SPEAKER_02: 0:00

What's up, everybody? This is an interview I did with a kid named Christoph. He's a kid, and he's barely old enough to drink, but he's old enough to make a boatload of money. And he started with me, he was doing about$8,000 a month. He's now doing over$50,000 a month, and he talks about all the things that he did to have really fast growth. So if you're looking to grow your gym quickly, this is a great interview with Christoph. Check it out.

SPEAKER_00: 3:56

Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02: 3:57

Happy you're here. I'm gonna take a picture of us. Smile. Awesome. Well, thanks for doing this. I just had two banger interviews. Awesome. Oh my god. These I'm expecting no less for with the one with you. But I am like the first one, I was like crying. Bobby and Maria. Do you know Bobby and Maria? I do not know. Oh my god, they're amazing people. You so you should definitely get in touch with them. Are you coming in a November meeting? So they'll be at the November meeting, but amazing people. They've done super well. They just opened up their second location. I've done great. But their husband and wife, but they had like a lot of struggles in the very beginning, and to see where they're at now is like amazing. But so and then another guy named Jason Marr, he owns North Star personal training. He's done really well too. Awesome. So yeah, so really cool. And it's um, it's funny. I printed out the thing. Did you put your answers in the sheet? I did, yeah. Oh, okay. I'm like reading this notes. And I'm reading this and I'm like thinking, well, oh I was like, Chat GPT did a really good job of putting the answers in. And I'm like, what? I was like, this sounds a little bit like Kristoff right here. So so before we start, I'll do an official start. The purpose I'm doing is I just kind of I'm almost done with this book, The Eight Profit Levers. And I wrote a book probably about six, seven years ago called The Four Stages. And basically it outlines the four stages, but I realized that most gyms are in stage one where you were when you started. And the best thing I can do is create a very specific resource to help gyms go from stage one to get to stage two. And that's all it is. It's just like 100%. It's exactly your story, and that's why I picked you because you legit were in stage one, and you have now at 45 close to 50k, you know, are in stage two now, which is amazing. And so I picked you and two others to do these interviews with, and then I'm gonna be transcribing the interviews to put them in the book. I'll also be using this as a podcast episode as well. But yeah, I appreciate you doing it. It's gonna be great. Yeah, I mean, it's very fresh in my mind, so it's a good time to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. And the big thing I want to do is shine the light on knowing that hey, not everyone, I don't want to say lucky, but not every everyone has taken your path. A lot of people are struggling for a really long time. So there could be guys listening to this that you know have been doing what you were doing at 8K for you know seven years. Yeah, you know, can I it I know you retired and you have no free time, but can you imagine doing that for that amount of money for an extended period of time? And that's kind of what I'm trying to help, you know, as people get out of this. And I think your story is inspiring, you know, to people that can be like, oh, wait, I can do that too. I can do that too. All right, awesome. Let me uh get started here. We'll get right into it. Born fit, that's the name. It's Bourne Fit Academy or Training Academy.

SPEAKER_00: 7:01

Oh, we just go by Bourne Fit for the most part.

SPEAKER_02: 7:03

Born Fit.

SPEAKER_00: 7:04

And what is the city that's in in the Millwood. But Westchester County is more well known. Westchester, New York. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:19

And how do you say your last name? Sourborn. Sourborn, okay. Yeah. Okay, awesome. All right, guys, welcome to another special episode that we are doing in conjunction with my new book, The Eight Profit Levers. And what I've done is I wrote a book called The Eight Profit Levers that is specifically designed to help gyms go from stage one to stage two. And from a revenue standpoint, basically between zero to 25k and getting those gyms from anywhere from between zero and twenty-five K to 25 to 50K. And the entire book is based around that. And what I did was I picked uh a few people that are going that did exactly that, that went from you know, join me and and you know, whatever they decided to sign up for, whether it's surge or SPF, whatever, but they were doing between zero and twenty-five K, and they have scaled past that amount of money. And I picked three awesome people that to use, and obviously they're being transcribed in this book, but also these interviews here. And today I have none other than Christoph Sourborn? Oh man. And he has a gym called Born Fit in Westchester, New York. I was at his gym not that long ago. I stopped up at his gym on my way to uh speak at the Perform Better Conference. It was awesome to see it live and in action. And I and it's funny because I have not personally worked with you very much. I've only heard great things of like all the stuff that you have going on. And then I showed up at your gym and I was like, Hey, how much money are you doing right now? And he told me, and I almost like fell off the stool. I was sitting on the one of the benches and I just like almost fell off. I didn't realize he was doing as well as he has. But uh super excited that you're here, brother. Looking forward to you.

SPEAKER_00: 9:07

I'm happy to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_02: 9:09

Awesome. So let's go. So obviously, you know, I'm painting this picture of going from stage one to stage two, right? And uh one of the reasons why I picked you is because I saw that the revenue level that you were at was around 8k a month when you first kind of joined and started with us, which is kind of a lot this or similar number where a lot of other people in the group have started and where I think a lot of people in the gym space are right now. And paint that picture for me of what life was like back then.

SPEAKER_00: 9:46

Yeah, totally. So that was I I signed up with you guys on SPF in July. We opened up in May, so it was only a couple months that I had actually been open. We had about 20 members at the time, and you know, I I didn't know much about organizing a schedule or or or much in general. I was leading all of the sessions and it was it was just a one-man show. I uh would run all the coaching sessions, I was handing all of the memberships, I was doing, I was recording all the content, I was running my own ads at the time, doing my best just to get my name out in the community. But it was all all all of me, pretty much giving just my 100% energy into the business.

SPEAKER_02: 10:23

And so, what were the challenges that in that spot when it was all dependent on you? Because I talk about this in the book, is like that is the big problem with stage one, that it's not like always horrible, but it always is dependent on you. And if something happens to you, yeah, this thing, it's like the example I always give is LeBron, you're LeBron and you're playing the game with four middle schoolers, right? And if all of a sudden LeBron, which is you, you're out, that team gets bad really quickly, right? So, what were some of the challenges that you faced, you know, in that time of making that amount of money, of spending that much time doing everything? Of you know, what were some of the challenges you faced there?

SPEAKER_00: 11:05

Not having the not having enough hours in the day for me to focus on getting new members. I again I was running all the sessions, and back at that time I would just open up any hour for somebody if they wanted to come train. I'm like, I'll I'll work with you. So I was coaching on the floor for about 10 hours a day and didn't have much much bandwidth to record the content and then learn about how to run ads on meta. So that was the hardest part for me, it was getting my name out there in the community. Got it.

SPEAKER_02: 11:32

And what was the challenges from like how you feel standpoint? Were you getting burnt out? Were you frustrated with the amount of money you were making? Like, what were the like the things that you're like, ah, like them the the the bad stuff that maybe made you be like, I might need some help?

SPEAKER_00: 11:50

Yeah, well, I wasn't taking any, I wasn't paying myself anything for the first so you're making no money, no money for the first four months, and I also didn't take a single day off. And uh, you know, I on that note, I wouldn't really call it burnout. I was I was definitely drained, but I loved everything that I was doing. It was everything I wanted to do. I definitely had the thoughts in the back of my mind coming from the world of finance as an investment banker. Like, well, now all of my peers are doing a lot better than me, and I'm here kind of spending all of my time just to bring nothing home. So all those doubts were definitely in the back of my mind, and I I was drained for sure. That that's it. Hold on, uh let's stay there.

SPEAKER_02: 12:28

So you were I I didn't know that you were in an investment investment in banking industry. Yeah, so what was that like going from probably making decent money to making eight thousand dollars to making no money? Right, right. Yeah, eight thousand dollars is revenue, like that's that's not what you were making. That's you know, so like what what what was that like? Like that you know, that's probably gotta be hard.

SPEAKER_00: 12:50

It was it was definitely challenging in the beginning. But I will say this every every morning I woke up with a smile on my face once I opened my gym, and I could not say the same when I was working at the bank. And that to me was was priceless. So I I always knew it was going to pan out in the end. I knew I was going to exceed what I would have been able to make working at the bank. So it was just a matter of time. And and once I hit that level, once I knew I was I was paying myself more every month than I was making at the bank, I was that was that was a big milestone for me. What what what was the thing that made you leave the bank? I saw the next 10 years of my life flashing before my eyes, and I didn't like where I was gonna end up. Where do you think you would have ended up? Unfulfilled. Unsuccessful in all the markers of life that go that don't include making money or being successful. I was very unfulfilled. Every single morning I would go into the office. I was sitting behind a computer screen for you know upwards of 10, 12 hours a day. And it felt like my work had no purpose, that there was no meaning behind all of all the energy I was giving to it. And that that was burnout to me because even after four months or five months of doing that, I I felt like I couldn't take it anymore. And then once I realized that, I was I was pretty quick in my decision. I gave my two weeks' notice. I'd already been kind of setting the stage for my gym in the last two months that I was working there. So I was definitely coasting while I was working there. I was not a good employee by any means, but but I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And once I had all the once I had the lease signed, I gave my two weeks' notice and hit the ground running.

SPEAKER_02: 14:34

It's really interesting, and I didn't know this coming into the conversation that that's what you did. And I think that there's a lot of people out there that are struggling as a gym owner, right? And there's burnout setting in, they're not making money, and they're possibly thinking about doing something different, like becoming an investment banker, right? Or whatever, right? Or getting a job with some security. And here you are, that had that, right? I imagine you were making decent money, you had uh, you know, security, you probably had benefits, like all that stuff that comes with the corporate job. You had all that, and I think that there's a lot of people that aren't able to make the gym thing work that think that you know there's this line of the grass is always greener, but it's fertilized with bullshit. Right? And so it's like, man, you just told us that it's not better on the other side, and you can make it work as a gym owner. So talk to me about, so that's great. That's a great insight right there. Talk to me about the decision to get some help. Like, what was so you're and I'll be frank, like your situation is not like some of the others we've had where there's severe financial problems or severe, you were you're a young guy, you know, you were trying to make it work and you were working a lot, but you weren't in this like shitstorm of a of a period of time, right? But you did realize that you needed some help. What was the kind of the moment that you realized, like, I I want to get some help to to take this to the next level?

SPEAKER_00: 16:24

You know, I I honestly can't say that there was one moment that told me that, but I've I've always been a believer in using money in exchange for time. And so in this case, I I I knew that eventually if I if I wanted to go solo, I could probably figure it out on my own after maybe like five, 10 years. But I didn't want to wait that long. I wanted the kind of the blueprint to follow and just know that if I followed these steps, I'm gonna get to this level. And so I was looking for some type of education, some type of you know, program that would give me accountability as well as teach me what I needed to do. And I found you guys, thankfully, after reading your book. Is that how you did it?

SPEAKER_02: 17:01

You read the book which which book which book did you read?

SPEAKER_00: 17:03

Uh it was this small group personal training handbook. I can't I can't remember exactly. I should I should know this, but uh you I saw an ad on Instagram, I clicked on it, you sent me the book, and and that's what I read. And then I attended the uh July Mastermind event.

SPEAKER_02: 17:16

Was it the physical book or is it that download? No, it was a physical book. It was a physical book, so we sent that to you in the mail. Exactly. Oh, okay, cool. Very cool. And so, like you, so you got the book, you read the book, and then you got invited to one of the events, and you attended the event, and then you eventually joined Mastermind. And so when you when you joined us, when you started working with us, you were doing 8K, right? You're currently, I'll fast forward for everybody, but you're currently and how how old are you, you might ask?

SPEAKER_00: 17:49

23.

SPEAKER_02: 17:49

You're 23 years old. Okay, I want to tell you what I was doing at 23. All right, I was getting drunk at 23. I was making zero money because I was probably I think I was still playing college football at the time at 23, and this 23-year-old punk is making fifty thousand dollars a month. I think you told me 45 when I was there, but now you're it's it seems like from your report you're closer to 50. Yes. So in a very short amount of time, you've gone from$8,000 a month to$50,000 a month. You've really blasted through stage one, and you are now a stage two gym owner. Talk about the things that happened to help you go from 8K all the way to 50K.

SPEAKER_00: 18:32

You know, I again there's no one gold or silver bullet, it's a bunch of golden BBs. One of the biggest changes I made was a mindset shift in the beginning around just the concept of giving away my service or my value for free. I think in the beginning I was so caught up in how much I poured into the business into all of the training sessions that I thought it would be a waste of my time to just bring people in for free and let them use my service. But the thing is, it's not wasting time at all. What that allowed me. So, what I did is we ran a buddy month where people could bring a friend to train with them the entire month for free. I did a bunch of free giveaways with as joint ventures, as well as just like a sweepstakes I would run within my community. And that not only did that give me more reps of doing the service that I was providing, so coaching four people at once, you know, it helped me become a lot better at that skill. It also helped me make our programming a lot more simple and efficient. And then all of those people, I built up so much goodwill and rapport and trust with them over that month that all of them, I can't think of a single person that didn't end up sticking around for with a membership after that. And so I think hearing from you guys that it's okay to give stuff away for free was was very impactful for me. And that was a big shift for me that I hadn't uh come to grip come to grasp with just quite yet. And so, yeah, all the uh the playbooks that I learned from you guys, so like we did like Buddy Month in uh in August last year, we did the a Black Friday deal, we did giving the gift of fitness and all of these ways that we started bringing more people into the community. And then because of how much value we gave them, they felt compelled to tell their friends and their family. And they turned out to be some of the biggest like referrers within the community. So that was if I can point point to one big shift that I made, it was that mindset around giving giving my service life for free, especially in the beginning when uh I kind of I I had spots open, so I might as well fill them.

SPEAKER_02: 20:28

How did you how did you going back to the buddy month? What were the things that you did to promote that? Like, how did you let your clients know that you were doing the buddy month? And did you do just one? Did you do multiple? Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_00: 20:41

I did it for yeah, just one month. And it was really all through email, and we put flyers up in the gym letting people know. But that was pretty much it at the time. Just messaged all my clients through email. And you know, I only had like 30 clients at the time, so I'm pretty sure I also just texted all of them. Um did whatever I needed to make sure that they they knew about it.

SPEAKER_02: 21:02

Good. And have you done any stuff like in the community? I know that I think you're from the area that your gym is in. Like, have you gone out in the community and done stuff at all and gotten new customers there? What have you done from there?

SPEAKER_00: 21:14

100%. So we ran a joint venture with a nutritionist in the area. Oh, nice. It was we just tapped into her email base and we sent a campaign out. What did you send? Tell me about the campaign. We were giving a I think it was fall into fitness, or no, we ran a fall fat loss detox uh last year. And again, we're running that this year, but um we we gave away five free spots in the program to her clients. And what I did is I I just had an application form that everybody filled out. So I think we had 30 applicants over a course of like seven to ten days, and we selected five, but the other 25 reached out to and I offered them a free two weeks or a free month just to give them value for free. And I got a lot more of those people in as well.

SPEAKER_02: 21:55

Just not even So you did so he Christoph's talking about a play that we have taught called the joint venture sweepstakes. And this is basically where you you partner with a joint venture and you give something away for free to a certain number, like you were giving away five, and then more usually more people apply, and then you follow up with the people that didn't win to make them an author. So for those listening to this, like that is a really, really good play. And you can do this with the nutritionist, but you can do it with like and I did it with my jujitsu gym as well. Did you really? Oh, how did how did it go in the jujitsu gym?

SPEAKER_00: 22:32

Amazing. We got it was it was a lot of the the men that I would grapple with, they would refer their girlfriends to it or their wives. Oh, that's awesome. I've brought up, I think we have like five of them who are continuing to train with us now.

SPEAKER_02: 22:42

Very good. And what is the so five, so how many did you get from the nutrition one?

SPEAKER_00: 22:49

We ended up with we had 12 new signups after the uh so we had five from the sweepstakes, all five of them stuck around, and then we had seven people who I gave like a free two-week trial to or a free month to. So so 12 from that one thing, and what did it cost you to do? Uh just well, time, but because it was just me at the time. I didn't have any coaches that I was.

SPEAKER_02: 23:12

Well, no, but time to fulfill the sessions. But I mean, what did it cost you to zero zero zero? Yeah, okay. So let's do some math here. All right. So, Christoph, what do you charge a month? On average,$400. Okay,$400. And then, you know, would you say lifetime customer value? I know you're somewhat new, but we'll call it 12 months.

SPEAKER_00: 23:34

Yeah, we our return is very low, but uh I mean I would our lifetime value is just above ten thousand dollars per member.

SPEAKER_02: 23:40

Okay, so ten thousand dollars. So for those listening to this at home, uh, Christoph spent zero dollars to get this nutritionist to send this email out. How many emails did she send? Just one. One email. So one email from and it's funny because this is in the book. I forget which chapter it is, but I talk about not you've heard of OPM, right? Other people's money. Okay. Well, I love more than OPM, OPC, other people's customers. And that's exactly what this is. Yeah, it's this nutritionist built trust with all of her customers. You send one, she sends one email out. All right, one email out. You got I'm doing some math for you guys at home. 12 signups. Now, this isn't just people that came in for the free thing, like they signed up, right? Mm-hmm for a membership. Yes, sir. That's$10,000. Well, a lifetime, lifetime value. Lifetime value. So you essentially, in a life from a lifetime value standpoint, made$120K. Not bad. That's from one nutritionist email. From one email. Absolutely incredible. Now, man, I'm sure the people listening to this would like to see that email that that nutritionist sent. Well, that's uh secret of Christoph, so you'll have to call him and ask him. Very cool. What else? What so you've done the and you did the same play with jujitsu? You've done that. So you did the buddy week referrals. What are the other ways that now uh let's talk about ads because I know you were running your own ads, and then you ended up, I believe you hired KISS Marketing, who's now under Gym Member Machine. I sold the company Kiss Marketing, who's now under Gym Member Machine, but same team and same everything. Tell us how that shift went from when you because that's another leverage point in the book, right? Because the I the we talk about profit levers, and it's like, how do we get more from less? Like you just extra described it. You sent one email and you made 120k. Well, ads is kind of the same thing. You invest a certain amount of money, you don't really have to do anything, and the leads just kind of come. Talk about the transition from doing it yourself to having an agency do it for you.

SPEAKER_00: 25:55

I mean, exactly what you just said. So we we signed up with them in in February, and the biggest thing was just that I didn't have to worry about all the technology behind it. I also didn't have a CRM before I started working with KISS, and so what I would have to do beforehand is like log into the meta ads platform, check to see if there were any new leads that I could download. Um and it was all a manual process, but now you know I just I record my content, my ads that I want to send or that I want to post, send them over, they run the ads for me, they make all the optimizations that they believe are best. And then with the CRM, anytime a lead comes in, I get notified right on my phone. So I can contact them instantly, and I don't have to worry about doing any of that from a uh manually. I can just it's just automated for me. Is that how you're is that how you're doing it before manually? Everything, everything. But now with the CRM, it's so much more seamless and it saves me so much time. Got it. Another leverage point.

SPEAKER_02: 26:51

That's actually one of the leverage points is just a good follow-up system um and following up with leads, and a software is a big piece of that. Definitely. Yeah, okay, great. That was a huge help. So really it wasn't just the running of the ads, but it was the automated software that helped you keep track of everything. Right. And following up and following up saves you a lot of time and energy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 27:12

Okay. Good. How how has the return been on the investment from the ads? Have you seen a good return on investment?

SPEAKER_00: 27:20

I definitely have. Yeah. I don't know, I don't know the exact number, but we we get a bunch of signups every single month. And they're helping a lot. So I don't I don't even know. And what is your ad spend right now? Just about a thousand a month.

SPEAKER_02: 27:31

So 50 a day. Okay, so basically you're spending yeah, you're spending a thousand dollars a month. I mean, literally, if you got at your lifetime value of ten thousand dollars, if you got one customer, yeah, it's totally worth it. Sounds sounds like you're getting more. A lot more than that, yeah. A lot more than ballpark, how many how many customers do you think you're getting from the thousand dollar ad spend?

SPEAKER_00: 27:52

From from the ad spend specifically, I would I would say about five to seven new members a month. Wow. That's phenomenal. Yeah, that's phenomenal. Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_02: 28:03

Awesome. Well, this is this is exciting. It's very you know refreshing talking to you and seeing how fast and quickly you've been able to move through. Point this snapshot of the business now. Like tell us, you know, where the revenue's at, where the profits at, where this team is at, where your schedule's at. You know, you started an 8K at 8k, one man show, doing everything, getting tired. You know, I I won't say burnt out, but like kind of like spinning your wheels a little bit. Paint us the picture of where things are like today for Christoph.

SPEAKER_00: 28:41

They're pretty good.

SPEAKER_02: 28:42

At 23 years old, damn it.

SPEAKER_00: 28:45

Well, I over the course of a week, I went from probably 80 hours down to maybe 40 hours a week now. I'm back to I mean, I'm in the gym a lot right now because we just brought on two new coaches. So we have now three coaches on staff, one full-time and two part-time coaches at the moment. I'm pouring a lot of my energy just into team development at the moment. That's really the the next quarter for me. That's all I'm focused on. Revenue-wise, we're doing this will be our first 50k month, which I'm very happy about. And the past couple months we've been above 45k. So we're steadily trending above that line now. Profit is just above 30k. But this month it'll be a little bit higher, but that's where we've been at the past couple of months, the past two to three months. So your prop your profit is$30,000, not 30%.

SPEAKER_02: 29:36

Correct. Correct. Yeah. 30. So your your margins are close to 60%. Holy cow.

SPEAKER_00: 29:46

Doing all right. I but yeah, I am I'm in the gym a lot, really at this point, because I want to be there. And I I will say I also still am working with a bunch of private clients at the moment, and another focus of mine at the moment. Is starting to either pass them on to my new part-time coaches or to have them work into our semi-private program. But that's life at the moment. I have a lot more free time on my hands. I get to go to jujitsu class at lunchtime. I'm getting a lot more sleep. We're closed on Sundays now, so I have the full day off. Finally moving out of my mom's house tomorrow. So excited for that. There you go. And yeah, that's that's really the gist of it at the moment. It's it's exactly where I want it to be at this point. And now it's just about not being complacent, but seeing what's next, how I can scale this further from here.

SPEAKER_02: 30:36

And what is the where do you want to take it? You know, from here. You have one really good gem. Where do you want to take it from here? Where do you see yourself in the next few years?

SPEAKER_00: 30:46

I see myself with multiple locations. I see myself by this time next year, I want to have my second location at least with 50 members in it. Beyond that, like my three-year vision is to have three training studios that are each paying me at minimum 20,000 a month with really no involvement in those businesses or no, you know, no coaching on the floor, maybe just managing the team. So that's where I want to be in three years. In one year's time, I want to have my second one almost at call it 50% capacity. But for the time being, I can't I can't get to my second one until I'm comfortable with this one running without me. And so at the moment, it's all about team development, which we're doing all right with. We're doing we're doing pretty well. I'm very happy with the the way my team is running at the moment. Awesome. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 31:33

So I want to end with this question for you. If you're, you know, obviously I want you to picture who's reading this book, who's watching this interview, and if you were giving those people advice that were where you were at 8K a month, 9K a month, 7K a month, wherever they are, and you were gonna give them a piece of advice on what they need to do to get where you are today, 45, 50k a month. What are the things that you would share with that person?

SPEAKER_00: 32:13

Well, the first thing is they need clarity on what they need to do. So if they know what they need to do, great. But if not, I'm a big proponent of investing in yourself or investing in your business by getting help. Once they have the clarity and they know what they need to do, uh a lot of times it requires the LeBron of the business to uh to put their head down and just grind until they can get their head above water. Long hours just sacrificing sleep, sacrificing time with the family, whatever it takes. But if the goal is as important to them as as they make it seem, then that's what it requires from them. And if in in any lens, if they don't believe that they can take their business where they want to go, then it's not gonna happen, period. So having the mindset of I can do this and I will do this is really the mantra that has gotten me this far, to my point. I mean there's really there's nothing you can't do. As long as you know the playbook, you know what's required of you. All it takes is is effort and love, really. So you gotta love what you're doing, and if you and if you do and you can tolerate that suck period for a while, just keep going and stick to the game plan.

SPEAKER_02: 33:27

So getting clarity and knowing what you need to do, how how did you get that? Did that just was that just there for you? Does that just happen? But like where where did you because I think a lot of people struggle with this. A lot of people struggle with they don't know what they want, they don't know what to do. If you if someone was to ask you, it's like, all right, clarity. How do I get that? What do I need to do to get it?

SPEAKER_00: 33:52

Are you talking in a lens of somebody who's a gym owner, not knowing what the next step is? Okay, yeah. Knowing what the next step is now from Like how did you get it?

SPEAKER_02: 34:06

Or was it just there?

SPEAKER_00: 34:08

I will say I uh I've stood on the on the backs of giants throughout my life, so I've gotten a lot of help. I've I've pretty much studied the playbook of of running a gym all throughout college, even though it wasn't part of my my degree. Um because I knew I wanted to do it one day. And so I I had a lot of clarity heading into it, but I ended up getting caught in the weeds. And so the the biggest help for me from you guys was just helping me get my head above that and seeing the bird's eye view again. So I got my clarity from from really those the boxers with Johashi, the mastermind events that you guys hold, the weekly meetings, all of that was really helpful for me in just reminding me of what the correct actions were to take at the moment.

SPEAKER_02: 34:52

What take me back to that? You said you were in college and you did were you an intern at a gym, or like what what was that?

SPEAKER_00: 34:58

Did you well I the I I read up on it. It's like Alex Ramosi's book, a gym launch. I I think I read that maybe 30 times, and I I had a whole note sheet broken down with that. I listened to any podcast I could I could find online. Yours was one that kept popping up. And I did intern at a gym. I worked as their social media manager for a while. It was a semi-private training studio in Manhattan, and I got very close with the owner. He he sort of took on the role as my mentor, and so he would just answer any question I had at the moment, and it was super helpful. So I I got a ton of help leading up to actually opening a gym. And I felt like I really knew what was what was needed in order to get to where I wanted to go, but getting caught in the weeds was a part of it, and having people in my corner that I could just talk to whenever and get the clarity I needed at that point was was a huge unlock for me.

SPEAKER_02: 35:52

So a big thing of the clarity for you was seeing what's possible, like seeing the success, you know, at that gym in Manhattan and at the you know, from the books and from the things you read. But really, the clarity came from you being like, Oh, you know, this is what it's like, this is how to win, this is the playbook, like you mentioned. Yeah. That's where the so the clarity came from other people. Definitely, definitely. 100%. 100%. Yeah, I'm not that kind of. Yeah, which which is great because you know, like a lot a lot of times it's just like, you know, it's like the whole Roger Bannister principle, right? You may be too young, you don't know who Roger Bannister is, but Roger Bannister was the guy that broke the four-minute mile. And they basically thought that, hey, no human being can run a mile in under four minutes. Their body will explode if it happens. That's like what they thought. And all of a sudden, Roger Bannister did it, and then a month later, someone else did it, and then a month later, someone else did it, and then a month later, someone else did it, right? And it wasn't until one guy did it that all these other people started to do it because they started to they saw that it was possible, yeah, and they started to believe it was possible. And I think that's kind of what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00: 37:08

No doubt.

SPEAKER_02: 37:09

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:10

Yeah. I also at the time I didn't really know what type of gym I wanted to run. So I thought I wanted to open a big box gym, like in you know, like an Equinox or an Anytime Fitness. And then working at a at a semi-private training studio really showed me that that model suited me a lot better. So getting the clarity on what I wanted my gym to even look like in the first place, 100%. It was only from other people that I was able to find that. Good.

SPEAKER_02: 37:34

So yeah, so really your advice is get in the room with people doing what you're doing, and that may be a step ahead of you. Yeah. Very good. Awesome, man. Well, this has been I'm uh I'm very, very excited for the future. You know, uh I mean, what you've been able to accomplish at such a young age is really impressive, and and you're still doing jujitsu at the same time, you're moving out of your mom's house, all kinds of cool stuff happening for you. You're gonna get your purple belt too? Like what which belt are you? I have blue belt right now. Oh, you're a blue belt? Okay, very cool. Very cool. Yeah, so maybe you get your purple belt soon, and or did you just get your blue belt?

SPEAKER_00: 38:14

No, I'm I mean, the it's kind of just like an honorary thing. I don't do gi, I do know ghee. So you do no gi? Oh, cool. Just gave it to me because uh I've been there for over a year now.

SPEAKER_02: 38:23

Nice. Oh, that's super cool. Yeah, my son is fully, fully into it. He's the emails. He's uh he's now a yellow belt or yellow, he's yellow with a white stripe. It took him, I mean, he's been doing it for five years. That's awesome. And so he's like, but he's getting we're now doing 30 pull-ups a day, and the kid is getting strong. Hell yeah. And it's like he's nine. Nice, and he's getting strong. Like last yes, last night we did 45 pull-ups with nine pounds of external load. Wow. And he's and he's 80 pounds. So he did 45 pull-ups. We do it, we do it in sets of two, sets of two to three. But yeah, it's it's funny to see his his jujitsu get better as he gets stronger. Oh, sure. Yeah, sure. And you retired from jujitsu, right? So I'm trying, I'm I'm thinking, I'm thinking about it. After my my retirement from agency life, maybe I'll I'll come back and I'll come back around, but uh, we'll see. I keep saying it. But no, man, awesome job. Super, super proud of you. You're doing amazing work. Keep up uh keep up the great work, and I'll uh we'll look to see big things from you to come in the future. Hell yeah, man. Thank you for all of your help. I really appreciate you. Got it, but have a good one. Bye.