So, okay, yeah. This is gonna be a a tough one. So I I'm I'm recording this podcast for me and me only. So this is my excuse not to go to therapy, but I'll probably go to therapy as well. I'm recording this on shooting what day it is anymore. Thursday, actually one week ago today. My mom died. And probably weren't expecting that one. And yeah, it's it's been a really, really, really rough week. I promise I have some business insights to share for you in all of this, but ultimately this is maybe me venting. And I I gotta be honest, so I I am I now both my parents have died. And my dad died about four years ago, and now my mom is gone. And it's tough, it's really, really hard. I can't not tell you I've been I've cried more in the last seven days than I have in my entire life, probably combined, and it's weird. I don't know if my dad would be upset about this, but I cried way, way, way more for my mom than I did for my dad. And I'm not I'm not sure why, but here's kind of I'll just tell you the very quick backstory of what happened and why at 46 I have no parents, but it's basically in 2017, I had just moved into a new gym, and my dad had a pretty bad stroke. And the stroke was like one of those a lot of people have strokes and they're fine, but this was a bad one. It lost, he lost his ability to walk, lost his ability to talk. Whole left side of his body was pretty much paralyzed. It was a really bad one, and you know, my mom, you know, set him up in the house. We had to like rearrange a whole room in our house, like build a bathroom in our downstairs and stuff like that. But she gave him like amazing care and and did everything that she possibly could to take care of him and give him the best life possible. I mean, the life quality of life was horrible in terms of how sick he was, but it was she did her best, right? And you know, it was a very, very stressful experience for a really, really long time. And as soon as my dad died, my mom got dementia. And it's it 100% was related to the stressful spirit experience with my dad. 100%. Like she probably would have gotten dementia, but her mom lived to like 94. My mom's mom lived to 94. My mom's grand, my mom, my mom's mom just just died like a few years ago. So she's like it's so weird. But anyway, so she gets dementia. You know, it's it's if you ever had experience with dementia, it's like it's a I guess it can vary, but in my mom's case, it moved very, very quickly. And about a year ago, we had to, you know, put her in a home. And and then yeah, yeah, just stuff starts breaking down, and you know, she didn't make it. And so it's like I am like super sad because my mom's a really fucking awesome lady, really awesome. And I I'm happy though that she's out of pain. She was not living a high quality life. She was in a home with like, you know, she was in like the the wart where they lock you up and you can't go anywhere. It's like it's hard. It was hard to visit her there. It was really stressful for me and my sisters. It was just tough. So she's she's now gone, but there's some there's some there's some lights in all of this. I got to do a little digging. So here's my first kind of lesson for you on this situation. So I wrote my mom's eulogy, and the first draft came back of the eulogy, and I was like, this is no way. This needs to have a writer's mind on it. And I sat down for hours and I wrote my mom a eulogy. And the amount of feedback I've gotten on my mom's eulogy, sorry, not uh not eulogy, obituary. Obituary is like the the big paragraphs with the way what they write for when someone passes, right? And you basically describe who they were, and a lot of times it's like, well, the this person leaves behind this person and that person, and I was like, no way, my mom's not going out like that. People are gonna know that this lady was different, this lady was special. Again, this is the first business thing for you, and so I wrote a really good obituary. Apparently, people told me that. And then the second thing was damn, I keep yeah, obituary. And then the second thing was because I have experience in speaking and I did my dad's eulogy, my sisters asked me to do my mom's eulogy, right? And so I prepared my ass off for that, and used a lot of the things that I know from speaking in public to on podcasts to on presentations and stuff like that for my eulogy. And I'm not saying that I crushed it, I'm just saying that everyone came up to me and it's like that was the fucking best eulogy I've ever heard in my entire life. Like that, it was amazing. How did you do that? Incredible. And it all came down to experience, it all came down to the work that I've been doing for the last several years with speaking and writing. And so the first thing I want to tell you and share with you is that you know, I'm yelling at you guys all the time to learn how to write, right? To learn how to write copy, to learn how to write emails, to learn how to, you know, write words that sell, yelling at you guys to get out there and get out into your communities and go do mini workshops and go speak and do and do this stuff. And while I believe that things, those things will, I don't believe, I know, those things will help grow your business and make you more money. Your ability to write and your ability to speak will make you more money as a gym owner. Man, you can really do great things outside of business with your written word and your spoken word. And because I've been doing the prep, it's kind of uh, I think there's a quote, it's like your your performance like falls to the level of your preparation or something like that. And I have just my entire life, not my entire life, but the last decade have been preparing myself to write and to speak to doing this, and it enabled me to really honor my mom on a much higher level than I would have done otherwise, right? And so like the benefits are are are way well more than just just making money in business. The same thing can go for, you know, when my when my a lot of times when my kids are having a tough time, what do you do when your kids having a tough time? A lot of times you sit them down and you have ta talk with them. Sometimes that's the worst thing to do. What do your kid doesn't want to talk about it? And so what I've reverted to when my kids are struggling with something, I'll write them a letter. I don't write them words. And so this the skills of speaking and writing not only go to helping you grow your business, but they help you grow as a person, and they help you make impact, make an impact on people around you and other people. Imagine getting up in front of a church and smashing a eulogy. It's one a great feeling for you, but and again, say not just eulogies, like wedding speeches. I married my sister, they asked me to do the what is it to do to be the the minister, so I had to become a minister, and they asked me to marry them. I've done wedding speeches, like stuff like that. So like it, those abilities and those skills talk you take you way beyond business. And so I felt really proud of my mom as I'm like digging through all this stuff and looking at the life she lived, and it was a really, really great, great life. And I narrowed my mom's life down to three words: generosity, love, and the last one was strength. And she was a really awesome person that helped a ton of people, and a lot of people knew that. But when they heard me talk about it and they read the words I wrote about it, they really got it, and it honored my mom's life really powerfully, which was really awesome, and I was so grateful. And it's a silver lining to a really fucked up, shitty situation. I'll be honest with you. Like, I'm like again, as I'm and I'm here's my therapy. As I as I do this and I, you know, recover from this, yeah, and and my my mom was so good to my wife Vanessa, they had such a great relationship, the two of them. She's devastated as well. So it's it's a tough, it's a tough loss. So I want to share my experience with my mom in business, and my mom helped me start Gabriel Fitness. So she was my first employee. And you know, when I launched the gym, even before I launched the gym, and you know, when I was writing my first business plan and I was doing all this stuff, like my mom was like right there by my side with me doing all this stuff and helping me. But the big thing that my mom had an HR background, and but the big thing she taught me was all about hiring. And there's a funny story I've told a few times, but my first hire when I was looking to hire a trainer, I had two candidates. One of the candidates was a guy that was very credentialed, right? He had all the certifications, he had a degree, he had everything you could think of. And then the other guy had like a college football background and zero training experience, and he had a communications degree. And me, the dumbass gym owner, I'm like, no, we mom, I will, and I'm talking to my mom about this stuff, and I'm like, no, we need to hire the guy that's got experience, the guy that knows how to train somebody, the guy's this. And she looked at me and she's like, honey, no. You hire the guy that's gonna create relationships the best. You hire the guy that's gonna have the personality that people are gonna want to come to this gym with. You can teach him the things that he needs to know, but you can't change him as a person. And so you want to find the best person for the job in terms of their personality, their buy-in, and she that that has been that lesson has been a pillar in every company I've ever had. And I probably would have made a huge mistake if I had hired the other guy. Huge mistake. And I'm so glad it did. Because I the other guy was you've heard me talk about him, is a guy named Big Tom, who's you know, was with me for 13 years. He's still one of my best friends. He's an amazing person, amazing guy. And he helped, he and I together shaped that whole company. And if it wasn't for her, I would probably wouldn't have hired him. And so my mom kind of instilled these different principles in me uh of how to find the high-quality people, and she taught me the interview process. And I had no idea how to interview anybody. She taught me, you know, what to do and how to read a resume. What are the things you're looking for in a resume? She taught me how to do a phone interview and how you have to do a phone interview first before you do an in-person interview. She taught me the things to look for in the interview process when they come in, and what are the things that I could do to test them a little bit outside of just asking them questions? What are the questions I should ask them? She helped me create this the fourth interview, which was called the Shadow Period, where she told me to have them come and watch. And she said, have them stay for like a whole afternoon or a whole morning. She's like, Don't have them just come for an hour. Have them come for like three or four hours. And I was like, Why? And she's like, Because I want to see if they really want this. And that became a pillar of our interview process. It's like, you want to hire someone that wants the job? And so we'd have them come in, and it's like, if they can't hang out for four hours and watch a bunch of sessions, and they're like bitching about that, well, they ain't gonna want to work from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. and then come back at 3 and do it again. Ain't gonna want to do that if they can't do one shift for four hours to watch. You know, and the last one was the last, you know, hiring, the step in the hiring process was she's like, go out to eat with them, take them out to eat and see what they're like. You know, how do they treat the waiter and the waitress? Do they offer to pay? Do they not? You know, how do they, what are their manners like? What do they evaluate, all that different type of stuff? And she taught me this process. And this whole process is outlined in my book, the 364 hiring manual. I think in one of my emails, if you're on my email list, I gave it away to everybody for free. You can shoot me an email and I'll send you a free copy. If you didn't get that email, Vince at GabrielFitness.com. But I outlined that was my first book I ever wrote, and I was outlined the hiring process that my taught me. And shit, it's like it's really, it's it's it's been tough. It's been a it's been a really hard week, it's been a really tough week, and I've just been able to just start working today. I haven't really done much at all. I think it's what it's like to feel almost a mini depression. I've been moving very slow. I'm coming out of it, though. I feel I feel a little better. And the good thing is, is that my mom's out of pain now. She's hanging out with my dad, and it's it's it's going to be it's going to be good. It's going to be good in the long run. And but I don't, she doesn't leave without me learning a lot of business lessons. And that hiring process that I just outlined for you. I've taught that hiring process for over a decade, and thousands of gym owners have learned that, and thousands of gym owners have probably taken that and used it to hire better trainers and have better businesses because of what my mom taught me. And so this one was for my mom. This one was for me to vent a little bit. I apologize if you don't, if you this is if this is your first episode, I am so sorry. But if you're a longtime listener, hopefully you can you've been you're going on the journey with me. And hey, life's filled with with great things. I've had a lot of great things happen in my life, especially in the last you know, several years with my kids being born and all of that. But man, life is there's a there can there's there's downs in it, and you know, the measure of your life is how you respond and the downs. And I looked at I was crying like crazy, but I looked at this eulogy, and I really took it very, very seriously. Like when I did the eulogy at the church, I took it really seriously. I put a lot of prep into it. I wanted to honor her. I wanted to use my gifts and speaking to also teach other people that they could learn from her life and and learn from the things that she did really, really great. And and I was able to hold it together. A lot of times people get up there and they can't. And I was able to hold it together because of I don't know how, but because probably because of the preparation. The preparation, I knew what I wanted to say. I rehearsed it a bunch of times. I always do this stuff with Vanessa, and I rehearsed it with Vanessa. She's like, no, take that out. Vanessa's like, take that out, take that out. And I listen to V. She's awesome. But yeah, man, it's been a uh it's been a tough one, but I wanted to share that, you know, she's had a little piece of, you know, a lot of the stuff, a lot of the stuff that I teach. If you you know have heard me teach about hiring before, and there's a lot more too. There's a lot, I this is all I can muster today. And I know there's more things that she taught me that I now am turning around and and teaching, you know, to you guys, not just not just from a gym space, not from a gym business space, but also just from a personal standpoint. But so this is all I can muster. And if you want the book, if you want to read the book, I'm happy to give you a free copy. I'm not gonna even send you the opt-in version. So I'm not generating leads from this. I literally, on my email list, when I sent them the sent them the book, I just sent them the actual, I think it was a PDF or whatever. So if you want it, I'll give it to you. It outlines the whole process, the five-step process that I went through that my mom helped create and created, you know, one of the more successful gyms in the in the in the world. And then, you know, we went on to teach this stuff to you know thousands of gyms all over all over the world. And so, yeah, my mom had that hand in it. So thank you for listening. I definitely wanted this to be not a long one. I didn't think I would be able to go too long today. But I appreciate you tuning into this podcast. I appreciate you allowing me to give you an episode that's a little different, a little more emotional. And I'm very grateful for this platform that I have. And and I thank you for listening. And so, over and out. See you on the next one.