shared, is pain divided. If you understand the struggles that I'm dealing with, because you're actively in the game too, I will listen to you a lot more. I think a lot of people in the business coaching world, and not just in the gym business, but in the business coaching world, they struggle to admit the problems and struggles that they've had in their own business. And what's always worked for me is just being super honest and transparent. It's like, hey, listen, I still have a deficit in this area as a gym owner. This is something that I'm still actively trying to get better at. This is something that our team needs to get better at. When you're working with somebody, and they hear you say that, your coaching is more relatable to them. People have such self-limiting beliefs that if you come at them from this place of certainty that you have it all figured out, sometimes that can be rather disappointing to people. And they can start measuring themselves against you in a really unfair way. So one of the things I always tell people is, like, first of all, I'm going to teach you what I know to be true today, but I always reserve the right to change my mind based on my current experience, how I'm operating my business right now. And there have been times in my business. What really to this day, I still hire coaches to teach me about running a gym business, and we teach gym owners how to run a gym business. So it's so important, I think, for you to be able to tell other people that, like, listen, I'm not the perfect example of gym business ownership all the time, but I'm in this game fighting. I'm fighting with you instead of trying to pitch from this place of superiority. Like, I've got it all figured out. I am your guru. It's like, no, man, like, I'm walking with you in this journey. I might be a couple steps ahead of you, and you can benefit from that, because I'm stepping into these places and I'm going to share the wisdom of my mistakes, and I'm going to share the things that have worked for me. - I think that's brilliant. I mean, especially because like, it's not realistic to believe, you know, you didn't have any issues. I mean, like, one of my pre-sales is, let's just say that the first slide is like an atomic bomb, 'cause about a year and a half ago in my business, that's what it felt like. That's what it felt like. It was a very, very challenging time. I mean, look, there's a number of those I can give you over the course of these 19 years. And, you know, we've had, so between Slovenia and here, we've moved seven or eight times, like, different facilities. Obviously, I own this building now. There, like, we had a crazy scenario there. Like, it's like a movie, it was like a movie. You know, from, and again, it was from build-outs to people leaving, to, you know, people fucking over, to this statue, you name it, right? Like, and I think that, like, sharing that, and then, but instead of, like, it's not like a victim, most sure, it's kind of like, here's the lessons I learned and here's how I turned it around. Right? And I think people get more from that. I love, like, reading biographies of people, or autobiographies where it's just like, you know, okay, here's where Richard Branson was like, a absolute, you know, you're reading it, and you're going like, oh my God, I want to vomit. That's how bad this is, right? And it's like, how did they turn it around? Yeah. Right? 'Cause you're gonna face these hardships. And I think being in the battle, like you said, being able to show people how you turn things around, but also, like, being vulnerable, being like, hey, man, like, I'm human, man. One, I make mistakes. Hey, I've dealt with the economy too. Like, oh shit, like, my, you know, my, my, SBA loan rate, more than doubled overnight. You know, holy shit. What do I do? All these things are real, business problems and challenges are real. And I do believe, like, the part of the story of like, I'm your guru is like, I don't talk about it because I just, you know, I just float above and fucking, like, I got all fingers and I got all this shit figured out. And we're always talking amongst each other figuring stuff out. But I mean, like, before this are, you know, me and Andy are like, alright, look, at this point that's coming up, we're investing in some more coaching and mentoring for us, right? For us, for this specific business and ourselves individually. And I, like, this year, man, like, I in the last 12 months, I have spent, who, I want, like, his insane amounts in education. I mean, I've done it every year for 20 years, but it's like, I have these, like, spurs, right? Like, whereas some years, I'm like, going crazy, some years a little bit less, but always investing. The last year's been, again, a ton of, last year and a half, tunnel learning. We're just, I mean, we're, and these are significant investments too, that we're making because we know, like, hey, here's this thing that we want to get better at. And let's figure out the people are the best at this and, like, do it, right? And that kind of brings me, I mean, first of all, like, these are our opinions. You could be like, I don't like, you know, whatever you guys are talking about, we can give a shit, we don't believe it. But that's how I feel about, that's how I know how Andy feels about it, but this power of mentorship. And, you know, it's easy to like, yeah, like, look, I, you know, we have a mentorship business. And we always tell people, like, dude, I don't know. If you're a gem owner and you want to get better and you want to go with somebody else, please do. Like, but just invest so that you get better. 'Cause I know the first time, I don't know what the first time was that you invested. Let's call it a significant amount of money, right? Like, you know, it was significant then versus what is now is different. But I think the first time that I went into a mentorship program was like 800 a month. And for me, that back then, that was like, oh, what even costs that, right? And I know after some contemplation, honestly, it was the feeling of like, I don't want to be where I am anymore, made me pull the trigger. And I wasn't necessarily in a place to like, oh, there's no problem. I can do that. It was a big financial like kind of investment for me, right? And in the next year, it was just like, I mean, I don't know, quite a group of the business at that point in time, triple or something like that. In a business wasn't that big yet, but it's like, it was a significant growth. And part of it was because, I mean, one commitment, right? The moment that like, if you put your time on the energy, you know, into something, your focus is gonna go there. I'm saying I'm like, I believe in myself enough. I'm betting on myself to do this. I joined a group of peers that were all like, whoa, you guys are doing shit. So the, I would say the standards of the tribe, I had become your standards and they elevated. So I work hard, I was more organized, I was more focused, I took more action, I did this stuff. And again, to have accountability and support in a group. You know, apart, like I'm not even talking about the information yet, right? Like the strategy and information were very valuable, but it was almost like secondary to all the other stuff, right? The challenge, the accountability and mentoring. Like, hey, you said you're gonna do this great next week on a call. Like, make sure you get this shit done. But like, I wanted to kind of get, you know, I kind of blurred it out a lot of stuff that I just was, well, I got some thoughts on that real quick. I don't mean to interrupt before I forget, but if, so we're talking about the importance of mentorship and how much we believe in that, and me and you have had talks about how we want to help kind of the next generation of gym owners get to the success that we've had. But if I think about like what's work for you, what's work for me, it's literally hiring coaches and mentors more than anything. We've read tons of books, we've taken tons of courses, but I think you would agree that when you join certain masterminds and coaching programs, that was the juice. If I look at like, think about, I remember when all you guys were in a mastermind together, the people in that group today are people sitting at the highest levels of this industry. The group of guys that I joined one of my first masterminds with, these guys all on multi-million dollar enterprises now. So to me, the evidence is so clear that mentorship, coaching, getting coaching from somebody above you and being in a group of peers that are committed to the same outcome is the most important thing that you can do for yourself as a gym leader. We believe in that so much, we're paying that forward to other people and we're trying to create an environment of people to believe in this coaching first mentality so we can surround people who want to develop that coaching pedigree because we believe that's been the thing that's helped us separate ourselves from other people. And I think that's one of the things that I don't hear enough people talking about is the power of being in a group with other people. But again, if you talk to all the successful gym owners that I know, most of them will tell you it's the power of the tribe, it's getting around another group of people. There's a leader usually that's running it. We lead our stuff, but there's killers inside built to life. There's people inside our program that are very good gym owners. They will say and communicate things that me and you coach in a different way. And they and the client will hear it differently from them and how they hear it from us. So there's different layers of mentorship that you get inside these coaching programs. And I don't think that's talking about enough either. We're so direct response marketing driven, we're like, the person selling you in a coaching program is very clear on your problems. You are their avatar. They have broken down your pain points, they have broken down your bottlenecks. And now they are creating specific content to like dig at that a little bit to get you to respond. And then they swoop in and say, here's the solution. And here's the thing. And we're not against it because-- At all. Yeah. I'm not saying that's wrong. I just think that it's important to like, man, just to open the communal. And I mean, like the-- It's more honest and simple. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I think, you know, the thing that you said, it reminds me of a, I think at first time I heard it was from Ken Shamrock, and I'm sure he didn't kind of create it, right? Like, this idea of like, you always have somebody that's ahead of you that you aspire to be like, that's coaching you. And then you have somebody that's right about where you are. And that's the person that like, you know, and obviously in fighting, you'll be like, the master's teaching you, right? They're better than you. And then you have somebody that's right around where you are. When you fight the man, it's a battle. Like, you're both right there. So it's a big challenge because you're trying to overcome each other. But it's friendly in a way. I want to make you better. You want to make me better, right? Like, yeah. And then there's always someone that you're teaching. Yes. Because teaching obviously helps you become better at the thing that you're doing. That's why I started doing, you know, teaching very, I'm going to say very early, but like, I started speaking and coaching and doing videos and stuff, because I felt that that was making me better at my craft. Yeah. I was doing it probably before I was ready to do it, but what it really helped me do is like solidify what I believed and when I was teaching other people what to do was kind of a mirror back to me too, like, oh, I'm giving him that advice. That's still an area that I need to get better at. And I think that topic that you're, I think I heard it in a ego is the enemy. I think I think Rhett and Holliday talks about it there and it's like, again, if I look at all the successful people that we know, they all have that one coach who impacted them the most. That was ahead of them. They all have a group of peers that they get together regularly with and work on ideas and building a business, whether that's a paid service or a free service, like, we have a lot of friends, we just mastermind with because we're all successful. We've gotten to know each other really well. And then they're all teaching in some capacity, whether that's passing it down to their team, they're passing it on to other gym owners that they kind of mentor and kind of take under their wing. Maybe they're creating content and sharing it, but that's three prolonged approach. Like it's flat out proven to work, crew and work, like you need a mentor, you need peers and you need students. And it's like a lot of times like what, what happens inside a built to last, too, is like, what's been cool because it's organic is that somebody that's ahead, I don't know, they might have, they might have a million dollar gym. Somebody's doing seven eight random months. They're helping them. Yeah. But it's within, but the thing is, but we're helping that person, right? Like, and you, you have this baked in thing with somebody is right there. You have like this friendly competition, which is good, and I mean, sure. And so that's happening there. And again, I think about like my basketball days, right? Like I mean, that was my life. Like there's somebody you're battling for to spot on the team with, right? Then there's the star to team, like they're teaching you a lot, but man, they're ahead of you. Right? And then there's somebody below you that you're mentoring. Yeah. It's everywhere. It's literally everywhere. And I would just, again, like awareness, perceived change, maybe become aware of this, because there's many people that go like, like, who am I to teach anybody? Like, no, like, if you're ahead of somebody by one or two steps, you can teach them. And it pays, you know, kind of pays off for you essentially. And my, like, the reason I bring this up is because there's like these, you know, few things that like, I'm sure of, right? Maybe it's more than a few, but like this is one in my experience and my 20 years of career. You know, I've told this story before in many podcasts, right? And I was still playing pro ball. I played for this team, three loud and like they didn't pay if they're still listening. Say that again. Three low. Okay. I'm not going to try that. Like the division wants to be basketball, you know? And like I'm fucking doing two of days. And I'm working for my brother who you know, like a translation agency. And it was like, man, I'm not getting paid here. And that's when I also started training people, right? For almost no money. But I made a deal with my brother because it's like, I was doing work. So obviously he was paying me. And I said, there was a thing called trainer's inner circle, parrots, we had it. This is like 19, I mean, this is like 99, I mean, this is a long time ago, right? I'm still living in Slovenia, by the way. So, and I'm playing pro ball. And I go to my dad and say, hey, man, like, you know, take part of my my checkout and pay for this thing with your card. I don't even have a card, whatever, right? And so I, and by the way, that was like probably a one 99 a month for a kid from Slovenia that's playing pro basketball, it's not getting paid and I'm doing all these different things. That was a lot, right? I mean, from there, my next level was a bootcamp blueprint. I did that. I mean, I know these things, right? I know what I went into and how much it was for me. Then I went to the mastermind, then I went to Sandback, you know, and that was a thousand dollars a month. We did a covenation thing and I was 35,000 dollars a year. It was big, right? And I can keep going. Like, I mean, price points. But what I'm trying to say is that like, those things significantly altered the direction of my career. For sure. Right? And the one is because I can tell you right now anything that like, you don't pay shift or you don't pay attention to, like, you know, who does better or bigger? And by the way, look, I, no judgment, but the person that invests more, I like, I went back and track this and it was like, they get the best results. Yeah. They're more accountable. They're more focused. They're more like, you know, I can tell you the masterminds I invested the most money in. You did the most work because it was like, well, shit, I'm not going to waste this. I'm going to fucking like, do everything I used to resist that. So I know there's somebody listening that's like, whatever, because I was so skeptical. People would say, the more you invest in something, the more accountable you'll be to it. I'm like, yeah, right? Like whatever. I remember us even having a conversation like a decade plus a goal about this. Yeah. And so it's a, I was very resistant to this. So I mean, I'm a lot like some of the people out there where it took me stepping in and investing in some really big things to see the leverage that that creates. But you still, but the thing is, but you made an educated decision of the right thing. Like here, it's not like, okay, just throw money at something. No, no, no. It's like, you know, when we're having a, like we were literally sitting here before and we're like, all right, when we hit this milestone, like, you know, here's two or three different programs that I think could be beneficial for what we want to achieve. Let's really put down pros and cons and like, what's the best one for it? Right? Like it's not like, and it's, and it's a suit. All of them are a significant investment, right? Like we're talking about multiple, multiple five figures per year, right? And it's like, hey, like, but I, but I know when we do it, we're going to get our, you know, it's like, all right, we're going to put in a word. And, and again, this is, this is not the pitch for anything other than because at the beginning, and I'm going to loop this back around because coaching, man, I promise you. So I spent, you know, when I was a big box gym trainer when I moved to the States and was like, LA fitness, I'm working 100 hour a week, 100 hour a week, and then I go to vision quest. I'm working. I mean, all day. I'm in the morning at my garage gym, then I work all day, a vision quest, and I come back and train athletes and myself, right? But I'm hustling and like every hundred bucks here, 200 here, 300 here, you know, I get it in my apartment building. I started coaching. The lady was paying me 450 a month and I put every $1.450 into education money. Right? So it was like, boom, six months in. Okay. There's like three grand there. Boom. I'm going to perform better. I'm buying this course. Everything was going into the education and improvement of my craft. Yeah. Right? And it's like, this is the S&P and me essentially cliche as it fucking is. You know, I can give you all the quotes, right? Like the greatest investment you ever made. You are the number one asset. You're the number one asset. Like your business is essentially the number one, you're the number one asset, your business is the number one investment. Right? Like, that stock keeps going up and we talked about like, uh, and we just had a couple like lunch. One of my good friends when I met when he was with the Seattle Sonics, when I trained with the Sonics, now, you know, ended up long story becoming a strength coach for the Lakers. Got to bring with the Lakers. Now he's Anthony Davis's personal strength coach for the last three years, I think. And we were chatting about business and, you know, him opening a gym and business in which direction to go. And my point being is this like this investment in oneself, right? And like, in, for example, you know, we're talking it out, napkin type of style and go like, man, if you just do these things, which you can do, hey, here's how you position it. It's what you, you know, you can be doing about 200 grand a year as a side hustle, right? Now, you tell me, and let's say that the investment initially would be 30K, 25K, right? And your first year return is 200,000. I mean, unless you fucking hit the jackpot on some Nvidia stock at the right time, I don't know. Nothing can give you that return. And that return is going to keep giving back. My point being is there's nothing greater than investing in yourself because you get to keep the skill. Nobody can take that skill away from you, that experience that wisdom away from you, those relationships that you've built. And that has never changed for me. I know it hasn't for you from the moment you had the AHA moment. Because 21 years later, 19 years later, gym ownership, I don't know how many books I bought this year. But of course, here we are going. I know you joined a mentorship program this year that was like, hey, this is going to help me build this area of my life. And now we're like, hey, what do we, what do we join for build to last to build this thing? And I went into different programs, you know, for myself to build a specific aspect of my business. And it's like, I think that those things leave clues. And if you, I would say more so than anything, if you truly believe in yourself. And when somebody told me this, and I've invested in companies and got lucky sometimes, you know, you invest in the Vanguard or whatever, right? But think about this, the act of you got 20 grand to invest, you put it all into a stock that some other company controls were an economy. But you put none of that money into yourself, which you have full control of. It's kind of wild, right? And so, man, it sound like a fucking sham wild pitch. Invest in yourself, I mean, which I believe, right? But so that part, it kind of wraps up the part on mentorship. And like, let's, because I think we're kind of running out of time. Hold on, I want to say this real quick before I forget this too. So there's the quantifiable ROI of like, okay, I invested this much money. This is the impact that it had on my business, right? So you can, you can quantify the ROI on an investment in a coaching program like that. But what's unquantifiable that might have benefited me more than anything is when I got in rooms with other gym owners, and I would hear, like, how successful they were. Like, I was 10 years in before I joined a mastermind. And I had a high income at that point. And I was doing well, but there were guys who were doing a lot better than me, who had good businesses. But when I got the same room with them, I was like, I think I'm as smart as him. Like, I don't see any reason why I can't do what he's doing. And that investment, or I'm sorry, that ROI in like the certainty is probably more beneficial than any of the money I've ever made of joining programs. It was me getting in rooms with other people who were more successful with me. Sometimes even the leaders of these programs, I would look at and be like, man, what's the difference between me and that guy? Like, we bleed red, like, I think I'm as sharp, and then, okay, well, what do they do that I'm not doing? Like, what are they investing their time in? What are they investing their money in? And that, I mean, I have deep reverence for every person that has ever coached me. So I don't want that to sound like I'm saying I'm better than those people. But it was really good for me to meet some of my heroes and go, oh, he's just a human. He's just like me. He does these things. If I do these things, I can be like that too. So that ROI of certainty, I think, is just as valuable as the finance. ROI of certainty, I love that. And it's crazy. Like, I felt the same thing. And it was like, I added a little garage gym when I first joined a mastermind. And I was like, man, everybody's doing better than me, right? And then when we were there, and I was doing numbers, and they're like, you're doing what? You know, and that was the juice for me, right? And it's like, then I thought I was because now I have exposure to absolutely. But I think that's part of the role. Like, for example, right? Like, if somebody, I mean, man, we got some savages and built the last wall. Like we got. And I just like that back to them all the time. I think you know how good you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. And my point to that is, is that like a great coach will fuel that fire and not try to slow them down. Because it's like, meaning, you know, like, oh my god. Like, are they doing bigger numbers than I'm doing? Like, dude, my job, your job is to help that person go for pointed point of view. Yeah. That's it. So we, you know, our baseline, we have a workbook. It's called perfect business, perfect life. That's what everything starts with, right? Like, and by the way, like, I highly encourage you to like think about like, what are you actually building? I mean, we, perfect business, perfect life is everything for like, who do you work with? How much do you work? How much are you taking home? Like, not just these whatever, you know, revenue, it could be whatever. You know, I'm bringing in a million, okay? I'm losing and I'm expending a million one. Like, okay. And what does your life look like? What does your life look like? So, so that's like the starting point. And our mission is to do that. Like, I can give a, you know, I can give a shit about like, if they're crushing me. Dude, my job is to get them to their dream life. That's what our job is, right? And I always go back to, I can't remember the book. They read the set up, it was a, it was a financial, it was the joke was like, right? Like, where are your clients, yachts? Yeah. Right? Like, basically financial planners, right? Like, the financial planner has the yacht, but their clients don't have the yachts. But your goal is to get them the yachts. You know, you know, analogy, right? But that's, to me, that's the thing, right? It's like, hey man, like, our success is built around, just like the gym, to me. Vigor is successful because we help people transform. Whatever that means for them, get out of pain, lose 40 pounds, keep it off, get an NFL contract, full out of money, I mean, whatever, right? Like, that's been, I succeed, right? And built the last in mentorship, it's like, oh, you know, you worked 80 hours a week and you're barely paying yourself two years later. You worked 20 hours a week and you're taking 100 to 20 grand and you took three vacations. Yeah. Like, that's making us win because you're winning, right? So always remember, I'm like, man, where are your clients? Yeah, it's like, go back, you know, I put up a post, a while back, I'll finish on this note. And it was, it was like, what if, you know, what if like, basically your whole career was oriented around how you basically coached this one clients in the world that they've got, right? Like, how would you coach them? And for most people, it's like, well, shit, man, I do a lot of different-- Oh, okay, that's how you should coach them though, you know? And like, I did. I mean, I had like a ton of private clients, like semi-private clients early on in my career. I did boot camps and I did that. And man, I would pour my fucking life into like having them like succeed. You know, and that's what fueled the business, to be honest with you. And I think that that should be at the fore. I think a lot of people lose that. You know, it's very easy that like, you get into your own way and you're like, what do we do? What do we do here for? Like, and it's like, man, this place is here, it's the tagline of vigor. I know BCI is similar in that way. It was like, we help our clients change their bodies so they can change the stories to their life. They got a story they want a different story. I love that. Like, that's the game. And guess what? Build the last? We help our clients, right? Build the gym that lasts so that they can change the stories to their life. It's the same thing as just the gym business. That's great. Oh, bro, I got 17 more questions. But we're out of time, another fucking exclusive episode. If you were a coach and you want to become a better coach, man, check out our stuff. You guys know my YouTube, lookaholsterer.com, check out BCI, check out Andy McClellan, IG. And if you're a gym owner with at least 30 clients and you want to blow up your gym, do it the right way, blah, blah, blah, sham, wow, right? Build the last gym.com. And let us know if you like this. We kind of, we were just like, hey, let's just dive into some topics that we really think that are important, that we feel strongly about, and that will help you out being a better coach and a better gym owner. So with that said, please stop. We'll see you next time. Salute. [MUSIC PLAYING]