Meet TJ Lopez And AMP

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What's up guys? Welcome to another special episode of the FBU podcast. Remember, this year I am taking a really, really cool angle on the podcast and once a month doing an interview with an SPF member. SPF is the name of my mastermind group, and I have tons of gyms. And the hardest thing for me to do is only do 12 of these this year, and needed to pick one gym owner that's kicking ass and taking names. And I definitely couldn't have had that list of 12 without the guy I'm talking to you today, and that is TJ Lopez from AMP. He is out, and we have a bunch of gyms actually that have the name AMP. So I gotta be I gotta be specific one and only TJ Lopez, who have mentioned in many other podcasts, and I've talked about him before. He was our 2025 Gym Owner of the Year Award, put up some monster numbers last year and continuing with some big ones over the course of this year, too. So super excited to have TJ on the podcast. TJ, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Thanks, Vince. Appreciate you having me on. And yeah, it's been a long time coming.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Awesome, brother. Give everyone like a little bit of just 35,000-foot view of you and name of your gym, where you're at, and all of that.

From Pro Athletes To A Hybrid Model

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Cool. Yeah, my name is my name's TJ. My gym is called AMP. AMP stands for athletic movement protocol. Started the business back in 2013 out of a converted bathroom inside of a baseball facility. So prior to that, I was working with a lot of pro athletes, baseball players. Cece Sebatio was my main client, you know, kind of my claim to fame in the sports performance world. And back then when I started the business, I was essentially started from zero and was working with, you know, mainly baseball players, not even mainly athletes, like specifically college baseball players. So I had a very much of a specific niche that I was working with. But prior to opening the gym, I had always followed, you know, people like UVance, people like uh Alan Cosgrove, the people that, you know, Tom Timmer that were talking about these kind of like hybrid gyms of you know, adults and athletes. And the thing that about my business was especially that's why I gave the name in the beginning, because it was very athlete-based, and I think it was a little scary. And it was probably a little bit more of my opinion of my own business, where it really took a long time for me to really build my adult programs. Back in 2013, I was in a little space by myself, grew the team, grew the business, kind of opened up inside of another baseball facility and then another baseball facility. And I just kept kind of like finding my way into like bigger spaces until I finally signed my own lease back in now it's been 2016, 2017. Since then, we've expanded that original location another two times. So we're right now we're in 7,500 square feet in Syasa, and I had a second location going back to my roots inside of a baseball facility, and we're growing that business now way faster than I grew my original business. And the hoax and and uh is that we're gonna be opening up an adult program. We have a few adult clients there, but we're gonna be opening up an adult program this summer in that location. And location number three is hopefully right around the corner. We're in talks with a new location that's actually five minutes from my house. Two of these locations. One one's about 30 minutes, the other one's about 50 minutes from my house. So it'd be nice to have one right in my backyard. And, you know, no announcements yet, but but we're we're working toward getting that third location. So it is a tremendously different business over the last 13 years. And my my frustrations of not being able to get away from training athletes only without being a part of the SPF mastermind, without being a part of, you know, under your tutelage and and the rest of the group, I there's no way I'd be where I am today in a business that I'm just doing my my finalizing my 2025 numbers. And it looks like our adult fitness is about 62% of our total revenue uh in our main location. I'm at about 50% of our total revenue overall. That was the thing that, you know, back in probably 2018, 2019, we would battle on, you know, what am I gonna, what am I gonna focus on? But you know, without the growth of the adult program, we again we again we just wouldn't be where we are today. And that's you know, it's a huge part of the success of the last like five years for sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yeah, we were talking about that before we started recording about how many gyms out there are doing you know the split business that they train athletes and they train adults. And typically the typical pattern is just the pattern I started with, and the pattern you started with is I'm an athlete guy, I'm a sports performance guy. And then your my season was football, your season was was baseball, right? And all of a sudden we finish our busy season, we like stack a bunch of cash, we finish our busy season, and all of a sudden we're like, what that the the the amount of emotional roller coaster that I went on that I know you've gone on, um an athlete-only gym is tough. It's really hard. I can go on a limb and say there are there are almost none athlete-only facilities that sleep well at night.

The Emotional Cost Of Seasonal Revenue

SPEAKER_02 5:09

The roller coaster of emotion, yeah, like the ones we could pick out, like Eric Cressy, right? Like there's a guy that I followed. Yeah, and I think him shut the business down. Like certain times of the year, they actually shut the business down so they would save costs. They don't do that anymore. And yes, they have added adults, I think, in both of their locations, but it's it's it, I would say it's impossible. It's impossible to have longevity. A lot of the places that I compete against that are kind of like athlete only, even though they might have a small adult program, the owner usually is not a full-time owner. They usually have another job. They're either a teacher, they're a physical therapist, and these are things that like I didn't know. You know, it's like, oh, if that guy can do it, I can do it. And but it's um, this is my only thing. It's not like I I have another career that this is like uh an afterthought. So I think there are a lot of places that just because you know, maybe the owner doesn't necessarily need to pull a lot on a business and they don't, it's not their only thing, they're able to keep that up long for longer periods of time. But I would say that three to five years of launching to like that fifth year was when I really had to make a decision of what I was gonna do because it was not sustainable. It was essentially, you know, exactly the five-year mark was when I joined the group, and it was we had just lost a big contract. We you know, I was training CeCe, his career was coming to an end. Let me start in. So there was so much more.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

I want to paint this picture and and kind of tell this whole story. Yeah. So you were training just athletes, right? And when did you join SPF? What year? 2018, 18th. So you came to an event, right? You came to one of our things at my gym. I think was A B at the one that you were at too. A B, Joe Riggio. God, that was like a heavy hitter. Yeah, that was a heavy hitter group. So you're basically, I used to have these events in my gym, and I'd bring like 10 guys into a room and I would just tell them at that point, it was just here's what we do at Gabriel Fitness. Like, we do this and we do that, and it was like everything. But you were at that, and then you joined SPF. So so I want to paint the picture because it's easy for me to talk about TJ, you now, and how great everything is and how much money you're making, all of that, but that sometimes overwhelms people, right? I think it's important to tell people where you were in 2018. So what's the podcast? What were the challenges? Yeah, were you listening to this?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

So, what were the challenges? What were the struggles that you were facing that made you decide, like, I need to get some help, I need to get some regular guidance in terms of coaching for what to do to grow my gym?

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Well, you know, again, I had seen your your progress in in the field and essentially being mainly athlete-only, former college football player like myself, opening up in your hometown. You know, I saw that the uh similarities there and you know, just your ability to grow that adult program and market to the adult program. I had no marketing experience. I hadn't spent a dime on anything. You know, I was just working off of referrals and you know, grit just going door to door to these organizations and whatnot. And I not just that, I think, you know, it I was getting overwhelmed with the just my own schedule and feeling like I had to do everything. I I was not a good leader. I did not know how to, you know, kind of, you know, delineate the work. And you know, that that was probably a big part of my frustration was feeling like if I didn't do it, it didn't get done. And I think I would say, like, you know, that the low-hanging fruit for me was understanding how to market and grow an adult program. I think that was the number one reason why I had joined, because I realized that the cyclicality of making money three months out of the year and then essentially giving it all back in in losses for the next three months or four months, and then having a decent summer. It was just the ups and downs were just too much. I knew I had a kid on the way. There was there were just so many things that that made me realize that I needed help. And I have been seeking this type of help for a really long time. And I had other business coaches over the years that just never resonated with me. Part of it was that they didn't own gyms and they were giving me this advice that was more for like virtual coaching and like online and maybe social media influencer type.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

You could wake up at four o'clock, TJ. Lazy bastard.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yeah, let's let's not let's not uh specifically call out anybody individually, but I think that those are the types of things that, you know, especially you from New Jersey, you meet from Long Island, very similar. And then just that following your career and seeing, you know, you help other business owners just like myself, you know, and it took me a long time to learn. Even once I got in the group, it took me a while to learn. But it was because I had built a business that was completely reliant upon myself. And and again, I was just I thought I was a good leader, but I wasn't. You know, I thought that I was clear and I thought that I was really good with, you know, even just with the numbers and whatnot, but I wasn't very good with predicting. I wasn't very good with setting good goals and and communicating those goals to my team. And I wasn't holding anybody accountable, including myself. So those are the types of things that I saw, the lessons that you were giving on a regular basis. And five, six years later, we're still we're still sitting here today and I'm still learning every quarter.

Why SPF And Coaching Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 10:22

I want to ask you more about the ups and downs. I know we were kind of mentioning it before, but I think this is important because I think not people go through this business of unpredictability, which causes a lot of stress. For you and me, it was the unpredictability of we had a bunch of business coming in, and then all of a sudden it dropped off the face of the planet. But there's also people that just train regular adults now, too, that have this, you know, one week they get, you know, five leads, and then the next three weeks they get zero leads. Talk about the stress of the ups and downs of a business and what you were going through at the time and kind of paint that picture of that stress that you were going through with the ups and the downs.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

First and foremost, I never really had a sound foundation that I was working off of. I was renting from these other facilities that that instability and you know, there was no certainty in what was going to happen tomorrow. Whether that baseball facility was going to put up business, they were gonna kick me out, or they were gonna raise my rent. Like I remember I first started renting, I my first like sublease was a supposedly it was a legitimate sublease. By month five or six, their business wasn't doing well, so they came in and they tried to double my rent. So, like those types of things, I was very reactionary to stress. And I was, you know, making I was focusing way too much on the things I couldn't control, and that was really throwing me off. On top of that, the cyclicality of the business and my only source of leads were showing up every day and prospecting inside of the baseball facility or emailing organizations or going to organizations. So it was like it was 100% my effort that would get somebody through the door. And then obviously it was my I was doing all of the sales, I was doing all the programming, the coaching. So again, overwhelmed, not knowing out how to really take a step back and get out of my business. I probably I would think that first event that I had gone to was probably one of the first, if not the only, business event that I was able to kind of take that step back and look at my business without the distraction or without the stress of being inside of my business. And I think that was pretty eye-opening in just in itself, just being me leaving the business for a couple of days and it not falling apart before I left, you know, as I left. And yeah, there was no, there was no, you know, the only way that I could predict was based on what I did the previous year. And because I was a smaller business, there wasn't a lot of a lot of data to go off. And, you know, I didn't have a CRM, I didn't have a marketing plan, I didn't have, I wasn't paying for any any type of advertising. So it was just flying by the seat of my pants in in in many, many ways. And and yeah, I mean, that is just very there's no stability in that plan down to even being able to put myself on payroll. Like the first 18 months, 24 months of opening a business, I didn't put myself on payroll. You know, all of those budgeting things, and I've learned so much, you know, from you and and Mike Waldron about how to budget better, all of those things, the discipline has come with just repetition. And I just didn't have any of that for the first five years.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah, no, that's great. And and and you've we've worked together so long, and there's so much that you've done and well, you know, since that time. There's also plenty of mistakes that you've made too, and as we all have, right? But I think one of the things that the big defining thing, I think, for you that really exploded your business was finding that balance of adults and athletes, right? You you had you you were like, and way more than I was, like you were like a known, well-known, famous person. You haven't mentioned it because you're not a name dropper, but you're you're CC Sabatia's personal training, which brought a ton of credibility to you in the Long Island area. So you had that, but you were like the, you know, like what Cressy was to his area. You were like that in Long Island. And so you had this massive reputation, but we still had these uncertainties around revenue because of it. And it really wasn't until you went all in on the adult program. And when I say all in, you still train athletes, right? But you took that seriously, that's when we saw your business go to another level. So it's kind of stopped there. And I want you to talk about that process of getting that adult program from an athlete performance facility, getting that adult program going to the point where now how many members, adult members do you have now?

SPEAKER_02 15:04

In in this one location, 180.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Yeah, like 100, 185. And you were like for a while hovering around like 30 and 40. And yeah, you would come to the 20 to 30. Yeah, you would come to the meetings and you say, I still got 30, I still got 30. And I was like, come on, let's go. Like, like, and now you're at 185, with like a they're paying like four or five hundred bucks a month. I mean, so it's a monster amount of recurring revenue that you're generating now. But there was a rut in a really long time where you're hovering of 20 to 30 adults. Yes, talk about what was the thing that got you. It wasn't it happened pretty quickly. It there was an explosion for you.

Building Adults: Who Not How

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Hundreds of it, it was the who not how lesson. It was essentially, you know, prior to COVID, I was essentially, you know, piecing it together with a bunch of strength and conditioning coaches, sports performance coaches that really were working at AMP to train athletes. And the adult program was always an afterthought. It would be coach would come in Monday morning and then work the rest, the rest of the week would work in the evenings, and then another coach would do Wednesday morning, another coach would do Friday morning, and I would be doing most of those days myself. So we were kind of like piecing it together with staff, which I would say was was a big mistake. And it was never anybody's like full focus, uh including mine. You know, we we obviously did our our we did our best with our athletes. We at times we were peeking out around 120, 130 athletes, and then it would go all the way down to 40. And then when whenever we would go down to 40, that's when we would really focus on trying to build an adult program. And then the athletes would get in the way, and it was it was always kind of like an a secondary goal, and it had to be at least one person's main goal. And that's when in 2020, I hired a former intern of mine, her name is Hannah. And when I brought her on full time to only focus on the adult training, that's when the business, when that's when I was able to switch back into a building, having a mindset of building something, as opposed to just like juggling too many things at once. And we were able to really double down on focus, on getting referrals from our adult clients, on marketing, paying for marketing. You know, we kind of launched the program with a challenge. We had been doing challenges, never really focused too much on it. In that challenge itself, I think we went from it was post-COVID. So we were even at times we had like 30 or 40 clients in the in the program. COVID brought us down to like 18. So we might have been around 25 at the time when we launched our first challenge. We went from 25 to 40 clients right then and there. And then we just grew. We actually, I'm looking at our numbers because I'm doing our our document for the next for this week, and we almost doubled every single year since COVID, except for this year, because we have grown so much it's kind of hard to double. But we had grown, we had doubled every year for three straight years in revenue and numbers. And it it was all because I was able to hire one person that was the head of personal training of our adult program, and we really just focused on on building that through you know paid mark marketing was a big help, but also just referrals from our adult program and for our athletes, you know, parents of our athletes. And that thing, especially with the cadence of having the three challenges every year, we're running more events now, but the three challenges per year, we do our our summer shred, we do our new year, new you, and our fit for fall. So those three throughout the year, those three, every time we do a challenge, we come out with more clients after that. The fact so having that's essentially like the basis and the foundation of our marketing calendar. And I've always found for myself having deadlines and having an event-based marketing calendar has really helped us because it puts some urgency behind what you're doing. Hey, we're launching this program, like we just launched it, it started today, our New Year and New Year's challenge. And those things have really been able to, you know, every nap for the last two years, three years, really focus on getting the adults or the parents of our athletes into that program. And I would say that our growth has happened almost like in steps, where we'd kind of we'd have 40 clients, we'd grow to 55, and then we'd keep those clients 55 to 60. And the next time we're in a challenge, we went from 60 to 80. And then we we we coast for a while, and then we go from 80 to 100. And it was like, you know, with a very good, really focused ground retention, we've been able to just gradually increase by that 50 or 60 or 80 percent in numbers. And over that period of time, we've also been able to raise our prices. It's just been a lot of just consistency over the last five years and and you know, getting the ideas from the group and implementing in the next 90 days. Like that's been like the stupid power for the last six years now, since since COVID.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

You said who not how, and I think that sums it up. What can you explain? That to the listeners, what what is who not how?

The First Hire That Flipped The Script

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah. So in the beginning, when I was when I would be faced with a challenge, I would look at like, how am I going to get this? How can I figure this out? I have to figure out marketing. I have to figure out how to grow this adult program and make it something that I'm proud of that I can sell. How can I sell more people X? How can I? It was always, how do I do it? And the who not how is essentially who. It said, okay, this is my problem. Who can I either hire to fix this issue? Who can I something like it hire an agency, hiring a marketing agency so that I don't have to figure out Facebook ads myself? I was trying to figure out Facebook ads myself wasn't working. And then, you know, just leveraging your team, leveraging, you know, the the relationships that you have in the community. How can I build my adult program? Well, I have uh, you know, 120 athletes that all have two parents. So that's, you know, right then and there I have 250 leads that I'm not really marketing to. So all of these things that just switch and kind of like change your thought process to making it as like putting on more work on your plate as opposed to like collaborating with someone and still putting in that same amount of effort but getting top double or three times the result. And you know, you have an idea and it's always going to stay in that idea phase if you don't have someone on your team that can take an act action on it.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Was that difficult for you to make that higher? To because at the time, like it was a situation where we're only at what 20 adults. You didn't need a full-time person to focus on the program. So it was kind of like an investment, I guess you made into the business. What kind of you do that?

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yeah, I mean, it was a tough decision, especially coming out of Boga to, you know, keep mentioning that. But I had just brought on my first kind of like full-time GM, and you know, that was an investment in itself to really help the stability of the business. And then on top of that, investing in a full-time employee when we really, like you said, were piecing it together with what we have, right? If I if I wanted to keep it where it was, it would have been fine. But in order to really grow it, I knew that we had to make that investment. So yeah, I think it had a little bit to do with, you know, just take making a bet on myself and the right person. You know, that was always a tough thing for me. Was we've always done a really good job hiring through our internship program. So having someone that I knew was going to be a good fit, when I wrote the job ad, I wrote it to Hannah. And I told her that after the fact that she she took the job. She didn't apply until like week three or four in that job posting. You know, in the beginning, I was very, you know, I was interviewing and not not coming up with a one.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

And wrote it to her knowing that she was she you knew she was.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

She was an intern. So she interned with us the the summer prior, right? So in in 2019, she had interned with us. And she had took taken a job after graduating with another gym. And when I put this job ad out, I I had, you know, I didn't want to reach out to her because she was already working somewhere else. I didn't want a poll trip in another gym. But I was like, the the and I I remember telling you know the rest of my team, I was like, the right person for this job is her. And that's just you know who I was writing it to in the, you know, when I had on top top of mine. And she she wound up reaching out, applying, and the rest is history. So, you know, that was you know, the first step is getting the right person. And then step two was really like putting myself now in an actual leadership role and putting myself into that CEO role to actually oversee the business and focus now on building something as opposed to just trying to hold it up. And I think that you know, that that change really in in just like that mindset shift allowed me to then actually test my abilities as a leader and test my abilities as a marketer. Because obviously we hired, we hired KISS Marketing, but that it doesn't start and end right there. You have to be involved, you have to build it, you have to make sure that it's that it's that it's it's done the right way. And and then that was a la that allowed me, taking that financial risk in the beginning, allowed me to then build a business that, you know, the the adult business still wasn't really profitable until about like a year or two later. Because, you know, we did we did hire Hannah full-time, and then we we had to hire another coach, you know, as a part-time, and it was like it was kind of just breaking even, but it was growing. And that was kind of like the you know, the the letting me know, okay, we're we're on the right path. It's just gonna take a little bit of time. And and that's one thing about me that you know, I guess I've always been consistent and I've always kind of like kept my head down and I've been patient, sometimes too patient. I think sometimes like I've just allowed things to take too long, but I always had faith in it, I always had confidence in it, and it only took a couple of years, but it did it did turn around and you know become the biggest part of our business that you know that it is today.

Challenges, Referrals, And Paid Marketing

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah, and I want to I want to shine the light on where the business is because it's really, really impressive. You won and with going against some pretty tough competition, some really good gym owners last year. You uh were uh one of three candidates of the SPF Gym Owner of the Year Award, and you took the crown, you raised it, you raised the belt over your head, and it was really I was really proud of you. I really uh loved to watch uh that moment and see you so happy and see you dressed up as Stone Cold Steve Austin at the same time, which is funny. But just paint a picture of of where the business is right now, from where's the revenue at, where's the location's at? Like where what is AMP today? Where's like before it was a stressed-out guy trying to keep everything afloat, and now you know you're a legit CEO, you're a legitimate CEO of a large business in a large company. I know you're respected by people in your community as a business owner, you're respected in our group tremendously. People come to you for advice all the time. You give, I've always said this to you, even when you were struggling, though, you were always very good at giving advice. You always were very insightful with the advice that you gave other business owners. I was always super impressed. I always said, if I need another business coach, I was gonna hire TJ because you do you do a really good job of that. But paint it, paint a picture, things are going well for you right now, pin picture of where everything's at.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Awesome. Yeah, no, I appreciate all that. And 2024 was essentially the the year that I won business.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

So the year was 2024, but we announced it in 2020.

unknown 26:46

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

So beginning of 2025.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Yeah, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Yeah, I mean, and that was probably the first year where everything started to come together for us as a business. You know, numbers-wise, we did just over 1.5 million last year. In I'm sorry, in 2024, we did just over 1.5 million. And the previous year we hadn't broken the million dollar, so we were just like$9,000 shot. We had just broken through that million dollar mark, and we had also added a second location, which was a huge help. And uh and it was a it was a profitable year for us. And this year, we're we just we're in our second location, second, second year of our second location. We are just under$1.5 million in our main location. So we almost you know kind of hit what we did as a business completely in one location. So we did 1.85 million this year. And you know, that's if if I had known that like five years ago as to like where I was today or where I was five years ago, I would have said probably not, even though I was a an optimist, you know, at times, you know, I I was it was a struggle to to kind of see through it all. And so yeah, I mean, right now, I would say like the major difference of my business is focus. You know, I was one of those tiny object guys that would always chase, you know, the next partnership, chase the next facility, chase the next program, whatever it might be. I I would never met an idea, a bad idea in business. And I was just trying to do too many things. You know, my business was just very disjointed. I had a rental business, I had a pretty much a physical therapy business, I had too many things going on all at once. I was still training pro athletes. So it was like now I have focus. It is I focus on my main location, obviously, is the main thing. And my second location is able to thrive because of the stability of my main location. And I just have an amazing team. And the people that have been with me, now I've got, you know, more than half my team has been with me for more than three or four years. So, you know, I've been able to really build an amazing staff that understands and sees the vision. And that was something that I really struggled with early on, too. Like you said, you know, I do feel like a CEO today. You know, even three or four years ago, I wouldn't have called myself a CEO, uh, but I truly am in that in that seat now. And I think the biggest thing, you know, was integrating everyone into more of a having off-site meetings, being able to sit down and and and show the vision and have them be a part of the vision and then have them grow the business in their own view and having, you know, having those off-site discussions, you know, even having our Monday morning meetings. We never had that prior to joining the group, you know, having a level 10 Monday meeting every Monday, just had it at 11 o'clock. It's every Monday for the last, I don't know, probably like four years now, five years, that we haven't missed that meeting. We do our quarterly offsites now. We we have staff development, and we have projects that are built out of ideas that I didn't even come up with in the first place. So they're essentially coming up with the idea, creating, you know, the plan for it and executing on it without my involvement. And, you know, those are the types of things that I've always wanted to be a part of, but I wasn't able to get out of my own way. So I think that, you know, now having the team really lead and having myself be in that in that driver's seat of making sure we're getting everything done, that we're dotting our T's, cross, you know, we're dotting our I's, crossing our T's. And yeah, it's it's it's a completely different world than the chaos that was, you know, four, five, six years ago.

Systems, Meetings, And Real Leadership

SPEAKER_01 30:37

TJ, I watched you as a young gym owner trying to make things work. I've seen you become a dad. I've seen you grow a monster business all throughout. And I can see the difference in you, not all obviously in your financial results, right? But I just see a difference in you as a person, as a human being. And so what are the things that this journey of being, and not even the journey in SPF, just a journey as a business owner and going, getting through COVID, getting through plenty of uh relationships that you know fell by the wayside. You've had some things fall through, some things were about to go through, and they didn't go through. You've been through a lot. What is the difference about TJ Lopez, the person, you know, today versus where you were and what have you learned?

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Well, yeah, I would say the biggest thing is is the amount of emotion that you know, I was acting off of emotion mostly. I was constantly stressed. I was physically, you know, you could just tell by you know, I I've just recently lost about 30 pounds and I've been able to keep it off for the last year or so. And that that was uh you know directly correlated with the amount of stress in my life. And today I'm able to, you know, really be way more measured in my decision making, share the responsibilities of the business with the team. And it's allowed me to, you know, to live the life that every entrepreneur wants to live and having the time freedom, having the flexibility to focus on what you want to focus on, you know, have passion behind what you do, grow a business with some amazing people. And I was not there five or six years ago. I was extremely stressed out. I wasn't happy with my team, I wasn't happy with my own business. I was, I felt like I was kind of a prisoner to my own creation. And, you know, again, the the CEO mastermind specifically, without that cadence of every every three months getting in a room with some of the best business owners that I know, I wouldn't have gotten out of it. I wouldn't have. And now I'm able to provide not only that that insight or you know, maybe the coaching to my other business owner, but I can I can say it by experience and I I can I can you know share my own growth. Because, like you said, I I always proud of myself on on helping others in the room, even if I had a smaller business. There were times when I was helping people that that had businesses four or five times the size of my own. But now that I'm I'm able to grow, you know, with with the group and be in that that that upper tier of businesses, now not only can I help on the strategic side, but also on like the the experience side of having gone through it and again, you know, just staying, staying with it, staying in the pocket. You know, many times I was thinking about leaving and doing something else, but wouldn't even come across my mind today. And that's you know, that that's the biggest change I would say for myself in having that kind of like yeah, having this new word that uh that actually one of my good friends, the basketball coach that I just started my own podcast, and and he used this word called solidity. And I was like, that's a great word. I was like, is that a real word? He goes, I don't know, I think I might have just made it up, but it actually is a real word. So I found more solidity in my life where I have been able to, you know, have conviction and stick with it and not be like, ah, am I doing the right thing? Am I not doing the right thing? Like I have confidence now that I've hadn't had in the past. And I think that that's waking up every day having that, as opposed to waking up every day with worry and and not knowing how the next month or the next week is gonna go, is a really scary place to live. And it's not fun. And the way I'm wired, you know, I'm very dumb to if we have a bad week, man, bad month, like I would always kind of look to that. And now I'm able to kind of go through the ups and downs and kind of stay steady. And that's for me tremendous because you know, I wouldn't be able to be the father that I am today or anything like that. So for sure, it's been a huge help.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

So you mentioned you know, the CEO mastermind and getting together with a group four times a year. You you're the you're an origin, you're an OG in that group. You joined, I believe, when it's first started, I think in 2020, 2020 or 2019.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

It was the day before COVID hit. It was, I believe that first meeting was March of 2020.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Yeah, and then we had some virtual ones.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Yes. Or no, I've actually been January 2020. It was the second meeting I think that it was a little shotgun.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

So you so you have been in that group ever since. I don't believe you've ever missed a meeting, have you? That's pro that's really impressive for a five-year run in a mastermind four times a year. It's a big commitment. But you miss for you're the only one in the group. Everyone else has kind of said, Oh, I got a wedding. I'm having a kid. Uh you did not miss uh any meeting.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

So tell us, yeah, you need a minute.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Sorry, kids. We're doing we're doing our our pickups.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

No, okay. What what what is the group provide for you? What's the biggest thing that, you know, hey, that's a big commitment, not only financially, but in time. Why do you keep why do you stay a part of something like that? Whereas most masterminds, people are in and out in a couple years, you know, you've been in this five years plus, as many of the other guys have. What what what why is that so important to you?

Revenue Breakthroughs And Multi‑Location Growth

SPEAKER_02 36:20

Well, I'd say it's two things. Number one is I don't trust myself. I don't trust that I will get this work done that I need to get done every quarter. The planning that goes into just building my document every quarter that I'm doing actually today, my whole day is just building the document and reflecting on the last 90 days and this year, you know, and the the last year, that's when most of the work is done. You know, I usually show up to the meetings, at least recently, in the beginning, maybe not so much, but more recently, I I show up to the meetings with my answer because I've already kind of done the work and I've already put in, you know, the time to like reflect. And, you know, in years past when I first started in CEO, I was getting the document done like the day of, like the morning of, or like while we're getting started, I'm still finishing my document. And now I've I've done most of the work, you know, even last week and week before, and I'm able to then obviously have really think about what presenting in front of the group. So that that amount of work, I don't know if I'd be able to do that on my own, is what I'm saying. I don't trust myself that I would get that done without having like the accountability of the group. And second to that, maybe one A to that is the friendships that I've built in that group. You know, like the the the true, you know, lifelong relationships and friendships that we built in that group is I wouldn't have had that anywhere else either. You know, we're all you know, rooting for each other every quarter, seeing you know what we've gone through, seeing what we can do to hey, what what can we do to help TJ with this problem or you know, Eric with that problem, or Devin, you know, it no matter who is in front of that room, everyone is trying to give their own insights and their own their own side of it, and having those outside eyes of the group, obviously including yourself and Joe, is invaluable. And you know, that's why I need to show up. I need to show up. And that if I don't show up there, I feel like I'm not showing up for myself and my team. So it's a big part of it. You know, having that it, you know, if I hadn't signed up in one word, it's accountability. That's it. Without the accountability of the group, my business wouldn't be where it is today because I'm a very competitive person. So I can't show up and not have my stuff left. I can't show up and not at least hit 80% of my rocks, you know, and and and sometimes that deadline is what you need. And it's hard to set that by yourself. It's hard to do it, you know, for yourself and hold yourself to it.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

TJ, what do you have to say to a gym owner that possibly was where you were at in 2019, struggling, stressed, and they're thinking about getting help with their business. They know they're getting help, but they're looking at the cost, they're looking at the time, and they're just like, I don't know if I can do this. What do you have to say to that gym or that's home thinking I can't afford it or I can't get help?

Personal Transformation And Stability

SPEAKER_02 39:15

The way that I think about it even today is that the investment that I've made is essentially I've invested in almost a pseudo-boss. We're all strength coaches, personal trainers, former athletes, whatever we might be. It's really hard to hold yourself accountable. So if you're not going to invest in someone to hold you accountable and at least show you the path, then it's going to be really hard to get there by yourself. So, yeah, the finances were really tough in the beginning. There was a large portion of my revenue was going to SPF and then CEO. There was probably a time, even while I was doing it, that I felt like I wasn't necessarily financially benefiting from. But the learning and the compounding effect of that learning. Is what today is a fraction percentage wise of what it was back then. And I think that you have to really look at it that way. And especially just like on a time commitment. I was on, and not only so I haven't missed a CEO. I know I I haven't made too a lot of calls recently, but like I don't think I missed a call. And it was a weekly call. I don't think I missed a call for two years. I was on that Wednesday call every single Wednesday for two straight years. And the only times I ever missed was like my kid was in a hostel or something like that. Like it was, it was not happening. Like it was a part of my day, and it was because it was so important. And you have to treat it that way, right? And it's one of those things like when you pay, you pay attention. You know, we say that to our clients all the time. And we also are asking our clients to hire coaches. If you, as a business, business owner and a and a coach yourself don't understand the value of hiring a coach, then it's hard to be somebody in that position for someone else, too. And you know, the reason why I'm still here today is because I'm still getting results, I'm still growing my business. And again, we're talking about six years or more, actually. No, 2018, it's almost eight years. Yeah, somebody that that's you know, maybe the revenue isn't where they think it needs to be or where it has to be to make that investment, I would highly recommend getting started because that investment will return if you put the work in. It guaranteed you will see a return on that investment. But I do see some people that put investment in, not just this group and other groups, and they don't put it to work in it. They don't put the action behind it. Um, that's the only time that I would say if anybody has not gotten the result, it's because they're not putting in the work. And and that's, I'm telling you, you know, what I've learned in this group, and not only from Vince, but the people that are inside of the group and the, you know, just the gr the gratitude and how gracious people are to share, share ideas, share full marketing, like just download and just change out the facility name to your facility. I mean, it's it there's certain things that are that are just so plug and play that you know that will change your business. And again, we might all have the idea, the right ideas, and we might all know what we need to do, but we need somebody to hold us accountable. And just like everybody knows that you're how to lose weight, move more, eat less, right? Like it's pretty simple. But you need a coach, you need a coach to hold your hand and and to at least like give you the, you know, for us when it's like our first time that we kind of sat down, it was like you're giving me permission to do things I already knew I should have been doing. And you know, sometimes you need that, you need that little bit of a push, but not there's not a better community out there than SPF and you know the CEO groups, not a better community in fitness.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Awesome. Well, this was a really, really exactly what I was expecting from someone like yourself to come on. And obviously, this is a podcast of you telling your SPF story, but really it turned into you spitting a ton of really good knowledge and sits and real. I have a whole page of notes down here of things I I want to kind of reiterate to to my audience of the things that you mentioned and and said, But the big one was emotional resilience, right? You have learned that and I've worked with you on that. I remember a lot of conversations we had, especially during COVID. But I think also, too, like getting in front of a room with your numbers and having to display everything about your business and to keep yourself cool, you know, while you're doing that, especially if it's not exactly looking great and everyone else is pretty looking pretty good. It's like it's a hard thing to do. So you've done a beautiful job with that. You got a great family, you're you're a dad, you're an involved dad. I see with your kids. You came and saw my man Joey had a jujitsu tournament on Long Island. You came and you came and surprised him and saw him get submitted in about 43 15 seconds. Although it's funny that that kid is like the kid that he lost to is like he travels the world doing jujitsu. He like couldn't have pulled a tougher opponent from when you saw it.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Yeah, I hope my kids get into it too. I love that. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

It's really, it's really awesome. Uh, but you're just a stand-up dude, TJ. I appreciate you. Very proud of you for all you've accomplished and all you continue to accomplish and all the people that you're helping along the way. So, TJ, great job. Thanks so much. Where can people get in touch with you? Thank you. I bet you there's people that would want to reach out. I know you're busy, you don't have a lot of spare time, but yeah, I would say the uh what's the Instagram or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

Number one, yeah, coach TJ Lopez on Instagram. That's I mean this best way. Maybe follow some of my stuff. AMP underscore athlete on Instagram for my athlete business, amp underscore personal training for our adult program. And you can reach out to me, TJ Lopez at ampathletes.com. That's my email. And yeah, I I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to help. And open invitation to every everybody that's in that SPF group as well. Had a lot of really good conversations over the couple of years. I've been able to get up on stage and and share some of my stories, share some lessons that I've learned. And I always appreciate that. It's always something that I love, you know, doing is doing my best to kind of give back to the community that's given me so much.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Awesome. Great episode, TJ. Thanks so much. Thanks, Mr.