What's up, everybody? Hope all is well. I am in the jujitsu parking lot, walking around aimlessly. And thought I'd bring you a nice podcast today. So hopefully you're ready for it. I am currently writing, always writing a book, but I'm currently writing, well, I'm actually rewriting a book called The Four Stages of Fitness Business Success. And I wrote it a very long time ago, and I'm doing a kind of a revamp of the book as then things have changed. And so it's it's been really it's been really interesting. And I was writing stage two this morning. And stage two is anywhere uh usually revenue level starts at around 20 K, goes up to around 50K. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. And so if you're you know listening to this and you're here, awesome, you're in the right place. And if you're not in there or you're past it, it's it's still you know probably be some good reminders for you. So stage two. I remember stage two is very interesting for me, where you it's it's kind of where you go from the guy that did everything, right? The the person that, you know, nothing actually happened in the business without you physically doing everything. And stage two is like where that starts to not happen, where you start to have some staff members to be able to, you know, you know, help you grow the business, right? And I remember, you know, I mean, you know, stage two for me was back in shoot 2010 or whatever, I don't know, a long time ago. We had a front desk lady named Sandy, I had Big Tom, we had this kid named Joe, who was like a young trainer than a new hire named Michelle, who was really a rock star. And that's kind of was the team, right? And you know, in the very beginning, it was just me and Tom for forever. And then I started bringing on these other trainers and staff members. The interesting thing was is as you, you know, have more staff, you know, one of the things you want to do is you want to keep them fit, right? You want to keep them happy with how many hours they're working and things like that. And sometimes what happens is you need to give up training hours to be able to give them training hours, right? And I'm not saying in stage two you do no training hours because I was still doing a decent chunk of them, um, but I was doing less. And the less part for me was the hard part because the easiest thing in the world for me to do is show up to the gym, start the 6am session, train the 6 am session, and then do it again at seven. There's no time management skills needed, there you just show up and you do the work. And where I started to really struggle as a business owner was when I didn't have that structure. And there was things that needed to get done for the business that, hey, you don't have to train this hour, so someone needs to do the marketing, someone needs to do the selling, and there's no one telling you what to do, there's no one telling you how to do it, there's no one, you know, because a lot of stuff at that point you don't even know what to do. And I found myself like sitting in my desk many times with my hands buried in my with my head buried in my hands, just like, I don't know what the fuck to do right now. And I found it to be such a hard, challenging thing. One of the most frustrating parts of my business life was feeling almost, you go. Here's what happens: you go from this point of feeling like you're this rock star that does everything, and you're very, very useful to going from almost useless because it's like you're sitting in your office, just like, I'm not doing shit right now. And you're at that point where you're not really good at sales and marketing, and you're not a great leader, you're not a great manager, you don't have the skill sets you actually need at stage two, yet you have the time to do it because you've delegated some of the sessions to two other people. And it's a really frustrating, you know, conundrum. And so if if that's you, if that's kind of like where you're at, I have, man, I wish someone told me this. You know that, you know, when you hire somebody, hopefully you give them what's called a job description, right? Where you're you know, it has you know what what the purpose of the job is, what the things that task you need, the responsibilities of the job, and you know, hopefully you're doing this, and there's an outline of what the job is. You know, that's like one of the most important things our team members need is clarity. And but for a long time I never had one of those. For me. It was just like, all right, and go do some of this. And I didn't have actually a clear written description of what my job is. And once I wrote that down, a lot changed. And so that my first piece of advice to you is well, yeah, great, you're giving trainers a job. What about you? So, what is your job? What are the things that you need to do and responsible uh and what you're responsible for? And the great Dan Kennedy has this question, and he asks this what are the highest and best uses of your time and what needs to happen in your schedule in your life to be able to make as much room as possible to do those things. I totally paraphrase that. But basically, it's like identifying the highest and best uses to your company and then writing that shit down, right? Writing that stuff down and being clear on what it is so you can then show up to a day and be like, all right, I know that there are certain things that I need to do as the owner of this business to make it grow. And these are it. And it's doing sales consultations, it's you know, following up with leads, it is, you know, you know, writing emails, it's like leaving the team, and just like the clarity around your job is really, really helpful. So I found this even today, like I have a job description, right? For me in this company, right? So one of my big, big things is recording this podcast, right? No one else is gonna do this. If I don't do this, no one will. And so this is like a big mover. That's why you see me doing this consistently. These podcasts come out, you know, pretty much every week. No one else is doing it, but it's on my list of like, I have to do this. This is something that's really, really important for me to do. So I think it's a really helpful thing to actually have, and I have it on my, I have a like a lit, literally a written sheet of all the things that are really, really important for me to do and me only. And I think that could be like a really good place to start, right? It's a really good place for you to start, is, and maybe it's one page, maybe it's two pages, but what you know is your role in the company? Now, if you were looking at a what's called an org chart, there is probably, you know, a box for marketing, a box for sales, a box for operations, a box for finance. Sorry, the I'm usually I'm walking on a route and usually it's not busy, but apparently like everyone's driving by today. So apologize for the noise. So the first thing you've got to identify is like, what are your roles for the company? Like, are you what are you in charge of? What are you responsible for? And then on below those things is is the most important things, you know, in each of those boxes. So really just getting together a one to two page description of your job for the company linked with what are the things you need to do, what are the tests, what are the things that need to get done to be able to do it. And it's kind of like this whole 80-20 rule, right? You know, you know, 20% of the things that you do are going to provide 80% of the results. So it's like spend your time doing those things. And I think what happens is when we don't know what to do, we don't have clarity on this, we spend time doing a lot of different stuff. And a lot of it is not needle-moving stuff. A lot of it is not impactful. I know back in the day that I spent a crap ton of time on stuff I shouldn't be spent time with, right? And I'll give an example. Like, now, so one of the things that I did in my first location is this is a funny story. So we had this, the the the my last gym I was at, there was like these, but this parking lot where the parking lot was, and there was these woods in the back. And one day, there was a storm, Hurricane Sandy, and it knocked down all the trees in the woods. Well, not all of them, don't tell anybody. But I ended up looking at it was like this utopian for me. This utopia was, oh my God, we can knock the rest of those trees down and have an open woods. And I called my buddy, because he's in Yumman Jersey, so I got a guy, and I called my buddy Tommy, and I was like, hey Tommy, I gotta come get rid of these trees. So he comes get rid of these trees. I was like, hey, Tommy, bring some of those machines over and you gotta smooth this ground out. And he comes over, smooths the ground out. And I said, hey Tommy, go bring bring me a bunch of you know uh stone so we can spread the stone and smooth it out. And so we come and spread the snow down. And then I went and found used turf. And I, you know, bought the used turf and we turfed the outside. And, you know, about eight months later, after almost getting kicked out of my lease because of it and getting almost arrested by the community for having massive, huge pieces of equipment on the where I'm not supposed to have it because they didn't play any permits. I just had my guy tell me just coming and doing shit. But I I'm I GC'd that project, and I want to tell you the amount of time and energy that I spent getting that outdoor turf was it was great. It was like me avoiding the doing the real things I needed to do. And yeah, technically it did give us more space, but it was like outside space that you know was a very, very good, nice perk and bonus. Was not, it did not give us a ton more income producing. We could have done the same stuff in the parking lot. It was nice to have turf, but it was just it was an example of my inexperience as a business owner of finding shit to do because it wasn't clear on what I really needed to do. And even so, when I found out what I was clear I really really needed to do, like marketing and selling, I was just not good at it because, and what do you do when you're not good at something? You try to avoid it, right? But that's just an example of I did not have clarity of my role in the company, so I found all these other things to do. I found these shiny objects to chase, I found these things that weren't gonna move the needle for the company. We didn't get one new client because we had turf in the back. We just ended up a few days in the summertime being able to be on turf. And honestly, I got a huge tick out there once, and I was like, damn it, I shouldn't ever built this freaking thing. Because it was literally in the woods. Like we had a turf field that was in the woods. It still exists today. We're not at that location anymore, but it still exists, right? But that's just an example. It's just like of me not being clear on what my job is for the company and finding stuff to do because it filled the time and I felt like I was doing stuff and but I really wasn't. And so that's that's what you need to do. You need to get clear, right? Because when you're in stage two, you gotta new job. Your job is no longer train people. Your job is learning how to lead and manage people, and your job is learning how to market and sell to grow the company that needs to be grown. That's the job. So you got to be clear in that role. And if you spend on stage two, what happens is what a lot of guys do is they get all like geeked out about this stuff and they fill their time with more training sessions. They're like, I don't really know what to do, so I'm just gonna train more. And what you gotta do is you gotta get past that. That's a growing pain. And you got to get past that point of that uncertainty of what to do, the uncertainty of how to do it, and you gotta learn. You gotta learn. And that's what the book is about. Like the book tells you kind of what to do, what you need to focus on at what stage and what are the problems you're gonna face. Like, and that's a big one is like uncertainty of what to do, and lack of clarity in the role and working on the wrong things. It's a big, big problem in stage two that you know business owners really struggle with. Right. So that that's that's really it for today. That's why I wanted to just share that with you and understand. And here's the thing: I bet you someone's listening to this that's not in stage two, or you maybe in stage one or stage three or whatever, that maybe you're unclear on what your job is, maybe you're unclear on what your role is, and your job is to sit down and figure it out. Now, ChatGPT is like makes it so freaking easy for this stuff to do, it will just tell you what to do. But get that sheet of paper and have that sheet of paper in your backpack and desk and sit down and make sure, right, that the things that you do, if you could look, if I could look at the inventory of your day, and what did your calendar show me? Would your calendar reflect the most important things that you need to be doing for your company? And if it doesn't, that's with the things you need to change. So get clear, it's not easy. It's there's definitely stuff that is outside of our wheelhouse as trainers turn business owners, but I mean that getting from stage two, which is like twenty thousand to fifty thousand, you know, to that stage three mark, we ain't gonna get to the next level without learning some of those skills and spending time on doing those things. So hopefully this was helpful. I'll see you on the next one. Peace.