
The Mindset Cafe
The Mindset Cafe Podcast is your go-to hub for personal development, self-improvement, and transformational success. Envision a life where you feel fully empowered to conquer time management, self-doubt, and the countless hurdles standing between you and your dreams. Each episode is carefully crafted to give you actionable mindset techniques, proven entrepreneurial insights, and practical fitness advice, helping you translate newfound knowledge into remarkable, real-world results.
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The Mindset Cafe
211. A Story of Resilience, Love, Leadership, and High-Ticket Sales w/ Guest: Craig Andrews
What if resilience and creativity could completely transform your life's journey? Join us as former US Marine Craig Andrews shares his extraordinary story of transformation from a disengaged high school student to a leader in both technology and marketing. With experiences ranging from working with tech giants like Samsung and Apple to overcoming a life-threatening health crisis, Craig's journey is a testament to the power of effective leadership and team-building. Discover how his unwavering mindset and leadership skills enabled his team to run his business seamlessly while he battled COVID-19 in a coma, showcasing the profound impacts of empowerment and trust.
Experience the surreal as Craig recounts the dreams that blurred with reality during his coma, set against the backdrop of a fictional Louisiana resort. His recovery story is not just about survival but is a moving tribute to the love and support of his wife, Karen. Transitioning into his business pursuits, Craig delves into the insights from his book, "Make Sales Magical," where he unravels the secrets of crafting compelling offers for high-ticket sales. Through personal anecdotes, Craig reveals the innovative strategies that combine complex low-ticket offers with high-ticket services, highlighting the importance of perseverance and creativity in achieving business success.
Lastly, explore the art of empowering autonomy in sales and customer engagement with Craig, as he explains how creating a sense of ownership can transform the customer journey. By leveraging cognitive biases such as the IKEA effect, he shows how investment and commitment from clients lead to successful outcomes. Gain insights into personal growth and learn how helping others can ignite your own development. Connect with Craig Andrews by visiting allies4me.com or through LinkedIn, and take away powerful lessons that will inspire both your entrepreneurial spirit and personal growth.
Thanks for listening & being part of the Mindset Cafe Community.
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Yeah, it's mindset cafe. We all about that mindset. Gotta stay focused. Now go settle for the last. It's all in your head how you think you manifest. So get ready to rise, cause we bout to be the best. Gotta switch it up. Gotta break the old habits. Get your mind right. Turn your dreams into habits. No negative vibes, only positive thoughts.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to another episode of the Mindset Cafe. It's your boy, devin, and today we are joined by a special guest, craig Andrews. He is a US Marine, an engineer, marketing expert, a multi-bestselling author and entrepreneur who has driven over half a billion dollars in revenue throughout his career. But Craig's journey isn't just about business success. It's about survival, it's about trust and it's about transformation. And you guys already know that the Mindset Cafe. We go all over the spectrum of mindset development, personal development, and Craig's story is one of that and I really thought it would be an interesting perspective from his journey. I don't want to spoil anything but his journey and his survival and the mindset shifts that he's learned throughout. So, without further ado, craig, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to hop on the Mindset Cafe.
Speaker 2:Oh, Devin, I've been looking forward to this. It's so exciting to be here.
Speaker 1:So let's dive straight in. I want your backstory. You know what's the bird's eye view of your story. You know leading up to you running a business. You know from Marines. You know your bring up. You know all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, the Marines was never an intended part of the journey. It just turned out that was an exceptionally bad student in high school. And it's not that I couldn't have done better, I just didn't care. I was like I got to make a change in life and so I um, I, uh I went around and started talking to the recruiters and uh I'll forego the usual insults to the other branches of the military, but let's just say that the Marine recruiter first great salesman I ever met I went in wanting to sign up for three years. He bagged me for six and it was great. It was absolutely great. You know, I'll credit the Marine Corps for giving me the mindset to learn how to walk again as an adult. We'll get into that part of the story. But the thing that was really cool about the Marines is that it's not that they turned me into a different person. They helped me understand who I was. They helped me find what was already inside me that just needed to come out.
Speaker 2:And so I spent six years in the Marines, had a blast, and I knew I wanted to be creative. I knew I wanted to create things and I thought that's what engineers did. So I went to engineering school and got an undergrad, got a master's and discovered the expensive way that engineering is not a career that rewards creativity. They like predictable and boring. And so I went into marketing and ended up marketing semiconductors for mobile phones for about a decade. You know my customers were the biggest makers of mobile phones in the world. You know I've been to Samsung, apple, nokia, siemens. You know used to be really big Motorola, ericsson, lg, boy they don't even make phones anymore.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so I did that and had a lot of fun and the margins in that business are rough and I knew the day was coming. They would ask me to fly coach to Asia and I'd already pre-decided when that day comes I'm out Because I was going to Asia four or five times a year and I'm like screw that coach, it's a hard trip anyway. And so that day came and I started my own marketing business, which has been kind of a wild journey and I know I'm flying over a lot of things quickly here, but that led to what I think I would consider my greatest achievement in business, which was not driving a half billion dollars in revenue. My greatest achievement happened on August 22nd 2021.
Speaker 2:I was in the hospital with COVID and the doctors, against my will, put me in a, put me on the ventilator and put me in a coma. And when I woke up well, I woke up six weeks later and mine was a little bit fuzzy for a couple of weeks afterwards. So about eight weeks after that day, my wife started telling me what had been going on in the world, and one of the things she told me was my team kept running the business without me, and I would say that's my greatest accomplishment in business ever.
Speaker 1:That is a huge accomplishment. That is, that is a huge accomplishment. Like, especially on a not a planned notice, you know not. You know, hey, guys, I'm going away, you know, to asia, you know, or on vacation, right, hey, this is what you guys need to do. It's, you know, they stepped up, they it shows you the kind of leader that you are and were before that, because that doesn't just happen, you know, all of a sudden. That is a culture that you've built of you know, growing that leadership within and growing that creativeness within and having them step into the role and step up to the plate when you needed them, yeah, yeah, and I think that's a huge testament to you. So I do have to give you a kudos for that, because that is not something a lot of business owners get to experience, because they don't understand how to effectively not not just lead a team, but build a team yeah, yeah, and they were amazing.
Speaker 1:You know, I, I, just I, I could not be prouder of what they did yeah, I mean you should be proud of yourself, you know, because that's again like that's not easy to do. So I want to dive in to you, know what? I know that we'll write, we'll rewind to some of the other things too. But you, but I do want to take a big rewind real quick and go back to the Marines, because you said something interesting. They didn't change you. They helped you discover who you were. What did you mean by that?
Speaker 2:We have untapped abilities in all of us. We have untapped abilities in all of us and you know, if you look at bootcamp, I mean we had all sorts of people, we had fat people, we had skinny people, you know, and when we were done we had a whole bunch of Marines who were fit and and able to do things that they couldn't do three months earlier. And you know they pushed me. I'll give you one example. So, third phase of boot camp, this was last month.
Speaker 2:I was at Parris Island, which is on the South Carolina coast. I was there during the summer and it's real hot and nasty on the South Carolina coast during the summer and we spent our week out in the field, you know living. You know living with the animals. And when we were coming back to the main part of base, back to our barracks, we did what's called 10 mile forced march and it's just, it's this horrible invention, it's just, it's borderline torture, but it just really pushes you and you don't do anything in the Marines until you're told to, at least in boot camp.
Speaker 2:And I'm sitting there dying of thirst for the first five miles, and you know, about three miles in, I start fantasizing about when they give the order to drink water, Because if you just go out and whip out your canteen and drink water, life's about to get hard for you. And so I'm sitting there fantasizing for at least two miles of how I'm going to drink water, how much I'm going to drink, and we get to the halfway point they stop and they say you know, ready drink. I take this canteen, throw it back and I start throat drinking and it's just going straight down my gullet. And I get about halfway through that canteen and I realize it's got stagnant water in it and I was like oh crap, so I put it away.
Speaker 2:I pull out the other canteen, I start drinking that. Well, then we have another five miles to do. And I get into that five miles and I'm like I'm losing it. I'm starting to see colors, everything's fading out and and I was like I'm not going to tell one of these guys I'm like hey, excuse me, my tummy hurts. Do you mind if I stop? And I was like screw it, I'm either going to hike until I pass out and they have to pick me up, or I'm going to make it back, pass out and they have to pick me up, or I'm going to make it back and I made it back. It was rough but I made it, and they helped me understand that there was so much more in me than I realized was there.
Speaker 1:That's, that's crazy, and I wanted I just want to highlight the stagnant water part. I've never drank in stagnant water, but I will say that I learned that you have to wash your hydro flask more frequently than I did and I figured that you know well it's, I'm putting clean water in it, I'm drinking it. I'm putting clean water in it, I'm drinking it and not realizing that that doesn't work. And I wouldn't say I got food poisoning, but I got sick somehow and it was definitely from that and it was rough. So I can only imagine drinking stagnant water, how that you really made your stomach feel and and everything like that.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, but it is so true. I mean that it there's times in life you know, there's things that you go through, such as yourself or you know the Marines that you learn a lot about yourself, right, because you were that same person going into it, right Then that you came out of it. It was just a different version of you because you were able to basically dig deep and learn the strengths, learn the willpower, learn the self-drive that you have. That you may not have known. That was there before, right. Now I want to wrap that into and kind of tie that back into the whole coma thing. You did mention that it was against your will. What? What did you mean by it was against your will? Like, what was that about?
Speaker 2:Well, um, so if you think back to 2021, if you went on the, if you went on the ventilator, you died. That was the outcome, and my wife and I had talked about that and we knew that and we had agreed, and the evening of the 21st they said hey, we're going to give you something that's going to help you sleep. They didn't tell me it was going to be an armful of morphine, and morphine suppresses respiration, so it's kind of a weird thing to give somebody with a respiratory problem and basically I quit fighting and so they decided somewhere around midnight that they were going to put me on the ventilator. And they called my wife in the middle of the night and I was aware I don't remember this, but I was aware enough of what was going on. She heard me screaming no ventilator, no ventilator.
Speaker 2:And the doctors bullied her in the middle of the night to doing it and they basically told her that she didn't have a choice. They basically told her that she didn't have a choice and the right answer would have been for them to roll me over on my stomach and keep me breathing until the morphine wore off and I could get back to regulating my oxygen, which I'd been doing successfully for 11 days Raising on your stomach. Your lungs are in the back of your chest cavity, and so I've been doing that for several days already. My oxygen would dip down, I'd get on my belly, oxygen would shoot straight up to a hundred percent, and so, yeah it just and it's interesting, we've talked to other people that have gone through this the phone calls were always in the middle of the night. It was always high pressure tactics, and that's why so many people died.
Speaker 1:A lot of people died that didn't need to definitely a horrible time in in history and it would definitely be going into the history books, you know, and to live it it definitely was almost. It still almost isn't even believable, even though we were in it. Yeah, you know, and that's, that's the crazy thing. Now, something you mentioned, though, um, kind of kind of staying on the topic for a second something that I've seen that you've mentioned is your wife spoke life into you. Yeah, can you explore that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me share a dream. This is one of my favorite dreams to share. I have a bunch of dreams in my coma that actually reflect reality. Share, I have a bunch of dreams in my coma that actually reflect reality. And in this particular dream I was in a resort in Louisiana. I didn't realize Louisiana had resorts, but in my dreams they did. And at this resort they had an interesting room service menu where I could call in room service and some young lady would come in and spray raw cow's milk at my face and it would make me feel better. So I just kept hitting redial. You know cause? I wanted more of that raw cow's milk. These young ladies offered other services and once offered one of those, I'm like no, no, no, I just want the cow's milk.
Speaker 2:And eventually it came time to leave and they get announced in the speaker over the room. They say you know, mr Andrews, it's time for you to leave. And I said I can't move, you're going to have to come in and get me. And they started getting angry and saying no, you really need to leave. And I tried to roll out of the bed because I thought if I at least fall on the floor, somebody will have to come in and pick me up. At one point they said if you don't leave, we're going to tell your wife about your room service. I'm like you can tell her. She knows I like raw cow's milk. There's no secrets there. And eventually they said well, let's get his wife in. And Karen came into the room. She put her hand on my left shoulder. She said Craig, this is Karen, I'm your wife, it's going to be okay. And when I told Karen about this, she said Craig, I said those exact words in your coma.
Speaker 2:And when we kind of deconvolved what happened, the you know, I was in a coma. There were these respiratory techs, usually young women, that would come in several times a day and give me a treatment of valbuterol, which they would put a mask on my face and would create a mist and would spray this mist at my face. My brain just interpreted that as raw cow's milk, but it would make me feel better. But that was in my coma and I still remember those words that she said, just like she said them yesterday. And so, yeah, I mean during the whole time, all the way from the very first day that they put me on the ventilator. They weren't letting family in and she, she insisted, and so they let her in. She'd come in the room and they give her an hour a day and she would sing to me, she'd pray over me and she'd say words of encouragement and you know, I I think that was critical to my survival, you know, because she was connecting with me in my world and I just kept fighting.
Speaker 1:That's. I mean wow yeah, wow Dang, that's powerful, that's extremely powerful. So I mean I gotta for, for personal reasons, you wrote a book on your marketing right and you I mean you had a marketing company right, and I believe your first book was about marketing right.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I released both books at the same time, a practice I don't recommend. Write one book at a time, publish one book at a time. I have a book called Make Sales Magical. That is about how to build complex front-end offers that lead to complex, high-ticket sales, high-ticket being five, six, seven figures.
Speaker 1:So what really inspired you to write that book though I mean your other book, you know, talking about the survival and everything like that. I mean that message is so powerful. But what was I mean? Knowing your background and everything like that, but what was the reason for writing this book?
Speaker 2:Well, some of it was just kind of a rite of passage. At some point if you're in business, you should probably write a book, and I've gotten business off of it. But the things that I outlined in that book, there's no other book out there that talks about it and I go on a live podcast and I've had people tell me a live podcast and you know, I've had people tell me they're like craig, I've never heard of anybody doing this, and so it was. You know, it's basically a manual on how to build these, these offers. Uh, because they're tough, you know. I first came and let me give the. Let me give a kind of an idea of the concept.
Speaker 2:For those that remember Columbia House Records, back in the days when we liked albums the first time, they had this offer where they would sell you 13 albums for a penny if you joined their record club, and so that's considered kind of an irresistible offer. If you're the type of person who wants to build a record collection, hey, this gets you 13 steps closer to your goal for one penny. And so I tried putting together offers like that. That would lead to my own high ticket service. I was just trying to fix my own sales and those didn't work. You know, my first first time offer failed. My second first time offer failed. My third first time offer failed a little bit less and over about 18 months I discovered that if you're selling a complex high ticket service, you need a complex low ticket offer. So the Columbia House Records 13 albums for a penny. That's a simple offer.
Speaker 2:Here's an example of an offer a guy named Bob Stupak put together. It's not one of my offers, but I think everybody will get it when I put it out there. Bob Stupak bought this dumpy old hotel in the Vegas Strip. It wasn't a player and he decided he was going to turn it into a major player on the Strip. Today you would know it as the Strat or the Stratosphere, but back then he called it Bob Stupak's Vegas World.
Speaker 2:It at Bob Stupak's Vegas World and he said give me $396 and I will give you two days, three nights in one of my deluxe suites. When you arrive, there will be a bottle of champagne waiting for you in your room. All of your drinks on property are free, regardless of whether you're gambling or not, are free regardless of whether you're gambling or not. Even if you're sitting in one of our entertainment venues. You'll pay nothing more for your drinks. Not only that, but for your $396, I will give you $600 of chips to use in my casino.
Speaker 2:So you hear that if you're the type of person that likes to drink and gamble, that's hard to say no to that offer, and the thing that's really interesting about it is it has four deliverables. This is where we're going from a simple offer to a complex offer. But the other thing that I really like about that is Bob Stupak understood who his most profitable clients were. His most profitable clients were people that liked to drink and gamble. As soon as he could get them drinking and in the casino gambling, he was about to make a lot of money. He didn't want people like me staying in his hotel. I don't gamble just not my thing and I do like wine, but I didn't think he was offering the wine that would get me excited for that 396. And so he doesn't want me in his hotel. He wants the people that like to drink and gamble, and out of the.
Speaker 2:I think it's like 15,000 rooms or more in Las Vegas, I probably pick somewhere else. No, it's way more than 15,000 rooms or more in Las Vegas. I'd probably pick somewhere else. No, it's way more than 15,000. Yeah, out of all the hotels in Vegas, I would probably pick something else, and so that's an example of a complex offer that leads to high ticket sale, and we build those types of things usually for B2B service businesses. We're a B2B service business and after about 18 months of fumbling around, stepping on the rake a few times, figured out how to put these things together, and then we put it in a book and they're awesome.
Speaker 1:So I mean that's so interesting and, being an entrepreneur too, I want to dive into this part a little bit. So obviously a first time offer, you know I get it. It's that entry level offer right in general, because I mean even not just from the casino standpoint and to really target a niche or an ideal avatar, essentially for coaching or for any business. What does this do for the sales process, especially in high ticket sales?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say not only high ticket, but I would say commoditized, and most people are in commoditized spaces, and that doesn't mean cheap, it just means there's a lot of people that look like you, and so I do marketing right, and when I get on a sales call with somebody, one of the things I know going into the call is they have a bad marketing experience in their history. Anybody who's ever hired a marketer has a bad marketing experience in their history. And the other thing is there's thousands upon thousands of marketers and so I look the same. We all make basically the same claims, and people have been burned before, so they're hesitant to sign up for a program. And so what this does is these offers. They identify problems they currently have and they offer to fix a few small problems for a smoking good deal. And what ends up happening is you start working with them and they discover how you think it's like a dating process. It's like going out on a coffee date and you go out on it and all of a sudden they're not having to make a big decision, blindly hoping it works out. They're like, hey, I know what it's like to work with this guy. Not only that, he's already helped me solve some problems.
Speaker 2:And it turns out when you solve a problem in somebody's life, it causes the release of oxytocin in the body. Oxytocin is the bonding hormone that bonds baby to mother. And so you come in, you get somebody to buy one of these offers. They're no longer a prospect, they're now a client. They've paid you money. They start viewing you differently. They're not viewing you as a sales guy, they're viewing you as the person that's helping them solve this problem. You solve this problem. It causes the release of oxytocin. You get a little bit of bonding going on. There's about a half dozen psychological levers that are being flipped during this whole process. But you're basically moving along the process and if you're good at what you do and you have the process design right, they get to the point where they say Craig, this has been great, or Devin, this has been great. What's the next step? Well, they're closing themselves. You don't have to sell. You've created the environment where they want to buy.
Speaker 1:So why do you think traditional sales approach pushes people away instead of drawing them in?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I was looking at a sales playbook recently. I was helping somebody with something and I saw their sales playbook. I went and helped them with their sales and I just looked at it and I was like it almost made me nauseous. It's just cheesy. I was like, really, you actually close deals with these questions and they're all the overused sales questions. Well, what's the cost to you if you don't make a change? I'm like you really think they haven't heard that before and as soon as they hear that, they're like oh, I know who you are. You're a sales guy, you want my money and their guard goes up and I just feel like a lot of sales, a lot of sales training is.
Speaker 2:I liken it to like driving the herd of cattle into the canyon. You're driving them into the canyon trying to box them in and you're hoping they don't notice that that's what you're doing while you're driving them into the canyon. But part of that concept and those questions are designed to reduce people's autonomy. Okay, and I found that I enclosed more deals. When I give people more autonomy, not less. When people feel like they're in charge of their own path, I close more deals and the deals are more sticky because they don't feel manipulated. They feel in control. They're setting their direction. I'm just there to help them along the way I mean that's, that is super important.
Speaker 1:I mean that's even with our gym, like you know, that's one of the things that we don't try to do hard closes and don't you know, try to do those mindset tricks where it's, like you know, convincing them off of their current state state and guilt them into doing it, and all that kind of stuff. You ask questions, right, and you continue to ask questions and you let them come to the answer because they know they came to you for a reason, right, and what is that reason? And have them find what the best solution is for them, right, and you just kind of guide them along the way of finding that solution, but again, they're the ones asking or answering the questions that you're asking them. So I think that is so important because, at the end of the day, if someone has buy in, they're going to be a lot more committed to that goal or that process, because they have ownership of the choice of that process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's another assumption that's that's hidden in what you just said. You know I mentioned when I get on the sales call with somebody, I assume they have a bad marketing experience. The other assumption I make is they have a revenue problem, because who gets on a sales call with a marketing guy unless they have a revenue problem? Who walks into a gym to talk about gym membership unless they have a fitness problem or some type of you know some type of goal? You don't have to convince them that they have that problem. They're. They're standing in your gym because they know they have that problem.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's exactly what I tell them to tell the team. You know, it's like you don't go to a car lot not expecting to try to purchase a car or not having a problem that you need to purchase a car, right, Like there's a reason that they're there. Ask the questions, Don't just assume that it's. You know, they've never been to a gym. They might be going to a gym and their problem, their fitness problem, is that this gym doesn't offer the class times they need, or this gym doesn't offer X, right? So you ask those questions to find out what is that fitness problem, right, you know? And so how do you think that you know creating an effective first time offer really creates that environment where people want to buy.
Speaker 2:Well, it does a few things. So one you know I lay this out in the book you should have at least two or three workshops during the delivery of your first time offer, and this is your chance to kind of work together. It's dating right, you know, you go out and you take your date on different things and you discover, hey, we really enjoy spending time together, and so that's one of the psychological levers that we're flipping. There's some cognitive biases that we're tapping into, one of which is called the IKEA effect. Ikea discovered by chance that when people took their box furniture home and assembled it, their perceived value of that furniture was higher than was reality. And so when we're doing these workshops, it's not us telling them what to do, it's us asking questions, where they're coming up with the solutions, they're building out their marketing plan and all of a sudden they have a high sense of ownership and they're sitting there self-prescribing of you know what? It seems like I need to do this, and so they have a higher. They value it more highly. It triggers another cognitive bias called the endowment effect. Because they have a sense of ownership.
Speaker 2:We found that people that own things value the things they own more highly than other people, or that maybe it's even worth Realtors run into that trying to talk people into listing their house at a realistic value. And it triggers another cognitive bias called the sunk cost sunk cost effect. Sometimes you hear the sunk cost fallacy, where people throw good money after bad, but the same bias. If they've been able to make progress towards their goals, they're like, well, hey, I just need to go ahead and make the next investment to keep this going, and so it triggers a bunch of those things. But there's one more thing that happens, and I bet you see this, with people coming into your gym.
Speaker 2:They come into the gym probably with some broken beliefs. They believe some things about getting fit. They're probably wrong, and the hardest job you have to is to say you got this all wrong because you know it's more leading them to that realization that you know whatever it is. You know, well, let's say, I need to be able to bench press. You know 300 pounds? Well, I do Camp Gladiator, we just use these little ham weights and but a lot of reps and, and yeah, that would be an example of a broken belief that's hard to change until people experience it. And so when you're actually working with them during these little workshops, they start realizing things that they didn't know before and that these things will unlock new opportunities for them. Well, when you create that moment, you're now the sole source provider of something they desperately want.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that's gold. So let's dive into the camp gladiator thing. I just put it on the screen. I put it back right now. Do you have a picture of a before and after of 19 months? Explain this a little bit more in depth.
Speaker 2:So that first picture is mid-January 2022. And it's funny, when I got out of the hospital, my wife actually worked really hard to keep me alive. So I discovered, coming out of the hospital, I had a mother again and she was a little protective. And so New Year's morning 2022, we're sitting around the breakfast table and, um and I know that I've got to sell this carefully and I was like I said, karen, I've got something I want to do, I want to tell you about. And she's like okay, so you need to know, you're going to hate this, you're really going to hate this idea. She's's like okay, I'm like Karen, no, no, you're going to hate this idea more than anything else. And what I'm doing? You've heard of price anchoring. I was emotionally anchoring super high and she's like all right, well, what is it? And I said, two weeks from today, I'm going to Camp Gladiator. I'm sitting there in a wheelchair and on oxygen and telling her I'm going to something called Camp Gladiator, and she kind of shook. She pursed her lips, shook her head up and down briefly, and that was the end of the conversation, which I considered success. And, sure enough, two weeks later, that's me at Camp Gladiator on oxygen in a wheelchair but I wasn't able to get an occupational.
Speaker 2:I was doing home health at that point and I couldn't get an occupational therapist out to my part of town and I knew I needed to rebuild some upper body strength and I was like how am I going to do this? I got to do something. So they were offering free classes on Saturdays for Camp Gladiator and I went out offering free classes on Saturdays for Camp Gladiator and I. I went out and fortunately I was blessed to have the perfect trainer for my first time there. She looked at me and she said okay, here's your workout, and she simultaneously ran two workouts, one for me and one for the normal folks and it was amazing.
Speaker 2:And I kept going back on Saturdays and I was really weak. I mean, I had extreme atrophy when I was in the hospital, lost 40 pounds in the hospital, and so I would go on Saturday and that would basically be all I could do for the day. I'd spend the rest of the day staring at the wall and drooling on myself. But over time got better and the picture on the right is my 100th workout at Camp Gladiator. I'm now at around 240 workouts at Camp Gladiator Still not fully back to where I used, to be fully back to where I used to be, but a good way down the road.
Speaker 1:No, that's amazing and I I just commend you for that. You know it's it's not an easy process and I've had clients, you know, not, as you know, in the same story, but similar, you know, when I was personal training and watching it. It's something that is a true inspiration. So I do want to commend you on that and you should be proud of yourself for pushing through it, because it shows you your internal drive and your willpower. Something I do want to ask before I give you the final question is after surviving such a life-changing experience, how did it shift your perception or perspective on all know sales, trusts, relationships, family life in general?
Speaker 2:You know, for Let me start with with marriage. You know I'm like most married people we fight about stupid stuff and it kind of shifted the perspective. I was like, okay, maybe some of that stuff's not worth fighting for ever, and so that's probably the biggest change in terms of work, you know, it really kind of affirmed what I've been doing. You know the um. You know I had a team that was able to run without me. I had freelancers that reached out. I didn't mention this. I had freelancers that reached out to my team and said, hey, we'll do whatever's necessary as long as Craig's in the hospital, and that really kind of affirmed that. I have affirmed that.
Speaker 2:But the thing that was really interesting, you know, when I was in my coma, there was a drastic shift in things. When I woke up from my coma, my trust in the doctors had plummeted. It just fell through the floor. My trust in my wife went through the roof, all while I was asleep. And the reality is I was hearing all of them in my dreams and I realized and this ties back into the first time offers it's like a quote from Maya Angelou People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. And there's something it just kind of reaffirmed my belief that, man, these first time offers are great because you have the opportunity to change how people feel. You have the opportunity to make them feel certain things. You're, you know, for me it's a lot about self-discovery for them to realize, for them to see their problem in a new way for the first time and to feel hopeful that it can be better. Try selling against that. You know that's just powerful beyond belief. And you know the way my wife made me feel.
Speaker 2:You know I didn't, I just straight up didn't trust the doctors. There were things that they wanted to do after I woke up you know this was before I could even speak. I had a trach in at the time and the doctors would want to do something. My answer was no, and so they go to her. Would one do something? My answer was no, and so they go to her. And you know, and I remember one time she was asking me, you know they say hey, the doctors won't do such and such. And I think I mouthed is it safe? And she said yeah, and once I heard her say yes, I was like yeah, and whether it's people in your gym or my clients or anybody that has any type of client, these are the relationships you want to build with these clients, where they trust you at that level, because you know what Life's not always going to be perfect. You're going to make mistakes. When you make the mistakes, they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt because they know that your goals are aligned with their goals.
Speaker 1:I love that, I love that. So I mean, dang, this could even answer this next question, but I have to ask it right, and I will preface this by saying it is not a tombstone, Even though I say that some people still like to give me a, you know, loving father, and that's not what I'm looking for, right? So this is the legacy wall question, right? This is the Craig Andrews legacy wall, and on this legacy wall is one message, short or long, that you've learned from your life's journey that you would like to leave for the up and coming generations.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow.
Speaker 1:Lead with service first. Okay, explain it a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's back to the whole idea of these first-time offers. People get focused on selling. They get focused on their needs. I just sold one of these offers yesterday and their comment was oh my goodness, this is an amazing value. It's leading with serving and I don't care if it's work or if it's personal Serving my wife, serving my clients, serving my community. Lead by serving and when you do that, people will line up behind you.
Speaker 1:I love that. Where can people connect with you and learn what you have going on? So then come to my website, allies4mecom. That's spelled A-L-L-I-E-S, the number four, m-ecom, and they can find me on LinkedIn, craig Andrews Very, very accessible there. So either of those two places are probably the best Dang you. But you know, there's so much, so much powerful things in here from entrepreneurship, but also just from a personal development side, and a realization and a shift on your perspective of life. So make sure you guys share this episode with a friend, you know, help them become better, because you're helping your circle become better. It helps lift you up as well. So, with that being said, craig, I want to take a second again to say thank you for taking the time out of your day to you know. Come and share so much knowledge today. Thank you, devin, it's been great. Outro Music.