Unmasking Greatness
Join Fitness/LifeStyle Expert & Mentor Chris Kakouras talk about maximizing your health, business, mindset, and overall life! Let's get better together as I bring on amazing guest to interview and learn from!
Unmasking Greatness
The Water Treatment Revolution: How Justin Shoemaker Scaled His Business & Fitness
Justin Shoemaker shares his journey from military service and executive protection to becoming a successful entrepreneur in the water treatment industry, highlighting how he scaled a solar company from $600,000 to $25 million in revenue within 11 months.
• Justin discovered his natural talent for sales after leaving the military, making $12,000 in one week selling water treatment systems
• Fear often prevents people from taking entrepreneurial leaps, but staying in comfortable positions can be more detrimental than risking failure
• When choosing between startups and established companies, startups offer greater growth potential and control despite higher risk
• Investing in mentorship accelerates business growth by collapsing the learning curve and providing proven systems
• Quality service justifies premium pricing – Justin's water treatment business thrives by focusing on high-end equipment and exceptional customer care
• Raising prices can actually increase customer satisfaction by enabling better service, equipment, and attention
• Finding quality team members is crucial – Justin went through multiple installers before finding reliable staff
• Business and fitness share similar principles: consistency, discipline, and understanding that results take time
• Strong accountability systems are essential for both personal and professional growth
• The mathematical approach to pricing: multiply conversion rate by lifetime gross profit to determine optimal price points
If you're struggling with taking the entrepreneurial leap, remember Justin's quote: "The sheep spends his whole life in fear of the wolf, but at the end of the day, it's the shepherd that eats them."
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Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Kikoris, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your sign to take back control of your health, mindset and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always find value in the show. Please subscribe and share, as we can all get better together. Let's go. What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Kikoris, and I have a very special guest, justin Shoemaker. Hello, this is really cool because actually I don't want to make this just about the gym in general, but I met Justin literally two weeks ago, a week or so ago, yeah, about two weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we've seen each other working out quite a bit, and then as you do with like gym relationships. You kind of watch from afar with everybody and eventually, when you're doing something at like the front desk, it's like oh, hey, dude, what's up? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that conversation started and then we ended up just chopping it up for for a hot minute and then I found out more about you and what you were doing and I was like, oh, this is, this is a really interesting guy. And then he told me you have a podcast too. Yeah, was it.
Speaker 2:Harmony, harmony of Hustle.
Speaker 1:Yep Harmony of Hustle More business centric.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of just started as a way to document me building the business from nothing. Yeah, because I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs it always. You know we could always use more resources, for sure, and there's not a lot of in my opinion. There's not a lot of content out there where you can watch it from start to finish of you know, from literally nothing to wherever it ends up going. So I wanted to start that. There was a podcast called like the Startup which was similar to that, where he was doing like a tech business. I think he was pretty connected to people like in Y Combinator, and so that was pretty inspiring. So I'm trying to layer that with visuals and do play-by-plays as things happen, but obviously more home service-based for me. But I think you can learn from any business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that was kind of. You know, we talked about that. You saw my studio and you said you had a podcast and so after we talked I looked it up and I was like I was listening to it on the way home and I was like this is really good, your content is actually really good. I mean, I listened to a lot of podcasts which got me into it, which I'm assuming is kind of similar to you, you just realize how much free knowledge is out there that people just don't tap into and you know at the end of the day, like, if you're not taking the things that you're learning, then, yeah, you haven't learned anything, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I mean, alex ramoji says it the best, right?
Speaker 2:I think he has the best phrases for things like this, but he's like, uh, learning is same condition new behavior so if you just listen to something and you do nothing from it, then obviously you didn't learn, you just got entertained. And that clicked for me on a lot of stuff, because I've done that before, where I'll listen to business content and I get like this spiky motivation, or I'll watch like fitness videos and I'm like, oh, I can't wait to go to the gym, but I still got to go do the workout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you still got to do it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, there's so much free information out there. But I think podcasts are really cool because and you're going to connect on a deeper level A lot of times if people actually connect with the content, they get value from the content, then they're going to listen to you, so you're in their ear a lot. That's why Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan, because a lot of people just enjoy that content and you feel really close to them. And podcasts have helped me out a lot because I road warrior all the time with the business, so that's where I'm able to get most of my knowledge and for me it's a great medium to learn For sure. So like, if you're busy you don't have time to read books, you can listen to a podcast over and over and over again and save notes and then actually implement what you learned. So for me it's great.
Speaker 1:And yeah, no, I'm like, I'm the same way, I don't. I don't have time to really sit down and read, so when I'm in the car, it's all listen to just podcast. Yeah, but yeah, so we got Justin on here. Just a little background that I know of is that you were in the military, yep, served in the military and then you helped start up a solar business.
Speaker 2:Yes, Correct yeah.
Speaker 1:And that went from. In one year went from $600,000 to $25 million, yeah, top line, yeah.
Speaker 2:So kind of the peak about how that happened was I was doing executive protection with NCIS out of the Pentagon, okay, so that's what I wanted to do because federal protection is super fun. So explain that. What is that? So you know the people that drive Trump around, like the Secret Service guys. Oh, yeah, it's that, but for whatever branch you're in. So, for example, some of my buddies now they work for like Department of Education, department of Transportation, and basically you protect like the top guy there, like the secretary or whoever, and it's a really fun job because unless something bad happens, of course but you get to go on all these crazy travels. I mean that was my first time ever going on like a G5, because the secretary flies on G5s, so you get into rooms you would never get into unless you're in like the upper echelons of government, which I thought was just super cool. I love to travel, so I got to fly on the government dime and get all the points, and so for me it was just like a really fun job. Got to go see a lot of cool things.
Speaker 2:The job itself wasn't very hard. Again, I've been in security for 11 years, so for me. It's kind of I've been doing it for so long, it's fine Cause I was. I was an anti-terrorism officer before that. So you know, pretty easy for me to do and the perks were just great. So that was my plan and all my buddies were doing that. And you know that job pays anywhere from a hundred to 20, especially in the federal sector. Uh, 120 to like 180 a year, I think, is where you can get to maybe higher than that, and I never heard of that type of money before. But when I got out, code was going on, so no one was hiring. And, happenstance, my buddy was in the water industry and I've always been into fitness and health, so he was like hey man, I know you're waiting to go back to the federal sector, do you want to just come sell water treatment?
Speaker 2:systems for a while and I was like, well, I didn't make money, so I'll I. For a while, and I was like, well, I didn't make money, so I'll, I'll try it out. And at the time it felt like a huge step back because I literally went from in my opinion and again the opinions of probably my family and stuff this really high status job to you're now going into people's homes to sell them water systems and, to make it worse, like the in-home test that we used to do, you had this big briefcase, so I just like looked at myself, like I was like this door to door, like suitcase salesman, like from like the early, like forties or whatever.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh God. And I was like, all right, this, this is a part time thing, I seem to make some money. But I actually got a system myself, changed my life and then I found out just by happenstance that I was naturally good at sales. So my sales training wasn't very elaborate when I went there. So I kind of teach myself like more advanced sales techniques from books and YouTube videos. The first sales book I've read was the Straight Line by Jordan Belfort, great sales book. Anyone that's watched sales content online, if you're in sales, they've all pretty much just repurposed that book. It's kind of like the Bible of sales and I just started learning sales and I fell in love with it. And what changed for me was I was three months in and I had a paycheck for one week of work and it was $12,000. And I was like, oh, what is going?
Speaker 1:on here, people like water.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, this is crazy, you can make this kind of money just talking to people and like giving people value, and the cool thing about sales is sales. And then I did more research and I found out everyone that's been super wealthy was in sales. Gary Vaynerchuk started in sales, grant Cardone started in sales, bronson started in sales, the I can't remember her name, but the CEO of ABC supply she started in sales. A lot of them in door knocking Right. So when I look at this, I was like, oh, sales is actually the vehicle to make wealth. Every business sells something, anything that anyone has in their life. They got from some sort of a sale. So that really switched it for me. And then I started making consistently 30K a month in commissions. I was like, all right, my life has changed. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Give me that suitcase Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:And my buddy he was working at. He's the one, a family friend of mine, who's actually a golf pro, super fitness guy. He was in solar his whole life, okay. And so he got recruited to that company and he said, hey, man, and we would talk all the time and he's like hey, man, you should come to the startup, because I kind of hit my peak at that company. I was at because it was a huge company.
Speaker 2:So lesson for you guys who are trying to grow even if you're the best guy there, if you're in a huge multinational, you're only going to go so far and I wanted more. So he's like hey, there's a startup, it's brand new. They've been in business, I think, about a year and a half. Come down, come down, let's see what we can do. And all I said was like I just want an office and I want my own team and then grew it from there. And then finally it got, uh, promoted to the sales director and then we were doing about, like I said, 600k in total revenue and then, with the same team, just with you know, some more oversight and sales training and scripting and building a culture, we took it to 25 mil uh in 11 months and it's also a team effort.
Speaker 1:It wasn't me but to go back so when you say there's a cap when you were at 30, is that from time you just can't sell anymore due to time, or why is there a cap?
Speaker 2:Well, no, I guess it's probably sell more, but time is a part of it. I was saying career advancement. I wanted to be in management and leading and making decisions, but they already had managers, they had trainers, um. So my next step probably would have been like a training role, but I probably would have been waiting longer to get to that position. I see, and I wanted to move quick. You know, I keep wanting, I wanted to keep growing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the money for me at that point wasn't as important, as you know, cause, especially in the in-home sales world, it was draining. You're driving a ton, especially for the work I was doing. I was working more than anybody. I would drive four hours one way for an appointment just so I could learn. So eventually you get tired of being on the road for five, six hours a day and, honestly, being in people's homes. Yeah. So I wanted to get out of that and luckily, when I built my own business, I have now tailored it so I can do what I love without having to do the stuff I don't like to do. I don't like going in people's homes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you shifted to solar. Do you think the big difference with scalability and, obviously, your income was you had your own team, that you were able to expand more?
Speaker 2:I think it was because it was early. Really, yeah, it was early. It was a startup, roles haven't been defined yet, and so being a top performer, you can kind of show what you can do and then you can create the role that you want to have. And so, obviously, because I was making the owner so much money, I was had leverage to say, hey, this is what I want.
Speaker 1:Okay, here you go, yeah, and that's like with anything, you know, if you're a win, win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, um, and with startups you have more of that control. When you're going to work with an established company, you're not going to have that much control because they've already got everything pretty much dialed in. Yeah, so that's kind of like when you look at what careers you want to go into Do I want to work for a startup or do I want to work for an established business You're going to get way more long-term payoff at a startup but way more risk Like that company ended up going out of business because the owner just did not manage it right. Which one? The solar company? Well, actually they both did. The water company did too, because it was attached to a solar company. Wow, yeah, a bunch of solar companies went out of business, just for I'm not going to go into it.
Speaker 2:A bunch of reasons why, but you know so there's a lot of risk in a startup, for it could go out of business, yeah, but the potential upside is you know you'll probably get equity. If you're there early on, you can be at a higher role, you'll be an executive, because any big company where you look at the executives most not all the time, but most of the time they probably started when it was just starting out, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I actually had a client. That was kind of her thing, because, you know, most people think I need a stable job, I need to build a career and her strategy was completely different and it was crushing for her. She'd go to these startup companies and these startup companies still were pretty big, uh, but she'd get equity in it. So she'd stay there for you know, two, three years, go to another one and she would just keep collecting the equity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and she would just keep collecting the equity. Yeah, and was she flipping? Or she just likes to go in kind of get her equity and then she would just stack it, just keep stacking it, and then she also.
Speaker 1:It seems very stressful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll tell you another.
Speaker 1:Here's a little side business for all you guys that I just didn't know even was out there. Yeah, dog walking, oh Dog, she did dog walking on the side, yeah, and she was pulling in at least eight to 10 G's a month. Jesus, walking dogs, that's wild. Get your steps in, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying I mean that's cool though, cause I think it shows, it goes to show you can make a business out of anything. Yeah, especially stuff that people don example all the time. You know like that's a business.
Speaker 1:Um do you know how much those guys on to on school? There's a company that they teach people this business model to pick up. You know how much money they're pulling in the school community or like the school community. How much? Last I heard they were at 60 grand a month teaching people how to pick up dog poop. Like. If that doesn't open your mind to like what's possible, it's pretty impressive. It's funny.
Speaker 2:You can make money anywhere now and that's what I think getting out of the Navy and sales taught me. You know, I think I was like your traditional person that was groomed to go into the workforce and be like a worker bee Because I was really good at the worker bee stuff force and be like a worker bee because I was really good at the worker bee stuff. But when you go into entrepreneurship and you just see how the world works, like you can make you may not be like a hundred millionaire, but you can make life changing money by just finding the service that people need or do or something you're interested in Like especially now with school, is a great example. Like, if you're passionate about something and you can just consistently put out good content about it, you can make 20, 30k a month recurring revenue. Yeah, you know, working a job you actually enjoy, but there's a lot of fear around that. So I think that's what stops.
Speaker 1:I don't want to like yeah, cause I mean a lot of fear. Does uh? There's risk, I think, even with with you. That was kind of the other thing I was going to ask you because, yeah, you know, you leaving the water going from you know, let's say 30, 30 grand a month solar, was there an initial a little bit of pay drop, knowing that it could be more potentially?
Speaker 2:yeah, I uh. I have historically regretted all my decisions after I made them learning lessons, oh my god, um, but there's like there's actually a quote.
Speaker 2:I'm glad we're going into this. There's a quote I recently read. It actually hit home for me because it it kind of encapsulates what most of my life was and now what it's not, and I don't know who to correct the quote to. I just saw it online but it was crazy and basically it says the sheep spends his whole life in fear of the wolf, but at the end end of the day, it's the shepherd that eats them. And you can analyze that however you want, but to me what it really shows is that most people are afraid to take the leap to something because they're afraid they're going to fail, but at the end of the day, what ends up killing them is just staying in the same spot. For sure, it's the complacency that kills them, and I'd say every bit of fear is justified. But that is your brain just trying to hit a survival mechanism Exactly. And once you actually get into the thing, you realize you're only afraid because you don't know what's going to happen, and everyone that has succeeded had that fear at some point. So if you have that fear, then you are in the same world and sphere as those people you aspire to be, and so I try to keep that frame.
Speaker 2:But every yeah, when I made the switch I literally, when I especially opened up that new office, like I went to a whole new industry I knew nothing about and I think I literally remember this is like a defining moment of just like probably the most pain I'd been in is we launched a new office and I had not made like any money so I was making, maybe going from 20 30k a month to making like 2k a month maybe, like just was stressing, and we had a really good. We finally and I built the team up, I finally had a team of door knockers with me and we were finally seeing some momentum. And one week I got like nine sales in in a week. And so the way solar worked is, on those nine sales, once they get noticed, proceed. You get half the, you get half the payment right then and there, and then you get the rest after install three or four months later. So those nine deals and they're big systems I was probably gonna make um 20k ish that week and I was like, finally, okay money. And I was like this is in a week now. So like, okay, now if I can continue to do this kind of type of stuff. I can. I can get to the point where I'm making a hundred K a month and and and my, so I got.
Speaker 2:I saw the. I saw that and I was like I got a phone call on Thursday that they need to cancel their appointment. Another person needed to cancel their appointment. It got down to it. I only had two sales and then the two sales that I had like okay, they're solid, but I was already beat and kind of just distraught about it.
Speaker 2:And then I get a phone call as I'm driving home and it was the one girl who I thought there's no way she would cancel this, this sale. I was like, hey, justin. So I was like oh, please. And I, literally I was so distraught, like please, tell me, you're not canceling. She's like listen, I'm a real estate agent and we have a baby on the way. It's just I thought about it, we're probably moving, we just can't do it. And I was like, all right, I got it and I just I remember I pulled up to my driveway, I just sat there looking up and just like crying, like I was like what, what the hell?
Speaker 2:And it was like it was the most pit of despair I've ever been in and, to what you're saying, I was like I just left this stable job where I was bringing in $20,000 for what? And I called my mentor at the time like dude, I don't know what I did. I feel like I just made a huge mistake here. And he's like listen, man, this is just the scars you got to get to become the person you want to be and it's sales Like it'll swing back, but your build. If you can push through this, you'll build resiliency to go even further and I was like all right.
Speaker 2:So that next week I went on the doors 15 hours a day just hustling, and then that next month I ended up making 35 grand and then consistently started doing that and then finally got to a point where I was making like 30K a week. Well, every two weeks, excuse me, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It was like the peak and I think the most I ever made in a month was like 100 grand. After that, yeah, but you know, I bounced back and I started making more money than I did at the water company. But, yeah, there was always that risk and that fear and especially when I initially wanted to quit, I was like what the fuck did I do? Yeah, cause I could have gone back. But that's the thing you can always go back.
Speaker 1:That's true, you can always go back. But I think now, like you going through that and I always tell people this my level for stress is not to say you know other people don't have a stressful life, but I have trained my stress level to be high yeah. Exactly like that. You know we'll have times that we're just we're crushing. I'm on a high next couple weeks, months. You're like where will happen?
Speaker 2:Right Broke. You know something's broken.
Speaker 1:I got to fix something and it's and you know, those are the things we just kind of keep digging in the weeds. But like having that emotional stability. Yeah, you know, because you know it's one thing to have emotions but to act on them is going to be a detriment to your business if you have one, you know yeah, honestly, and I think fear puts you in the worst places.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what put me, my business, to the points where we probably I'm luckily we're going to be out of it now. But uh, I brought in partners because I was afraid of things I didn't know and I wanted to like in my my head I thought it made sense, like limit the risk, but those people just took advantage of it and put me in a shit ton of debt, right, and that I know how to claw my way out of.
Speaker 2:So it's like if I was just okay being afraid and figuring it out and being okay going slower at the beginning and saying, oh, I'll probably make some mistakes and that's okay, yeah, I would have avoided these bigger mistakes. Yeah, you know what I mean. So, for sure, I think, I think you're spot on with that. I think you know, being an entrepreneur and we, we talked about this a lot Once you actually are responsible for your own income and everything else that goes with it, there's like this consistent underlying level of just like stress that's always there and at the start like it's crippling and. But now, like you said, you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's almost like a normality, but if we don't have stress, it's almost something. Something is wrong as well. Right, like why is it? It's like the, the storm that's coming, you know like where. Why is it so calm right now? You know? Why is it so sunny? Like things are too good, like no, something's not right when?
Speaker 2:when's the last time you took like a vacation, like and actually got to unplug and like had nothing coming and you're like, oh, I should be relaxed right now, but all the stress is technically gone. Yeah, no, have you done that?
Speaker 1:My wife's going to probably listen to this and be like Chris, I told you you need a vacation. We haven't gone on like a legit vacation in probably three years. You know we've gone, obviously out of the country and stuff, but that was more for like weddings or stuff like that. Yeah, like a legit, like just unplug and try to relax, which is hard for me to do to begin with. Yes, like you know, but yeah, it's been probably like three years. Dude, I'm on this constant, like I'm still in a growth phase. You know we're still. We've been. We started in 2020 through COVID, you know, and that was that was hard for me because, you know, I've talked about this in other episodes, just like my past, but I left kind of a stable job, like you, my father, he had a restaurant. I thought I was taking it over.
Speaker 1:You know steady paycheck, which you know I was getting five grand a month. You know support, a grand a week plus a bonus. You know, yeah, which was enough to pay my bills. You know which was enough to pay my bills. You know, have my house, have my car. You know, had a son that just got born. So I was okay, wasn't thriving or like living my best life, but I had one vacation a year that I could save up for.
Speaker 1:The dangerous middle right. Yeah, yeah, so you know we were there. And then, you know, a lot of different pieces started moving around and I had to make a call which ended up being like the hardest decision of my life to leave there, and I was already doing online coaching as a side hustle. You know, because I was. You know, I was competing, I was already a trainer.
Speaker 1:I went and I went to school and got a bachelor's in exercise science and a minor in psychology and thinking I was going to get like a good job. That's a false hopes, you know. I got out trying to be like a strength and conditioning coach and find other jobs with that degree. The most I could find in South Carolina was like 20, 30 grand a year.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's crazy, I couldn't even pay off my student loan, I was going to say, and just to get the degree itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I ended up as I started just kind of doing this little side hustle. It started snowballing a little bit to the point where I had enough clients to just pay bills and that was kind of like okay, like I think I can do this. So I cut the cord at the restaurant and left there, left everything, and we did like a hybrid. So I picked up in-person training and blended that. Luckily, because of like where I'm at and I was kind of like born in the area, my clientele filled up pretty quick. Like within three months I was filled Like from seven to seven, monday through Friday. I left a two hour gap for me to like train and I would run it and it was great at first because I was like, oh, I'm making money, but then I was getting burned out.
Speaker 1:I'm like dude, this is exhausting. So then I brought on another trainer, who I was like I'm going to give you all my evening clients. I'm going to train in the morning, You're going to take care of the evening. I'll also bring you on online. And at that point, a year later, I hired my first mentor.
Speaker 2:Oh cool.
Speaker 1:So that was kind of I knew there was more to the online space, Right, and there's a lot of good trainers out there, but they don't understand business. Yeah, Like me, I didn't. I didn't understand it. I didn't know, like client acquisition, you know what softwares to use, what apps to use, like you know pricing, churn all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, um, I ended up investing in that which, at the time, uh, it was $14,000 for four months and I didn't have it. Yeah, I had a credit card and, uh, I remember sitting in the back of the gym because I had the sales call and they told me, and I was just like, oh my God. I was like, well, they're a guarantee with this. And he was like Chris, do you guarantee that your clients are going to lose 50 pounds? So we can't guarantee that because, like, if they don't do the work Right, how am I supposed to know he goes? If you do the work, he goes, you will get the results. But you got to put in the time you got to put in the effort, which I respected that answer.
Speaker 1:You know he could have sold me some pipeline dream, you know, but he was real with me and, um, I signed up and in that four months I'd never worked so hard in my life. I don't think I slept much because I was like I got to make this money back, you know, and uh, first month I didn't make no money. Second month no money. Third month a little bit. Fourth month, then we started jumping. I was like okay, cause you know, it's all getting back in systems put in place and learning sales, like I didn't really know how to sell. I was watching do you know, beatrice Cooley? So he is a donor of the fit body bootcamp franchise? Okay, super, super successful dude. But he was putting out YouTube videos on how to sell, do personal training, all this kind of stuff. I'd watch all his stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know, I remember looking up him for a mentorship. At the time he was charging 50K for the year, yeah. So I was like maybe one day, yeah, you know, now it's 100. I was like, all right, my man. But you know, there's value in that. Some people are like dude, I would never pay $100,000 to somebody. I have a close friend. I actually trained him for a national show. He started coaching other coaches' businesses. He got his business to right over a million, so right over a million. I saw him at a seminar that one of my mentors was throwing on and I was like, oh, dude, are you in this program too? He's like no, dude. He's like I actually just signed up with Bedros Nice. I was like, didn't he charge $100K and he goes, yeah. And then he told me about his business. I was like, dude, let me know, I'm going to know. Like, is it worth?
Speaker 2:it. What's the?
Speaker 1:deal. In four months they tripled his income. Yeah, Four months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the investment no one wants to make is an investment in themselves, and it's the only thing that scales without cap. Yeah, because the only thing that limits your growth is knowledge, if you think about it. So and it's the same thing with business People were gawking when Alex Ramosi did his book launch. Like, oh, $6,000 for these playbooks. I've gone through three playbooks and I've already increased the LTV of my business. It's like invest in yourself, as long as you are the type of person that will take it and learn it and implement. Go into your seminar. It makes so much more sense because you fill the gaps of your knowledge base and speed up because the playbook's already been made. They already know what success looks like, so now all you have to do is model that and then you can be successful.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a lot of people just aren't willing to invest in themselves. Because it's like one of the few investments where immediate return, where, like if you invest in Tesla, you can watch the stock market and see the charts go up and down like, oh, I'm making money today or not. But with skill sets they compound. And they compound not by a factor like two X or three X, but 10 X, 20 X, because once you learn a skill you're already gonna get two X or three X better. But then you get better at that skill and then you pair that with your other skills and now you get this incredible return on that money.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so, yeah, I've uh, I I've changed my thinking on that a lot too, because I used to to balk at like, oh, why would someone spend 100 grand? But then it's like, well, one, what has that person done in their life to be able to spend 100 grand? Yeah, right. So number one how can I model that? Because they can spend 100 grand on it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to assume they probably have the means to spend the a hundred K, so I would like to get to that point, yeah. And then number two is like, okay, well, if there's, let's say, assuming they're an intelligent person, why would they spend that type of money? Well, they must want to learn a skill. They don't already have to get somewhere further along. And I think anyone I've talked to in business that has at least again do due diligence and spent that money with a mentor that was actually legit, not just selling snake oil stuff. They've always seen a return on that, and even bad ones. I've spent money on courses that, objectively, weren't great, but I still found stuff that I was like, oh, I can take that and use that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know if I told you that, because I was going to say that there's always a little bit of risk, right? You know, I've been with three different mentors now. The first one amazing, the second one was great. They offered different things.
Speaker 1:So, I gained different knowledges from different perspectives. The third one I'm not going investment that I've made, because it was $25K for six months and it wasn't very good and I got in and I was like, okay, this is good, this is good, and then it just wasn't. I'm doing everything, was it the?
Speaker 2:knowledge that wasn't good, or the stuff you already knew, I think it was part of that.
Speaker 1:I think part of it was because, being in high-level mentorships prior, my back ends are set up, everything's set up, and my purpose of going in there was solely lead gen Gotcha. You know, that was kind of like the only reason that I went in there. And they're like oh we have, you know, these done for you ads and you know we'll help you plug and play stuff and and that's not the case. It's not as simple, and this is for anybody that's in the business. You cannot just plug and play other people's content. You know you have to speak specific, especially when you're paying advertisement. You can't be broad. You have to be very specific for who you're trying to target and you've got to be creative as well, so there's so much more in depth about it.
Speaker 1:But anyways, yeah, we kind of had I don't want to say necessarily fallout, but we had some words and you know there's nothing for me to do. You know I signed up, you know I did it. I'll take what I can from it and then you know we part ways. What do you think was?
Speaker 2:the biggest thing you learned from the ones that did work compared to those that didn't work. That actually helped you scale your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the first. So my first mentor was Tanner Chittister.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know him. Yeah, I see him all the time, yeah.
Speaker 1:So he was my first real mentor and I stayed with him for a little bit over a year, okay and he helped me with everything, everything from like back-end systems to how to have a workflow, what app to use which we've shifted over time, right. But all that back-end, like business stuff was just all new to me, right? So I'm just soaking it in. He taught me high ticket sales, because at the time Tanner has been still to this day, I want to say, one of his brothers, he's over the sales department. And then Benson Chidester he's actually worked for acquisitioncom now. Oh, really Doing what Do you know? Oh, I'd have to look.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool. Of course they're gobbling up all the talent, yeah, yeah. So we kind of like we'll message each other here and there.
Speaker 1:I'd love to see if he would get on a podcast with me too, because he's a wealth of knowledge but he's super cool, super humble dude, but anyways, yeah, they've really kind of just helped me able to scale and just that backend stuff. And then it basically and again, this is not anything bad, but as he was growing his business too, they started opening up departments.
Speaker 1:So now we have a sales department, and so this is where it kind of took me back, because and it's you know, again nothing to knock, because, honestly, like I have nothing good words to say about them. They opened a sale department and they're like we'll run your ads for you. You know, we're going to put it together, we'll run it, we'll track it, we'll show you everything, We'll give you the scripts. You know, 3k a month.
Speaker 1:And then it was like an add on to the yeah, and then, on top of your ad, spend right, which they wanted you to spend anywhere two to three grand a month on ads. Yeah, so you're talking about five, six grand a month and I signed up for three months and didn't sell one thing. Yeah, talk about a hit and I was like yo turn this shit off.
Speaker 2:We're done and these are meta ads yeah and um yeah lesson guys, I have been burned on. Meta is a crazy platform to advertise on because you can like, if you can get a winner, it's great, but you get so much like bullshit in. You have to have a good enough funnel to really pre-qual people that actually you speak to. Because I don't know if you had this situation, but I've when I just ran and I don't have any met ads running now, but when I was, I remember I went through an agency it's kind of similar and the I was getting a ton of leads in I think think it was like I was getting like a hundred leads a week and it was like the most garbage conversation.
Speaker 2:I was like. I was like, guys, what are you doing? You're sending me into a person that's in a crack house right now. What, what's?
Speaker 1:going on. I was either it was, it was trash, trash people I was talking to, or ghost town, like tons of people. You know we do triage calls. I people you know we do triage calls. I didn't sign up for anything. Is this your name? Is this your number? Is this your email? Oh, you know, like, come on. So yeah, it's just, it was just bad. So we tried a couple different things, but I think they were. There was some miscommunication within the department as well.
Speaker 1:They're like well, you know, let's, let us do one month free for you, and I was just like dude, I'm good, Like we're, let's just cut the rope at this point. But I will say from a systematic standpoint and they probably fixed that by now- I guarantee they have, but just in the beginning phase.
Speaker 1:So I was looking for something else. I was like ads burn me, I lost a ton of money, let's shoot more organic. So then I found a guy, jason Phillips, who has NCI massive company as well, and his strategy, I mean. He basically said if you're not pumping out you know close to like 60, 70, 80 grand a month, like why are you messing with ads, which is a pretty like heavy concept.
Speaker 2:Now I will say he has shifted that since then. That's an interesting perspective, yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, because with Tanner, you know, we hit 10K consistent, then we got up to 50. Yeah, and it kind of like, you know, a little bit of a wave at that point in time. Yeah, I think the ads it all comes down to. I need new eyeballs, right, right, well, switched over to Jason. Y'all getting the nitty gritty on these people. I never talk about this. I love it. So they had their three components were what they call like fast cash frameworks, okay, okay, and one of them is actually in alex's new book.
Speaker 2:I read it right. Yeah, I used. I, by the way, I used one of those. If we go into it to uh pull, I think right now 15k ford to help pay off some of that debt we were talking about yeah, so there you go. So that was super nice, but yeah keep going, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So he ended up um, they had Fast Cash Flameworks. One was the scholarships, which is basically, I think, what Alex talks about in his book Okay Challenges and then webinars, these are all like legion systems, right.
Speaker 1:So I was like, okay, so as far as systems go, honestly like, in my opinion, tanner systems were better back end Got it, business systems, but Legion, yeah, and even like CRM systems and all of that organization, just a little more advanced. And again, their processes were just different. The way that they track, because they did track heavy, it was just different, right, but I kept my systems because I like them, but anyways, so I sign up for them. And the first one we're going to run is the scholarship play, which is exactly what Alex is talking about in his book.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Is that the 12-week challenge?
Speaker 1:No, it's a challenge play, no, so basically, it's a you're giving something away for free, a service for free.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right, and you can sign up for the scholarship. And the people that don't get the scholarship you call them back and say, hey, sorry, you didn't get the scholarship, but hey, we have this, we can give you a discount, or whatever. Yeah, got it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we ran that and dude, insane dude Worked out well, hell yeah yeah. We had probably 150 applications telling us why they wanted to work with me, which is the key piece Wow. Yeah, why do you want to work with me?
Speaker 2:Right, Because it's not just like give me your info.
Speaker 1:Why do you want to work with us? And we, basically and I did, I went through all of them and we chose. I mean, the whole system is fair, you know what I mean? It's not rigged, by no means, but we chose and we gave that person you know, for us it was free coaching for four months, right, something of real value, yeah. And then, basically, everybody else we followed up with and said, hey, listen, I know you didn't get it. I really liked, you know what you had to say. You were close, right, and we tell them what they said. So we were not bullshitting, Be actual, honest about it. Yeah, yeah, you want to be able to help you. So if you're open to the conversation, let's jump on a call and we have something different to offer you guys. We signed up. Probably I think it was close to 30 new clients in that month. What was the price point on those At the time? We were doing, I think, what were we doing back then? I mean, I think back then too, it was three grand for six months.
Speaker 2:It's not bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so with all the new signups, re-signs from current clients, and then you get them in a continuity after that too. Continuity, I mean total sales. That month we hit 104, which is insane for coaching. You know what I mean, wow that's great. Now let me bring everybody back to reality. Yeah, we call that a unicorn month, got it? We have never hit that again, gotcha.
Speaker 2:Since that day, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you why. And I didn't understand at the time, because with this organic play it works really good. I dried out my funnel. I dried out my funnel for the next couple of months. So it was very like here and there, sporadic Um, and then I was like, dude, I need to run another play. We did it the following year. It did half as good and I'm like yo what's up with this? So, as I started thinking or reflecting, I'm running the same play to the same people, right you?
Speaker 2:know what I mean. That makes sense, yeah, so unless you're having new flow of leads and organic to be tough right, so you have to build your audience consistently, then, too right, it's not going to work as good.
Speaker 1:So you know again. These are the things that I've learned. You know throughout the time.
Speaker 2:So do you think you know, just kind of to dig deep, then do you think it'd be better, or another play is like okay, well, maybe say that work, focus on just building your organic audience to as big as possible before you monetize it 100%. Probably be for more again if you have to do what you have to do. But longevity wise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe no 100%. You have to. I mean, you always should be like working again. This is for our business specifically. You always got to be working on content. You always got to be doing research. Recently, again, it's almost like a whole nother job to create content, do research. What's working, what's the hook?
Speaker 1:how to clip it what's engaging? It's just constant, constant testing. But you have to do that and then part of that actually we just signed. I don't know, have you ever heard of a software called Notion Notion Uh-uh? There's a couple of different out there. It just helps organize tasks Notion Notion, uh-uh.
Speaker 2:There's a couple different out there.
Speaker 1:It just helps organize tasks.
Speaker 2:Notion or Notion Notion Okay, I know there's one. There's an AI one called Notion yes, that like syncs to your Google and you have your own little email and it'll AI if a task is automatically move it around. Yeah, yeah, something like that, it's similar to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we use that specifically for our content, so I have it to where like we basically created this whole pipeline and you know there's our ideal system. Then we move it to scripting, to filming, to, you know, posting, and then we'll review it and see how it does. So it just helps me kind of stay a little more organized in that sense, you almost have to become like a media company.
Speaker 2:I feel like these days, like, no matter what business you're in, I guess, depending on what you want to do, right, like in the water space, that's the one thing that we're trying to do. A little different is no water company really has that figured out. It's the same, like if you go and look up water treatment ads, it's the same. Ugc-created offers. The same content. Like I'm the only company now that has a super high ticket offer that I'm offering.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, which, to your credit, I think, puts you in your own realm for sure, because now people, like when you said, like the play for the scholarship, why do you want to work with us? Yeah, it's like if you have a super high ticket offer, you can offer people it's like well, okay, they're different, yeah, so I think that's that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it's tough, like the side is tough, and one of the biggest things I want to save money for is next year is actually build out a content team, because I can say right now, I'm, you know, my skill set on the recording, the lighting. It's not that great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, you have to see, like, how much time am I going to invest trying to learn these skills, or if I can build the company up enough to where I can just pay for someone to keep me on track.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll say this I haven't looked. I know you post some stuff on YouTube. I didn't see that, but I did go to your website. Yeah, whoever did that video looked good. So if you did that, yeah, I did that one. Your lighting is. I think the lighting is good.
Speaker 2:So if you recreate, that Camera and editing commitment, you know what I mean. Like, oh, yeah, it's, I can make it good enough, but there's, there's ads I want to run that. I know I just don't have the skill set for, or the equipment for, like talking head stuff. You know it's pretty easy, yeah, so that stuff is fine, but that let's be real like the talking head stuff is great for like the business content for what I want to do, like vsls and like the actual or operations got that unlocked. But we're talking about content and getting eyeballs.
Speaker 2:That's a whole different skill set, have you seen, because you have to create something new.
Speaker 2:You have to create something that isn't just a carbon copy of other people's content, and there's so much good content out there now it's almost kind of hard to be unique, and so that's why I really want to try to focus on just telling stuff that I've done and try to find those little nuggets and gems of what can help people.
Speaker 2:And I think for me, until I can get a bigger team that can help me create content ideas that maybe would be better the documentation process, I think, is the best thing, because I can just document the journey and say this is what's happening. This is what's working and no one can really refute that. And that also just creates my own unique path and then I can. Also makes it easier because I can repurpose things. Like again, I'm going to show Hermosi like crazy because his stuff has just been so applicable to my business recently, where it's like I can say on my episodes and Pox say, hey, this is what was in this playbook, this is what I learned from it, this, these are the results, and that creates its own new type of content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of info in there. I've seen some people ads They'll like sign up for my thing and I'll give you a free copy of this book. Yeah, you know, because I collected 200 books to give away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still have 190 of them.
Speaker 1:So if people want a book, I got books, so let's kind of shift gears. So you was in a water company then you went to solar. Then you went back to now starting your own water company. So what made you shift from you know, obviously scaling to 25 mil in a solar company, to like you know what I think. One why did you want to do something yourself versus going into just like another sales position somewhere else? Yeah, that's way more established.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the easy answer is the owners in the company kept fucking up the companies.
Speaker 2:Fair enough, like I had been working my ass off in these businesses and the owners kept fucking it up and they wouldn't listen to us. Like, especially the solar company, we had a really good team I'm talking a really good team and all we needed was for the owner to get out of the way and let the team just do everything and just say, hey, we need to pay this and pay this and pay this. Now. He probably wouldn't have paid it, but that didn't happen and so the companies ended up unraveling. So I was in this nexus point where I had made the most amount of money I've ever had. So I had a nest egg now and the good thing about that solar company is I had actually me and the core leadership there were basically running it. Okay, because the owner was always off doing whatever. So I got to actually, well, I didn't have as much experience I thought I had, but in my at the time I was like, okay, I've been semi running this business, um, I feel, and I know sales really well, like I know I can sell no matter what. So, no matter what I know I can sell, so I'm good there. I don't know operations that well, which is why I tried to hire on the guy. That wasn't the best decision, yeah, but I was just looking and I was like I had just turned 30 or I was just turning 30 and I was like, all right, I got all this money. We have the house that we can sell up in maryland and I was talking to my wife about it. I was like, well, listen, I I can either go work for another company and I continue to probably make some good money, but I'll probably still have to work hard to make the money I want to make. You don't just make 20 30k a month without working hard. It's still a lot of effort. Yeah, and I was like, well, if I do, I'm just going to continue to make these other businesses a ton of money and I'm not going to see the long-term benefits of that. And if I don't do it now, then when you know now it felt like the perfect time of like we have money saved, we can sell the house to get even more money saved.
Speaker 2:I'm passionate about water over solar. I was like, if I'm going to start a bit and I know there's a market for it, so you know, I knew product market fit would be there. I knew Virginia wasn't like the biggest market for it at the time. But there was a market. So I was like, okay, if I don't start a business now, I never will.
Speaker 2:And I'm always going to regret not knowing, because at the time I was like I'm so sick of these owners just fucking the stuff up, like not caring about their customers. Like I know I can out care everybody and I know I'm going to work super hard to make sure my business is successful and I will go above and beyond for my clients if things go wrong or when things go well. So to me it was just like if I don't do it I'm going to hate myself forever for not going for it and I just played it out. I said if if it fails, I'll just go back to sales. If it fails I'll go back to sales. I'll be a little embarrassed.
Speaker 2:But on the upside, if this thing succeeds over the next five to ten years, I could potentially build something that gives me wealth forever and I can actually dictate how I want things run and I can build a company I actually want to work in. So that was it. It was just a bunch of I don't think I had, and maybe some people can relate to this. I don't think I had like the entrepreneurial bug. You know I didn't. You know, I went to the military for a reason I wanted security.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to serve my country.
Speaker 2:But like I didn't have money to go to college and I wasn't the best student, so I didn't have, like this, I'm going to go be this entrepreneur and have these like genius ideas of, of, you know, changing the world. It it just came out of desperation, like I was in so much pain of I just can't work for anybody anymore. It's just, I've seen, I've proven to myself what I can do in the sales environment, which is somewhat like a business. That's why, if you want to get in a business, I think they should go work as like a 1099 where you still have to eat what you kill. And so I gave him the confidence that I was like, okay, I can survive on my own, I know I won't starve. So that was just kind of the decision.
Speaker 2:I was in too much pain to go the other way. I was like I have to do something on my own, yeah, and I just I'm. I'm really in love with water treatment. So I was like this is gonna be the best, the best avenue for me to go. Yeah, um, and I knew customer satisfaction and water treatment super easy to do because, unlike solar, which takes forever or other industries, or even fitness where, like you know, you gotta like work with these clients for a long time and they may not get the results and then blame you. Like with water, I put the system in. You get results in four hours. Flush your water out, you feel the difference immediately. So really easy for me to look good, as long as my installers don't mess up yeah, so as far as the quality and obviously I invest in really good units.
Speaker 2:I'm not buying the cheap stuff. These are very expensive units so I put them in. They're happy. There's reason we have over 155 star reviews over our locations because as long as you don't mess up the installation, it's really hard to piss these customers off. And as long as and sometimes things go wrong like there might be a manufacturer defect or you know things happen yeah, as long as you address it and fix it and show that you're showing up. Yeah, I've learned. Most customers are pretty understanding up to a point. But if you are as mad about a situation that they are and you respond to their request quickly and you don't just try to like shift blame, customers generally won't leave you bad reviews and they'll generally work with you because they understand it's a business and they understand we're a small business. So I think that gives a little bit of grace.
Speaker 2:I tell them look, we're a small veteran owned business and they understand we're a small business, so I think that gives a little bit of grace. I tell them listen, we're a small veteran business. We're great at a lot of things. Some things are going to be a little bit slower at and I just think that's a long-winded answer. But yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's a good answer.
Speaker 1:I think customer experience is massive. Up until literally two months ago, since we've been online, we didn't mess with reviews like that. Tons of testimonials, tens of transformation pictures that's what really kind of helped us and word of mouth, so the better the experience I could get on top of the results communication. That's how we've been getting clients for the most part no ads, no paid spend. The majority is just referral system. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:So now, coming here, we're kind of planning on making a couple different shifts, cause I wasn't going to tap into the in-person, but I have another coach. I think we're going to bring him here and let him kind of run that. So I was like you know what, let's, let's get a business Google profile. I didn't have one, I didn't think I needed one, and so I just started and this is funny I had no reviews. Obviously, I just started this thing and, uh, in two weeks we had a hundred five-star reviews. And you know why I have a hundred five-star reviews. Obviously, I have a lot of people that I've worked with in the past too. But, um, call them yeah, text them yeah, and and a lot of them. Yeah, chris, dude, I'll do it. I'll do it right away. Give me a. Give me a. Give me later today, I'll get it done. They wouldn't do it, guess what? Text them the next day. Hey man, I just want to make sure. Like, are you so cool with doing a review?
Speaker 1:Dude, I totally forgot right now the follow-up is so important. People don't understand the follow-up, and this is why, if you have a business, you need to create some sort of pipeline of a follow-up system. Yes, because. So just that one little text, oh yeah, and that's how we were able to rack them up.
Speaker 2:And most CRMs. You can automate that now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you can literally automate it and it'll do it for you, and then you can just do your personalized ones after a certain cadence.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So for us we'll do automated follow-ups for four days and then on day seven I follow up.
Speaker 1:Oh gotcha, yeah, you know, yeah, you know. Yeah, it's important, dude. I mean with mine, I'm not going to lie. I went the extra mile for these because I really wanted to rack it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, voice note. Ooh, that's good, a voice note of people with their name, you know.
Speaker 1:so it's not like AI generated, it's a real personal touch.
Speaker 2:That's key and I think that's super smart because I think, especially now, with AI becoming so prevalent and everything that is probably going to new meta of like how you get people to convert is how personalized can you be like? And I think we'll even see a and we've been talking about this with my team for next year is sending little gift boxes and like hand hand, like real estate agents do, the handwritten thank you cards. I think that's going to be like our next extra mile I wanted to create. I'm really inspired by first form when I uh, when I purchased my first order First Form, they sent me this little welcome box and it looked so good and so I want to start doing that for my.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I don't have the money to do it right now, but that is going to be something big that we're going to try to implement. It's just like a welcome box for them that just has like little goodies. It's like a nice that really did like. I saw that and I'm like oh, this is cool. Yes, and the people that first formed they'll write stuff Like when I ordered different products like oh dude, I see you got this flavor. This is my favorite new flavor.
Speaker 2:So, like you see, that type of stuff and especially now, it's like that's that hits different. So I'm trying to implement more of that in my business. Especially now that we went fully virtual, it's going to be even more important to have that interaction with customers. And, yeah, the follow-up is huge and to your point too for leads and getting sales.
Speaker 2:One shift that I found because I was an in-home sales guy, I always was like super big on like my sales skills to close people that was like I'm the king shit of sales, I can do these word tracks and I can use these different tonalities. Like I went through like the psychology of sales. So when I went to business I kind of thought the same way. But what I realized and this is just a new shift that I've, that I've had that has helped me make more sales Now is customers don't actually care. Like that's not as important. Like if you have proof and the testimonials and video testimonials which I'm trying to get more now of that's all you really need. The customer is like they don't need all the fancy sales techniques. Like if you have great proof and testimonials and a good product and you present it in a good way, then you don't really need to do the whole aggressive selling. You can literally say all right, a or B.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, let's go. They're almost already bought in, you know? Yeah, yeah, they're almost already bought in. You know, you just got to basically just open the door and close it for them, versus like kick it open and slam it behind them, you know.
Speaker 1:But I think Alex Ramosi was saying that too. And you know me getting into sales too, especially starting a business, yeah, a lot of people knew who I was. So my close rate was like 80%. Yeah, like we were closing pretty much everybody, you know, which is high, feels great For ours. So but he's like you don't know how good of a salesperson you are until it's a cold lead, like they don't know who you are. He's like you don't train sales, for them saying yes, yeah, you, you train for them saying no, like what? How, how do you follow up with that, you know? And so Object Rejection handling yeah, and that was an interesting concept. I was like, huh, no wonder mine was really good, because they've been looking at my transformation and testimony.
Speaker 1:But yeah, in the coaching space, the nurture time has extended significantly. I think, and this is my opinion too this is why school was developed. This is why a lot of these free groups have been developed, because so many of these high-ticket coaches. They're signing people up, but then people are getting burned. They're like this is not what I signed up for, this is not the results I'm getting for, and we know it's just like dating somebody right. It doesn't always go good the first time, right, you know you find somebody else, you know what to look for, but that happens over and over again. People are very hesitant and a little more cautious before they just jump into something.
Speaker 1:So if you can get somebody into a free group, where you're helping them with some like lower tier problems get them to a point they're like oh man, I'm getting all this for free. What if I actually paid this person or got one with me? So it used to be back. You know, when I started, you know three months was kind of like a nurture time that you should be able to close people, just follow-ups, et cetera. It's like six to 12 months now, yeah, and so that's where you got to play the long game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you guys have a pretty, I'd say, a saturated but unsaturated market right, there's a ton of people that do what you guys do, but it's a massive market cap to go for because everyone, for the most part, wants to get healthy or they go through seasons where they want to get healthy, right, get the body they want, and I think it's like one of those things where, like you're, if you are really good at what you do, especially in the service space, like you'll stand out amongst the rest. Because I've. It's like, yeah, I've had so many bad coaches the same way, where I've been in programs that didn't work, where I've done everything. And, um, you know, sean, credit to him local trainer here, sean france, sean fr.
Speaker 2:France Trayden, really good guy, spent some of the best, the actual and again all natural with TRT and best transformation I've had out of any coach. But he also, you know he's a little bit more aggressive on calling you out on stuff and you know, just yeah, he'll see stuff. Like, hey, you know, just yeah, he'll see stuff. I hate it.
Speaker 1:Like, stop being a pussy or like we'll do that and.
Speaker 2:I'll pay for the in-person training, which I think helps a lot and like actually learning how to work out the right way. For me has been super helpful, but not I think you're spot on with the school stuff and we've been trying to look at a way to do that. For us, it's a little much about water treatment. You have to educate and right now our client base are people who maybe will get into school community but they're not spending a lot of time learning Like a lot of time it is. We have this pain, this issue we want fixed. Help us fix it. I think the social media side will be part of that, but especially for, like, the coaching space, I think it's if you can create a big funnel of free content, build that trust and absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for us. Because it is so large, you have to niche down Right. There was a girl in our first mentorship group. She only works with vegans that are going through menopause Women. Wow, that's it Super niche. We want to talk about narrowing it down. How much does she do a month? I don't know what she's doing now, but I do remember, because we used to talk about the ads thing a lot.
Speaker 1:She's like I'll help you, kind of show you. That is the cool thing I will say about getting in the right rooms or being in mentorship groups. Yeah, you have your mentor, but you meet some really, really good people that you just want to see each other win, yeah. So we got on a couple of zoom calls and she would show me. But she was like because he goes this, this ad stuff.
Speaker 1:yeah, you want it to be good, but it's testing she literally had some sort of reel that she was running ads to. It didn't perform, she turned it off. All she did was like change like the headline and the captions and she did it on the K month Same video. Wow, exact same video. Just changed the words, the captions and, like that's crazy, it just you know, just cranked and you know it'll.
Speaker 1:And she said it ran great. I mean, overwhelmingly great, is what she said. She was like I wasn't ready for it, wow and. But she handled it and she ended up. I think you know usually a lot of those ads, man. They'll run for a couple months and then you got to get new creatives or whatever. But a little hack. I don't know if you ever do this. If you go on Meta there's it's called Ads Library.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have gone through there, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you can find people in your niche. There's a little hack for you guys and if you see, you can't see exactly. You know their target, demographics and stuff like that. Right, but what you can look at is the ad, the copy Yep, and if it's been running for over 30 days Yep, then it's probably doing pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've tried that. Unfortunately, what I've noticed is the ads are all the same and every water company, all my competitors, are in the exact same ad. Yeah, and so I'm looking at it like, okay, I'll probably run the same ad and get the same type of people in, but then what ends up happening is they start price shopping and then I'm getting the same people that are going for that same ad. And so, like I said, with the water treatment, I think I'm can crack that code on the marketing and try to create a new avenue for it, and I'm not trying to niche up to more higher end stuff. I think that is going to be the new wave.
Speaker 2:If I can again, we'll see I could be completely wrong, but I think that's going to be the way, cause I think right now people who sell water treatment, they sell it as a commodity and they feel like it's a commodity. I've talked to a ton of dealers who will price like they will price shop like crazy and what's changed my business? Actually? And this was hard for me to do, but we had a client who was emailing us back and forth and he's like listen, man, your systems I've been doing all this research, blah, blah, blah your system is $900 less. He's like I want to support a veteran-owned business. I just he's like I just need you to beat that price and I can go with you. And he's like I was like, well, do you have? And I basically emailed back. I was like, well then, I guess we, if we're not doing business, I was like that's not supporting me.
Speaker 2:I was like I was like yeah, well, number one I have learned, especially in any home service industry. But, like the people that want to negotiate price down, you lose your money with them, no matter what. And then you lose respect on the on on your equipment, and then, morally, all my clients have paid that plus more for better systems. So it's like what would I say to a client that spent seven grand with me and then they find out like someone else got it for two thousand dollars less. Let's say morally, that's not good, that compresses my margins like crazy, and that guy that complained is going to be complaining about the entire thing forever. And so then I have to keep going back to their house and comp things, and so it's like I've just learned that's not the right way to go, especially if I provide them clear value.
Speaker 2:And what I told them and I even said like listen, I'm not gonna drop the price, I said, but what I can do and this is how I knew and this is a good litmus test, especially if you guys have someone that drops price is you don't drop price, you change terms. And I told him. I said, okay, I will, I'm not dropping the price of the system. It's a great thing. But I said I'll let you choose some of these features. Let me know which one you don't want. I said we can get rid of the lifetime warranty. I can send one of my junior techs out there, so he's not going to have been in the field very long, I'll save you on labor. And I think I took like hey, I won't give you the RO system and I'll save you 500 bucks or whatever. And then he just emailed back and was like no, I just want that price. And I was like, well, I guess we're not in business.
Speaker 1:Because it's not the same.
Speaker 2:And I have a price match on my units for that reason. Where it's, if you find apples to apples of my units and they're cheaper, then I'll match price Because I truly believe I have the best equipment on the market. Now. It's not the cheapest but it's the best. And so I let people shop me for 90 days once I get my units, and I'll refund you if you find the same but you're not going to.
Speaker 2:I've done the research, I know what I'm offering. So when people come back, they're like, oh, I want the cheap. They're like well, I don't even want to work with you anyway, because all my clients now, I made this mistake early on in the beginning because I needed money, but now I. But now like I get high end clients who pay what my prices are and I can actually serve them better. Yeah, and I think that's one thing that business owners I mean make. I know they make this mistake, cause I was making this mistake.
Speaker 2:Is you want you kind of like for your ego, want to say, oh, I have all these clients, but I have less client. I sell less deals a month now at a higher price point. I make more money on it, which, by the way, I learned this one that hermosy books. If you want to go through this, if you want to change your pricing, I there's a mathematical equation you can use. It's bonkers. It blew my mind when I learned it. And my customers are worth more now. I don't have to work as many people. So now my operational drag has gone down, which is fantastic, and I make more money, so it's like it's a win-win-win, yeah, and so I kind of want to scale that more and all my customers are more happy because I'm able to also give them a better service, because they're paying for more, right, and I don't think what customers realize and what I try to tell my owners is there is a sea of dead, dead companies, especially in water treatment, I'm sure, in any industry, yeah, and those companies are all these like smaller companies that just would continue to try to match price, beat price and go as low as possible. But you can only go so low before you lose all your margin and then you go out of business.
Speaker 2:And for me, I want to beat everybody. So for me, I want to beat everybody. So for me, I'm going the opposite direction. I'm going to I have a super high ticket offer now that maybe three people will take a year, maybe more, who knows. But if three people take that offer, I will be able to outspend every single water competitor I have and I will be able to scale to the moon. Yeah, and then those people that get that will get. I mean, it's like I literally said what's the most insane thing I can offer somebody so much. So, realistically, only 10% of my client base will be able to get it.
Speaker 1:Because operationally it'd be too much to handle. You roll out a red carpet to their door like walking in.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, Essentially yeah, it's crazy Like, literally it's the most. We cover everything for you forever. Yeah, no, it's crazy Like literally, it's the most.
Speaker 1:we cover everything for you forever. Yeah, it's insane. You get what you pay for. I've learned this through many other ways of just trying to. Again, everybody wants to save money. I get it. I want to save money too. Last year we built a detached garage at my house, right, and I was talking to different people. I was like I don't know how to do this kind of stuff. You know, I have a friend, he does concrete, so I had someone that could extend my driveway, put the you know the slat, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:And my neighbor, you know, and he apologizes to me every single day now, but he's like I got this guy. I've seen his work. Oh no, he does well, you, you know, he does these refabs on these houses on the lake, you know. So I'm like okay, cool, let's bring him in. This dude's a little sketch, you know when you're mad at me.
Speaker 2:He's a little sketchy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know kind of got some missing teeth and like you know, oh good, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know kind of work.
Speaker 1:Anyways, he's like, yeah, yeah, we start neighbor's good, I trust him. So we start talking and I'm like, how much is this thing going to run me? This is what I'm looking for. This is the size, nothing crazy, I just you know, this is it Probably run you about all in all, and I'm going to overshoot 20 grand. I'm like, all right, cool, let's do it. So he starts working and, you know, for the first couple of weeks he's there every day, every day. And then I started seeing him being there every day and nothing else was getting done except, you know, four energy drinks within a six hour period Great, awesome. And then he's not coming a couple of times. Long story short, this thing dragged out for about four-ish five months, and not only did he not finish the job, I called him one one day. I'm like dude, what are you doing? And he flipped out on me. He was like you know, I finish it yourself. So, jesus, at least, like you know, the walls were up, the roof was on lord.
Speaker 2:But like did you pay him the 20k at that point? Like yeah all down.
Speaker 1:I gave him uh, partial on the front end, and then you know, again, this is what happens when you mess with uh, you know, quote unquote crackheads, you know what I mean. Like, hey, uh, chris man, just give me a little bit more, you know to hold me over till next week. And you know I'm like, okay, cool, I'll give him a little bit, a little bit. And then I yeah, that's what happened. I ended up having to get two other companies to come finish a job for an additional $10,000. So that's what you get for saving money sometimes.
Speaker 2:I had it when I moved to Greenville and I was kicking myself because I had a quote and it was a high quote. And I got another quote. It was like half the price and they said all the right things at the time and I was like, okay, sounds good. I gave him my measurements that the other guy gave me oh yeah, I think they said it was going to be $4,000. And the other guy quoted me $8,000. And it's the last time I ever go against this again. And I felt so stupid because I was like, oh yeah, this is a really good price for what you're offering. Awesome, let's do it. And and sure enough, it was horrible. And then they nickel and dimed us at the end because they have your stuff in their truck. Oh, actually it's going to be an additional four grand. So we ended up paying more than we got initially quoted from the first guy and they broke stuff. It was horrible, it was a nightmare. So, yeah, that has reinforced my decision that now I go for the best value. I don't go for the best price anymore because it never works out that way. Because you value. I don't go for the best price anymore. It never works out that way, because you also have to say well, who are they hiring? Personal story for my company why I now even charge even more is my guy shout out to Kier I have probably one of the best installers ever right now.
Speaker 2:Prior to this guy, I went through four different people. The first guy just ghosted and chop-shopped my truck, didn't even show up to his first job, found it in the hood with zero oh, legit Legit Gone. We literally had to like it was crazy. It was like a PI. And this was like my first install. I sold too. Thank God it was a referral that we knew them, so we had a little bit of grace on it. But first job ever, he no shows. And I kid you not, we had to find his. We had to stalk him on Facebook and find out whose kids were, go to his kid's house, say hey, we can't get a hold of this dude, where is he? And then finally we get the location of the van. I can't remember how we found it, but we ended up finding it. And then he called me hey man, sorry, you've just been out of it. Is it cool if I still work here? I was like bro, no, fuck off.
Speaker 2:So that was installer number one and then again, mistake I made I should have I spent a lot of money on a new truck and I wish I would have started with a shitty truck, because I'll try to be all fancy and look bigger than I was. Right, yeah. And so the truck got chop shop so I had to pay money to get that fixed. Um, and then my next installer was let's see if I can remember the order they went in. So then my next installer was actually a really good guy, um, but very unhealthy. So unless I've again, I try not to be rude but like I'm big into fitness and health and one of my, my core principles in hiring for certain positions you have to be like somewhat healthy and this kind of reinforced that decision. And he just his job is moving these tanks and he had a son that helped him and I was actually getting a really good deal on him. He was taking a really low rate to help out and he's a great guy, really really good guy. And his installs which I guess if you're sloppy, you're going to be too and he just couldn't handle the tanks. So he no-showed three jobs and so I was like, okay, you got to go. And then my third guy was a young kid who I thought would be good because he was hungry. But then same thing Now his actual quality of work was decent, but then he was smoking weed out of the truck and the clients knows it, so he had to go.
Speaker 2:Then I got my fourth installer and I was like, all right, this is the guy I'm wrong enough, no teeth. I was a little iffy on him but he interviewed, well, his resume was stacked Like he had been a plumber, done a lot of good stuff, and he actually was crushing it. So he comes on and I was like, okay, maybe don't judge a book by its cover. And for about three months he was rocks. I mean, I'm talking the work this guy was doing was insane, like high-end plumbing. His plumbing was beautiful and it was great. He was getting jobs done quickly. But then I think he had a drug problem which I should have guessed. He started making money and then he got back on drugs, got the thing, and then it just it fell apart. And then I got kieran to work with him and care crushed and he cares been with me ever since. Um, but I I saw how long it took me, probably a year and a half to get like one good, reliable installer.
Speaker 2:So when I know other companies are, you know, selling super cheap, it's coming somewhere and and I know how hard it is a good to find good talent, especially in the contracting space. So it's like you're paying for this because you're going to get someone, that one is respectful of your home yeah, it's going to do phenomenal work, is a good person, isn't on drugs and actually cares about you and you're getting the highest end equipment on the market. And you're getting the highest end equipment on the market and you're getting the best customer service team on the market, because my customer service staff is amazing and and you're again, you're getting unequivocally the best equipment. So it's like you're paying for that. Yeah, and I know there's people that go cheaper, are going to get hit by these installers, because it's that's why I'll never my next business. I'll never do home service again, I'll never do something with inventory or yeah, it's that deliverability is horrible.
Speaker 1:Or you might be able to like scale yours into a point where now you start teaching other people how to do that business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 1:That's where a lot of people are getting into Cause. I have people that ask me all the time like, hey, can you help me with my coaching? And there there are a few people that I have and they've done great, but it's just it takes time out of my day. It's not really what I do, right. So I might help like one person or something like that, if they really want it, but they got to show me that they want it. You got it. Yeah, I'm not playing around Like I don't got time to like follow up with you and stuff. Yeah, here, do this. Guys don't. First off, they don't have any money, right invest in themselves right, I'm like, I'm fair, I'm cool, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, you gotta do something for me, you know. So we'll figure out something that that works both in our favors, you know yeah but um, yeah, so I want to switch things before we end this one. Yeah, sorry, with with the fitness. Have you always been like working out, or is that something recently now like no, I'm a coach always, yeah, up and down, so well, actually.
Speaker 2:So in high school, no. So I played varsity tennis growing up. So I was a tennis player. So super skinny, lean, had to gain weight to actually get into the military. And then that's when I got really into fitness because I was around a bunch of jack dudes all the time. I was super like you know, not very confident, and I see my mentor was like super jacked dude, he was getting all these girls and I was like I don't want to be like that, so I was getting really good fitness then and then yeah, just kind of continued along that and I hit like my peak physical thing when I went to the Middle East because all you had to do was work out, yeah.
Speaker 2:So got super jacked in the Middle East and then came to Italy, stayed pretty fit, then lost it in the Pentagon gig because all I did was sit in a car for 18 hours a day and eat fast food and then once I got out of the military I really wanted to get back into it. But hitting your 30s it's tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, things shift, things shift. Things shift around. Hormones change, digestion changes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Weight stays on more. Yeah, yeah, it's different.
Speaker 1:It's different. Do you see a lot of, I guess, parallels from fitness and running business? A hundred percent, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:I think I wish I could marry the two more.
Speaker 2:I think if you had like a perfect marriage mentally between the two, it'd be like the perfect mentality, because in fitness, like you can't get jacked overnight, it takes like a lot of hard work and you have to do all the right things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, business is the same way, and like you can't shortcut it, um, I would say like there's certain plays you can do that are like a steroid that will, like make your business better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but if you stop being consistent with the business, yeah, you're gonna lose all the gains that you made on it, right? So I think they're like one in the same. Yeah, I love that, and I think, honestly, if you're going to lose all the gains that you made on it, so I think they're like one and the same. I love that. And I think, honestly, if you're in fitness, you'll probably be better at business too, because you go, you learn like how to do hard things for a long period of time to get to a certain physique that you want, and if you can just build that skill set, I think, not only in business but in life in general, that's going to serve you so much better and I've had so many positive reinforcements from the gym, like meeting people like you, the gym, community in general is awesome, I think, putting yourself in the right spots, man.
Speaker 1:I think that's why I really enjoy this gym. Shout out, carolina Iron. This gym has been amazing Outside of the equipment and just the environment itself, the people I met you. I met a lot of other people, a lot of business connections too. That's just when you start surrounding yourself with the right types of people, it really kind of expands your mind to what's also possible and everybody's willing to help. All you got to do is open your mouth, just ask.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest hack that you just said there. For people that are trying to be successful, it's like sometimes you don't even need to do anything other than just get around new people and dump your current circle.
Speaker 1:Right, if you want to be successful.
Speaker 2:Just get around successful people. I'm sure you're the same way. I found the most jack guys here in the gym. If I go and ask them fitness questions, they're just like oh yeah, please let me do it, I'll help. What do you want?
Speaker 2:I'll help you work out Cool, because they love it obviously, and I think business is the same way, like if you go to a successful business owner and you're like humble and you say, hey, I'm trying to learn and I'm trying to better my life and I'm trying to like get into something, I'll work for you for free, or I'll just kind of pick your brain for like 20 minutes. Yeah, most people, most business owners, will do that. And you know entrepreneurs I feel we are in our own little. Unless you're an entrepreneur, you don't understand like the values of despair you go through. So it feels very lonely and I think every successful entrepreneur has been in more of those values than anyone else. So they understand that. I think they want to help you get through it. That's like with AJ and stuff, like we always try to talk about this, like dude, what we always try to talk to this, like I do, what can I help you to help you? Like it's like bro, raise your fucking prices. Sorry, carolina members, but it's like I'll pay more.
Speaker 1:Like we've talked about it. Yeah, we've talked about a lot, I think your prices.
Speaker 1:So I'm not going to say whether he is or he's not like a different language. You know there's so many people that are like, oh, people don't understand what I'm going through, you don't understand what I've been through or what, what's what's happening in my life and maybe, but that doesn't mean somebody doesn't. Yeah, you know, you don't have to isolate yourself on an island by yourself. Just you gotta swim to a different island. You know, so that when I get around people like you or I go to these like mentorship, uh, meetups and things like that. It's just like conversations. Conversations flow, yeah, and plus, we kind of, like you said the other day, you're like dude, I like nerding out about this stuff. I mean like you get into it and like as hard as it is and the struggles that you go through and some days it emotionally breaks you, like it's a little bit of a toxic relationship. It's crazy. You love it. It's crazy dragon, like, oh, it sucks, but oh, I'm that.
Speaker 2:Those good days feel so good. Yeah, yeah. So we just we ride the wave, yeah, yeah. And the more entrepreneurs that you can just get around, you know the community is so important, I love it, and if you can get more people to support each other, you know, the cool thing about business that you start to learn too is like, even if you're in the same space, like there's so many pieces of the pie that, like everyone can get a big piece of it for sure, everybody can eat, and so it's just like, how can I learn how to make the pie faster? Really? And that's why I love talking to the business owners, because, like, there's so much stuff that I still need to learn and know. And there's stuff that we've talked about, where you talk about even on this podcast.
Speaker 2:The way you you did the challenge a little bit, or the. The challenge, the scholarship, is a little bit different than the way even it's put as a concept in the books. Yeah, so it's getting kind of like the actual nitty gritty on how you implement things that, like I took from that like, oh, I could probably do something like that in my business, and the way that you guys did it. So I think it's just, it's super important and I think everybody I don't think everybody should be an entrepreneur, but I do think everybody should do something that they actually want to do and if they're sitting in a cubicle somewhere hating their life every morning like you, don't have to do that. Yeah, that's true. And you say the you don't know what I've been going through? No, probably not.
Speaker 2:But I can tell you everyone's had stuff in their life and, unfortunately, no one cares, know like yeah, like it might be controversial to say, but like you got to figure it out and everyone has had something happen in their lives. How you respond to something is what really dictates it, and if you allow it to stop you from doing what you want to do, then you just give it even more power. Yeah, you know, we've all had that stuff, I'm sure where it's, just like you, you know, if you went into it you'd probably be traumatized or whatever. But I think if you just get around people that are successful, you'll learn that they've had maybe not the same things. They've had obstacles they had to get through and they can give you frameworks to get through those obstacles. Yeah, and be successful.
Speaker 1:I like how you said that too. I think a lot of this whole journey is really finding your purpose through the chaos, finding peace, because at the end of the day, like you said, nobody really cares. Nobody's going to care if you fail, and a lot of people aren't going to care that you succeed either. I mean, at the end of the day, people that are watching from afar. They're looking at it from a different lens. They'll see one day that you just got successful and you're lucky, or they see that you failed and you'd be like. I always knew he wasn't going to make it. People are going to say whatever they want.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'd rather just, you know, put those the people that I want in my life. Currently in the season, I keep those and we hustle and we drive each other and help each other out and then from there. But you got to do it for yourself, have you? Because at the end of the day, like if you work on yourself, you can serve everybody else at a much higher level, Way better, yeah, so have you heard of like the thing called hedonic adoption, kind of that all.
Speaker 2:So basically it's when, as humans, we will get used to everything at some point, so novelty just doesn't last that long. Like, if you ever achieve something great, like I mean, you've probably had some big achievements throughout your life, right, and Tim Grover talks about this in his book a lot but like success isn't the outcome. Like success and winning is not like the Super Bowl. If you're in sports, right, it's everything else you do to get to that point, because that one moment of winning no-transcript, it's fleeting and then it's right back to hell, to get back to where you wanted to get to. Right. And even in the business we have these great months, everything's just great, and then it's back to the fucking shit.
Speaker 2:And hedonic adoption is you get used to the good things. So, for example, if you make 30K a month, well then, if that becomes your norm, then that money has no more relevance to you anymore. You anymore. It's like okay, that is my norm, I get used to it. So then, if you have these because I know I thought this way I'm like oh, if I start making all this money, I'm going to feel way different and I remember when I made the most money at the solar company, I definitely felt great. When my debt got paid off, don't get me wrong. There was a huge like whoo and then I started stacking money. But once I got to the point where my debt was paid off and I was consistently making that $20,000, $30,000 paychecks, it didn't. I felt the same. I felt exactly the same. Now I was able to now use them to go do more fun things, which was great, but like my actual well-being and my state did not change. So what that showed me I was like shit, if there's stuff that like makes me unhappy.
Speaker 2:This thing is not going to fix that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've actually and I think this is a good gym analogy I get more enjoyment out of like the actual journey of trying to get to where I want to go.
Speaker 2:And you know, I get more from like oh man, I hit my diet today, I had a great workout today, yeah, okay, cool, I feel good about myself now. And then eventually, you know, after six, seven months, you see like the progress and I'm like, oh great, but then I'm back to the gym, yeah, and I think for business and life, like that's the same type of thing and I have gotten better at my stress management and, I think, more effective by now, not trying to tailor or focus my success on the end goal and more on like finding enjoyment. I know it's corny, but the journey right, yeah, following the journey right, yeah, follow the journey, that destination, um, but actually trying to live that now has helped out a lot, because if I can actually just enjoy like, oh, I, for example, I made this new sales presentation which I was putting off forever because I didn't want to do it, but I got it done and I was like, wow, I feel good about myself now.
Speaker 2:yeah, because I did something I did not want to fucking do and that has taken me a long time to do, because I know every social media person has put out oh, you've got to love the journey, not the destination. That's cool and all, but I can tell you for a long time fuck that, I want the fucking destination.
Speaker 1:I want the six-pack.
Speaker 2:I want the million dollars, I want my destination and don't get me wrong, whoever says the destination is not sweet is fucking lying to you. It's amazing to hit goals, but I did burn out, like the solar comes as a perfect example. I was trying to hit this really arbitrary goal and once I hit it, I just learned how arbitrary it was. And then I hit this huge dump of like well, fuck, now what? And then that's what actually forced me to say, okay, I actually need to enjoy the day-to-day, which is why I didn't go back into solar I went to water because I hated selling solar systems yeah, you know well, that's why you'll be way more successful in the water system.
Speaker 1:One, you're in control, right. But two, also, you just when you, when you enjoy it, it doesn't seem, uh, the work, you know, it just seems like it's just part of your day-to-day, right, there's many. Yeah, devito, that works up front. I'll, some days I'll leave here. I got here at, you know, a little after six. I won't leave till like 6, 37, some days. He's like damn bro, like 12 hours. I'm like, yeah, I didn't really realize it, man I mean, it's a long day, for sure but it's not something that crosses my mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because at some point you you'll talk to people and they were like, oh, you're so lucky, or I want to work like you. You don't know how I work, right, you know you're you, you, you hate your. Nine to five. We do five to nines every day. Weekends are not off. Vacations are, you know, potential, do you think?
Speaker 2:part of it, though, because you know you, everyone knows if you're in business, you're going to work more than a 9 to 5, right you would hope.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, if you want to be successful.
Speaker 2:If you want to actually be successful. Like, if you're trying to start a business to not work hours, then you're not going to be successful, like you're going to work more hours. But I've been thinking about this a lot Do you think the reason why we can work those type of hours is because, selfishly, we know those hours are actually going back into something that we're building, so it doesn't feel like a waste Cause? I almost wonder if why the nine to five is such a grind is because you're putting time and effort into somebody else's dream or somebody else's business that you have no equity on. You don't get to see anything from it. So you literally are just putting your fucking life force, I guess, into nothing, whereas in a business, every action you do it builds upon your thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it compounds, yeah, 100%. I think it's just a lens that you look through. I heard this. There's something, man, I wish I remember what podcast it was, but this person was talking about how you can take a picture of, like you know, the moon right, like a full moon. You could take a picture and then you can look at the picture and say, man, that just this picture doesn't do justice of what it really was right Because you're looking at it through a different lens, but like through the naked eye, you see how magical this is.
Speaker 1:So when I look at somebody's physique, or when you look at your own body, you see what's really magical and what you're building there, you know, versus like just, oh, just the work and the hustle and grind. No, there's something that you're you're building an empire, and so I look at it like that. Where I'm, there's something that I'm building and I'm working towards, and it's it's something that I'm I'm doing. No one's doing this for me. You know, and I think part of that ownership makes you drive and work harder. I think there is a little bit of letting people down and fear of failure and some doubt mixed in there as well.
Speaker 1:But every time you just get that little win or you finish a little sales presentation, that's all I need. That's all I need to be like, no, we're doing it, we're doing something good. And then you get some good feedback and you're like, okay, this is something special, special. And you're like, over the time you know over the years that you continue building, you start like creating this thing and it's like a kid.
Speaker 1:I mean, you hear people say it's like your business is like a child, yeah, like you're feeding it, you're nurturing it, you're training it to be something that's that back talks you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, smack your business around a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean for me. You know I've never been, you know I wasn't in the military, but I'm not scared of working Right, hard work. Yeah, like I wasn't the best in school. Yeah, I scratched by but I didn't care. Yeah, but I care about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing, right.
Speaker 1:Outside of. Just like you know, we're here sitting talking business. Making money is cool and stuff, but when I can impact somebody's life, that gives me a way better high than you know you writing me a check.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. I think that's actually what shifted me for water was we had a client and I was a sales guy at the time. I was new in the industry but she was spending like $3K a month because her daughter, like six years old, had eczema issues and psoriasis issues like crazy. And one thing about water treatment is in certain states you can actually use it as a write-off because it can actually help psoriasis and eczema issues. And so I told him I was like listen, I'll be straight up. I don't know if it's going to fix this, but hopefully it'll help. You know, the water's terrible out here, it doesn't help. So they got the system.
Speaker 2:She called me two weeks later, just bawling her eyes, like oh my god, her condition's completely fixed, like it's completely going away, everything's great. And I was like and that was with no creams, no dyes, and like I try to tell people all the time like do you realize how much your water affects your skin in your hair? Yet you know. You see, it's kind of like with the pfizer commercials trying to peddle medicine to you that you probably don't need. I see it all the time with psoriasis and eczema medications or these things, where it's like, maybe we just clean up what's getting put on your skin and sure, there probably are some chronic conditions where you absolutely can't get rid of it, but it's like you probably won't. You'll be at less risk of getting diabetes if you stop drinking a liter of cola every day, yet you'll shower in a shower with an oxidative chemical, that's a transdermal Chlorine, goes right into your skin, into your bloodstream. You don't swim in a pool every day, yet you're still exposing yourself to these really harsh chemicals every day.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting concept, because once you get in a pool and you swim for a while, what do you want to do? You want to shower, you want to shower, you want to get the chlorine off. You feel kind of like either dry, irritated. Yeah, that's a good perspective. I'll say that Because you know, when you first told me what you're doing, I was like water Like Spartanburg, Greenville water, Like what?
Speaker 2:are you?
Speaker 1:talking about. That's the first thing. When I started looking, I was like, oh no, this is, this is something different. It's um, I think a lot of. I mean it is. It's a commodity, just like our. Our work is also. It's a, it's an extra. But uh, there's people that see a ton of value in that. Yeah, I got friends no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Your body, you know it's adaptable. Like you can eat takis every single day and the first two weeks or first couple of days you're gonna probably be shitting your brains out. But if you're eating Takis every day for a month, eventually your body's going to be like all right. Well, I guess I eat Takis now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, like your body's going to be dead. So but probably not the best for you. It's like now that I've been on like a good diet with my trainer like really like dialed in, you know I now my body wants healthy food, like I want to eat like my chicken and my rice and my steaks and the stuff. And when we go out on the weekends like I if I have like something off plan and I try to say now I try to stay as close on planning for this reason, yeah, if I go like a little off crazy with something like greasy, like I'm wrecked, yeah I'm in the toilet. It's like my body like is rejecting it now. So the same thing for the water, which is I try to tell people that I know it sounds crazy because you've been probably drinking out of this and showering it your whole life, but once you make that switch, you're never going to go back.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's cool man You'll never go back, so that's why I wanted to do it. Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. And then learning about business and meeting people like you, and I think that was where it becomes fun for me. I'm super competitive and business becomes kind of like a game, in a way.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm like, how can we best play the game? And that shift has made it more fun for me. I'm like, okay, I need to beat these levels Because I was a nerd growing up. This boss, um. And then the money is just like for me, I like watching numbers on the screen go up. So for me it's like that's my high score, like how can I just, how can I just get higher scores? And yeah, um, yeah, I wanted to ask you a question, because you are mainly in the fitness and something that I struggled with growing up or even getting fit. How do you and maybe there's a parallel in business here but how do you combat like people that gets like where you're at super fit, competed to deal with like the body dysmorphia, or like saying, oh, this is a good enough, or there is no good enough, or not trying to push it too hard, or someone may look totally fine, but then consistently there's like, oh, I need to get bigger and bigger, or more jacked or unsafe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a hard one, man. I think everybody has some sort of level of body dysmorphia. I will say, going into competing and then even at a pro level, which I got to, the standard is different. We know we can't keep that conditioning. You just can't. It's unhealthy, it's going to wreck your hormones Like we need to eat you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:You can't just burn yourself out and kind of burn from both ends of the stick. So you know you do reverse back. Now everybody's kind of different but I, you know, going into competing and working with multiple coaches, you know, with bodybuilding, is very rigid you know, egg whites, oatmeal, chicken rice, like you don't steer off from that very rarely.
Speaker 1:You know maybe a cheat meal here and there, if you even get those. So you're kind of on this plan and learning and watching your body change, which is great. But you start to correlate I have to eat like this to look like this, right. And so for you to stop competing and say, do I still have to eat like this if I still want to look good, that's a danger zone. I had a hard time with that because I was like I'm a pro now, so I got to keep a standard look and I got to make sure that I'm holding some sort of conditioning. So once I decided, okay, I'm going to take some time off, I don't want to compete anymore, it was literally like dipping my toes into different foods, just trying, testing things like what responded well to me.
Speaker 2:Do you feel, like the if it fits your macro philosophy, like if you, if you can build, do you think it's better to like, go super crazy hard, build your physique to a position where, like you, look really good and then just maintain macros and that'll maintain it, or is that not true at all?
Speaker 1:yeah, no, I think I think food quality does matter, yeah, just like water matters. You know the ph in your water, the, yeah, the, the cleansliness of it as well, because you could say, I, you know that was a big one, if it fits my macros, people were eating skittles oh, I got extra carbs, right, you? Or just like highly processed cereals and stuff like that, yeah, yeah, but I that will change the look, right?
Speaker 2:So I think there's there's levels, right.
Speaker 1:I kind of I use this example because, again, I had a friend that was pouring concrete for, you know, driveways and all that kind of stuff. I was like, think of it this way. I was like you want to do just macros. You got a truck full of cement, just pour it, just pour it down. Will it make it down where it needs to go? Probably It'll be a little messy on the edges, it'll probably crack because you don't have the framework up. You know what I mean. So it's not going to look pretty Gotcha, right, but if you want to actually eat quality food and it doesn't, you know, I like to do like a 90-10 kind of split. So 90% of the time I'm trying to stick with more whole, healthy foods. Think of that putting, you know, your wood bars up. You know you're framing things and then you let it dry and set. You're going to look way better and you're going to feel way better too, right, yeah, and it's easier to handle that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Once you get your body to like a decent body fat percentage, a good body comp, it's a lot easier to maintain Gotcha. So for me, like I have kind of what I eat, what I enjoy eating, and that's the key dude Like find something healthy that you enjoy. Dieting is not dieting anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a lifestyle you know when you get tired of it, switch it up, you know.
Speaker 1:So I find the things that I like the majority of the day and then at the end of the night, my last meal. I typically eat whatever I want On the last meal of the day, so I don't overindulge. You know, I have a normal portion meal and sometimes it is just like some salmon, some rice and veggies, and then other times I'm going and having sushi Right. Or, you know, I rarely will do pizza Once I turned 30, dude cheese and dairy don't do me too well so certain things I kind of shift away from.
Speaker 1:But, like you know, burgers, fries, I eat that kind of stuff, but again, it's not every day. Yeah, exactly so. But if you can find and this is this is my thing for a lot of our clients too If you're constantly finding urges or you're wanting to binge on certain things, your plan is too restrictive. We need to give you a little bit of something, right? We had a client that you know. She ended up dropping 20 pounds in three months but we set her up on a good plan about two weeks in. She's like Chris, I just started getting these like really sweet cravings at the end of the night, like okay. I was like, well, how's the rest of the plan? I was great, it's perfect. I mean, it works with my schedule, I can eat it, I don't have no problems. But just at night, like I just want something sweet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are you?
Speaker 1:craving. She's like ice cream. Okay, I was like, well, let's try to figure something out. So I kind of restructured her plan and I gave her like a little ice cream cone every night, nice, every night. And she was like that's all I need, I'm good. Yeah, she dropped 20 pounds on that. That's great, right?
Speaker 2:So again, the majority of her day she's healthy.
Speaker 1:Healthy, you know, good whole for a whole, whole sources of food, a little ice cream cone, you're fine.
Speaker 2:So I have a question. So I've uh, this has helped me a lot with my schedule and I don't know, and this is more, it's like the deep part of the fitness, like digestion, and I don't know, and this is more into like the deep part of the fitness, like digestion. So one thing that I found that worked out really well for me, because I am so busy, is on my plans. It's normally a five-meal split, okay, which I actually enjoy, like the plans. These healthy plans are fine for me, and when I go on weekends, if I have to cheat, I try to find like a like, for example, like a Dave's Hot.
Speaker 2:Chicken. I'll try to at least get chicken. Yeah, something that's.
Speaker 1:You know. It's got protein, it's got protein and I won't eat the bread.
Speaker 2:I'll eat the bread, eat right, um. But what I found, like what can really set me apart, is like we get meetings all the time and we do all these things. So it's like, unless I'm home, doing the five meal thing would be tough, and especially when we're trying to move like deep work is super important. So what I've done and I don't know this is the right thing to do is I'll do my. My first meal of the day is always on plan, okay, which is like protein shake, some almond butter and, I think, a little bit of honey, um, in the morning, and then it's supposed to be a steak and then a chicken, a chicken. So it's a steak, steak with veggie, chicken with rice. And then the last two meals are just no non-carb for right now. Okay, but what has helped me to try to hit these macros that I need to hit is protein shower, whatever, a pound of the beef, a lean ground beef, just to get my 100 grams of protein in, and I can just, you know, put the veggies. I'll do it with romaine lettuce, yeah. So I still hit that. Okay, I'm all right, I'll take me probably 30, 40 minutes to eat. Eat while I'm working. Yeah, then next meal do either like 12 ounce or 18 ounce of chicken or another pound of beef, and now I got my.
Speaker 2:For me, I'd say like 200 grams of protein plus a day, but like almost no carbs. It's like I think my carbs are 80 grams, I think or maybe they're 90 grams for the day, yeah, and calories are 2000. Calories on my low days and high days is like 2300. So by doing that I hit my main protein goals and I still have calories to spare. Then at night I'm able to be a little bit flexible, but mainly for me. If I've noticed, I don't do that. I miss meals Because you get caught up.
Speaker 1:You get caught up in work, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I come back and I'm starving. I'm like, oh fuck, I got to throw two meals together or I don't eat.
Speaker 1:And now it's 6 o'clock and my wife's cooking dinner and it's like, well, yeah, yeah, you know you got to sabotage yourself at that point I'm like this amazing dish that's sitting in front of me.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I guess I'm eating that now. So I wonder what your thought process is on that, because I know potentially it could be digestion issues or you don't get all the protein out of it. But I wonder just kind of what your thought process is and maybe if there's other business owners out there that are busy how to kind of hack that.
Speaker 1:I mean we, anytime we work with clients, cause we deal with a lot of business owners and you know busy professionals, realtors, they're always going all over the place.
Speaker 1:So we always try to. We actually start time blocking with our clients. So we'll say, okay, what time do you wake up, what time do you go to sleep? Yeah, all right, let's fill in the gaps and then we'll kind of plug in, like where you know, if they want to do three meals, four meals, five meals, the end of the day, the science shows that it's not that significant whether you're doing two meals a day or you're doing eight meals a day. Yeah, as long as you're getting the calories per meal. Yeah, that could get a little harsh, right.
Speaker 1:But again, now, if you were competing, I would say, yeah, no, we need to break those things up. We just want to be as efficient as possible, gotcha. But from like, a lifestyle perspective, it's all about, you know, creating something that is cohesive with your lifestyle Right Makes sense. Creating something that is cohesive with your lifestyle, right. You can't take a bodybuilder's plan and give it to a business owner. They'll be like Chris dude, I said my life is busy, I don't need it to be busier, I like, I respect it, right. So we have to find the hacks. Whether you're getting meal prep company to, you know, cook your meals, getting your food cooked in bulk or you do it If you, if you got the time and you want to do it, throw it in a crock pot that's yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean the best things. Yeah, I just walk away. Yeah, come back, shred it up and you know, space it out how you want, um, but it's just being efficient with that. I think for you like doing that. I would probably say I wouldn't do red meat for both, just because, you know? I just think that would be. You know, with with red meat it takes a little bit longer to break down and digest as well.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, yeah. Make one of them like chicken or even fish is a lot lighter, easier to digest. Yeah, Sean's going to be mad if he hears that because he's like dude, just follow the fuck, just do the chicken. I've had these conversations.
Speaker 1:I'm helping you out, man, I'm just getting the truth.
Speaker 2:We'll talk and I'll talk Justin. He's such a good coach, he works so well with me. But there was times where I was like, hey, man today's like bro. I was like, yeah, I think we had the same similar go to yeah, I just ate two things of beef. He's like that's fine, you ate like. You ate, bro, for a reason. Eat the fucking plan. I know, and I'm I'm so hard-headed sometimes like I'm a, I am a what's the word I'm trying to say. If, uh, I'm a routine guy, like I gotta be in a. If I'm a routine, I'm great. If anything breaks routine, I get fucked. And so now I've gotten better at like buying in bulk. I'll cook all my chicken in bulk, yeah, and when I, if I'm doing that, it's so easy to stay on plan. But the moment you, you don't like I've learned if I don't prep for the week prior or whatever it's like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to you gotta set some boundaries I mean outside of fitness in your life. You gotta set boundaries for yourself to make sure that you're you're still fueling and taking care of yourself. At some point you're going to burn out if you don't you know what? I mean. So if that means you've got to take, you know, 15 minutes out of your day to sit down and eat, like, do that?
Speaker 1:If you can't, that's okay. Get a shake until you can eat. You know you can get a little bit of protein just to hold you over, Right, Because you just never want to get to a point where you're starving. Yeah, that's when it's like all right, yo Domino's, what's up?
Speaker 2:What it ain't nothing for me to eat a whole large. This happened to me the other day. Um, I was on plan and, uh, I hit all my macros. I felt actually, I thought I was actually full, like I felt good and uh, we made a pasta dish. This was last night and I actually cooked it. So I was like, oh, let's go, so it's just a shrimp and pasta dish and I, you know, specifically did a little bit of pasta because I didn't want to destroy my carbs and like picked out the shrimp and put like a shrimp bowl for me and I started eating it. And when I started eating the carbs, immediately my body was like cravings through the roof. I felt like I was starving. I went from feeling fine to the moment I had that first bowl. I felt like I was starving.
Speaker 2:And I was like what the fuck is this? And I just wanted to just destroy that entire pot. I didn't, but I looked at it and I was like you hear that song? I didn't. Yeah, I was proud of myself. I was like I literally went there and I, I, I put my, my, my fork in the pot, started eating it and I was like nope, stop fridge. Yeah, good, but literally it's. It was like. It was like I just tasted like crack or something.
Speaker 1:I was like I need that whole pot right now? Yeah, yeah, it will. I mean, those, those types of carbohydrates will send signals to your brain to like, want more. You know. That's why, like most people, you could eat a large bag of potato chips. But if I gave you like five whole potatoes, right, who's gonna eat five whole potatoes? Right? Probably Probably not, you know. But you know, especially when you know because I'm assuming you guys are like in a cutting phase Right, having a good nighttime routine and a time you're going to sleep is mandatory, because if you are someone that just kind of you stay up late and you start watching TV and things like that, you're going to want a snack. Right, you know and we're actually talking about this with our clients too If you're eating food, you should not be looking at your phone or watching TV. It is a distraction and you'll be able to eat more than what you should be eating, you know.
Speaker 1:So I tell people, just like, be in the moment, eat your food, it'll fill you up a little bit more. Yeah, but having that time that you like you're cut off, you go to sleep, that'll save you. I mean, I've been time so many hours, yeah, because I've gone in my kitchen at the end of the night because I'm kind of hungry and I'll open up all my cabinets, close them back up. I'm like, why do you torture yourself like that? Yeah, so yeah, just having to have a, you know, a solid routine, that'll save you a ton of headache and just like stress, because when you're dieting you will get hungry.
Speaker 1:There's no way around it Like you will, unless you want to, and I'm not going to open up the conversation of some of these GLP-1s, but again, that's having having a routine is is the key piece, cause you just like business. You need systems, you need structure, you need a schedule, your health needs the same, your lifestyle needs the same. Boundaries, equal freedom.
Speaker 2:It's not to constrain you.
Speaker 1:It's to make you more efficient. You know what I mean. So, like, why not take those kind of same concepts and apply it to your life? There's a lot of people that are really good at their job, not so good at fitness, or there's people that are really good in fitness and not so good at the job. You have the traits. You just have not been able to take them and implement them in a different fashion yeah, I mean that's great.
Speaker 2:it's funny you say that it's um, that implementation is so key because and if you're busy, if you're like watching this or listening to this and you're like, oh, I want to start a business, but I need to learn all this stuff first, this is like a perfect example of why that's not true, because I read before. I actually was like so I started the business, but then me and my wife went on a vacation for about 35 days, came back and the business was starting. So during that time I just was reading books and learning just as much as I could because I didn't want to fail. The problem is I didn't have any context to apply any of that information.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like with my workouts and the diet, like I still have to do it and see how it works to get context, and what I've learned is I had to make still make some of the same mistakes in the books, and then I went back to the books and read them after I've had some battle scars and been through the trenches. It's like, oh, now I see why. Yeah, this makes sense or this is how I can apply this now, and I think too many people want to like know everything before they start something, and I think you, I think you should try to fail fast, like fail fast, fail up, because you'll learn more by doing it, like with the sales. I've learned more because, honestly, I've read books about sales, but there's so many people that will spend tons of money for sales training, which can be very, very, very useful, but, as like an individual contributor, like you, can learn a lot from YouTube and just getting the reps in.
Speaker 1:For sure, and practicing yeah.
Speaker 2:Same thing for working out, you gotta.
Speaker 1:Just digging the weeds. You gotta get in there.
Speaker 2:You gotta do the bench press.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which, speaking of lifts, Sean is a. I'm glad he's put me on the Smith's Machine squat I used to hate it.
Speaker 1:That's enough. Listen, you know we're in a gym and there is a lot of bodybuilders in here, a lot of big people. How many of them have you seen do free weight, barbell squats?
Speaker 2:None, none, you know what I've also learned Because Sean's a bodybuilder and this hit home for me. I've been working out since I was 18. Until I worked out with Sean, I don't think I actually ever really knew how to properly work out, because my first time and I think he did this on purpose to fuck with me. So, sean, this is kind of rude of you, but he gave me my plan and I remember I texted him like an idiot. I've regretted this text to this day I was like well, this doesn't look very difficult Because it wasn't that many exercises. And this was when we first started working together and there were two sets Actually, it was two sets. Now they're not like that and I was like two sets, how am I going to get a good workout with this?
Speaker 2:And I was working out on my own for the first, I think for the first four weeks, I was like oh, this is easy. Or first two weeks, I was like this is easy. They're like oh cool, are you ready to do an in-person workout? I was like, oh, I'm an idiot Because I didn't realize how like, and granted the weights I was lifting, we probably dropped it by about 40% than what I was lifting and it smoked me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because of like no, you're going to lift it with your actual muscles. You're not going to. You're going to be concentrated the whole time during the lift. You're not going to. You're going to be concentrated the whole time during the lift. You're not going to rush these lifts Like. It's going to be focused and controlled, full range of motion, every single lift, yeah, and it's like all your lift weights are going to go down dramatically, but you're going to be crushed and you know, sure enough, you start getting results. Yeah, all like the jack dudes. I rarely see them doing massive lifting. It's you know, some of these guys are super strong, so they will, but relative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's controlled, everything's controlled, Everything's so controlled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love being in these environments because, like I told Sean, I was like listen, I'm not trying to be a professional bodybuilder, but I would like to get a show ready at some point for, like just men's physique. The Ryan Terry division I was like that's the physique. I want, I want to look like Ryan Terry at some point or close to it.
Speaker 2:So and being in this environment and seeing how people do. That's why I think I wish, if you can invest in knowledge, like we said, it's the biggest thing, because, again, I've been doing the wrong thing For people that look good, but none of them are professional lifters, right, they're meatheads in the military.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Come, come here and learn from people that know what they're talking about. It's like whoa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, like you said, these people here, they're more than happy to help you just by asking a question, you know. But when you invest into like a coach or a mentor, just time collapses everything that you could be like figuring out on the way. You know, you could, just you could have pulled that plan probably from, like you know, people say, oh, I use chat GPT on YouTube. Sure, you can pull workouts from there, but like, are you lifting it Right? Right, are you doing it correctly? You know, are you tracking your weights? You know these sorts of things. It does not say that you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know about you, but I need to kick in the ass too. I need accountability, like I need to know I'm checking in with somebody every week yeah, everybody does. Because if I don't like, I will yeah, I'll eat fucking.
Speaker 1:Twix bars. Well, think about the pasta thing you were talking about.
Speaker 2:If you weren't, if you didn't have to go back to your coach and say damn, dude, I messed up you know Honestly, yeah, if I knew, yeah, and especially because you see the progress too, I don't want to ruin that, but yeah, if I knew, if I'd have anyone else I'd report to in the coming weeks, yeah, that whole pot would be stuffed. I'd be sitting here bloated as hell right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, accountability is everything, dude. We tell people that all the time because you know, listen. Now you have full access to everything. You know. You have YouTube, chat, gpt, google. I mean people are just giving away free programs left and right, which is, you know, their way of building rapport. Yeah, if there's so much free information out there, why are we getting worse in obesity rates and overweight? Right, why? Why would things be going the other direction when all this information is available, right? Information doesn't mean that you're going to take it and actually apply it, and most people don't know how to take information and apply it to their lifestyle, right?
Speaker 1:Because they'll be looking at bodybuilders, you know, if that's what you want to be, oh, this person's eating eight times a day. Well, they also don't know. You got a wife, you got kids. You got a business to run. These people eat, sleep and train. That's all they do. That's it, so it's easy for them. You can't do that Easy relative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, easy, relative. I say allocation of time is easier. Yeah, as far as what they have to focus on, but I wouldn't say it's easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, but you know you can. If you want it bad enough, you can do it. I tell people that time in the restaurant I was going to school full time and then training twice a day, sleep was on the bottom of the barrel for me. It was very minimal. Fortunately, like for me, I was able to like take like a little break from the restaurant, run to the gym that was five minutes away, get it in and run back, and you know that was enough for me to push through and I turned pro that year. That's awesome, you know. So not only did I just turn pro, like I won my whole class and the overall wow, and that was over 140 guys must be a pretty good feeling.
Speaker 1:It was a great feeling, yeah, and a little funny story, because I was thinking about this when we were talking earlier. I remember winning that and it was the probably one of the highest times of my life. I felt and after you finish a show, you have to stay because they want to do an overall picture with all the classes. I remember sitting backstage it's late, the show is big, so it's almost midnight, which also I knew. The only place I was going to be open was like a Waffle House or something. But regardless, I'm sitting backstage and I don't know who it was, one of the guys that was working in the back. He's like you, wouldn't you won your pro card. I'm like, yeah, dude, heck, you know I'm on like this high. He's like that's what's up, dude. He's like you, ready to go back to your old life tomorrow. And I just looked at him and I was like but you know what?
Speaker 1:That was the realest thing anybody said to me that night Cause tomorrow nothing. Yeah, you know people congratulate social media, but like my lifestyle never changed, I went back to the restaurant. I went back to just training like I normally train. I mean it's not like, oh my God, I landed this like you know NFL contract or something. Yeah, bodybuilding is a whole different ball game. It's a great platform but you'll never build like a career through bodybuilding Right. Only like the 2%, 3% at the top are making like some serious money.
Speaker 2:Like the C-Bums, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And even C-Bums smart. He was able to build his business with his platform Right, exactly. Most people they let that slip because they're riding the high of being like I'm a champ, I'm winning shows. Yeah, you better take that thing and better use it now.
Speaker 2:Do something yeah, people are watching you. People want to be you right now, but you know my dad always says you know, you're the new ferrari now you're gonna be the old ferrari later.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean it's. So, yeah, everything's in cycles, right, and uh, that's why you also we just you shouldn't get caught up on, you know, whatever else wants you to do, like, because you know, you know you're going to have hot seasons and slow seasons and and, like you said, you have to do it for you, cause if you do it for the outside validation, people just don't care enough. Yeah Right, you get your pro card, good for you, but you talk to like the average person, cool, whatever.
Speaker 2:Especially in America, the Especially in America, the average person is obese so you can say, oh, you got your pro card, okay, cool, whatever. Now it's great for clients. I think client acquisition, that's phenomenal. But at the time, yeah, I think we over-index how that good feeling is going to feel. Yeah, right, because you work. If you think about it, you work so hard for that one moment and that moment is glorious. Right, it's an endorphin, serotonin dump of just like, oh, I did this hard thing, but then that's it. Like you said, you go back to the restaurant, you go back to your normal day-to-day. So what?
Speaker 2:really was the win? Probably the fact that you got to become the person that got to achieve it, and now you keep that forever. I think that's what really is what winning is and yeah, um, I try to. I try to keep that frame all the time now, especially when, like, things are tough in the business, especially because you know there's moments where you, you, you don't even know if you're gonna make it to tomorrow, and you're like you know what, if I can make it through this, then that's going to make me, even if I fail, it'll make me into somebody that can probably achieve something better and bigger. And if I can get through today, I can feel, go to bed feeling good about the work I did today. Yeah, and I think that's that can help you sustain, because those moments are rare, right, you get it for a second and then it's now what?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, yeah. What's the next move?
Speaker 2:now and look at Seaborn. Seaborn what he has. A good record right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Give it 10 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It'll be hard for people to break stuff like that. But I think, for me, as now, because I look at things a little bit different outside me, you know, as as now, because I look at things a little bit different outside of just winning competitions, I look at what. What have you built in your life, Right? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, he has taken his platform and just, you know, supplement brand and I don't know if he's part owner he bought Gymshark and then, yeah, I mean now he's got a, he's got a coaching app that apparently he's had for a while but they're expanding on. But none of that would mean anything without his status. Right, you know him just slapping his name on something is validation now at this point, whether it's good or not. Yeah, you know, I don't know, I don't take his stuff, but physique-wise and just mentality-wise I am impressed.
Speaker 2:For sure he's a— yeah, yeah, and I think you know what I take away from the seabum story is just like he did something extraordinary, and I think that's what I think is getting the content so terrible now is that everyone wants to be the influencer or have that type of influence without being influential and not actually like achieving something that people should aspire to be. You know, you see little viral clips of like oh, that was a cool word track, especially in like the sales environment, and like, oh, I can teach you how to make a bajillion dollars in sales, buy my course. And it's funny because, like I actually built a sales course for water treatment but I've actually and I've stopped, I haven't released it yet and I'm probably gonna. I need to prove that. Like, yeah, I know I can sell water and I've made a ton of money, but I actually want to prove that I can build a big ass business on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that has shifted the way I do the content now. Before I wanted to do like more, like, oh, let me train on certain. But then I look at like holistically I'm like well, what have you actually accomplished? You know I've done 30K. I think the solar thing was the biggest one, but that wasn't my company.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, you know. So yeah, and it wasn't just me, right? Obviously I was leading that charge, but I had a great team under me that we helped build it. So now that I'm in this seat, I try to really try to not say, oh, this is how things should be done or work, because I need to prove it first on my thing. I think for you too, us collectively, the bigger we can build our proof of we build this big thing, then the more influence we'll be able to have and help more people because we say we've done it. And then, honestly, I think it will be less stressful Instead of people try to say, oh, this doesn't work, it's like that's cool, maybe it won't work, it's like that's cool.
Speaker 2:It may not work for you, but I can show with unrefutable proof that what I have done does work. And so for the you know, for the things that I'm doing in my water company, I haven't even talked. I won't talk about them publicly in a lot of detail until I make sure they, because it's a departure from what works now in the industry. I just have some fundamental beliefs that the way it works in the industry now it's not going to last in the way that culture is moving, with moving virtually and online and stuff like that, and the way we sell water, I don't think is, I think, is outdated. Pretty much everyone sells it the same way. So I truly believe I'm putting a big bet that in the next two to three years this is going to be like the standard and I think we'll be able to take a lot of market share from some big companies. But I could be wrong, you never know.
Speaker 2:You got to think outside of the box, so documented, I think will be better. So if it fails, it'll be entertaining for people Like ah, he failed.
Speaker 1:You suck, and if it succeeds, then people can see the thought process.
Speaker 2:There's something in that, I mean, there's a lot of people.
Speaker 1:They asked me like they see me coaching other coaches, and I think that's my. Do I know what I'm doing? Sure, do I know everything? Of course not, I mean, I would always be learning.
Speaker 1:But I feel like for me I need to and maybe I'm wrong I need to hit this certain income for me to feel qualified to teach other people how to do this. Because one of the first guys I helped out and he did he paid me. We got him up to almost $20,000 recurring a month and then he went and worked with other mentors. That was kind of always the plan anyways. And I've worked with other people, helped them get a handful of clients and things like that.
Speaker 2:So like, do I know how to do it? Sure, I think that's enough proof. You need, though, yeah, like if you get testamental, like hey, because then the ad copy is just hey, we help so and so make 20k a month, we can help you too.
Speaker 1:That's pretty convincing yeah, because I will say this I am very like. Even being in um in jason's mentorship group, I met a lot of cool people and one of the kids he was just starting and he was like dude, do you mind if we jump on a call? I'd love to just ask you questions. I'm like yeah, dude, sure yeah, and I helped him. We had a couple calls together and he's like dude. He's like I want to say like I think Jason's group is great, but they kind of put us more in pods, gotcha Versus, like a ton of like one-on-ones.
Speaker 1:The one-on-ones are every, you know, four weeks, once a month or something like that. Yeah, but he's like I get way more value talking to you because you kind of give me more detailed things to implement on versus like You're kind of in it, yeah yeah, so, like, I think there is a space for someone that's like that.
Speaker 1:But uh, yeah, it's been something that crossed my mind. It's been for a long time. I just again there's people in our space dude that are and you're talking about this is online fitness coaching, which people used to joke like oh, you're a trainer, right, you know what I mean. Yeah, uh, there's this guy. He is pulling in. Well, hell, my first mentorship group there was this chick dude. She was doing almost 300 grand a month. Good lord, online niche, niche down, or just Only women. I mean, that was the one thing Only worked with women. Her whole team was nothing but women. Yeah, so there was a lot of that, but like predominantly pretty general health stuff, gotcha, I don't know if she ever niched down more. I think maybe she got in the market at a good time.
Speaker 2:I wonder Like super jacked?
Speaker 1:No, was her red, not really Just like in shape. Yeah, it was really wild. I mean, you'd be surprised there's some people that are not that in shape and they got some pretty crazy businesses.
Speaker 2:Which is I'm over here like man, why am I struggling so much?
Speaker 2:You know, I got these triceps and like you know, there's always and it's not the craziest thing, but as long as you don't bitch about it, like you know that, ok, there's something that they're doing that we just don't know. We got to figure that part out, like, what is it about what she's doing? Why is she getting like, is it just the ad copy way and make all of your marketing for that niche? Logically, it has to work better, right? You know, if it's like the hey, I only work with clients who make 200K a year, I'll transform your body. You are going to get people that you can probably charge a premium for, and then if you deliver for it and have testimonials, then great, but yeah, it's a.
Speaker 1:I know Alex Ram. He talks about that. It's like outside of just calling out your avatar, calling out who you don't want, that go ahead and like knock them out, which is always hard for anybody. But, like I said, I think his uh name's john john madden, and I want to say his last name anyways. He used to be a ex-nfl athlete. He coaches high-level entrepreneurs. His ad copy is specifically like you're a guy that wants to get shredded like a god, you've got to be making a minimum of $150,000 a year, willing to invest into yourself, full guarantee and everything. But in his copy he talks about who he doesn't want and some people, of course, would be like, dude, you're so arrogant, why would you only want to help the rich and the wealthy and things like that? But yeah, he has crafted a program and, dude, he crushes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think he's doing a, you know, a couple of six figures every month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just scary to do, but I think that's why you have to do it. Right, we talked about the fear thing, right, I it it's not. The fear is in the unknown and once you know it's not that bad. And like that, right now, like tonight, we're implementing our first new process that we did in the company with the ultra high ticket offer, and I'm scared because we, you know, added more services which are raising our prices and we're changing our avatar a bit and we're now doing the exclusions a bit, where we're like, hey, if your home value is under this or you're only looking for this type of system, like we're not, we're not for you anymore.
Speaker 2:Or before we were still trying to kind of win that business to keep cashflow. So it's going to be tough Like it's scary, Like I'm legitimately scared to to make a super ultra high ticket offer that has never been made before, but it's kind of scared and exciting.
Speaker 1:I think that the terminology can be intertwined because you know even what you're charging now, at some point I'm sure you're like oh, that's might be a little much.
Speaker 1:But when people start saying yes, you're like maybe not. Yeah, you know, like transparency, like I train people here in person and I was they're basically like paying for my time. Obviously, my attention, I do spend more time with them and we're more in depth, yeah, but, um, I charged enough that was worth my time, right, and I was like when, like, when people would come in, I would talk to them, I'd really push online, but they're adamant about in-person, I'm like all right, well, this is the deal, this is the time I have, this is the price.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And without hesitation yes, nice. And I'm like oops, got to go. I meant you know what I'm saying, but it was fair. It's fair for me, fair for them. Yeah, they have an amazing experience. That's it. That's how I got my next in-person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know the price. Obviously you already told the price, so the price is the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's so true, and we've been able to. We've had better customers since we've raised our prices. Like more people are happier with us since we've raised our prices Because we're able to actually do stuff better. I'm able to invest in better equipment, invest in more technicians. People never want to spend more money for things, especially if they think it's commoditized. But let's say and I can say this, let's say our units were exactly the same as another unit but our service was 10 times better. You should still pay for 10 times the price For sure, because you'll get more long-term and like.
Speaker 2:That took me a long time to really hammer down Because for me I just you know it's easy to say, but when you're when you need fricking money, it's like you kind of want to make concessions but you have to hold strong Cause, like you. Just you dilute your brand. And now all of my clients they pay. I don't discount anymore. All of my clients they pay. I don't discount anymore.
Speaker 2:Like which is great, I I the only time I'll discount is if they take away services, that's it. I'm like, okay, if you're going to pay less, then it's gotta be easier on my business and it's been so much better because the clients that actually want good equipment. They're super happy because number one they also know like they're getting a fair deal and they're not going to pay more than somebody else. They know we can serve them at a high level. And they also feel like they're getting something valuable because price is indication of value. Like if I go to a coach and they say, oh, it's 30 bucks a month, it's probably not that good, yeah, yeah. Or it's probably not going to be that personalized. But if I go to a guy's like, okay, it's 300 a month and you, yeah, I want to pay more for better stuff, yeah, yeah, no, obviously the value has to be, and that's like you can't just raise prices if your thing sucks, right, yeah, that's a sure way to shut your business down, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you said, any offers you make, if it's expensive, it better come with something that justifies the price. They should feel like they're still getting a good deal. Yeah, but you should Raise the price.
Speaker 1:And one thing I learned in the books is if you close more than 30% of your qualified leads, you're probably underpriced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, At 30% If you're above 30%. So if you close about 40% or 50%, you're probably you probably raise your prices by like 0.8 to 1.2. If you're 80%, you could basically double your prices or triple your prices. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much what happened and the math behind it. I learned this. I don't know if I'm supposed to give this out, Because on the book it says not for distribution, but this math changed the way I look at price increases and I think this is probably the most valuable thing I can say, Because I called all my entrepreneur friends when I learned this because it blew my freaking mind.
Speaker 2:So there's a math conversion of how to figure out where you're the most profitable in pricing. And the math conversion is you take your conversion rate of whatever you're selling and you multiply it by the lifetime gross profit of the customer. So lifetime gross profit is not net profit, so it's just the cost of equipment deliverability. So if you have a trainer, what you pay them and then that's it. So lifetime gross profit is not net profit, so it's just the cost of equipment deliverability.
Speaker 2:So you know if you have a trainer, what you pay them and then that's it, and whatever it costs you for software service stuff like that, yeah. So for a perfect example, let's say on my, we'll use simple numbers, let's say my lifetime gross profit at my current prices is $1,000.
Speaker 2:And I have a 30% conversion rate. I take 30% times lifetime gross profit. At my current prices is a thousand bucks and I have a 30% conversion rate. I take 30% times lifetime gross profit. That conversion number is 300 bucks, right, so that is like my benchmark number. And what's crazy is if, let's say, I drop my price in half and I did this with all my products If I drop my price in half to make the same money, I have to close at least 80% of clients at that new price point. But what was cool is if you raise your prices, I did like a I think it was like a $1,000 increase. So my lifetime gross profit was now like $1,800 or something to make it easy.
Speaker 2:And what was crazy is I could actually close 23% of clients and still make the same amount of money at that 30%. So then it's like that just takes the fear out of it Cause. Then you're like then you just test it.
Speaker 2:So you say all right, I'll raise my prices for 30 days and I may close the same percent. If I close the same percent 30 or higher, shit, way more money. If I close under, or if I close between 25 to 28%, I'm still making money. And if I close under, or if I close between 25 to 28, I'm still making money. And if I close under that let's say I close at 15 okay, prices aren't where the market is at. I need to go back and cool. But you have an actual mathematical way to test it. And when I saw this, I was just like, oh, this is crazy. Yeah, like this is how you actually raise prices.
Speaker 1:And I think it helps people get a little more justification and feel comfortable raising prices Like it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Well, you, have to with inflation. So when Warren Buffett took over the candy well, he sees candies he raised the prices by 3% to 4% every year, Every single year. Yeah, Just to keep up with the CPI. Yeah, yeah. If you don't keep up with the CPI and you sell at the same price every single year, your margins will compress, It'll go down. So you have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true, man.
Speaker 2:Just to survive in business. That's just the reality, unless inflation goes away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm waiting for that day. Yeah, right, so well. Well, look, justin, I appreciate you having me on. We've been rolling almost two hours on this one dude.
Speaker 2:That was great. I went by quick.
Speaker 1:I've never done one this long, so we might do this in a two piece yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:No, this is fun man, I love it.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I could talk business all day yeah, so I hope you guys nerd out about this kind of stuff, because this probably could have went another hour, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Honestly, yeah, Well, maybe we'll do it again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure, awesome. I appreciate you. I'm looking forward to seeing how you grow physically and financially and business and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you keep getting featured on the Carolina Iron Fitness page. I need to get on there. That's the next goal. Yeah, dude, just day post everybody. I'm not getting not like this, or not? Let me get to that 8% body fat and then we'll—.
Speaker 1:You'll get there. You're on your track, we're on the road man. All right, appreciate you, man. Yeah, brother, appreciate you.