Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. I'm going to talk today about something that I feel has served me very, very well over the last 10 years, and it is being ambitious but not being reckless, and it's hard to package that up into a short conversation, so I'm actually going to use a couple of examples A quick conversation that I had yesterday with somebody new at the gym, a short excerpt from a book that I'm reading and then a short story. Don't worry, this isn't going to be too too long. So we've had the gym for 13 years and you can go back to some of the earlier episodes. You know where I've talked about. You know how I got into fitness and the catalyst of financial education. Those two will unpack this a little bit more, but those early days we struggled. We struggled pretty hard and that was actually right around the time there was a thing called the new you challenge. I'm not expecting anybody to know about it, but basically, like it was when up that, like they only get paid if you set appointments. So anyway, you'd end up paying this company a bunch of money and everything and, um, your appointment you'd have. Your calendar would be literally full of appointments, like you'd have back-to-back appointments all day long. Um, we stayed away from that. Like, my thought on that was I don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Our gym was only like 50 or 60 people at the time and I thought to myself like, like, even then I did. Like what we were building. I just didn't know how to build it more and better. But I thought, if we drop another 50 people in this gym, or 100 people in this gym this month, like what does that even look? Like Like you, all of a sudden, you can't even control the culture of what you're building. So we stayed away from it, you know, to our own detriment, really. So I'm going to move into the stories, and I mean when I, when I read these, I mean some of this is for me to come back to later, some of it is for my sons to stumble upon one day and hopefully it serves them too.

Speaker 1: 2:38

So there's an auto text that went out to one of our new clients that say said are you starting to see results? She said yes. I asked what are you noticing most? Um, and she said I'm loving the energy of all the classes and my, my body is seeming like it's waking up and so I said, hey, that's awesome. And from our initial conversation I said I knew that you starting five days a week right away was not going to happen, like she was adamant on it and I just kind of okay, like we'll see. Um, what she's doing now is more of a normal process. The body has to wake up, the body has to adapt right, and it's going to take a little bit of time, but if you can stick to kind of like a three day aweek minimum, it's going to have you in a really good spot. And she chuckled back. She said that's still the goal, five days a week. And she said thank you for all the check-ins. Your follow-up game is strong. You should be in big-ticket sales. And my message back to her immediately was trust me when I say I am right where I belong, which she loved. She said that's a beautiful line and sentiment and it's going in my status. So I don't know where she put it, but I mean I was just trying to be honest. So hopefully these next two stories will kind of cement that as well. So one is from really early on in the book. It's called the Obvious Choice by Jonathan Goodman on page five. And go figure, the name in the book is mine.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Jason had a great business. It was simple, it was profitable and he did a good job. He wasn't famous on the internet but he'd built a local reputation Old school stuff. One day his friend Maggie suggested he build an app to scale. She had good intentions. Maggie said her friend jennifer has one. It seems to be going well.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Jason follows matthew on instagram. Matthew's always posting pictures with his girlfriend traveling to exotic places and promoting his app. Does anybody know any app developers? Jason posts in an online industry group one night. Recommendations are made, sales calls are performed, jason commits to a few thousand dollars, which quickly turns into a few more thousand dollars. His app is ready. He prices it at $20 a month. Why $20? That's what others do. A few friends buy to support him. Then he has to find more customers, but he doesn't know how. He's never paid for ads or used social media to get customers before. Unknowingly, jason's gone from a simple business model where he needs a few customers paying him a lot to a complicated one that needs a lot of customers that pay him a little. He's learning the hardest to learn law of business. Just because you build it doesn't mean they will come. Does anybody know a good social media growth agency? Jason posts in the same group Again. Recommendations are made, sales calls are performed. Jason commits to a few thousand dollars more. Six months have passed. Jason's burned out. His local business is suffering. He's been focused on the app. It's time to renew his contract with with a development company. He's delaying the decision by doom scrolling instagram.

Speaker 1: 5:48

When a post from matthew appears in his feed, I'm shutting down my app. It says that's something that I'm very, very aware of. Um, I've talked about potentially going down the the road of, like second gym and all this stuff, and there's other things that I want to do in with my life and affect people in different ways, but like, just not at the expense of what we have built already. And you know, if I had another thing and like, I would hope that it would be, I would hope that it would be everything that we've built right now I don't know if I'm saying that right, I'm pretty freaking content. So, anyway, the next one.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Some of you guys might know this story. It's called the businessman and the fisherman. One day, a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish. About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. You aren't going to catch many fish. That way, said the businessman to the fisherman. You should be working rather than lying on the beach.

Speaker 1: 7:19

The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied and what will my reward be? Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish, was the businessman's answer. And then what will my reward be? Asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied you will make money and you'll be able to buy a boat. And then which will then result in larger catches of fish? And then what will my reward be? Asked the fisherman.

Speaker 1: 7:47

Again, the businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman's questions. You can buy a bigger boat and hire some people to work for you, he said. And then what will my reward be Repeated? The fisherman? The businessman was getting angry. Don't you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world and let your employees catch fish for you. Once again, the fisherman asked and then what will my reward be? The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman Don't you understand that? You can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again. You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach looking at the sunset and you won't have a care in the world.

Speaker 1: 8:30

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said and what do you think I am doing right now? Um, it's a quick one. It's a pretty powerful little story. Um, I don't feel like I'm I'm not saying I'm the fisherman, but I. I just there's something that lands with this. Um, I feel like I have a little bit of both of these guys and and I have to, uh, and, and I think if I resist being going too far on the businessman, I will get right where I need to becoming the fisherman I have. I have the vision of that. You know, we'll, we'll see how it goes.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Um, it's something that um was said to me years and years and years ago was that you can have anything you want in life if you will help enough other people get what they want. And I found a way to do that. That is really meaningful and and I love it and like again coming back to the, you should be in big ticket sales like of what I don't, I'm not interested. I'm I'm not interested in sales. I mean I meet with people. I meet with hundreds of people every year and I mean I've been told that I'm not a typical salesperson. As much like more often than I've been praised for my sales, which, of course, like I'm not, I'm not professionally trained. I've, you know, I've done some training, sure, but like the amount of times that I just side like side rail my own sales conversations just because I'm interested in talking to that person, and it's hard to bring back, I couldn't even tell you, but my track record is still pretty good because I believe in what I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 10:23

I'm not interested in the type of sale where you make the sale and then you never see that person again. It's hard to explain, but the best part happens after the sale, that's. All I can say is that it's not all about that. The sale. That's, that's, that's. All I can say is that it's not all about that, but the only way that we actually get to work with someone and affect them is if they make it through that, that initial meeting. And so I do. I have to be good at that, um, but I'm not interested in that part. I'm interested in the part that comes later. With that, I'll see you in the gym.