What's up everybody? Happy New Year. Hope you had a great Christmas and January's kicking off. Wanted to get a podcast to you, and if you haven't followed my emails, we've been having a uh a direct line into the SPF Mastermind, and I don't usually do that. Usually, you know, I make people read the book first or buy a course or something like that before they get into the mastermind because it's it's a big commitment, and you know, there's there's uh a lot to learn once you get in there. But what I wanted to do to kick off the year is really give people the direct line right into the group because I I've realized that you know when you're part of something, something like a coaching group, which I've been in a mastermind my entire business career, it just helps a ton, right? And you know, I could scream from the rooftop on this podcast and tell you, well, you gotta join the mastermind, you gotta do a mastermind. And instead, what I want to do is share some stories of guys that have done really well and what what what they've done to do really well. I'm gonna I kind of picked about six guys that I've worked with, and I'll share like kind of one thing that I think I think it's multiple, right? But I'll share one thing that I pulled out. I wrote in my notebook one thing that I think this this each individual did really well, that I think of one of these six things, if you started focusing on one of these six things that one of these guys did, it probably would help you a ton. So this is not just me, you know, proud papa talking about some of the guys, some of my guys, but this is about one thing they did that I think was kind of a game changer, if you will, or a breakthrough creator that hopefully you can use and learn from. Now I'll say this I th there are people that have come to me that are clients of mine that were already successful. And I'm not saying that every consultant out there does this, but I think there's a lot of consultants out there that are peddling clients that they've had success with that were already really, really successful when they got to them. And it's kind of like the coach that trains athletes, and all of a sudden the kid was like really, really good athlete, and then he makes all state, and the gym starts saying, Oh, we got this all state athlete that we helped, and it's like, no, dude, they came to your gym three times and then they became all state because of the 20 years or the 15 years of work they did before that, not you. And so what I wanted to tell you some stories of people that only I would call it one out of the six was doing even close to seven figures, and they were doing under seven figures at the time. But the rest of them, some of them without I'm not gonna give the exact numbers on each person, but many of the ones I'll talk about today, multiple of them were doing under ten thousand dollars a month when they started with me. And every all of the six that I'm gonna talk about are doing over a million dollars a year, and many of them well over a million dollars a year, some into the twos and three million dollars a year. So these are big, every one of these gyms are doing over a million dollars, and many of them didn't even come close to starting like that. So I picked these this group of people because they started with me from the very beginning, and they're still with me. All six of the guys that I'm gonna talk about are still clients of mine. And so it's not like it's been like this oh, they worked with me for three months, and uh they were already doing two million, and then I got them to do 2.1, and they're like, they're doing 2.1 million. It's just like, no, these guys were in the poor house, and now they're in the rich house. And the commonality between you know all of them is they were clients when they started and they're still clients today, right? So here's the first one. First one is a guy named Giancarlo Rainey. I don't know if I even after a seven-year relationship, I would hope I get his name right, but I always mess it up and I kind of do it on purpose to mess with them a little bit. But he this guy came in, he he was probably I think 22 years old when he started with me. And you know, he was he started with my surge program, and then he jumped into mastermind right after, and he was scared to do the surge program. And this was back when the surge was like 500 bucks to get in, and he was petrified to do it. He just posted his numbers for this year. Uh, he'll do 1.8 million dollars, and he has five gyms around the Philadelphia area, and he has absolutely crushed it. And here's the one thing that I'll say about G-Man is G-Man always says this. He always says these words I have stood on the shoulders of giants, and he's not talking about me, he's talking about all the other people in the group, in the SPF mastermind, that were already doing pretty well when he got into the group. So some of the some of the people that he is talking about are people that I'll talk about next, right? But he did a beautiful job of looking at the mistakes that I made, that many of the other guys made, and he did not make those mistakes. That's one of the things is just like if you uh the Keith Cunningham has a line. It's just like, hey, if you just avoid doing stupid things, you'll probably be pretty successful. And that's what G-Man has done the best. G-Man has not made a lot of stupid decisions. He's he's made a lot of really, really good decisions, but he's also made very few stupid decisions. And I think some of that came from watching what we were doing, hearing the mistakes that made and the things that caused challenge, and not repeating that same stuff. And, you know, I I I think I was listening to an Annie Frisella podcast, and he was just like, hey, don't make the same mistake over and over again. If you make a mistake once, all right, fine, whatever, learn from it and then move on. But if you make the same mistake over and over again, that's on you. And I think that's one of the things he did. Two things. Well, he stood on the shoulders of giants, right? He found people that were doing well and he just modeled what they were doing, and he didn't make the same mistakes that they made to get there. And so he got there faster. Like way faster. Now I gotta move on. I could go on and on about G-Man because he's done great. He's actually up for our gym owner of the year award this year. I could go on and on about him, but he's uh absolutely incredible. Literally doing 8K a month when he started with us, and now he's doing 1.8 million this year. It has like five locations. It's sick. But remember those two points. One, don't don't reinvent the wheel. Find people that are doing well and just be like, all right, I'm gonna go do what they're doing because they're winning. And then the same thing is find out what mistakes they made and don't make those same mistakes. Okay, number two. The second one is another Philadelphia guy, his name is Devin Gage. Now, I worked with Devin w before he even, you know, had his big gym. Well, I think he actually had it, I don't remember, but this was probably one of my first coaching clients. I worked with Devin one-on-one in probably like 2013 or 14. So, right when I first started doing dabbling in coaching and consulting. Right. And the and the short story is Devin was doing all in-home. He was like driving all around Philadelphia doing in-home clients, and he had a gym, but he had no one training at his gym. And I was like, dude. And I was like, we got to get this gym cranking because you're paying rent on it. Let's actually just make it work. So I had him basically take all his in-home clients, tell them hey, they have to come to the gym, and then we worked on growing the gym from there. And I didn't, I either thought I was gonna ruin this guy's life or change his life. And luckily, I hopefully it changed his life. I think it did. But he then grew gauge strength training into a very strong million-dollar business, a combo of adults and athletes. So really, really, really strong business in the Westchester P area. Devin is a very, very, very good business owner, one of the best business owners I've been around in in my career. Super, super uh smart, savvy guy. But he came to me and you know, he said, you know, all right, I got this gym, it's due a million bucks, and I'm kind of bored, and I want to know what's next. And it was in our CEO mastermind, I think we were in the the one of our Colorado meetings, we were at the Colorado meeting, and it was the basement of Joe Hashe's house, so we always talk about it. And he had this idea to scale the best part of his business. So he was training, he had like a bigger gym, so you know, the revenue from a million bucks was made up of athletes, adults, he had like some other things going on, right? And he decided to take, like some of the other guys were doing, he decided to take the best part of what he was doing, which was the small group personal training, and scale a business around just that piece of it. And he has since that day opened, I believe, I think he's at nine or ten uh locations. So that that his main gym is still cranking and humming, which is beautiful, right? Well over a million dollar business. And now he has ten facilities all over. He has one in Florida, now he had one in California, he's got a bunch of Pennsylvania, Delaware. Uh so he's got these gyms all over. Now, a couple things Devin did really one, Devin is a marketer. I don't know of a smarter marketer that's a gym owner than Devin Gage. But the second thing is he committed to a model that was different from his first location. And I think that's what a lot of people make the mistake is they have this one gym and they think they need to just open a second gym that looks identical to their first gym. And Devin understood that you can't scale complexity. And so he's like, I'm just gonna take the piece that's doing the best and the most profitable, and I'm gonna scale just that, and I'm gonna make it simple, and I'm gonna make it easy, and I'm gonna make it small, and he's doing that, and he's doing that amazingly well. So the combo of this, these two things one, very, very, very vast education and knowledge base on marketing. He is constantly studying, he's always coming up with ideas, he's always testing things, he has no problem throwing shit against the wall and it failing and flopping. He's done it many times as I have. And then the second thing he's done really well is he's he scaled a model that was different than his first, and he didn't scale something that was complex. He scaled something that was simple and easy to be able to duplicate that wouldn't cause a ton of headaches to be able to replicate it. So Devin Gage, uh phenomenal Jim Monarch and doing swimmingly well. Third guy, Anthony Bevelacwa, A B fitness. He's out in Long Island, uh phenomen one of my favorite people in the world, just a phenomenal human being. And A B came to me, he was doing all one-on-one training. And he came to one of my first mentorships and signed up for the SPF mastermind right after that. And his big shift was you know, many of you have done this already, but his big shift was going from one-on-one to small group. And the problem was he didn't think he had the space. And so he was training in like a 900 square foot, you know, storefront in Long Island, you know, where the rents are high, right? So it's hard to have a lot of space. And he wasn't, he kind of knew about small group, but he didn't think he had enough space. And so what I had him do is I had him go watch the a movie called The Founder. And the Founder is the story of McDonald's. And there's a quick scene in that movie where they're trying to create the most efficient optimal kitchen for McDonald's. And there they did there's a scene where they go out into a tennis court and they have tape on the floor, and they're like on the tape, they mark with chalk, like, you know, milkshake maker here, fryer here, burger joy bur burger fryer here, burger grill here. And they what they did is they created this like choreographed dance that would create the most efficient kitchen to be able to get people in and out, right? So it was created for efficiency. And in and they only had a limited number of space, so with the space they had, they had to be able to make it work. And I told AB to go watch that scene, right? Go watch the scene, and he like got it. And he had to get rid of his preacher curl machine, right? Because he didn't want to have three preacher curls in 900 square feet because we're not going to use that. That's not you know relative to his audience and what they want, just you know, one extra, one piece of machinery that does one thing. And so he cried and then got rid of his preacher curl machine. But then he started realizing that all right, I can do this, I can fit this. And he bought he got rid of certain pieces, he bought certain pieces, he rearranged things, and after a while, he he he actually was able to get two groups of six i i in in 900 square feet. Now, it turned out to be, I think, too tight. He did it for a while, and then we started seeing some attrition, right? So we like that to fix that. It was like it would the the the money printing that was going on, because he actually does 30-minute sessions, the money printing that was going on was just incredible. And he actually he he was making so much money he earned the nickname Cash Room because his gym was making so much money. We were like, we gotta put a little room in the back to hold all the cash. So it was really funny. So he earned a good nickname in the process. But one of the things that A B did really well is he he did no one else in the group did 30-minute sessions. And it was easy for him to be like, well, you know, everyone's doing small agreeable. It's like, you know, I'm gonna, but I'm gonna just now do an hour because everyone's doing it. No, and he stayed with 30 minutes. And I think it was one of the best decisions he ever made. I know my friend of mine, Brent Gallagher, does all 30 minutes and he prints money too, right? And so I think he's onto something. A lot of us don't have the courage to shift from a 60-minute model to a 30-minute model. And I'm not here saying that that's the right thing to do. I just know it works for A B. And one of the things that I think was so great, what's so great about him is his commitment to who he is and his authenticity. So he stayed with that third. He did shift from one-on-one to small group, but he stayed authentic and true to what he felt was needed, and he only feels that 30 minutes is is necessary, right? And I was actually at his gym not that long ago and I watched it, and it's like they do a beautiful job. They get them a really, really solid workout in 30 minutes. So stay true to to who you are. Just because I do something or Mike Boyle does something or Eric Cressy does something, you know, doesn't mean you have to follow that exact thing. You you can take pieces, right, and take things and learn from people, but you you at the end of the day, you want to stay true to to yourself and who you are. And A B did that, which was which was beautiful. Staying in Long Island, number our gym owner number four, is a guy named TJ Lopez. And TJ was actually our last year's 2025 Gym Owner of the Year Award winner. And he is TJ was kind of like famous in the Long Island area for training athletes. He was CC Sabathia's personal trainer. He was just like the athlete guy. Everyone knew him as the athlete guy. And for years and years and years, he just focused on athletes and he kind of realized that hey, I got this big facility. I know I can train people from you know 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and nothing's going on and no revenues being created. And for a really long time he dabbled in it and it didn't take off. Finally, he he he made a shift and he basically hired a director. He hired someone that was in charge of the adult program. And he got that, he he he did a great job of leading that person, but it wasn't until he's like, all right, this is a viable way that this business can make a lot of money. It's cap we have an unbelievable amount of capacity, we have tons of parents that of our kids that we could get to train here. Now we just need to focus on it. And what he did do well, that a lot of people don't do, is he he found a way to be able to get two things done at once without taking your eye off the ball. He he basically sometimes people can only do one thing. And you can do multiple things when you create many leaders. And that's what he did. He created leaders that own certain results in his company. And so someone owned the growth of the adult program. And TJ was leading that person, and and that is when his business actually took off. I mean, he's actually exploded multi-multi-million dollar gym. I think he's approaching, I think he's approaching two million. I'm not positive on that. But just and and monster profits, monster profits. I mean, if you go back and look at the put we made posters for what the profits were for each gym owner of the year candidate, and his was like off the charts. I was like, oh my God, what are you doing with all that money? And so, but that was the big thing. Like he had a really good thriving athlete program, and he needed a way to get the adult program going, and he couldn't focus on it himself, focus on both himself. So he kept his eye on the ball of the athlete thing, kept that humming and kept that going, hired someone to really own the adult program. He oversaw both of them with the leader in charge, and then that's when it that's when it took off. So sometimes taking it to the next level is all about a strategic hire. It's about a specific person that you need to hire to be able to give you the freedom to be able to go focus over here, but not let the other thing that you're doing, you know, fall by the wayside. So he did a really brilliant brilliant job of that one. Congrats, TJ, our two five winner, SPF Gym Owner of the Year Award winner. Gym Owner number five, this guy named John Doherty. He owns Conquer in Frisco, Texas. He joined SPF similar to G-Man, doing about eight 7K, 8K. I don't know the exact numbers, under 10, I know. And, you know, was even going through some personal problems at the time, some challenges. And John has today, I think I don't even know where he's at. I think it's six or seven locations, has opened these gyms all over Frisco, Texas. He did something similar to what Devin has done was taking, you know, a model that he had that was very, very large. His first gym does over a million dollars, and he took a piece of it. It's different than everyone else's, which is another thing about John, is like he's not doing the exact same thing. John is a he's a doctor, he's a physical therapist, and he's incorporating physical therapy into some of his facilities as well. So it's very different than what some of the other guys in our group are doing, but he's been massively successful, and you know, he's killing John's another guy like Devin that's a really good at marketing. And so he's been killing the pre sales and doing really well, you know, in that front. And one of the things I see with John is John just has a ton of courage. And He's not afraid to go open two locations at once and one of them fall by the wayside and he's got to jump back in and get it going again. And he just he's he's a true entrepreneur that gets out there and he's taking chances. And in order to do that, you gotta be okay with something breaking and being able to get in there and and and go in there and fix it. So the one thing I think that what courage is, is courage is is doing it every way, even when you're feeling fear. If you're waiting till you feel good to do everything all the time, you're probably not gonna get very far. And so one of the things I see about John is he just goes and he knows he's gonna mess up and he knows he's gonna screw up along the way, but he just keeps going and just keeps moving forward. He doesn't care what anyone else thinks of him. He sometimes gets teased in the group because he's like poses with his shirt off in front of the cars. And one of the things I always say about John is like, I would never do that. You're never gonna see me posing in front of a car with my shirt off, nor do I deserve to do that. John does. Okay, but at the end of the day, he totally owns it. He totally owns it. He's not uh he doesn't apologize for it, he's not embarrassed by it. He just goes and he and he does it, and he has uh a ton of courage. So I mean, I I think he's done phenomenally well of creating a really big brand in the Texas area, and is that thing is, you know, it's got some massive legs. I I I would not be surprised if we see a hundred of these things popping up, and he's doing amazingly well. And the last one is varsity house gym. And this is my friends Dan Goodman and Joe Riggio, and and these guys were the one group that I talked about earlier that were doing, they were doing just under a million bucks when they joined my group, I think about you know, five years ago or six years ago. So they were already successful, they were already doing, you know, well, but one of the things that they had, and I actually did this on a podcast with them not that long ago, um, but one of the things they had is they had what's called organizational ADD. They had this very, very large business doing big numbers. They had a ton of staff, they had a ton of things flying around, but they were really stressed out and they didn't know what was making up their money, they didn't know their numbers, it was just a whole big mess. It was like a big, big mess. It was they were making money, but it was a mess, and they weren't making nearly as much money as they could have. And the one move we made, and this is kind of like an historic move in that the one move we made is we we realized that there are two owners of this company. And one of the things that we did was we realized that both of them were doing everything and they were kind of teaming up and doing everything together, and no one had any clear roles. There was no clarity around what Dan was supposed to do, what Joe was supposed to do. And here was the big shift we made. We made Dan the CEO of the company, and that was a big shift and a big move because kind of Joe was the first founder, so kind of he was known as the kind of CEO, so people go to him, but Dan was also a ball, so everyone's kind of confused, right? And we said, All right, Dan, you're you know, you're both still owners, but Dan, you're the CEO. You're the you're the person in charge, you're driving the profit and loss statement. Joe, who's more of a visionary and a marketing mind and a guy, you're the head of marketing, and you're gonna focus on growing the leads and growing the marketing and building the brand and doing that. And when they made that shift, everything in their company changed. They really both looked to that as a as the one of the biggest shifts that they could possibly make, you know, for their company to be able to take it to the next level was role clarity. Right. And so if you're listening to this and you have, you know, all bunch of things going on, you gotta maybe ask yourself this question. One, do you know what you're supposed to do all day? Do you know what you're responsible for? Are you spending your time on the most valuable things that you need to be spending time on? And then the second thing is, do you have staff members that are kind of doing everything too? And do you need to sit down and do you need to draw it up on the board? And that's what we always do, we draw it up on the board called an organizational chart. And we basically say, all right, here are the positions in the company. There's a head of there's a CEO, there's someone in charge, there's a head of marketing, there's a head of sales, and many times that that can be the same person, that's fine. But at the end of the day, certain people need to own certain results. And if you don't know that, then when it doesn't get done, no one's taking ownership over that and working hard to fix it, so then it doesn't get fixed. So that that's really what uh a big shift we made with them. And they went on to, you know, now well over a million dollar location, but but way more profitable than it once was. And then they also have opened up uh two to three, I think three, two or three, I think two, two more micro gyms as well. And they have a bunch of other things going on. They own real estate, they own another consulting company like mine. They're just doing you know big stuff all around. But it really the breakthrough of the company started with a role clarity shift that happened in one of our CEO masterminds of hey, you go here, you go here, you're responsible for this, you're responsible for that, divide and conquer, and then go, and then go get it. And it was a big shift, right? And so I tell you these stories because I want you to know that some of the the stories that you hear about gym owners that are doing really well, a lot of times you don't hear the origin story. You don't hear when they were struggling, you didn't hear when, you know, a G a guy like Giancarlo, you know, who's doing 8K a month is scared to sign up for a$500 course. You know, you don't hear that stuff, you just see that. And a lot of times people can look at these people and think they're they're robots or they're not human or or they're just gifted. But every person that's doing well started in a tough place. And I think it's always helpful to hear what were the big moves that they made? What was the big shift? And I shared each one with you today. One big thing that each one of these people did to totally, you know, take it to the next level. But I will say this, and and all of them I believe would agree with this and and and and say this. Along the way, they have really leaned on a peer group. They have leaned on myself, Joe Hashey, they've leaned on the the other people in the group that I mentioned, and actually every one of these guys that I mentioned are all in the same group that I'll be meeting with in a couple weeks. They move they this group comes to New Jersey three times, uh four times a year and meets with me and my CEO Mastermind, but they also come to our SPF masterminds. They're at the events, they bring their staff members with them. They are fully, fully participators in, you know, what we're doing here and have been for many, many, many years. And I think that that's one of the things is, you know, where they say your net worth is related to your network, right? They have leaned on this. Some of these guys, you know, you ask, you know, varsity house, they're like really good friends with TJ and Devin, and like these guys are all friends and they talk all the time. They go on vacations together. They have found uh a connection with each other, but it's through that connection that they've really grown. They've grown personally, they've grown professionally, and they I I believe that they many of them would say this that that that the people that they've met along the way in the SPF mastermind have changed the trajectory of uh of their life. Right. And so I relay this back to you is that it's super important for you to find that peer group, to find that group of people that you can lean on, that person that you can call, or that group of people that you can meet with to be able to say, Hey, I don't know what I'm doing here, or I'm I'm lost, or why is this happening? And it's like that it's like that's one of the things why people fail in business is they only have conversations with themselves. They have a conversation inside their head, and they're just bouncing things around in their own head, and a lot of times they they they make bad decisions because of it. And so when you have a peer group, they have fresh eyes. They're not blinded by all the motions going on, they're just looking at a business and being like, oh, this makes sense. Joe, you go over here, Dan, you go over here, and let's just do that. And they're like, Oh, I didn't even realize that. And so that's kind of how what you want. You want to find that that group of people, whether it's with me in the SPF mastermind. I mean, that's I hope it is. I hope you're listening to this and you're a listener, and you know, you you know, are you're looking for something like this. And and it here's the thing: you shouldn't be looking for someone like this. You should be looking for a little bit of pressure relief. A little pressure relief that it's not all on you, it's not all on your shoulders, that you have an outlet, you have people you can talk to, you have people you can bounce ideas off of, because that bot it bottles up. It bottles up when it's all in your head. Because you're not you know you're not talking to your staff about this. You're not talking to your staff about some of these decisions and things like that. The peer group can can get inside of your head and help you pull out the right decisions that that you need to make. So I've I've committed to these things my entire career. I used to fly to Kentucky and put one of Pat Rigsby's groups, you know, for many, many years. For many years. And that commitment has been massive in my life, and now I have the honor to to create a group that provides that for people. And it's something I love doing so much. And these guys are, you know, I mentioned today, and this is just, I mean, six guys, and these are all guys that came from, you know, that weren't doing much, that are doing a lot right now, and they're still coming, they're still meeting, they're still learning, they're still growing. I'm gonna see them again. See all six of these guys again in a couple weeks, and we'll they'll meet, you know, together and they'll help each other out. And sometimes they come in and they're killing it, sometimes they're coming in, they're a little down. But at the end of the day, it's it's been a really powerful thing for them. So, what I want to do is I want to invite you to inquire about coming into the SPF mastermind. If you're a gym owner and you are, you know, thinking about getting some help and getting some support this year, you know, hey, you want to make 2026 a great year, and you you feel like you need a peer group or a support system, and not just peers, but coaches, right? You know, it's it's one thing to have peers, but it's another thing to have coaches that are going to hold you accountable, that are going to give you the advice you need based on the experience they've had. If if that is something that is interesting to you, if that is something that would provide relief for you, is that something that would provide hope for you, I invite you to I put a link in the show notes. There's a link in the show notes that basically is a call link. You can book a call with us and see if it's right for you and get all the details in terms of like what the commitment is and what the investment is and things like that. Um but on that page, you know, book the call, but on that page you'll also see an ocean of testimonials from members in the SPF Mastermind. So I talk about these six guys, I don't have just six guys that I'm working with. There's and you you'll be you'll your hand will get tired from scrolling from all the testimonials, and these aren't just bullshit testimonials, these are real stories, these are screenshotted things that people have texted me, you know, you know, long, long paragraphs of stuff about how their life has changed from having a peer group like this. So I hope you learned something along the way, but most importantly, I really hope that this provides a path for you. It provides a path towards success, it provides a path towards not doing this all by yourself. It provides a path of hope and relief that you can have the best year of your life this year, and I think one of the biggest things you can do is surround yourself with other successful people that want what you want. So click that link in the show notes, book the call, and we'll chat. It's like not gonna like pressure into anything. If it's not right, it's not right. But uh book the call and then we'll have a chat, and then we will go from there. And hopefully, I will see you in person at our upcoming meeting on February 27th, 28th, and March 1st. So if you get in now, you can get in time to come to that meeting because they're included in your membership. And I will see you on the next one. Peace.