Transcription

Today we’re talking with another amazing fitness entrepreneur, his name is Pat Flynn. Not to be confused with the podcaster, Pat Flynn of “Smart Paths of Income” …

But this is another Pat Flynn who’s just as awesome, maybe more awesome. Pat has a great podcast himself called “The Chronicles of Strength” but let me quickly tell you about who Pat is.

He is a self described fitness minimalist, expert generalist, business coach and seventh degree black belt in hanging out. That’s right—just chillin like a villain.

Some of his notable accomplishments include building a six figure monthly income as a solo entrepreneur, he also was one of the top 500 health and fitness wellness blogs and he’s become an international bestselling author of three “For Dummies” books—you know those WordPress for Dummies type of things, right? Not that he was writing them for WordPress but it was one of those “For Dummies” books.

You can learn more about Pat over at his website, it’s chroniclesofstrength.com. In this episode we’re going to talk a little bit about some controversial ideas … Whether or not specialization—really doing the one thing that you do better than anyone else—is really the best way to go as it pertains to building your business’s standing out.

Some interesting talk as well as some lessons learned about navigating the complex world of building an online business. Pat will also share what he believes to be one of the most important things you must master in order to be successful with businesses, especially online.

With that said, let’s welcome Pat onto the show and let’s get started.

Mr. Pat Flynn welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. How’s it going buddy?

Pat:     Yuri, I am so excited to be here. Things are going well, thank you.

Yuri:    Yeah, awesome!

We had a great conversation on your podcast a little while ago and that was a great conversation so I’m like, “You know what? I’ve got to have you on this podcast!” Because you’re doing some great things and I just think we have a lot in common with the way we think.

I have no doubt this conversation will go down a really fun route.

Pat:     Yeah I’m excited. I loved the talk that we had two or three weeks ago and have gotten fantastic feedback from it. You’re incredibly savvy. I’ve just been diving into all of your material since, so I’m excited to talk about whatever comes up.

Yuri:    Yeah so let’s talk about what you’re excited about right now. What is the major focus? What are you excited about bringing to life?

Pat’s background and his new book

Pat:     Well the major focus right now is my next book, which isn’t slated to release until 2018 but what’s kind of exciting about this for me is it’s completely a new venture.

It’s a venture that I’ve kind of taken on as a passion product—because I’ve done very well with my business where it is, which is in the fitness industry.

The benefit of having an online business and it doing well and a lot of it being automated, is it allows you to take on different projects or more creative projects. And they don’t always have to be projects where you’re like, “Alright, how am I going to derive instant revenue from this?”

That’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m writing a new book that really ventures more into entrepreneurship, I’m sure will be relevant to the conversation we’re about to have. It’s not completely detached from fitness but it’s definitely toward a different audience.

For me it is an entirely new thing that I am excited to explore. You asked me the one thing I’m fired up about, that would be it.

Yuri:    That’s awesome.

Yeah, it’s so cool to be an entrepreneur because you can create stuff out of thin air, right? We create value in physical things, whether they are foods, courses, books, just an idea.

That’s what’s so amazing about doing what we do, as crazy as we are.

Pat:     Well for me, the biggest thing about being an entrepreneur was to get to this point. To get to a point where all the bills are covered, I have extra in the bank and I can just focus on creative projects.

Especially things where I don’t have to worry, even if they don’t return a dime—because I already have that part covered.

Now that said, I have a plan to make this a profitable venture, but even if I didn’t it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Another thing for me is that I grew up a musician and just being able to have time to record music and have creative projects there is really something I don’t feel I would have been able to achieve if I didn’t start my own business.

Yuri:    Totally. This is a really important topic to get into because a lot of people get into business and then they get so deep in the trenches, they kind of forget about why they even started in the first place.

I think what you’ve been able to do is create a really successful business that’s allowed you the creative space to really pursue other passions without compromising your existing business. That’s awesome.

What advice do you give to someone who is struggling? Who’s constantly like, “How do we make money tomorrow? How do we make these goals? How do we survive?”

What advice would you give to that person so they can kind of get out of the weeds and start to think about what the possibilities might be outside of that?

The benefits of being a generalist

Pat:     Yeah, well it would be the exact advice that I’m writing this book about—which is the idea of generalism.

To give a little bit of background about myself, I got into fitness kind of late in the game. I grew up very unhealthy, out of shape, never worked out, was never on any of the sports teams—at least, never played on any of the sports teams. I sat on the bench, I kept that perfectly warm for other people.

Later in life I kind of stumbled into martial arts and that instilled a certain level of discipline in me. It started to increase my confidence.

I realized that as passionate as I was about fitness and martial arts, I was never going to be the best in the world.

I was very honest with myself about that. I was never going to be the strongest or the fastest or the biggest. I was never going to be the best at fitness, whatever that even means. That would never have been me.

I wanted to make a career out of it, I wanted to build a business out of it because it was my passion, it’s something I cared deeply about and I was really great at fitness. I’m exceptional at coaching, even if I’m not the best in the world.

I’m also really good at writing and I’m really good at marketing and I’m really good at copywriting and a number of different things.

The point of the book that I’m writing and the advice that I would give people, is don’t specialize—don’t try to be the best in the world and hope people discover you. The better way to get ahead is to get good—or really good, maybe great—at a bunch of different things of compatible skill sets and then learn to stack those skill sets and that way you can have a competitive advantage.

Even though I wasn’t the best at fitness and I wasn’t the biggest or the strongest or the leanest—people paid attention to me because I could write about fitness in a way that was humorous, that was relatable, that was sharable, that made it easy to understand.

It was by stacking my skill of what I knew about fitness and my ability to write—both skills that I developed later in life—I was able to stand out in the fitness industry in a way that a lot of other people weren’t, back when I first started getting into blogging.

Then when I started getting good at marketing—and again, I’m not the best marketer in the world, but I can run direct response ad campaigns, I’m a good copywriter, I can curate sales funnels that convert. When I got good at that and combined it with writing and fitness … That was when I was really able to break out.

That was when I really had the skill sets that I needed to create a profitable business.

I ignored being the best. I ignored specialization. I definitely got away from trying to be leaner or stronger or more impressive than all the other people on YouTube, because that was a losing game.

I was never going to do that and I don’t think anybody can really do that. Statistically, as soon as you’re the best, you’ve got what, 10 seconds until somebody beats you?

Rather, you focus on, “Okay, what other skills can I develop or layer on top of my base skill? The thing I’m really passionate about that I want to build a business around, to create that competitive advantage?”

Yuri:    Nice. So this is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum of what a lot of people talk about—which is, focus on your few activities that are your zone of genius or unique ability, outsource or delegate everything else, specialize and just focus on the one thing you’re amazing at doing.

How do you know if this approach is right for you? Or is it maybe appropriate for certain people more than others?

Pat:     Yeah, I think this is a really important point.

Just because you generalize and get good, or great at many things—that doesn’t mean you have to do all those things and you probably shouldn’t.

The thing that’s beneficial about being good at say advertising or copywriting or marketing is you can easily detect bullshit. Right?

When you go to outsource these things—which you should if you really want to scale and grow—you should still have a base stack of skills. Like, I’ll handle these two or three things—for me that is fitness, writing and copywriting. And then everything else I kind of outsource.

But I’m good at those other things—that way when I do hire somebody else I can easily detect if they’re actually good at what they do. “It takes one to know one” is the old saying and there are so many people out there who get duped by people who say they’re good copywriters or good ad agencies because they don’t know any better.

If nothing else I think the advice is actually mutually compatible. You generalize in order to be a more effective specialist in your business.

Yuri:    Yeah, that makes sense. I think actually it’s a natural progression too, especially if you’re bootstrapping from day one.

If you’ve got 100 million dollars backing, you can hire hundreds of people and get a ping pong table for your office and just do what you want … But if you’re like most of us, you’re kind of doing everything—customer service, copywriting, video, audio, writing.

Eventually you become competent in all those areas to a certain degree.

I think, as you mentioned, it is important. Have you found—in terms of delegating or outsourcing or hiring other people—that it allows you to better set parameters or performance measurements? And getting those people in the right seats in the first place?

Pat:     Oh 100%. Another point—I think it was you who said it in our last talk—is to make sure you’re emulating people not where they are now, but where they were in position relative to you.

Yuri:    Sure.

 Pat:    A lot of people see someone like Gary Dean—Well, he didn’t start out with a 100 million dollar ad agency, right?

 Yuri :   Yeah.

 Pat:     Same thing.

A lot of people will try and emulate where you are, and I’m sure where I am now. It doesn’t always make sense for people but to your other point, metrics. I mean, when I hire somebody it’s very easy.

I say, “Hey, here’s my number from my ad campaign. You gotta beat it or you’re gone.”

Yuri:    Yeah.

 Pat:     It’s kind of hard and it’s kind of harsh, but it’s allowed me to build very effective team members.

It’s like, here’s what I’m getting … It’s not like you have a week to do it. I’ll give you some time to show me what you’ve got, but if you can’t do it at least as good as me, then what value are you adding to my company? Like, fundamentally.

You shouldn’t be able to just do it as good as me, you should be able to do it better than me.

This is where it helps to not really have an ego with these things. I want people to do these things better than me. I want to be beat at these things.

I haven’t been able to do that with everything, because I’m not great at absolutely everything. But I’m good to great at the things that are really important.

A number of those are things I really don’t like to do, so it at least helps me set those benchmarks that you’re talking about. That when I go to hire somebody or outsource I can say “Hey, here’s what I’ve done, here are the hard numbers. Can you beat this?”

That’s what I love about things like advertising and working with people like that—the numbers don’t lie.

You’re going to know very quickly whether somebody actually knows what they’re talking about so long as you have some general base level of skill and have been able to acquire some level of success yourself.

Yuri:    Yeah. That’s great. How do you get people to recognize what their few activities should be?

They’ve done a lot of the general stuff, they’ve done everything kind of growing their business and then they get to the point where they’re like, “You know what? Really what I want to do, what I love doing is walking my dogs. But obviously that’s not going to help grow my business unless I’m doing something in the dog business.” [laughing]

How do you steer people in the direction of really figuring out what those few things are? In your case, for instance, it was blogging and some of that.

The power of communication

Pat:  Yeah, I think you start with communication skills.

I think fundamentally, if we’re talking about essential skill stacks, communication is the name of the game.

Then this is where you can kind of go where you think your strengths may be. Not everybody wants to be a good writer or is a strong writer, but maybe your voice is great and you’d be fantastic with a podcast. Or maybe you like the way that you perform in front of the camera or maybe you suck at all of these things and you just need to work on getting a little bit better at each. And then kind of see which one suits your style the best.

Communication is fundamentally the name of the game. If you do not have clear channels of communication in your business it’s over. You’ve lost.

If you cannot communicate your value, your message, your unique proposition, your brand in some way … And there’s no one way that you have to do it.

First I started out with writing, then I started taking video work a little bit more seriously and now I kind of do a mix of each. I know people who are tremendously successful in just one avenue, whether it’s podcasting or YouTube or any of these.

I think the first skill is communication and then once you develop those lines of communications—or as you develop those—you can simultaneously develop the skills of direct response marketing.

If we’re really talking about bang for your buck, “how are we going to get from A to B as quickly as possible?” …

I’ve built over four businesses since I started my first one, and I don’t want to make it seem like it’s easy— but nothing is as effective for building a profitable business than understanding true direct response marketing.

How to build a sales campaign start to finish, how to get attention, how to acquire leads, how to get those leads into some type of sequence, how to warm those leads up, how to introduce them to your brand.

This is where the skills of communication come in.

Then how to ultimately position and offer and make sales. Then once you do that how, to retain customers. How to please customers, make sure they’re satisfied and then eventually get them to ascend to more or higher levels of good or services.

Yuri:    Yeah. That’s great. That’s really good advice and the funny thing about direct response … For everyone listening, direct response is … I’m so deep in it I can barely explain it anymore, but it’s basically a form of marketing where you can measure the response.

You put out an ad, you can see the ROI. You put out a video or an email you can see the response, as opposed to, say, a billboard ad on the side of a highway that has no way of tracking the results from that.

Pat:     Yeah it’s funny that you bring that up because people will often ask me, what’s direct response? Same thing, I’ve been in it so long I don’t have a great definition for it.

I think you’ve really summed it up. I think that’s perfect. It’s a type of advertising where you can directly measure the response that you get. That’s it.

Yuri:    That’s the beautiful thing about online is that you can measure—you should be able to measure—most of what you do.

For instance, with this podcast we have a free book for all of our listeners called Health Profit Secrets. There’s a specific URL attached to that book so I’ll know exactly where those people came from and I can measure the value of those customers based on their traffic source being of the podcast.

That’s something I can measure but if I were to just say, “Hey, go buy this book on Amazon,” I have no way of knowing—other than looking at the movements in book sales somehow based on it’s popularity on Amazon—how this is affecting that.

I think that’s such an important skill set. The funny thing too is—and you might agree—once you know this stuff you can’t un-know it.

You’re going to start looking at commercials or looking at billboard ads and you’re like why would they waste their money doing this when they can track things appropriately?

Pat:     Yeah it’s funny. And direct response is a series of skills. It’s communication, it’s copywriting, it’s advertising. It’s a lot of different skills that go into being an effective direct response marketer.

I forget who said it, it might have been Gary Halbert or Dan Kennedy, but they made the point of— if you can learn the skill of direct response you will never be poor.

You could be broke if you’re irresponsible with your money, which often happens to people. But you will never be poor because you will always have a skill set that you can use to generate income. And then, you know, learn some financial skills so you don’t wind up broke.

Yuri:    Exactly. One thing at a time.

This is one of the biggest challenges for the health and fitness industry, because a lot of people starting their own businesses are really technicians, right?

They’re really great artists at doing their work but they’re not great at the marketing. Because they’re not great at the marketing they don’t like the marketing. Or they don’t like selling so they feel like sales is douche-y or they want someone else to handle that.

How do you get someone to understand that if they don’t get this dialed in they’re going to have a tough time?

Pat:     Yeah you know it’s very similar to my background of playing guitar and this was exactly me as a guitar player I just wanted to be a technician. I wanted to be the best guitar player.

The problem with being the best guitar player is the only people you interest are other guitar players.

Most people out there are not going to a concert to listen to somebody shred on the guitar for two hours. They want to go hear actual music.

I got stuck in this trap early on of being a specialist and kind of being a purist about it too, like “Oh, I’m not going to dilute my art.”

You see the same thing with a lot of business owners. “Oh marketing, no I’m not going to dilute my art or dilute my integrity.”

You really have to get away from that mindset. It’s a hideous trap and it’s a snare that a lot of us fall into.

Marketing and Pat’s 80% rule

The rule that I tried out in my book is the 80% rule. The idea is that you go to 80% of something. Be 80% as good at something that you can be—and 100% means you’re the best in the world.

Don’t go beyond 80%, because beyond 80% is where you typically pass that point of diminished returns. Where the trade off you have to make to become that hard core specialist is the difference between practicing for a few hours a day and practicing for every hour that you’re awake, and giving up every other possible opportunity.

Rather than trying to go to 100% in fitness or whatever your technical base skill is, go to 80% of it, which is still great.

You’re still a master at 80%. You’re just not the best in the world.

Then all that time you’re saving by not trying to go to 100% you can begin to allocate to the other skills that, like it or not, you need to develop if you want to grow a business.

Marketing for example, it doesn’t matter how great you are at the guitar or doing hanging leg raises or hand stands if nobody knows who you are.

Now the flip side is true, and we have to acknowledge that. If you’re only like 5% good at something and then you start getting good at marketing … Everyone’s going to realize you suck at that other thing. Right?

You do have to get good at something first before you start to add marketing on top. Marketing is just a delivery mechanism. It’s just going to speed up the rate at which people find out what you’re talking about or not.

I can sympathize with it, I’ve been there.

I was that technician who was like “No, I’m not going to dilute my art by learning song-writing, I’m just going to play the most technical guitar solos I can.”

Nobody wanted to listen to that. It wasn’t until I decided, “Okay I can just be an 80% good guitar player.” Then I also learned to be a better songwriter too—to actually attract people to my music—which was far more rewarding and actually allowed me to make music in high school that people wanted to listen to, and would win the battle of the bands competitions.

That lesson always stuck with me when I went to start my business. I avoided specialization and I embraced generalization. Okay I’m just going to be 80% good at fitness. Then all the time I save around not trying to be the best at fitness I can spend on getting the word out about what I do and how I help other people.

Yuri:    Yeah, totally. That’s great.

It’s funny, I was going back and forth with someone on LinkedIn who I thought would be a good fit for the podcast because he was doing some cool stuff. He was really adamant about his response like, “I’m a researcher not a promoter.”

I was like, “Wow. That’s really sad. I’m very sad to hear that.”

I have nothing against people who are doing the PHD thing, researching and all the formulations or whatever it is they do. When I see those kinds of responses I’m like … “Wow, you have a gift that can transform a lot of peoples lives and because of your own mindset you don’t actually want to get out into the hands of more people.

I find that somewhat selfish.

That’s why … Similar to what you’ve said, for me it was a big journey. Figuring out how to be okay at selling and getting to the point where I understood that if I don’t sell something I’m really depriving someone of a solution that can help them.

I think that’s something a lot of our listeners really have to remember. Whether it’s you, Pat, or anyone else—everyone has a gift and a message that can really transform peoples lives, and if we don’t get it into their hands we’re really doing them a disservice.

Pat:     Yeah I forget, I’m terrible with the attributions, but again I remember one of my early mentors saying, “Hey, there is a moral imperative to marketing. If you really believe that you are great and you truly believe that you can help somebody and you can help them better than that other person. Well don’t you have some type of moral imperative to get the word out about what you do or of how you can help them?”

Especially when there are so many hucksters out there, or con artists, because if you don’t get them then the other person will. Right?

If you can do a better than job than that other person then certainly there should be some type of impotence upon you to make sure that you are doing whatever you need to help that person. You can’t just expect that they’re going to be magically attracted to you if you’re just sitting in your research lab doing research all day long.

You might have the best knowledge and the best experience for healing people but if you’re not willing to get out there and promote yourself then you’re not really helping anybody.

It’s a shame because I’ve talked to a number of these people, especially people on the fitness side. I’m friends with many people who are very much in the evidence-based community, which, that’s what I am. I’m an evidence-based guy but a lot of them just lump all marketing into one category where they feel like it’s selling out, or they feel like it has to be done in some very cheap cliché way.

Then they see what I’m doing and they talk to me and they’re like, “Pat, I love what you’re doing. You’re marketing effectively but you don’t come off as that used car salesman.”

I think that’s a really important message, and I think it’s really important to expose people to that—not all marketing is about being that used car salesman, in fact I find that method to be quite ineffective.

I think a lot of effective marketing comes down to authenticity but that doesn’t mean you’re not being aggressive about it, because you should be.

Yuri:    Well you have a great podcast and that is a form of marketing. That’s a marketing channel where you’re basically just getting people used to who you are and other guests.

Hopefully people understand that a podcast—us having this conversation—is a form of marketing, so if you’re worried about what that looks like here’s a simple example.

Having a conversation, adding some value and then over time whenever you’re ready you can go to the next step. It doesn’t have to be really slimy as a lot of people might find.

Pat:     Yeah.

Pat’s advice for starting in a new market

Yuri:    New market today, what’s the first thing you would start doing?

Pat:     If I was starting in a new market today, I would start by identifying a problem.

A lot of people think initiatives and things like that. I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, but I have always had the most success by identifying problems first—big specific problems.

Problems that have a large market to them already, meaning problems that people are actively paying to have solved.

Then I would go to that problem and I would try to develop a unique solution to that problem.

Rather than trying to find a problem that isn’t being served or isn’t being solved—which means there probably isn’t much of a market for it—I would find a big problem that is a huge market like fat loss for example.

I’d be like okay, how can I craft the unique message, unique brand, unique proposition that would allow my solution to stand out in this big market, in this hot market—that other people are not able to do?

Fundamentally, that’s what I’ve done with my business.

My business is fitness minimalism. That’s my unique proposition because I’m the guy who will help you get from A to B by doing the least amount that you need to do. By being effective and efficient. And then through there I do a lot of my stuff with kettlebell training so I have a very unique solution to a series of common problems, really—I offer solutions to fat loss or gaining strength or muscle.

I would just take that approach and move it to a different problem, whatever that is.

Maybe you have problems making money—okay, well here’s a unique approach. Generalism, like we’ve talked about. That’s kind of what I’m doing with my book right now, and that’s why it’s exciting, is because I’m doing exactly what you asked. I’m moving into an entirely new market, at least for me.

The problem that I’m helping people solve is actually a few problems. It’s not just making money, but it’s also that feeling of wanting to do more with your life, of wanting to create—and creating a business is just one part of that.

A big thing that I’m trying to solve with this book is to help people understand that humans are really meant to be generalists. I mean, that’s why we’re at the top of the food chain, because we can adapt to so many different things.

We are beaten out as specialists—we’re not as strong as the gorilla, we’re not as pretty as the ostrich, right?

But we can do most things better than almost any other animal. We are supposed to be generalists and when we embrace that, we’ll not only be more successful in my opinion—or at least find success easier than trying to be a specialist—but we’re going to be able to be more creative, expressive, and enjoy life more overall.

That was a very long winded answer to a very simple question.

Rapid-five questions

Yuri:    Oh it’s great man. Well going from a long winded answer, which is always welcome on this show, we’re going to the rapid five. Are you ready?

 Pat:     I am thinking I’m ready.

 Yuri:    Alright. You’ve got no prior knowledge of these questions, I’m going to just fire them at you and whatever comes to mind just shout it out.

 Pat:     Right.

 Yuri:    Number one, your biggest weakness?

 Pat:     My biggest weakness is procrastination.

 Yuri:    Your biggest strength?

 Pat:     My biggest strength is creativity.

 Yuri:    One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

 Pat:     Copywriting.

 Yuri:    What do you do first thing in the morning?

 Pat:     I write.

 Yuri:    Complete this sentence, I know I’m being successful when …

 Pat:     I know I’m being successful when people tell me that I’m changing their lives.

 Yuri:    Beautiful. Awesome Pat. This has been a lot of fun buddy. Thank you so much for taking the time.

What’s the place for our listeners to stay up to date with what you’re working on and obviously when it’s out, your new book?

 Pat:     Well my email list is definitely the best place and you can join that at my website, chroniclesofstrength.com.

I give away an eBook with 101 kettlebell workouts in it, so if you’re interested in kettlebell workouts then you’ll find that to be very fine and dandy indeed. You can also just grab that right at 101kettlebellworkouts.com.

I make my emails fun, I think people enjoy being on there. I talk a lot about minimalism and generalism but other than that—Facebook and Instagram. Facebook.com/chroniclesofstrength. Instagram.com/chroniclesofstrength. Those are the best places to get me.

Yuri:    Awesome. Guys, we’ll be sure to link up to all that good stuff in the show notes so check out the chroniclesofstrength.com afterwards.

Pat, once again, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate you, I appreciate the work that you’re doing and for really kind of challenging the status quo with these new concepts that you’re pushing out into the market. And really getting people to think differently about how they approach life and business.

Keep up the great work man.

Pat:     Yuri, thank you for the engaging conversation.

Yuri:    As always.

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There we go guys. Hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation with Mr. Pat Flynn. It’s always fun connecting with him because he’s just such a well spoken guy, he’s got his head on straight, he’s got a really cool way of looking at the world, as you can tell.

Once his book comes out I’d strongly recommend grabbing a copy. I haven’t read it obviously, because it’s not out yet, but I’m sure based on who Pat is—it’s going to be pretty cool to go through.

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Follow Pat Flynn At:

https://www.chroniclesofstrength.com/

Facebook

Instagram

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Transcription

In the last couple of episodes, in case you missed them, we looked at the ten traits of successful entrepreneurs in the online health and fitness space, what they all have in common. We did a two part episode split on those. If you missed those, go back and grab them.

We also had some great conversations with Wes Kennedy, who’s a former special operations/sniper in the Canadian Forces, and my former publicist, Nicole Dunn, who helped get me on the shows like Dr. Oz and the Doctors. If you missed any of that stuff be sure to go back to those episodes because there’s some really great wisdom that was shared.

Today we’re taking things up to the next level because we’ve got a really great guest. He’s actually been invited by NASA on several occasions to advise them on strategic countermeasures for long term space flight.

Now, why would he be invited to do stuff like that? Well, part of the reason, I think, is because he’s got an amazing fitness technology called ARX which is taking the world by storm and has been adopted by a lot of the leading bio hackers in our space and high performers who are looking to get the most efficient use of their time when it comes to exercise.

We’re going to talk about how Mark developed this technology, why he developed it, some of the challenges that have come along with bringing such an innovative technology to market, and also, how they’ve done it so successfully.

So you’re going to want to sit tight because if you have an idea for a product or a service, or if you’re thinking about how to position yourself in this marketplace to stand out—this episode is going to help you big time.

We also talk about some really important questions to ask yourself as it pertains to those desires of; “How do I differentiate? How do I stand out in a very competitive marketplace?”

Some very important questions you want to be asking yourself that Mark is going to share with us towards the end of the interview. So sit tight, grab a green juice, and let me introduce Mark Alexander to you.

He’s a health and wellness entrepreneur based in Austin, Texas. He chooses to invest in health because, without it, we really have nothing, which is something I think we all believe in. He’s been involved with founding and running several health and fitness wellness companies, including Efficient Exercise, Paleo FX—with one of our previous interviewees, Keith Norris—and his current primary focus is on his new fitness technology, ARX, which is adaptive resistance exercise.

If you want to learn more about Mark and ARX, you can go over to arxfit.com. So without any further ado, let’s welcome Mark onto the show.

Mark, how’s it going, my friend? Welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast.

Mark:  Hey, thanks for having me on.

Yuri:    Yeah, I’m excited because you’re doing some pretty cool stuff and connected with some other people that we know in the space like Keith Norris from Paleo FX. Right now, in this day and age, what are you most pumped up about when it comes to your business or businesses?

Mark:  Yeah, ARX, our adaptive resistance exercise technology, has got me most excited right now. As an entrepreneur, yeah, I’ve been involved in numerous health and wellness and health and fitness businesses over the years, ARX has definitely got my attention and got me most excited right now.

Yuri:    For the listeners who don’t know what it is, can you just quickly tell us what it is, how it’s unique?

What adaptive resistance technology is all about

Mark:  Yeah, sure. We’ve developed our resistance training technology, and it’s a hardware/software integration. The hardware is comprised of a couple different frames, pulleys and mechanisms that are driven by motors as opposed to any type of gravity-based weight system.

It’s a non-gravity based system. These motors are computer-controlled, so our software program dictates what’s going on for the user and what’s going on in the workout and it actually adapts to the user. There’s no pre-setting of weights or resistance, the system will adapt to your force capabilities at that given time—as a matter of fact, down to the microsecond.

For the user to understand this … Sometimes we say it’s like arm wrestling a super hero. Yeah, the super hero’s going to win but he can let you move his arm, if you will, just so slightly.

What the software does is it reads that force capability. Even though the machine will always win, the motors are always stronger than the human—we can see in real time what’s going on in your performance as well as track over time and quantify the experience so that the next time you’re on the system, you can chase previous performances and have the real time biofeedback to give you motivation. And there’s the long term dashboard quantification, if you will, to make sure that you’re tracking and progressing over time.

Yuri:    That sounds pretty amazing. I think one of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs have in our space is coming up with some new product or technology or service that is very unique from what else is out there. How did you even come up with this idea?

The creation of ARX

Mark:  Yeah, I’ve always been obsessed with efficiency—some might call it calculated laziness—but I’ve always known and grew up with exercise.

My father was a retired physician, so I knew exercise as medicine from a toddler on up. I really have always been into exercise and known what that can do for performance, whether the performance is in business, athletics, or whatever your focus is.

Fast forward to 2001, I started Efficient Exercise which is a fitness training business where we have people come see us in Austin (we have more than one location). As the name says, I was after this pursuit of—what is the most bang for your buck in the exercise world? I leaned toward resistance exercise, or strength training, for the laymen.

With resistance exercise I’ve always looked for tools that could possibly be better and more efficient, more effective. I always like to say, “The barbell can work.”  It has for many, many years, similar to how the horse and buggy worked for many, many years.

But cars came along. Jets came along. Things that got you from point A to point B, got you there faster.

Similar to exercise, we have found methods to get you there faster, if you will. What is the result of exercise that you’re wanting? We have improved upon the tool.

It’s been a pursuit over many years, and I cannot lay claim to being the absolute inventor of this technology. The inventor and I worked together for many years, let’s call it refining the technology, and then being able to bring it to a place where we can market it. And again, be a differentiator, if you will, in the market.

But it really came from this passionate pursuit of being efficient, effective and safe in the exercise realm and there’s a lot of stories along the way that we could dive into—but I would say, at the end of day, it was having an exercise science background and knowing what we want from exercise.

How can we get the most efficient tool to produce that stimulus that everyone’s chasing after in the exercise world? That’s how ARX came about.

How to educate effectively

Yuri:    That’s pretty cool. There must be a good amount of education involved in teaching people what this is, why it’s beneficial to them.

How have you done that? How have you taken this new technology, this new, more efficient way of exercising—and disseminated the information to people so they’re like, “Oh, my God, I need to have this”?

Mark:  Yeah, that’s a good question.

I don’t want to go about it—and I’ve seen this done time and time again—where the means of education is bashing everything else out there.

Yuri:    Yeah.

 Mark:  I’m definitely not taking that approach. Again, there are a lot of ways up the mountain, and in the exercise world, to get to that summit you can do a lot of different things.

I guess first is knowing your audience, so the people that I’m speaking to are usually chasing performance, often in business or in life in general. Not necessarily athletic performance but just high achievers, high performers, and they’re after any time saving that they get. Because they understand that health equals contribution, or health equals performance to a certain degree.

In other words, if your health goes down, likely your contribution will go down as well.

Again, knowing that I’m working and speaking to those people, we talk directly to that audience. If the gym is your lifestyle and you spend six hours a day at the gym, we’re probably not for you, and that’s okay. You might be the biggest guy out of your friend group because you do that but, again, that’s just not our crowd.

Again, knowing who we’re talking to, we’re talking to fellow entrepreneurs, fellow high achievers, people where time is literally money in most cases—and they’d rather spend their time doing other things. Being a husband, being a father, chasing after their latest venture, whatever that is.

The education process, I guess, starts from there. And I do push back when we put out super technical or uber technical language. I won’t name names, but we have some internal names or internal customers, and we always check ourselves and we say, “Does this meet the so-and-so test?”

In our internal lingo that means, essentially, “Would your mom understand this?”

We want to make sure that even though there’s a lot of scientific knowledge and background that has gone into the development of ARX, we’re not trying to speak in technical language that only an engineer would understand, only an exercise scientist would understand.

We want to make sure that we can distill this information in ways that anyone would understand. Namely, let’s just say, a 65-year-old woman that has no exercise background. Would she be able to understand it?

So again, knowing our audience and then also trying to keep things simple. We have a handful of internal rules and one of them is—simple is usually better. If we can explain something simply we try to go with the simple explanation versus diving too much into the details.

Trust me, we all love to talk shop and dive into it, but I think if you can’t explain something very simply and succinctly, you probably need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to explain it.

Yuri:    That’s huge. That is such a big lesson. For everyone listening, write that down. Especially in the space of health, wellness, fitness, where everyone is like this technical wizard.

Man, you have to be speaking at grade three level. It’s such an important, important thing.

I remember a friend of mine who’s a sport chiropractor—really smart guy, works with the Toronto Raptors—and I remember about 15 years ago seeing a postcard flyer of his that was hanging on a bulletin board at Starbucks.

And I’m reading this, and I’m like, “I can’t even understand this with a background in kinesiology and health sciences, how do you expect the average person at Starbucks to understand that this is a clinic for real people?”

I’m just like, “Dude, you got to kind of bring this back to English.” That’s such a great reminder, so thank you for sharing that.

Mark:  Yeah, and I think that your experience will show your prowess, if you will. I run into a lot of people who are technicians first and then they happen to have a business—I think that’s what a lot of health and wellness entrepreneurs actually are.

 Yuri:    Yeah.

 Mark:  If you’re a technician first, that’s great, that means you have a lot of background and experience. But really, a lot of that goes nowhere if you can’t teach it to a layman and can’t teach it to someone that—if we want to be honest here—they probably don’t really care about it like you do.

But they do want the result of whatever that knowledge is.

You have to find a way to distill it into something … Do the 80/20 test on everything that you’re putting out there. I think in threes all the time—“What are the three main points you want to make?”

Just stick with those, don’t try to go outside the lines too much unless people are really asking for it. Sometimes you find the people that are asking for more technical information, but I think 80% of the people do not want that.

Yuri:    Yeah, and you know what’s interesting, Mark, is a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs that I speak to in this space, they say that one of their biggest strengths is simplifying complexity.

Mark:  Yeah, yeah.

Yuri:    I think that’s so valuable because as you mentioned, it’s really important to take a complex technology or concept and be able to slim it down to digestible bite-sized pieces for the average person to understand.

Because if you don’t, you really have to go back to the drawing board and figure that out.

Mark:  Yeah, yeah.

Yuri:    As you’ve built this bad boy, what’s been the biggest challenge that you’ve faced in business?

Biggest challenges

Mark:  I think coming from a service side of business—in other words, “I know something and I’m going to perform a service for somebody and then also I’m going to train many staff members over the years to perform various levels of service.”

And I applaud anyone that’s been successful in the service business—whether it’s a personal trainer or physical therapist or what have you—because that has its challenges. It’s relationships first and technical knowledge second.

So I had to go from that paradigm into bringing a product to market. And again, relationships are still important in the product world, but the challenges of bringing a product to market have put some more gray hairs on my head in the last five years … Just because you know it’s there, you know what you’re after, and it is a physical, tangible thing.

We have hardware and software, and there’s challenges in both of those. I would say there’s probably more hardware challenges of, again, just bringing this product to market.

You read time and time again of all these products that test well—for example, with the model 3 now—it’s like, they’re having challenges. And you’re at the hands of manufacturers, you’re at the hands of other engineers—very competent, skilled, capable people—but I have yet to read a success story where there weren’t challenges along the way of bringing a product to market.

I definitely say that the challenges of bringing a physical product—that happens to also have a technology and software component to it—to market has definitely been dominating over the last about five-ish years in my entrepreneurial journey.

Yuri:    So guys, check out the website. ARXfit.com.  You can get a better sense of what we’re talking about in terms of what the product does and what it looks like.

Mark, so this is bit more involved than a kettlebell, right? A kettlebell is like—Okay, I’m going to go pick it up, it’s $70 bucks, whatever.

What does the business model look like for getting someone to potentially be interested in this? What is the price of one of these machines?

Market strategies; products vs. services

Mark:  Yeah, in North America, our primary go to market strategy is business-to-business leasing.

We recognize we’re not the cheapest thing around, we understand that, and the cash up front we want to try to minimize as much as we can—therefore, we’ve developed a leasing model. There’s credit factors and yadda, yadda, just like if you were leasing a car. Similar things go into it in terms of the risk assessment and the like, but I won’t bore your audience with that.

The cool part about what we’re starting to see and this trend that I think is going to continue, is smaller footprint facilities. So we’re starting to work with people that aren’t in the 20,000 square foot gyms.

They’re recognizing that A) they can’t afford it, and B) that model is terribly inefficient and not personal—so they’re going into these more personal, smaller footprint facilities. And then they’re also asking themselves the 80/20 question of health; “What should go in here?”

I don’t think many people these days would argue that resistance exercise is not part of the health equation. I think most people recognize that now. 20, 30 years ago with Kenneth Cooper and the aerobics craze, people might have questioned you more, but now I don’t think anyone’s questioning that, thank goodness.

They’re starting to say, “Well, we can get people in the door for exercise but I don’t want to allocate 10,000 square feet to a gym. How do I get a couple machines that are each about the size of a couch to basically do a full workout?” Well, that’s where we come in.

So we’re helping practitioners implement space effective efficient exercise in a very small footprint way. But, again, there are models where you can still grow in scale and still help hundreds or thousands of people per location, if you do it right.

I think this venue of health, if you will—I keep trying to come up with a creative name of what this is … It’s not a gym, it’s not a medical clinic, but whatever you want to call this new venue, it’s starting to take shape. And it’s starting to take shape really quickly as things sprout up all over the place—where it’s usually a practitioner, an entrepreneur or two that are looking for ways to bring, not only resistance exercise, but some other health or biohack type of technologies to the market and under one roof.

Again, we’ve seen a lot of aligning and technologies and tools that are going alongside ARX. Again, I not so boldly predict that these types of new facilities are going to start popping up more and more often, which I really love because the big gym model is, to me, really dying a slow death and eventually I think it will go.

Yuri:    Yeah, I know it’s tremendous. I was thinking, just as you were talking there … If I’m a gym owner, or if I own a clinic where I’m going to get people to do some type of exercise … If we look at the number of people you can service in a certain amount of time, maybe that number becomes a lot higher, because you don’t need an hour to work out, now it’s 10 minutes. Or now you have an amazing differentiator, which is—No one else has this technology but us.

Mark:  Yeah. Yeah.

Yuri:    I think for the potential owner of someone who’s going to bring this into their facility, I think it’s a massive value add to the value proposition they can offer their clientele.

 Mark:  Absolutely. Yeah, you’re saving them so much time, and I mentioned that the technicians often don’t realize that the people they’re serving probably don’t care about 80% of the knowledge that they have so they don’t need to hear about it.

I would also say that if you could tell them that they’re saving time, they would rather be doing other things. You’re right, it’s a huge market differentiator in that you are … Yes, you’re able to get them the results that they are after but also save them a lot of time.

Yeah, we talk about the entrepreneurs and I know that’s your audience here, but what about the stay-at-home mom or the stay-at-home dad or the people that are just trying to be family-focused for this season in their life?

We’re all busy. I don’t really like that, I wish we weren’t as busy sometimes. But I’m not sure that that’s going to change really quickly, so let’s try to find ways to make our lives a bit more efficient through technology.

I think that’s where we’ve come in with ARX, is being able to provide that efficiency so that you’re not spending hours and hours at the gym every week.

Yuri:    Yeah, no, that’s pretty awesome. If you were to look at creating a new company or let’s say ARX just got abducted by aliens and never existed, there was no footprint of it on the planet and you had to start a new company tomorrow … In maybe a new market or similar market.

Knowing what you know now, what’s the first thing you would start doing differently, if anything?

Asking yourself the important questions

 Mark:  Yeah, I like your concept of finding a new product—I did some reading prior to our podcast here, and I think it is a very important concept. I think we’re starting to see a saturation—and I’ll just take the online or digital marketing type of community as an example—I see a lot of gurus out there.

It’s like, how many gurus can we really have and what are they really saying that’s any different than the next guru?

I think what I would do … Maybe this sounds counterintuitive, but I would just do nothing and think for awhile. I would go away to the mountains and I would try to figure out, “What is this new thing, this new product, this new idea?”

And then ask myself, “Is it really new? Is it really something that holds its ground on its own?”

And this is my own take, but I sure as hell wouldn’t base it on my own personality or my own ego or my own persona. I see that, and it does work in our world, but I’m not the guy who’s going to take off my shirt, flex my muscles and be like, “Hey, follow me.”

I know it works, I get it. And athletes go through this all the time. They’re like, “You know what? I got my knee injury and now I can’t perform anymore. What do I do?” I think we all should take that time to pause and reflect and figure out—“What is it that I’m passionate about? What is it that I’m skilled at? What is it that I can see myself dedicating some serious, considerable time to?”

If you’re asking me what the new idea is right now, I don’t know. Again, I think it’s … Take some serious time for consideration and planning and then know that execution is much greater than an idea.

So once you do come up with that idea, you have to think about the next years to come. How much time do I want to allocate to executing this idea because I think most people underestimate that side and that’s why most small businesses go under—is they did not understand what it took to execute upon that great idea.

Yuri:    Yep. That’s really, really good advice. Because I find there’s a lot of the entrepreneurial people tend to follow the advice of ready, fire, aim. I’m a huge believer in MVP, minimal viable product, get it out there, get some feedback and adjust.

But I’ve also recognized from my own experience that when you put something out too early, you end up having to spend a lot of time and money going back and fixing errors. I like to think of it as strategize then strike.

You talked about taking time to think, that’s extremely valuable. I don’t think a lot of people do that because they’re so focused on doing the stuff in the business all the time. Yeah, I think that’s great insight.

Mark:  Yeah, yeah. Well, and technology has empowered—maybe not in a good way—empowered people to take ideas to market really quickly these days. Again, probably in most cases it’s not wise to go do that that quickly. Even though you can, it doesn’t always mean you should.

I think that’s probably a rule to follow, as you said, it’s not the ready, fire, aim approach. There have been certain seasons of digital products that you could probably have gotten away with that.

But I think we’re in an age now where the market’s saturated enough, technology is what it is, people can quickly sniff out when bad stuff comes out and then you’re going to fail.

Yuri:    Yeah, totally. I want to go back to what you said about we have enough gurus, which is true. Again, I started off my health and fitness business as the expert, the face of the business, and I decided to go very general, which is not a very good strategy.

So it’s always been more work than it may have been had I thought about this stuff 12 years ago. I want to put this out there to our listeners—if you are the personality for the face of your brand, even if you have a product and you’re not, I think it’s important to consider this discussion.

Just playing off what you talked about, really asking yourself, “Why do I exist? Why is it important that this business, my product, or me exists?” And taking the time to really reflect on that. Because if you can’t explain or express your differentiator and how that matters to the marketplace, they’re not going to see the difference. They’re going to be like, “Oh, here’s another person talking about the same stuff.”

I think we’ve hit on a couple of things—whether it’s creating messaging that can relate to a 65-year-old woman or just really clarifying the message so that you are unique in the marketplace. Because, as you just said, it’s so saturated that you have to think about this stuff before you just put out another weight loss product or another course that everyone else is doing.

Mark:  Yeah, yeah. I think the question of, “What would this business be like without me in place?” Whether you’re looking at that from a legacy/exit strategy, or you’re looking at it from, “Does it stand on its own without me?”

I think those are great questions to ask. It doesn’t mean that if there is a good-looking guy or girl out there with tons of Instagram followers and they end up being able to work a business out of those followers and sell them product—that that’s inherently bad.

I know you speak to what I would call true entrepreneurs a lot, where again, I think there is something born into certain people that’s not in others. Not that it can’t be groomed and trained, but nonetheless, I think if you’re talking to that crowd which is 80/20 style on the actual entrepreneur crowd to those people that really are, as Gary Vee would say, the hustlers … I think those questions are super important because maybe they’re not already thinking about the next thing.

I think every entrepreneur has his or her timetable in their head and they figure out, “I’m a five year guy, I’m a two year guy, I’m a seven year guy.”  You figure out where you’re strong and then where you need to move on. To those people, I think you do have to ask yourself about exit, about legacy, about, “Is this viable without me?”

Start asking yourself those things fairly early on. And I’m speaking about all this like I’ve been perfect at it. No, I’ve had to learn the absolute hardest ways possible many times trying to figure out how can I make this stand without me—and usually it’s by failing several times and then figuring it out and knowing, “Oh, okay, these are the strategies and these are the people that I have to put in place.”

Yeah, you’re going to fail when you’re doing that but that’s totally okay.

Yuri:    Yeah, that’s great.  That’s such good advice.

If you were sitting down with someone at a coffee shop or a juice bar, and they’re a relatively new entrepreneur looking to build their business, whether it’s a physical product or an information product, what one piece of advice would you give them?

Mark:  It’s just asking yourself the hard question of … Essentially, double-checking yourself and say, “Do I really want to do this?”

I think I went back to the saying, “You should really think about it.” Sorry, I guess I’m coming back to that again. “Is it okay if you tell yourself no to this idea of this business?”

If the answer to that is, “No, I’m called to do it, I’m driven to do this,” whatever it is internally that is driving you, well then, pursue it.

But I have seen too many times where people get really hung up on an idea. They think this idea is going to net them millions of dollars. And again, execution is really where businesses are made or are not. So ask yourself, “Is this something that I’m really going to pursue and put a lot of energy and effort into over the next several years?”

I don’t know if people’s pride will let them say no, but saying no is totally okay. I’d also say that to the investors or the people that are empowering others, investing in others, let yourself say no.

A lot of people know that already, but I think if you come to a “no” after really digging deep then that’s okay. But if you can’t come to a “no” and there’s no way you cannot do whatever this is, then by all means, pursue it.

Rapid five questions

Yuri:    Good advice. Good stuff. Alright, Mark, are you ready for the rapid five?

Mark:  Sure, I don’t know how rapid I’ll be but I’ll try.

Yuri:    Here’s a little hack for all of you listeners. If you actually want to make this a rapid five, go to 2x speed on your phone if you’re listening to this on iTunes.

Okay, anyway—basically whatever comes to mind as I ask these questions or completing the statements, that’s pretty much all we’re asking for. Nothing too incriminating, so it’s all good.

Okay. First off, what is your biggest weakness?

Mark:  Oh, I would say chasing perfectionism.

 Yuri:    And your biggest strength?

 Mark:  I’d say empowering others, trusting them.

 Yuri:    Nice. What’s one skill you’ve becoming dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

 Mark:  Emotional intelligence.

 Yuri:    That’s a good one. What do you do first thing in the morning?

 Mark:  There’s a bit of a routine, it’s not a one answer thing. In a nutshell, it’s doing things physically, spiritually, and emotionally to get myself ready for the day and it’s pretty Type A routine, but it only takes about an hour.

 Yuri:    Nice. Well, especially if you’re using the ARX, right?

 Mark:  Mm-hmm.

 Yuri:    That’s awesome. Complete this sentence: I know I’m being successful when …

 Mark:  When the sense of reward and fulfillment is there.

 Yuri:    Awesome. Good stuff. Mark, this has been a pleasure. It’s been great connecting with you and talking to the man behind a really, really cool technology that can help people exercise more efficiently and more effectively.

What is the best place for our listeners to follow your work, learn more about ARX and anything else you have going on?

Mark:  Yeah, you mentioned arxfit.com, as well as our Facebook page on social. I would say those two resources are great. If you want to dive into a lot of the technicalities, go into our YouTube channel and just consume. Yeah, so I’d say that those are definitely great resources to check out.

Yuri:    Perfect, well there you guys go. Mark, once again, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today, it’s been a lot of fun, and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Mark:  Yes. Thanks, this has been super efficient and fun. Thank you.

 ——————————————————————

What I loved about talking with Mark was that he’s coming at this business a little bit differently than a lot of people creating information products. This is a full on piece of equipment that is not inexpensive.

And so the questions that he’s asking, like taking time to really think and reflect and ask how do we really standout? How do we position this in a way that is going to be meaningful to this very competitive marketplace? I think those are great questions to ask yourself and that’s why I’m a huge believer in the idea that the best way to build your online business is to spend more time offline.

Taking half a day one day a week to just think, turn off the computer, get out a notebook, and just start thinking. Writing down ideas, writing down questions, and really challenging yourself to come up with great solutions that you wouldn’t otherwise think of when you’re in the grind, day in and day out.

Taking that time for reflection is just valuable.

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Follow Mark Alexander At:

https://arxfit.com/

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Free Healthpreneur Health Profit Secrets Book

If you would like a free copy of the Health Profits Secrets book,  you can get that over at healthpreneurbook.com.

It will show you the four secrets that really are the fundamental components to building a successful online health or fitness business.

Transcription

Episode 17! Ten traits of successful entrepreneurs part two. Last Monday, we looked at the five traits in this two part series.

We’re going to go back to that video that I extracted the audio from, and I’m going to give you the final five traits that all successful entrepreneurs have in common—especially in the online business world. Let’s get into it.

 

6)  Taking Caluculated Risks

The sixth trait is that successful entrepreneurs are able and willing to take calculated risks to move their business forward.

Let me give you an example.

A couple years ago when my first published book came out, The All Day Energy Diet, I decided I was going to invest $300,000 to make this book a massive success. And we eventually hit number two on the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today—it was awesome.

Now that was a calculated risk, and a very, very uncomfortable one in terms of, “Holy cow, we’re going to make this happen.” But again, that came back to belief. That cames back to testing. A funnel and a book launch strategy that I knew was going to work, and we made it work.

Now I’m not saying you have to do that, but there are different levels of risk that you can take with what you’re doing. But if you’re not willing to bet on yourself, or bet on the people you believe in who are around you, you’re going to kind of stay at the minor leagues if you will. Be able to take calculated risks.

Look at people like Elon Musk, Richard Branson—facing great adversity, they just knew what they were doing would make a massive difference, and they were able to make it happen.

7) Have Your Own Products

Okay, the seventh trait of being a successful online entrepreneur is that you should really have your own products. There’s a lot of people making money through affiliate marketing, where they basically put links or promote other people’s stuff, and that’s fine.

But we’re here to create a legacy business, to really impact people’s lives. And you have a message, you have a unique method—a gift, a system, a way of helping people that you should really package in a product that you own, and that people can buy from you.

Because if you don’t have your own products, then you’re always reliant on finding other people. And the thing is—that dilutes your brand.

Unless you’re the person who’s going to say, “Listen, come to me and I’m going to refer you to all these cool resources,” that’s fine. But if you want people to see you as the trusted expert, you should really in-house a lot of your own stuff.

Because when you start promoting all over the place, it confuses them, it dilutes your brand, and quite frankly, it pisses off a lot of people on your list.

Own your own products. Create your products. They can be as simple as workouts, digital eBooks, courses, your own stuff.

And when you’re creating your own products, think about, “How do I make my products 10 times better than what is already out there?” Raise the bar. Don’t be a me-too product. Make yours better.

8)   The Riches Are in the Niches

All right, number ocho. Successful entrepreneurs, not even online, but just in general, niche down. The riches are in the niches.

One of the mistakes I made with my online health business is that I didn’t niche. I just said, “I’m gonna be the guy who’s going to help people have more energy, lose weight, improve their health.”

Well that’s a very broad market. Kind of competing with Dr. Oz, right? Pretty tough sell.

We made it work, but it’s an uphill battle as opposed to being like the Hashimoto’s expert, or the adrenal expert, or the Crossfitexpert for women. Do you see where I’m going with this?

When you understand a very small segment of the audience, or the population, and you know them intimately in terms of their values, their pains, their desires—and you can speak to that specifically? That’s very powerful.

Plus, your prospects and customers are always putting you in a specific category in their mental archives. When they’re thinking about you, what’s the archive that they’re putting you in?

Is it, “Oh, this person that I go to for delicious gluten-free recipes. Oh, you should check out this person because they are the expert for women who are doing Crossfit.”

Who do you want to be? What’s the category you want to occupy in your audience’s mind? Go niche, go deep a narrow.

9)   Never Giving Up

Number nine is never giving up, having this relentless persistence, and just being like a dog on a bone. And this goes back to a bunch of stuff we’ve already mentioned—it’s very easy to stop and give up.

Quite frankly, the business failure rate of small businesses is 95% after three years. So that means only 5% of small businesses make it beyond three years, and that’s just because it’s tough. And most people don’t know what they’re doing.

They’re trying to reinvent the wheel or do their own thing, they’re not investing in themselves or their business, to get the coaching and strategies they need to succeed, and they struggle. And then they get a point where they’re like, “Well I don’t know if this is worth it.”

So never give up. You have a gift and message that people need. They need to have it. There’s stuff you know that I don’t, which is awesome, because there’s only one me, there’s only one you. And you have to share that gift in any way, shape, or form with the people who are most receptive to it.

10)   Good Humans

And the final trait of successful online entrepreneurs is that they’re good humans. Need I say more? Don’t be a douche. Be a good human.

Do unto others as you would want done to yourself. And that’s just a great way to live, right?

I think it’s just a great way to approach business. And never forget this—it’s not about how much money you make, it’s not about if your car matches your shoes, and your belt matches your home, all that bling-bling nonsense.

Your reputation really matters.

So when people are talking about you to their friends, or they’re leaving comments about you online, what are they saying? Are they trash talking you? (And you’re always going to have haters, don’t get me wrong.) But for the most part, what’s the reputation, what’s the legacy that you are building? Or the legacy that you are leaving behind?

Never forget that, okay, because at the end of the day—sure, money is awesome. The lifestyle is awesome. But it’s the impact we’re making in the world, it’s the legacy that we’re leaving, and if you resonate with that, then that’s awesome.

And there you have it. Now you know the ten traits of successful entrepreneurs. Now if you’re thinking to yourself, “Yuri, I have no idea what you’re talking about, we just talked about five.” That’s because we did five last time.

We broke this up for the sake of time, to cover five last week, five today. So if you missed the first episode, episode number 14 where we talked about the first five traits, go back and listen to that. You can also go over to the blog to get the show notes at healthpreneurgroup.com/podcast, and you can just oscillate between episode 14 and episode 17. There’s a two-part series, 10 traits of successful entrepreneurs. If you want all 10 of them, there you go.

But here’s the thing— now you know what to do. Now you know what’s involved. That’s the easy part.

Crushing it

The challenging part is doing them, is living it. And this is where rubber meets the road. This is what separates those who crush it in their business, and when I say crush it, let me just be very transparent.

I’m not saying making hundreds of millions of dollars. I’m saying crushing it, relevant to whatever crushing it is for you. So whether that’s serving people at a deep level, making the money you want, enjoying more time with your family, feeling like you’re fulfilled in the work that you’re doing.

Whatever you define as crushing, that’s what I’m talking about.

So, that’s it. That’s the deal is, actually living the stuff and doing the work. Because doing the work si what produces the results. And if you know what’s involved, it becomes a lot easier.

Transcription

Today’s show is going to be less of a journey type of conversation, it’s going to be more of a how to and what to do type of conversation. I’ve got my dear friend, former publicist, Nicole Dunn on the show.

Nicole’s amazing. She’s a sweetheart, she’s an amazing person, and she was my publicist for three years. And she was the sole reason that I was able to get on the Dr. Oz show and become a regular contributor to Mind Body Green, and US Health News World Reports and a bunch of other websites, and platforms that would’ve been pretty tough to get on all by myself.

Nicole’s great because—as you’re going to see in this interview—she’s also the PR person for The Health Influencer. She’s worked with people like myself, JJ Virgin, Tony Horton, Brett Hoebel, Emily Fletcher, Josh Axe, and on, and on, and on.

She’s really done a smart job and I think this is a great lesson for you, to become the expert in a niche, right? To become the big fish in a small pond.

Instead of being the publicist for everyone, she is the publicist for The Health and Fitness Influencer. Let me give you a little bit of her background.

She started on Dunn Pellier Media in 2008, and she’s set out not only to kind of dominate the health and wellness Public Relation sector, but to tie her extensive connections and experience in TV production to her passion of healthy living.

And knowing that good PR is all about telling the story, the right story, Dunn Pellier Media uses out of the box angles and precise strategy backed by decades of industry experience to bring health and wellness clients to the next level.

Nicole is a former team Emmy nominated producer, and she’s worked with a lot of the people that I mentioned just a moment ago. If you’re interested in finding a publicist, someone who can you on TV, get more media exposure—Nicole’s definitely the person I’d recommend.

And if you want to learn more about what they do, and their website is over at dunnpelliermedia.com and we’ll be sure to link that up in the show notes over at the blog, at healthpreneurgroup.com/podcast.

You ready? You ready to take some notes? If you’re driving you may want to pull over, get out your notepad, and jot down a few notes—because what Nicole is going to share with you here is really the step-by-step process that goes into the thinking and execution of getting your message out to more people using PR and media.

And I’m also going to share the really cool index card strategy that helped me stand out to the producers on the Dr. Oz show, so you’re not going to want to miss that.

Without any further ado, let’s welcome Nicole Dunn onto the show.

 

Yuri:   Nicole, welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. How is it going?

Nicole:   Thanks for having me. It’s going wonderful here in Los Angeles.

Yuri:    Such a beautiful city. Every time I’m there, I’m like, “I like this place more and more.”

Nicole:   We love it, because it’s sunny every day.

Yuri:    I know, I know. It’s pretty … plus, LA’s got this vibe—there’s so much going on. Every corner you turn, there could be a movie being shot, or some new thing going on, there’s a good energy to it.

Nicole:   Good energy and there’s a lot of workouts, there’s a lot of health and wellness people here, so we love it.

Yuri:   It’s pretty cool. All right. So, I’m excited to talk to you today because it’s been a while since we last spoke. We worked together for about three years, and you were the reason why I was able to get onto the Dr. Oz Show, and the Doctors and a bunch of other great media exposure.

Nicole’s Tony Horton Story

I want to start off by talking with you about … Why you, as a publicist, decided to really focus on health and fitness? Because you did the stuff for Tony Horton, for a ton of other big names in our space, was there a pivotal moment in your journey where you were like, “You know what, maybe I should just focus on this industry?”

Nicole:   There was. I actually was a TV producer, so I was producing television and there was a moment where you can only go so far. And I was just directly under the EP—which is executive producer—and there’s not many of those executive producer jobs. So I was really vying for a job that really wasn’t available.

My husband said to me, “I think you should start your own business.” And I said, “You’re crazy. Why would I do that?” So he said, “I just think you’re really good with putting people on television, and you could really do this.”

So I set out, I hired a coach, I ended up getting myself on the cover of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, and I set out to actually get a client.

I had a mastermind group and one of the women in the mastermind group said, “Listen, I’ve got a client that I cook for that I think would be really, really great for you.” And I said, “Oh, okay. Who’s that?” And she says, “Tony Horton.” I said, “Wow, I’ve never heard of this person, what does he do?”

Yuri:  Are you serious? 

Nicole:   Yeah. I hadn’t heard of him.

Yuri:   That’s awesome.

Nicole:  This was ten years ago. And she said, “You haven’t seeing his infomercials? They’re all over TV.” And I said, “No,” because I was not into health and wellness and fitness.

I did not take care of myself when I was in television—and that’s a whole other conversation—working the hours that we did. So as I got into this relationship with Tony Horton, he was my only client.

I started with him, and I started traveling with him, and he was like, “What do you do for workouts?” And I said, “Actually, I don’t work out.” He said, “Well, we’re going to change that.”

So I started working out, which increased all these great things in my life. It was like, “Wow, I actually feel like I can breathe.” I just looked better, I felt better.

And the pivotal moment for me was, we were in Washington DC, and we were doing a workout for the Press Club. Now, if you don’t know anything about the press club in Washington DC—it’s very exclusive, there’s probably 2,500 members of journalist that attend Press Club meetings and press conferences there. And it’s very prestigious.

So we were raising money for journalism by utilizing Tony Horton to do a workout, to raise the money. And we were walking down the street after the workout and this woman was running down the street, African-American woman, she said, “Oh, my god, you’re Tony Horton!”

And he says, “I am.” And he says, “Do you have any questions for me?” And she said, “I do. I lost 100 pounds doing P90X.” So they started talking and she said, “You know, today is my birthday.” And he says, “Oh, happy birthday.” And she said, “And my name is Hope.”

And we’re like… “Oh… Hope, happy birthday!” And she said, “You’re never going to believe this.”

And he says, “You told me it’s your birthday, and you told me you lost 100 pounds. And your name is Hope. What am I not going to believe?”

And she says, “Look at this. She’s carrying a box, and she opens the box and it’s a birthday cake with his face on the cake.”

That was sort of my real pivotal moment, where I said, “Oh my gosh, I am going to do this health and wellness thing” and I really got into it. I really started to focus my efforts on just health and wellness.

And the coach that I hired in the very beginning when I first started said, “You’ve got to go niche. You just have to go niche and really pick something and fine tune it.” That was my pivotal moment and I didn’t look back.

I was like, “I’m doing this. I’m doing the health and wellness thing and I’m on board.”

Yuri:    That’s awesome. That’s a great story. Tony has such a great personality, I can see all that going as you’re describing it.

Nicole:   Yeah.

Essential PR Tips

Yuri:    You’ve worked with a lot of people in our space, like myself, Tony, Brendan Brazier, Josh Ax, JJ Virgin, some really influential people.

A lot of our listeners are obviously health and fitness entrepreneurs. Out of all the people that you’ve worked with, when you think back to your roster, what are one or two common traits that all these people have? That have helped them get on TV or just get more exposure, or help them get their messages out to more people?

Nicole:   Yeah. I think the number one thing was, they were very clear about who they were, why they were doing what they were doing, the direction that they were taking their expertise, and they were very credible experts to begin with.

So they had really good information for their audience, and I think that made it really easy for them to get PR. They knew exactly what they wanted to put out, and they utilized me as their biggest megaphone.

I think when you have good content, and you’re a credible expert, you really shouldn’t have a problem putting the information out to get coverage or to build a following with your expertise. If you’re really clear about your why and your messaging, it’s a lot easier to get coverage.

And I would say they have something special, all of the experts that I’ve worked with. For one, they’re particularly great, and they take direction really well.

So I would say probably, all in all, everyone that we’ve worked with, they had something special. They had something that no one else had and they specialized in it.

Yuri:   That’s cool. I know I had something no one else had, which was no hair, so … that’s something that no one can touch.

Nicole:    Right? I know.

Yuri:    Exactly. And what would you say, for people that are considering putting in the time or the investments to hire a publicist, or go down the media route, what are a few things they need to consider in terms of mistakes to avoid?

What are some things they don’t even know they don’t know, that they should know about?

Nicole:    Yeah. I think the first thing is to understand what public relations is, and public relations is a way to take your message and put it out to the media and to their audience.

And it’s really not about you. It’s about their audience and how do you fit into their audience.

I think people don’t understand why they need PR to begin with. If you want to be more credible in your field and you want to build up your expertise, you probably would go out and utilize media.

You’ve got a book to promote, you have something to promote, and I’d say—for people that are just starting out—figure out what is your why. Why are you putting your message out to the masses? And get clear about your expertise, you as an expert.

Coming up with lots of content, content is king in our world. So coming up with content, and being able to research and identify before you set out to hire a publicist.

Where could I actually write and contribute to? I always tell people, “Think about those outlets, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Hollywood Reporter, Washington Post, where would you see yourself contributing content to?”

And then the second thing would be to really find your local staff first, don’t just go for the big shot stuff right off the bat. I think you need to be a star in your own niche, in your own area first.

And that’s really easy to get coverage. People don’t really realize how easy it is to get coverage.

And then, it’s creating ideas that you think the public would be interested in. How are you changing lives and how are you taking what you know to a mainstream audience? So that they can understand what it is that you cover, and what your expertise is, and how you’re helping people.

Yuri:   Nice. So content is really the platform. In today’s day and age where there’s so much information, so much content, is content enough? Or does it really have to have a unique hook, or angle, just like anything catchy online would have as well?

Nicole:    Yeah, it’s got to have a good angle and good hook.

I tell people generally—have a really good subject line for your email and have a really good first paragraph. It doesn’t need to be long and lengthy.

And you can get through to somebody with an email. If you’ve got that one catchy title, that’s going to get your email opened more so than it would if you didn’t put any thought behind it and said, “Hey, I want to be on your show.”

Yeah. You’ve got to have content. And, like you said, content—there’s so much of it out there. So as an expert, you’ve really got to think of ways to … how do you stand out from the rest of the crowd? You want to be different, you want to stand out.

And people don’t really realize, we send out … Let’s say for one pitch, we probably send out maybe fifty emails. And if we get three or four responses back, we know we’re on the right track.

And we know we’re on the right track because we got a response. And that tells us that our pitch was good. If we don’t get a response, we go back to the drawing board and we recreate, and come up with something else.

And I think as an expert, you just have to think outside of the box. How are you going to be different than the massive amount of experts that are out there now?

Yuri:     That’s good. It’s a good lesson in marketing, because there’s a lot of smart people, as you mentioned. A lot of the people you work with are leaders in their field, very, very smart. And then, it’s like … I wanna talk about probiotics.

Okay … How do we put a sexy packaging around probiotics to make it really appealing?

And that takes practice, it’s not something that comes naturally to a lot of people. How do you suggest people get started with kind of coming up with that angle or hook?

Nicole:    Yeah. I want to say one thing about the angle and the hook that brings you back to what you’re just saying.

What we do is we create google alerts—on ourselves, on the people that we represent … And it’s a good idea because let’s say you specialize in probiotics. You set a google alert for probiotics, so that you can be looking at what kind of content people are pumping out about probiotics.

Become an expert at your own expertise. See what other people are writing about. And then create your pitch, or your idea that’s different from everybody else in whatever the clutter is.

And often times, the clutter is what’s trending. There’s a way that you can “newsjack” and you can take your concept and then play off of something that’s happening in the news, as well.

So, it’s a two-sided thing. It can be too cluttered but at the same point, it can be trendy and you can jump on the bandwagon of, “Hey, wow, that’s a trend right now, the gut is huge right now.” I mean, it was huge a year ago, but it’s still huge right now.

Yuri:    That’s really great advice, because I think a lot of people online are focused on evergreen content—stuff that is going to be searched for years on Google.

But I think as you just mentioned … the Today Show, the media type stuff, it’s more like what’s happening right now. So that newsjacking idea is great, it’s a really good suggestion.

Nicole:   And you also really have to study. Like I said in the beginning—when you identify five outlets that you think that you could contribute to, you should do your homework.

You’ve got to study how they present their content, what they’re covering, because if you’re just going to blindly pitch your content and it doesn’t match their audience and what they put out, they’re not going to use you.

So I try to tell people, “Do your homework.”

Yuri:    It’s good advice, not only for kids, but for adults as well. So let’s say the pitch goes well, there’s an interest from a show, or from a magazine, or anything else, what’s the next step? Is it a sit down with the producers, or does it depend on the outlet?

What to Expect at a TV Show

Nicole:    It just depends on the outlet, it depends on the show. If it’s a TV show generally what happens is we send a pitch over, they say we like this, we kind of work through it to make sure it fits their audience.

They’re always going to say, “We want to make this three points.” And then you’re going to say, “Okay, great. Here’s the information that I can add to the segment to make it great for your audience.”

They usually do a pre-call, and if you’re a local, then that’s great. If you’re going to be on the Today Show, you can just jet over there. I generally tell people if they get a bite like the Today Show, or they get a bite on Dr. Oz, one of the bigger shows, get yourself there.

You can write that off and you can get yourself there, but generally they have a meeting with you before you go on the show… And if you know your content and you know the show, you should be well-prepared before you get to the show. It shouldn’t be hard.

And you have to be able to think on your feet because television is a visual medium, it’s also quick and fast. You only get like four minutes to do a segment, versus doing something for Mind Body Green.

Mind Body Green has a lot of experts that contribute to their publication. So they’ll ask you to write an article, they’ll say, “Okay, these are trending topics that we want to cover. Can you please contribute on these items.” And you’ll just write it up for them.

Generally what we do here at our firm—we typically do their job for them. So they don’t have to say, “Wow, I need this, this, and that.” We give them everything that they should need—and we kind of go overboard, because I think that’s the way that we’ve been able to land great content for clients, is because we do their job for them. We make it easy. We know how many emails a day they get.

Each show is different. I do have an interview checklist that I have, that I can send out to anyone who comes to our website. We’ve also got a PR checklist that we send to people that gives you ten steps on how to get your PR started.

And then, for those people who are in the other place, where they’ve gotten some PR and now they’re nervous … They’ve gotten the big interview with the Today Show, we also have a checklist for the interview, which is very important. It’s important to know what to do when you get to the station.

Yuri:    Yeah, totally. We’ll make sure to link up to those links, to the sites in the show notes, for this episode. So be sure to check those out, guys.

So what I did with the Dr. Oz meeting, with the producers ahead of time is: I have those cue cards made out, kind of like drew these cartoons for the five different segment ideas.

I’m thinking, “Okay, they probably see 100 of these people on a weekly basis. How do I stand out? How do I become memorable?” How do I give them something that makes their life a bit easier, where they can take these and just get a caricature of what I’m thinking. On the back, just some bullet points of things they can consider. And they loved that idea.

So I don’t know if that was the reason I got on, but it was just something I thought would go above and beyond to make their lives a bit easier. Because as you said, there’s so much stuff.

It’s like, “Who’s that person again?” And you just have to stand out.

Nicole:     I remember those cards. And you did do an excellent job with the cards. And that was one of the reasons that you stood out.

You stood out to them because you did your homework and you gave them exactly what they wanted. You listened to them, and you listened to, “Okay, so what are you covering?” You came up with five different segment type of ideas, and you went in and you blew them away.

That’s what happened. You knew your material, but you also knew the show. That really, really helps cement your time on Dr. Oz.

Yuri:    Yeah, no, it was great. I want to thank you again. I don’t know if people realize this or not, is that—especially with an online business—there’s a lot of suspicion.

“Oh, is this guy a scammer?” or whatever. Having that credibility is huge. It really does make a difference.

And it’s something that you can always refer back to. Like, “Yay, I’m a New York Times best selling author, I’ve been on Dr. Oz.” All of these little sound bites, when you’re introducing yourself on video, when you’re introducing yourself on a podcast, or when someone is reading your bio …

We live in a world that’s very superficial. It’s sad to say, right?

But people make judgements. And if you have the stuff to use to your advantage, that’s going to help push you above everyone else.

I’m a huge believer in really leveraging all that for sure.

Nicole:    Absolutely. It’s a vehicle. It’s another vehicle to say, “Hey, I’ve got a book, hey I’ve been on the show.” It gives you more leverage, it makes you a star in your niche, in your field. And you get more followers, and you get more clients, you get more people buying your products and it’s just another thing to add to your resume of sorts.

Setting up your own PR mission

Yuri:     Yeah, totally. If someone wanted to start doing, for instance, their own outreach from a PR perspective, what are some things they need to do? How do they start?

Nicole:   Okay. So I said in the beginning of our interview, content is king.

So, coming up with ideas, first and foremost, of what you could be putting out. Generate topics that you think that the media would want you to contribute to. So come up with a list of at least two months worth of content—stuff that you can post on social, about you, your product, your brand.

Think of trending topical stuff. Like I said, set the google alert, come up with a short, sweet succinct pitch. Google is our best friend—I always say this to anyone starting off.

Identify the five places that maybe you wanna start writing for and contributing to. Let’s say that’s Women’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Huffington Post.

And then you go online and you start reading and looking at who’s posting things about the type of stuff that you’re writing about or the type of stuff that you put out for your programs. And start following those people that are putting content out there—editors, reporters, journalists, and you can just Google the person’s name.

I’ve come up with emails, we have a program here that we use—it’s called Cision, it’s very expensive—but we also just Google people. We Google them, we find them on Twitter, we start a conversation on Twitter, we look at their Instagram.

Really you can identify people very easily, and you can pitch one line. You can send them a direct message and say, “I’ve got a great pitch about adding fats to your diet with new scientific information.” And you might get something just from doing that.

I always say—get your content down, identify the places that you wanna write segments for or contribute to, and then research. Just research, research, research. And you can’t do enough research to find people that are like-minded, that you can contribute stuff to their publications, and also their television shows.

And I’d say, start small. Start in your own neck of your woods, in your home town. Why not start there first? And start with your local paper, and start with your local news. They’re always looking for content and coverage.

I’d say, probably the worst time to approach a journalist is if there’s some breaking news story, especially with a hurricane, or some kind of an incident. You have to really be careful about when you’re pitching people.

And usually in the mornings the reporters are very busy with the TV show, or they have deadlines—so being really courteous with people about it … “Hey, do you have a few minutes?”

Personally, I pick up the phone. And you can do that very easily. Just get started and have a base for something first, because then you’ll understand the process of public relations and why you’re doing it and how much work it takes to get the segment, or get the story.

Start local and take that mainstream after you do your local presence. And be organic and create something that sets you apart from the rest of the crowd.

Yuri:    That’s good. It’s good advice. One of the things that I recognized as I got into understanding PR a bit was … These shows are massive content publishers. Whether it’s a news show, or a Dr. Oz show, they’re constantly having to come up with new contents.

And I think what I realized is—my job is to just give them what their looking for on a silver platter.

Nicole:    Yeah. Yeah.

Yuri:   When I started to think of it in that way, it really helped me thinking about, “Okay, if they’ve got this problem of filling in these gaps, how do I do that? How do I give them something that’s unique, that’s different than what they’ve covered before, and gives them easy to utilize content.”

Nicole:    Absolutely.

And I think people generally respect you a bit more when you’ve done the work for them. They’re like, “Wow, this is so great. Thank you so much.”

And lastly, I’ll say … every time that I book something for someone, for clients, I send a thank you note. No matter what.

No one does that anymore, and they’re going to remember you. I tell people—let’s say you get an article on Mind Body Green. You are going to want to promote the crap out of that article.

You’re going to want to go to all of your friends and all of your followers: “Hey, please, share this article.” Because the more shares, the more popular it is, and they’ll ask you back.

I always ask them for an address. I say, “Can I get your address? I just want to send you something.” And I send them a quick note, “Thank you so much for having me on your show,” or “having me in your publication. It means a lot and I look forward to continuing to build a relationship.”

Those little things go a long way. I have done it for every single client, when you went on Dr. Oz, and the Doctors, they got thank you notes, they got flowers, they got wine.

I tend to want to reward the contacts that I have because they’re very valuable, and you have to wear golden gloves with any kind of media contact.

Yuri:    That’s great advice. And I think there’s just less clutter. People get less mail than they do email, so why not send notes?

Nicole:    One time we had a client. We got her on the Today Show, we built a diorama, like in school, like in eighth grade, and-

Yuri:   Not a diarrhea, a diorama? [laughing]

Nicole:    Diorama, yeah. Diorama. So we built this whole thing and we put this box together and we had all these kitschy things that we put in the box and we had sayings that we put on the inside of the box when they opened it up, and we got booked right away on the Today Show.

And I think it’s because we had a really good idea, but we also had that box that showed up. And the producer was like, “Whoa, okay—nobody does that.”

Yuri:   Yeah, it’s going that extra little mile, which I think a lot of people just out of laziness don’t do.

But I think if you’re really identified those targets that you’re after and just say, “Okay, listen, this is worth it, I’m going to invest the time, the money, whatever, to make this happen,” it will certainly leave a mark and probably pay off.

Nicole:   And speaking of time, one last thing, PR is something that takes time. It just does not happen overnight. And, like you said, we worked together for quite a while, to build up that reputation and build up the credibility, so I think people get the wrong idea. They think, “Oh, my gosh, I’m going to be on this show tomorrow.”

And I’ll give you an example. We worked with Emily Fletcher, ziva meditation, we worked with her for a year and then we she hired us for something recently and we invited someone from the Today Show, who came to see her speak in person.

And then they said, “Oh, my gosh, I’m going to put her in a segment.” And literally a week later she was on the Today show, and recently she was on the Today Show again.

But that took time, that didn’t happen overnight. You have to be mindful of that time and the journey to get there.

Yuri:    It’s true, great advice, just like with building a business, doesn’t happen overnight.

Nicole:   Exactly.

Yuri:   There’s no teleportation that I’m aware of yet, whether it’s flying from New York to LA, or zero to a million on your business. So enjoy the journey.

Nicole:   Yeah.

Rapid-Five

Yuri:   Nicole, are you ready for the rapid five?

Nicole:    Yeah, go. 

Yuri:    All right, so here we go. All right. Let me get pumped up here, one second.

Nicole:   I’m holding my hands together. [laughing]

Yuri:  Okay, here we go. Your biggest weakness?

Nicole:   My biggest weakness. I am a worrier.

Yuri:     A worrier. Cool. Your biggest strength?

Nicole:  My biggest strength, my ability to connect.

Yuri:   One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business.

Nicole:   Meeting people and just talking about the business, and what we do, and connecting.

Yuri:   Nice. What do you do first thing in the morning?

Nicole:   I meditate.

Yuri:   Complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when.

Nicole:  I know I’m being successful when my clients are on major TV shows and in the biggest publications out there.

Yuri:  Awesome.

Nicole:    And their success is my success.

Yuri:   Totally, totally. That’s great. Well, Nicole, this has been awesome. What is the best place for people to follow your work, get in touch with you, if they ever want to engage your services?

Nicole:   Yeah, we’re on all kinds of platforms. We’re on Instagram, so it’s Dunnpellier PR and our website is dunnpelliermedia.com. And we love to connect.

Starting this fall we’re going to pick back up and do our media mornings with DPM, where we answer all of your PR questions, we talk about anything to do with PR, and media, we’re there. Every Wednesday at noon.

Yuri:    Awesome. Great stuff. And we’ll link up to those in the show notes, guys. Those all will be over in the blog.

Nicole, great to have you on the show, I’m so excited for all of our listeners to follow your work and obviously just take some of this stuff and, if they’re considering doing more media and PR, these are things that most people don’t consider. So, I’m surely grateful that you were able to share all of this with our listeners. So thank you so much.

 Nicole:  Thank you.

 ——————————————————————

All right. So if you’re serious about getting more exposure on TV, magazines, websites, and so forth, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.

Now, I’ve got a little action step for you to take. This is something that I, a type of implementation exercise that I use with pretty much any kind of live sessions that I do, from our big events or from our workshops, and it is this. This is kind of an abbreviated version of it.

What I’d like you to do is think about what is the big “a-ha,” what’s the big insight you got from our conversation? I want you to write that down.

I want you to write “The big insight I got from this discussion was ______.”

Once you’ve written that down, I want you to challenge yourself to take the next three steps.

What are the next three steps you’re going to put into place? To make that insight actionable.

That might mean write three pitches for this piece of content, or research five websites I want to write for, or contact the editor at this magazine. Whatever it is for you, write down those three action steps, where you take that big a-ha, that big insight, and you now move it into execution mode.

So that’s my challenge for you to do right now, but assuming you’re not driving, obviously. Unless you’re driving a self-driving car, in which case you can actually do the work while the car drives itself.

 

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Follow Nicole Dunn At:

https://dunnpelliermedia.com/

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Transcription

Hey, what’s up? Yuri here, and welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast, I’ve got a question for you to kick things off today; what makes an entrepreneur successful?

Do you know? I’m not too sure.

Actually, no, I am pretty sure because I’ve been doing this for a long time—and not that I’m the be all and end all when it comes to entrepreneurs—but I’ve noticed some common traits, and that’s what I’m going to share with you in today’s solo round.

This is actually part one of a two-part series on The Ten Traits of a Successful Entrepreneurs. I’m actually going to share the first five with you today, and the final five next Monday. So don’t go anywhere—you don’t want to miss out on part two.

 

So today, what you’re going to hear is the audio from a YouTube video that I created on this very topic—so I’m going to introduce it here, we’re going to go right into the five traits, and then I’ll come back and see you on the flip side. And then you’ll be able to enjoy part two next Monday.

So if you’re ready, let’s jump into these five initial successful entrepreneur traits.

It’s in your genes

Alright, so if you’re an entrepreneur with an online business in the health or fitness space, well, what’s it going to take to succeed?

First and foremost, I believe that entrepreneurs are kind of born—it’s not really something that you can teach. I think it’s something that you either have, or you don’t.

Now, you may agree or disagree with this—I’m just sharing my opinion with you—but if I think back to when I was a kid … I was very stubborn, I wanted to do my own thing, I had a very tough time working or taking orders from other people. These are all signs of entrepreneurship.

So if you have that, that’s a good thing. Even if you’re not a full blown entrepreneur right now, I think you know whether you’re happy to work for other people, or if you ultimately need to run your own show.

1. Relentless testers

So with that said, the first trait of successful online entrepreneurs is that they are relentless testers. Now, I’m very grateful to be associated with people who are multiple seven, eight, nine figure business owners in the health and wellness space, and monetary success is not the be all and end all—but there is a reason for all of that success.

And there’s very few overnight successes. A lot of the people who are doing really well—it didn’t just happen overnight, they’ve been doing this for five, six, seven, ten years and it’s been like a ten year overnight success.

So how do you take an offer—an ebook, a digital course—and turn it into a multiple seven figure, or eight figure business? How do you take a supplement, a physical product, and make it a massive success?

Well, you put it out there, see what happens. If it doesn’t work, do you give up or do you keep moving on?

Well, a lot of people who do really well online are willing to look at, “Okay, what didn’t work? How do we make it better? How do we tweak? How do we retest?”

And then, “Okay, this is the winner? Okay great.” We can sit on the beach or we can beat the control.

How do we come up with a new idea, new concept, something new to test against this winning variation? And that’s what they do—they relentlessly test, and if you’re not someone who’s going to be granular or nitty-gritty like that, find somebody on your team who will. Because you could hit singles all day long if you want, but all you need to live the life of your dreams—to set you up, literally, for the rest of your life—is one home run.

One home run. I know people in our space who are doing eight figures from one ebook. One ebook. So never underestimate the power of continual testing.

2. Willing To Try New Approaches

With that said, the second trait of successful online entrepreneurs is that they’re willing to try new approaches.

If something doesn’t work at first, they don’t give up, they try something else. It’s very much like flying a plane. I love flying, I’m a private pilot. If you’re landing, and you have a wind sheer that can throw the plane onto the runway (very, very dangerous situation) well guess what? You’re going to do an overshoot. You’re not going to land the plane, you’re basically going to take off out of midair, if you will, and come back around.

So it’s very similar to flying and landing a plane, where if that one approach doesn’t work, you’re going to come back around and try a slightly different approach, and the same thing with your business and with your offers.

If something doesn’t work, well guess what, go back to the drawing board, try something else.

3. Investing in Yourself and Your Business

Third; they invest in themselves and in their business. This is really important. You probably know this, right?

If you’re a trainer and you’ve had people come to you for a free consult and they didn’t want to have training with you afterwards, or personal training with you, well guess what? They weren’t willing to invest in themselves, right?

So you know how frustrating that can be.

When I started off as a trainer I was working 16 hours a day, doing all sorts of free workouts, and a lot of those people didn’t see the value in having me train them.

Now, maybe I wasn’t as good a salesperson at the time, but the reality is—if you’re not willing to invest in yourself, you’re not going to get the results that you want. And in my business, when I started online in 2006, I decided I was going to do things all by myself. And for three years I struggled.

At the end of the third year I made a decision that I was going to hire a coach. That following year I hired a coach, joined a mastermind, went to more live events—so I invested in those, I purchased tickets, I purchased enrollments in that stuff. And my business took off.

And it’s the same thing I advise for you, as well as everyone I’ve ever helped—you have to invest in yourself. Over the past couple of years I’ve invested over $350,000 in my own coaching, the masterminds I’ve been a part of, the events that I go to. It’s very, very important.

If you don’t see the value in that, you will struggle. And the thing is, as a coach, we’re mostly coaches to other people.

If you’re telling people to invest in you, you have to invest in somebody else—you have to invest in yourself to give the coaching and help you need. We all do, right?

4. Believe in Yourself

The fourth trait of successful online entrepreneurs is that they believe in themselves and they believe they have a value to offer to this world. They believe that what they’re doing is going to make a difference—and if you don’t have that belief, then it’s going to be very easy to give up when the crap hits the fan.

But if you have that belief that what you’re doing, there’s a bigger purpose, there’s a bigger cause, there’s a bigger reason why. And that is going to fuel you through those tough times, because it’s not all peaches and roses, right? There’s going to be ups and downs throughout this entire journey, and that’s why it’s amazing to be an entrepreneur—because there’s those levels of uncertainty all over the place.

There’s highs and lows, and I would much rather have those than working 9-5 for a secure job.

5. Putting Your Customer First

The fifth trait is customer first. You have to put your customer first. Successful entrepreneurs are always thinking about their customers as human beings, not numbers in their system.

That’s really important because not only is it just a good way to approach life, but when you put your customers first, you only put stuff in front of them that they would value.

Don’t create stuff and put stuff out there that you think is going to be awesome, ask your audience, ask your customers what they want, figure out what their pain points are, and deliver on that.

Alright, so there you have it; the first five traits of successful entrepreneurs.

In next Monday’s solo round we’re going to look at the second five traits. I’ve got to keep you in suspense for a week, I’ve got to keep you on the edge—you’re not going to be able to sleep properly until you uncover what these final five traits are.

Transcription

Healthpreneurs, what’s going on? Yuri here, and welcome to episode thirteen. Today, we’re talking with the man himself: The founder of Spartan Race, Joe De Sena.

Now in case you don’t know what Spartan Race is, you’ve probably heard of adventure races at some point hopefully in the last couple years. Things like Tough Mudder, and obviously Spartan Race. Those are the two that come to mind, to be very honest with you.

But Joe is a really cool entrepreneur and he’s gonna share some breakthrough business lessons in this episode. He’s a seasoned entrepreneur. He’s been around for a while. He is the CEO and co-founder of the Death Race, and Spartan Race.

In this episode, he’s actually joining us live from the mountaintop. Seriously, he’s actually on a mountain as we’re doing this interview. It’s pretty crazy. Talk about congruency, right? Really being congruent to his message. It’s pretty awesome.

I’m not gonna give a full-on bio of what Joe has accomplished over the years. You can discover that on Wikipedia, but we’ll hear from the horse’s mouth himself, if you will.

He’s gonna share some of his lessons learned over the years of business, some of the epic failures and lessons that he’s learned from those failures, the ways he has overcome adversity, and what he feels is the real driving force behind any business.

If you’re missing this, then obviously you’re gonna have a tough time building your business, and if you’re someone who’s big into the fitness space and you enjoy adventure races, then Joe is kind of like a pseudo-celebrity, because this is the guy who’s really brought adventure races to the forefront.

Really cool guy, I think you’ll really enjoy this episode. With that said, let’s welcome Joe De Sena to the show.

Yuri:   Mr. Joe De Sena, how’s it going, my friend? Welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast.

Joe:   Thank for having me. This is incredible that somebody wants to talk to me.

 Yuri:   Yeah. Well, for everyone listening, this is a very unique interview, because Joe, can you tell our listeners what you’re currently doing?

 Joe:   Yeah. We just moved to Vancouver a couple days ago, so turns out right next to where we’re living is this … If you’re from out here, you’d know it. It’s the Grouse Grind.

Stairs, fireworks, entrepreneurial beginnings

It’s a two-mile hike up this mountain, and the awesome thing is it’s all stairs, so it’s stone and wooden stairs, which I love stairs so much—you gotta ask me about this backstory on stairs—but anyway, I just got to the top, as you called.

So we’ll be talking and I’m gonna work my way down, or I might sit in the sun while I talk to you, my wife just said. We might sit in the sun.

 Yuri:    Nice. What’s the vertical elevation there that you guys are working at?

 Joe:    I have no idea. I’m not a detail-oriented guy, but there’s a sign that says, “Grizzlies this way.”

Yuri:   So you walked the opposite way. That’s wicked.

 Joe:   I’m walking the opposite way from the grizzlies.

 Yuri:   I’m a huge fan of stairs too.

 Joe:    Yeah, I love stairs.

 Yuri:   Stairs are awesome, because it’s very rare that we get to work vertically against gravity like that, so it’s such a great workout. Talk to us about the backstory you wanted to share with regards to stairs.

 Joe:   When I was first starting all this stuff, I was doing stairs in New York City, and … I guess we’re just gonna walk. I’m following my wife.

I was doing stairs in New York City, and I loved them. I mean, it was just so efficient, right? You go up and down the stairs, you get your workout and go to work. We moved to Vermont. We lived on a farm for … God, 12-14 years. It was really annoying, because we had a mountain in the back but there were no stairs, and I missed the stairs.

I don’t know if you know, we used to put on this thing called a Death Race, which I think I’m gonna bring back next year. And I was thinking one day, I said to my wife, “You know, it would be awesome if we had a staircase in the back on the mountain.”

So I got like 1200 giant stones delivered at the base of the mountain, and at the beginning of the race, in order to even start the race, the 300+ competitors had to move the stones up the mountain and build a stone staircase.

So we now have, for anybody to use from around the world, they come and … it’s kind of like the eighth wonder of the world. We have a stone staircase.

Yuri:   That’s awesome.

 Joe:   We have a stone staircase going to the top of the mountain. Some of the stones are the size of Volkswagens, it’s unbelievable. And they laid pipes down, and I was visualizing, if I was a Pharaoh, back in the times of Egypt … This is how they built the pyramids, because with 300+ people—obviously they had protein shakes, unlike the Egyptians—but they pulled with ropes, heave-ho, and in 12+ hours built a one-mile-long staircase that climbs a thousand feet.

 Yuri:   That’s awesome. Yeah, and maybe you can just add that to the Death Race, as part of the race is to move Volkswagen-sized stones up a mountain.

 Joe:  Oh, we do all kinds of crazy stuff in the Death Race.

 Yuri:   Hence the name.

 Joe:   Yeah, it’s awesome.

 Yuri:  That’s wicked. So you had kind of a small business in fireworks, selling T-shirts at a young age. You had a pool-cleaning business as a teenager.

Have you always been an entrepreneur? Has this been in your blood from day one?

 Joe:  Yeah. Yeah, my whole life I’ve … Well, I think about it often because we have four children. I think, “How could I get them to have that same instinct and that smell for money and hard work, and just relentlessness?”

Somehow I got it, but I think it’s the neighborhood I grew up in. I grew up in a neighborhood where everybody—whether they were making raviolis to sell, or cement, or stealing things and going to jail—they were just relentless people, men and women.

The coffee started brewing at 4:30 in the morning, the trucks got started, you smelled diesel in the air, guys were plotting robberies. Stuff was happening, early morning.

Yuri:  Nice. So your father was a business owner as well, correct?

Joe:  My father was a business owner, and he had all kinds of businesses. He had a taxi business at a young age. He had a trucking company. He had a disco. He had a greenhouse. He had real estate businesses, did condo conversions.

I was very, very fortunate to be around such a strong work ethic, but also somebody that sat down every night at the dinner table … and I took it for granted, but friends of mine later said, “Gee, you were so lucky because your dad would sit every night and just talk at the dinner table about business, and we didn’t have that.”

And so, that’s why, to your earlier question—I’d say 8-9 years old, I was selling fireworks, and I remember sneaking down to the basement, getting the phone number of the local supplier, which was illegal. Somehow negotiating at sub-10 years old, negotiating in the dark (because my parents would have killed me), buying them, marking them up, running around on my bicycle selling them, stashing the money.

Yeah, and I think back … I’m visualizing my kids as you describe it, and they just don’t have that, as hard as I try.

“They’re kind,” my wife said. They’re kind, though. They’re very nice.

Yuri:  That’s good.

Joe:   And they’re happy. I’m happy. And then, at thirteen I started a pool-cleaning business, which evolved into a construction business. Then I sold it and I went to Wall Street and I built a business on Wall Street and I sold it.

And I went to Vermont, bought a farm and a bunch of different little cool country businesses, and like I said, spent 12-14 years there.

Then we picked up and we went to Singapore for a year (three years ago), and then we went to Tokyo last year, and now we’re in Vancouver, on top of a mountain.

Yuri:   That’s awesome. Back in good old Canada. I’m from Toronto, so I’ve got an affinity towards Canada as a whole, but I love all people.

Joe:  Canadians are the best. This place is unbelievable.

Yuri:  We are. We’re pretty awesome.

 Joe:   Yeah.

Yuri:  Yeah. So I wanna talk about, the origin of Spartan and everything in just a second, but let’s go back to the environments, the kids, all that kind of stuff.

What advice do you give to someone nowadays … let’s say they’re a millennial, or maybe even someone who’s a bit older, or younger. What advice do you give them as they’re starting their business?

Everybody’s got a plan till they get punched in the face

Joe:  Well, a couple of things. When you’re starting a business … and I’m not gonna give a very clear answer here, so you’ll have to do your best with this one, but when you’re starting your business, you could easily talk yourself out of it. Because it’s very easy to lay out on paper a very detailed plan, and then discover there’s lots of things that are gonna go wrong and so it doesn’t work.

I subscribe to “fire, ready, aim” rather than “aim, ready, fire.” Because if you aim too much, as I said, you could talk yourself out of it. Just get going.

The other thing I believe is, yes, you should look at an industry that’s growing, and yes, you should lay out a business plan, but the reality is, almost everything’s gonna change.

Mike Tyson said, “You’ve got a great plan until you get punched in the face.”

Yuri:  That’s the best quote.

 Joe:   Everybody’s got a plan till they get punched in the face. And that’s gonna happen, and when you’re running a business, you may get punched in the face 500 times. And just when you’ve finally recovered and you no longer have a black eye, you get punched in the face again.

So yes, business plan, but don’t overanalyze it. And then, just really think through this thing you’re about to embark on. Make sure you’re passionate about it, and that it aligns with what you would do for free, because if you wouldn’t do it for free and you don’t love it and it’s not gonna get you out of bed in the morning—you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

Most of the businesses I started, the first 10 years, you don’t make much money. You kill yourself. Extreme success requires extreme sacrifice, so everything around you is gonna suffer.

In life, you don’t get everything you want. It just doesn’t work that way, so if you’re gonna be great at something, and you’re gonna put everything into it, everything else has gotta give. Otherwise you’re better off with a 9:00 to 5:00 job.

So make sure you love it. Make sure you’re passionate about it, and if you are, then working for free for 10 years, no big deal—because you love it so much you just do it.

Now for me, if we go back to the construction business or even Wall Street, you’d say, “Well Joe, did you really love that?” It wasn’t those things I was doing. I just love business.

I just love work. I just love waking up early, so at that time, those businesses filled that void. They answered that question.

For me now, yeah, I love to work. I love doing stuff, but I wanna do something purposeful. Spartan answers that question for me.

You gotta see this view. I’m looking at Vancouver here, the city, off the top of this mountain. Unbelievable.

Yuri:  That’s awesome. Well, talk about congruency. Talking about doing something you love, which is pretty much what you’re doing as we’re speaking here, so it’s so on-point. That’s awesome.

Joe:   My wife and I have to take a picture while I talk to you, because I was informed that we don’t have enough pictures together. You keep asking questions, I just gotta take a picture.

 Yuri:  You gotta send it over, because I will include it in the show notes on the blog with this interview. We’ll be like, “This is exactly where the Joe De Sena was.”

Joe:  I’ll send that in the show notes, no problem.

The Spartan origin story, lessons learned

Yuri:   Yeah, that’s awesome. Alright, so Spartan Race. Talk to us about the genesis of Spartan Race, because it kinda came out of your own experience, which is pretty cool.

Tell the listeners how it all started, why you decided to do it, and where things are at right now with Spartan.

Joe:  Yeah, so basically … Oh, it says, black bears, deer, cougars, and coyotes, you might run into here. Good.

So, Spartan Race was started because I raced myself. I did a lot of this stuff, and because I’m a business person, as I was racing I just thought, “Is there a better way?” Could I come up with an event that people would love and it would transform their lives?

My mother was into yoga, meditation, health food at a young age, and everybody she got into that lifestyle, into their head, she transformed their life.

So as a hobby, I was doing this for a long time. I was losing a lot of money, as I had my other businesses paying the other bills. And then in 2010, I got serious. And I guess I got serious because we had that financial crisis, so I lost a bunch of money like everybody else.

So I was a little more motivated than I might have been otherwise. But in addition to that, I just got to a point of frustration where I had lost money putting on these events for ten years as a hobby. I wasn’t paying enough attention to them, and I was ready to really focus on it.

What amped it up, though, which your listeners either running businesses or starting to run a business could appreciate, was—in 2010, I started to spend a lot of money on it, and I became so under pressure.

My back was so far against the wall, I had no choice but to try to succeed.

When I think about why certain businesses succeed, why others don’t, obviously it’s the hard work, the business plan, the industry, all the things, but really, the biggest correlating factor I’ve found is, how committed is that person?

When you’re all in and you’ve mortgaged the house and sold your kids, you’re on the hook. You gotta make it work, and so I had to make it work. Anyway, 2010—I go for it, and get really lucky with the name Spartan And I launched this thing and 700 people show up, or 1000 people show up to that first race. Then 1500 show up to the second.

And at that point, I did everything wrong.

When you’re starting a business, a brand, I now understand that you’re supposed to build rings around your area of influence. In other words, if my first race was in Vermont, maybe my next race would be Massachusetts, and then from Massachusetts, I’d work my way to New York.

What I did by mistake, not having this knowledge, just being an idiot … and to my point earlier, not having a very detailed plan … I launched Vermont, New York. I went to Montreal. I went to the UK. I went to Slovakia, and I didn’t get a chance to leverage any of that influence I had just spent millions of dollars gaining in the few markets I originally launched in.

So I became even further underwater. I spent more and more and more money, and I was just trying to stay afloat.

Then, like I said, I became so pressured that I went for it. I went for it in a big way.

I started taking ads out on television. I took any billboard that was available in any of our markets. I took billboards, I went crazy on digital media.

But with all that, when I look back today, seven years later, why we were successful and so many other obstacle events went out of business … I think it was, I stayed true to the core. I didn’t change with the wind.

It was very focused on health, wellness, athleticism. I wasn’t gonna electrocute people for silliness or make a bunch of noise digitally. I was gonna hold people accountable. It was really important for me that it really transform lives. I didn’t need to be in another business, right? I had just done 30 years of business, if that makes sense.

Yuri:   Yeah. You could have kicked up your feet, chilled out at a beach, but that’s great.

Joe:   That was it.

Yuri:   People might be asking, “Okay, TV ads, billboard ads. That’s awesome, but I can’t do that.” Were you bootstrapping this business from day one with your own capital, or were you taking on investment from day one?

Joe:  I was bootstrapping with my own capital, and it was a disaster. I started to … Hold on one second, I just wanna throw my sweatshirt on, because it’s getting cold up on the mountain. I’m gonna start working my way down, hold on.

Yuri:   Sure.

Joe:    I bootstrapped it with my own capital, because at that point … again, to my point earlier, I’m actually telling the audience that what I said early must be a bad idea … But because I didn’t have a very detailed plan, I didn’t realize how much money this was going to require. And so before you know it, a year into it, I had spent 50 times what I originally planned on investing, and I was underwater.

I was very fortunate—and this is a really important point for your audience—I was very fortunate in that I had a very strong professional network. Not the kind of network you build on LinkedIn or Facebook, but a network of people that over 10, 15, 20 years, I gave stuff to. I helped out. I was always there for them. I took care of problems, and I didn’t ask for anything in return.

So when I found myself against the wall in 2011, I needed money, I was able to call some friends, and within 24 hours, without a set of documents, without evaluation, without anything, they sent me millions of dollars.

So one thing, when people say, “Give me reasons for success vs. failure,” you’ve gotta focus on the network. You’ve gotta put two dollars in for every dollar you take out.

You gotta take a really long-term view on life and say, “Do I really need to ask for anything here?” I can’t even tell you how many customers, hundreds of customers I did work for, I didn’t ask for anything in return. It comes back tenfold.

It might come back ten years from now, but it always comes back.

Yuri:  Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can never underestimate the power of human relationships and that goodwill you create over years.

That’s such a great piece of advice. Thank you for sharing that.

Looking at how you’ve built Spartan in a relatively short amount of time, knowing what you know now, if you were to start things all over again, what would you do differently if you had to start all over?

 Joe:   Well, if I had to start all over again, I would have invested. I didn’t know at that point that it was gonna be 35 countries, 200 events … I just didn’t see it. Other people around me saw it, but I didn’t see it.

Again, it goes back to the point I made earlier of not having a very detailed plan because I didn’t wanna talk myself out of it. I’ll tell you this. If I did have a very detailed plan, and in that plan it showed the amount I was gonna spend … I wouldn’t have started.

I wouldn’t have done it. And I don’t think many people would have.

By not having the plan though, in those early days I didn’t invest in a CRM and technology and all the things that today’s businesses require, and so I’m playing catch-up now.

I would say that’s the biggest downfall. Had I handled it better in the early days, had I made that investment.

Joe’s “why

Yuri:   Sure, sure. That’s a good insight.

So when you started back in the idea for Spartan Race—you had the idea, did you have a clear vision for what it would lead to?

You said you had no idea that it would grow to where it is today. Did you have a vision? I’m sure you did, but was that vision in line with where things are at now, or did that constantly evolve over time?

Joe:   Constantly evolved. Same with all my businesses. They constantly evolve, and you just tweak them.

I think the environment changes so rapidly. In the 1800s, that didn’t happen as much, but today stuff changes daily. Weekly.

As you ask the question, I reflect back. I think even if I did have a vision, I would have had to change it 12 times. But there are some core attributes that have not changed, which is, “I wanna get 100 million people healthy.”

Now that number used to be a million, but now that we’ve already done five million, I wanna get 100 million people healthy.

Yuri:  And do you know your “why”? Why do you do what you do? Why do Spartan Races?

You mentioned you want to help 100 million people. At the foundation of all that, what’s the real “why” for the existence of this business?

Joe:  That’s it. I say to myself, life is super short.

I’m talented at making money and figuring out how to work hard. I’m pretty much always happy, even when everything’s going wrong and my wife wants to kill me. I have this knack for staying happy, even though I might not look it.

I don’t have a happy resting face, according to my wife, but I’m happy internally.

That would be unbelievable—to be able to have that mark on so many people. So when I get these emails that say, “Oh my god, you changed my life. I stopped doing drugs. I lost a bunch of weight. I’m back with my wife. I’m back with my husband,”

That’s cool! I get to do that.

Yuri:  Yeah, that’s awesome. The question I was about to ask you a few moments ago was, outside of the monetary side, in terms of needing to have that money or having a plan from the get-go, what would you say is the biggest challenge that you’ve faced growing Spartan so far, and what lessons have you learned in the overcoming of it?

Joe:   Biggest challenge was money. Running out of funds. But then on the flip side, it was a positive because it forces you to be extremely efficient. I could have been sloppy. If we had 50 million dollars we raised in the early days … I would have been extremely sloppy.

And so we were efficient. I could have invested more, as I said.

I guess I wish I would have moved even faster. We moved fast. People think, “Oh my god, you guys came out of nowhere. You’re in 35 countries.” But I would have even moved faster.

As I said, I would have had the technology … And I should have known on the technology part, because I ran a trading desk. So we had Bloomberg terminals and all kinds of sophistication where we could watch the markets on a tick-by-tick basis.

I should have had that from day one on this business. I should have been able to watch everything—every metric, every KPI from day one, and we didn’t.

Yuri:  That’s good. That’s really valuable stuff. So you’ve grown at a such great pace. Obviously marketing is involved in that, whether it’s word of mouth referral or getting the message out through technology or other means.

For you guys, what’s been one really effective marketing strategy that perhaps our listeners can employ in their business?

Joe:  I guess the best marketing strategy is just being true to what you stand for and making sure that consumers know that.

I have an open door. I have an open door to our entire consumer base, so I think consumers see it. I think they appreciate it, they recognize it, and it’s easy to become too corporate.

My door’s always been open. There are times I’ve gotten 2700 emails in a row and I’ve gotta answer them all myself, but I think that’s powerful.

I think it’s very authentic for the consumer.

Yuri:   That’s awesome.

And as the role of the head of the company, the CEO, the visionary, what does your day-to-day look like? What do you think a good visionary or a good CEO should be doing in the business, or for the business?

Joe:   Well, if you spoke to a lot of the people around me, they’d say, “Joe is way too tactical.” And I would say … I don’t know.

I’m heavily involved in the business. I don’t follow exact chains of command. Again, people would complain about that, but I just read an article—and I feel somewhat vindicated—from Elon Musk, where he talks about like … Kinda throw out the book on the corporate structure and the chain of command, and just make sure you get in touch with whoever you need to get in touch with to make the company better.

Everybody should be rowing in the same direction. That’s easier said than done, but as CEO, I try to just be involved everywhere and see exactly what’s going on, because you can quickly lose sight and lose your way.

It’s overwhelming. It’s 24/7, but I’m doing it from the top of a mountain, so … right?

Yuri:   That’s awesome. Beautiful.

Joe:   Yeah.

 Yuri:  And because you’re an entrepreneur at heart and you’ve been surrounded by so many … From your experience or from the people you’ve known, the other businesses that you’ve seen and respected, what do you think is the number one skill entrepreneurs must have for lasting success?

The day-to-day, hiring

Joe:   I think you’ve gotta be able to prioritize, because every day you’re gonna be dealing with fires, and it’s the fires that are about to burn the house down that are the ones you have to attend to.

I also learned, I read an article talking about Eisenhower, and he had this ability to focus not necessarily on the urgent things, but the important things.

I think we all tend to confuse urgent by being important, and that’s not necessarily the case. I think you gotta be able to prioritize because there’s only so many hours in the day, and you gotta be ticking off the things that really matter and are gonna 10x the business.

Yuri:   Sure. How do you help someone differentiate between the urgent and the important?

Let’s say they discover that there’s things that they’re doing that are urgent but not really important? How do you get them to start moving towards the important?

Is that bringing people around them, or using different technologies? What does that look like?

Joe:   I’m working on that. I have a knack for at least believing that I’m tackling the stuff that really should be tackled and prioritized, but it’s hard to share that with your company when a company gets bigger, and make that just part of everyday business.

When you figure that one out, let me know, because I’m working on that right now.

Yuri:   I’ll do my best, yeah. How big is Spartan Race employee-wise, or people that work within the company?

Joe:   I think we’re about 250 people now around the globe.

 Yuri:   Awesome. What advice or what tips can you give someone looking to build a team … maybe not to 250, but what are some kind of key things that you’re looking to check off as you’re building a team and creating culture within your organization?

 Joe:  You know, in the early days when we were launching, we hired anybody with a heartbeat.

They had to be able to work for low wages because we didn’t have the money. They had to be willing to work long hours, which sounds like Shackleton’s advertisement but it was true.

When I look back, in all the businesses but especially this one, where we hired people—all we could afford was $2000 a month. Didn’t matter. Two grand a month, everybody got the same.

You don’t get a big pool of people raising their hand and saying they wanna work for two grand a month, 20-hour days, seven days a week.

But it was people that were really passionate and believed in the mission. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have domain expertise in an area. If they were passionate and relentless and worked hard, you could teach the other stuff.

You get somebody that’s really smart, but they don’t have that passion and they’re not resilient and aggressive and gritty … Useless. So I would say, always go for the passionate people that just wanna get the job done.

Yuri:   Great advice. That’s awesome. So you’re kind of descending a mountain right now. Out of curiosity, what does an average day look like in the life of Joe De Sena?

Joe:  Well, it’s a lot of traveling. I just got to Vancouver, so I don’t know exactly, but it’s dropping …

So it actually starts out at like 4:00, 4:00 and change now, with the west coast time difference. So getting up at like 4:10. I got phone calls to start because it’s 7:00 am on the east coast, and then I gotta get my workout in. I gotta do the kids’ workout with them for an hour. I gotta drop the kids off for school, and I like to work out with my wife for an hour.

So, looks like I might be getting three hours of working out in. That should be nice when I’m not on the road, but 50% of the time I’m on the road and so it’s just planes, trains, automobiles and hotel workouts.

Yuri:   Yup. So morning time is still kinda the workout time. What does the rest of the day look like for you?

Joe:   Well, it’s non-stop email. 600 emails a day I’m dealing with. It’s phone calls. I was doing a conference call on the way up the mountain. I did a call at the top, then you called, got me on the way down.

Yuri:   Well, you’re being very efficient with it.

Joe:   Yeah. Probably annoying for the people climbing as well, around me.

The rapid-five questions

Yuri:   That’s funny. Awesome. Well Joe, this has been a lot of fun. So, you ready for the rapid five?

 Joe:   Let’s do it.

Yuri:   This is five rapid-fire questions. You have no idea what these are, I’m just gonna throw them at you. Whatever comes top of mind is the right answer, pretty much. So here we go.

Number one—what is your biggest weakness?

Joe:   My biggest weakness is my impatience.

Yuri:    Nice. Number two—what is your biggest strength?

Joe:    My biggest strength is my ability to withstand pain.

Yuri:   Yeah, no kidding. Hence the Spartan Race and the Death Race. Number three—one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

 Joe:   Prioritization.

Yuri:  Nice. I was gonna ask you, “What do you do first thing in the morning?” But you’ve already answered that, so let me ask you a different question. What has having kids taught you about business?

Joe:    It’s always gonna be tough. It’s never gonna get easy, ever.

Yuri:   That’s a good one. And finally, complete this sentence: “I know I’m being successful when …”

Joe:     I know I’m being successful when revenue’s coming in the door. All that matters is that we’ve got revenue coming in on a daily basis.

Yuri:   Sure, sure. I mean, otherwise your business can’t thrive, can’t exist.

Joe:     Yup.

Yuri:  That’s awesome. Well Joe, this has been a lot of fun.

I wanna thank you for taking the time to join me from the top of a mountain, literally, and for all the amazing work that you’ve done with Spartan, and what you continue to do to really help millions of people improve their health and get in great shape.

So I just wanted to share and express my gratitude for all the great work that you do, and for being here with us.

Joe:    Thanks for having me.

Yuri:   For sure. And finally, what is the best place for people to stay up to date with Spartan Race and maybe follow you online?

Joe:   Spartan.com is everything Spartan. You can go check out our podcast, Spartan Up. I think it’s spartanuppodcast.com. Something like that. And then, what else …

They can shoot me an email. [email protected]. Because I need more email.

And then, the other one is, I have a race coming up in Iceland on December 16th. It’s gonna be like the endurance world championships, and there’s $750 entries.

Let’s give away a half of dozen to your audience to motivate people. You pick them and then just tell me who you picked.

Yuri:   That would be awesome. 

Joe:   December 16th, Iceland. Yeah, tickets are super cheap to Iceland. They’ll save a ton of money because we’ll give them free entry and make it happen.

Yuri:   Beautiful. Joe, that’s awesome. We’ll make sure to promote the heck out of that. And again, we’ll do half a dozen—so we’ll do six lucky people.

If you want in, literally just email me or message me on Facebook and we’ll make this happen, because that would be an experience not to miss.

So there you have it, guys. The one and only Joe De Sena. Thank you so much, Joe. Climb safely down the mountain. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Joe:     Thanks so much. See you later.

Yuri:    Yup.

——————————————————————

So there you have it, guys. Joe Desena from Spartan Race. The man who brought Spartan Race to the world, for the most part.

Hope you enjoyed this interview. It was a lot of fun chatting with him as he is scaling down the mountain out in Vancouver, British Columbia. So that’s the deal. That is what is going on.

So, couple housekeeping notes here. First and foremost, I want to give you a little challenge, and that is this. I think Joe’s a great example of being congruent with his message and what he does, and I wanna challenge you to ask yourself the same question. “Am I congruent? Do I walk the talk? Do I live what I preach?”

I’m sure you do, but if there are areas of inconsistency, that’s gonna show up. People are gonna pick up on that, so don’t lie. Don’t be false. Just be you. Be authentic, okay?

——————————————————————

Follow Joe De Sena At:

https://www.spartan.com

https://www.spartan.com/en/media/podcast/episodes

Facebook

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Pintrest

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Free Healthpreneur Health Profit Secrets Book

Transcription

Today, we’ve got Megan Buer, who is going to share with us how she juggles parenting while building her online business.

She has three kids and works from home, and she’s gonna be sharing some amazing nuggets of wisdom. You definitely want to be taking notes in this episode.

I’ve got three boys myself, as you probably know. I work from home, and some of the things that she mentions that she’s doing with her business, working from home, will really save you if you’ve got kids and are working from home as well.

So, in case you don’t know who Megan Buer is, let me quickly tell you. She is the founder of a company called Harmony Restored, which is focused on helping individuals heal from the stress that is at the root of their physical and emotional pain.

She is a Certified Emotion Code Practitioner, author of two books on healing, a Reiki healer, and as I’ve mentioned, a mom to three. She suffered for years with anxiety, panic disorder, chronic stress, food intolerances, adrenal fatigue, and an autoimmune disease—and she went on a journey to health.

She spent over ten years researching, experimenting, and finally figuring it out using very unique tools that she needed to heal herself—that go above and beyond just eating different foods.

And that’s why she’s so interesting, and why we really connected the first time we spoke. She really focuses on the emotional side of healing, which is something that we all have to address at one point or another.

If you want to learn more about Megan’s work, you can find her at harmony-restored.com, and obviously we’ll link up to all of her different profiles at the end of the show notes here.

So, without any further ado, let’s bring Megan onto the show, and let’s have some fun.

Yuri:  Megan, what is up? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

Megan:   Thanks, so happy to be here.

Yuri:  Yes, I am excited, because we connected … I don’t even know how, but we did.

We first spoke a couple months ago, and I was really blown away by the conversation we had because we talked a lot about the emotional side of eating and we really connected. We’re really on the same page with that stuff.

So I was like, “I gotta have you on the show and talk about your business,” and just because I think you’re a cool person. So, I’m happy to have you here.

Megan:  Thank you, thanks so much.

Yuri:  Yeah, so what is new and exciting in the world of Megan Buer and Harmony Restored?

Megan:  Good things are happening, yeah. School finally started back up and it’s the fall, I’m kind of getting back into routine. And you know, I work from home. My husband is here with me working the business, and we’ve got three kids, so it kind of makes for an interesting business life, to say the least.

But we’re getting kind of back into our routine and really just trying to find the best ways to serve my tribe more and help them more, and go beyond just educating, but really providing some great services to them. And so, we’re playing around with a lot of different ideas right now and kind of gearing up for some long term goals.

Working from home, kids, boundaries

Yuri:  Cool. So, I want to come back then, just a second, because I think that’s an important thing to talk about. I want to go back to the kid situation, because I’ve got three kids as well, and you work from home, so do I.

How do you build a business? How do you work at an online business where you can work from anywhere with that type of setup? Like, what does your setup look like, and how have you guys made it work for you?

Megan:  Well, it looks like our bedroom is our office.

Yuri:   Yeah.

Megan:   But, you know, I think that’s the great thing about having an online business that you can do anywhere—is that I have flexibility. Like, I have the ability to work from anywhere and work any time, but I also have the ability to close my computer and go play with my kids for a couple hours and be totally present with them. And come back, rejuvenated, to my business and not be stuck in a stuffy office somewhere, not being able to go outside, or move, or go for my walks, or do my yoga … you know?

And so, it’s this incredible flexibility that our whole family just thrives on. It’s so fun, you know, to be able to work from the lake because we can turn on our wifi and let the kids play.

And we do a lot of trading off. There is a lot of juggling—it’s crazy. I’m not gonna say it’s not.

But it is so liberating to be able to set my own schedule. To have my husband set his own schedule, and to just find that balance.

You know, we have boundaries. I think that’s the only way we make it work, is we have really strict boundaries around—this is when my husband is able to work, and this is when I am able to work.

This is when we come together and have our meeting, and at 3:00 when the kids get home—everything is closed and we’re done, and we are present with them.

And maybe we’ll check an e-mail or two before bed, but we really, we turn off and we’re done, and we have that flexibility, and we just hustle during the day and then we’re done at 3:00.

Yuri:  That’s good. That’s kind of the same as me—when the kids are home, it’s kind of shut down. Because even if they were home and I was trying to work, it’s not gonna happen anyway, so-

Megan:  Oh, no. No.

Yuri:   So Why do that to them?

Megan:  No, it’s stressful trying to work with them.

Creating boundaries and spending quality time with your kids

Yuri:    So you talked about boundaries, and I firmly believe in that as well. What advice would you give to parents or new parents who are working from home, building their business, and they have one, two, three, seven kids? What advice would you give to them if you were sitting down with them at Starbucks and having a conversation about this?

Megan:   I mean, going back to the boundaries—you can’t work when the kids are around.

Because I tried—I did that for a while at first. It was like, “Alright, the kids are home and I’m gonna try to get something done.” I’m gonna try to do this client work or I’m gonna update Facebook, or whatever.

And they would start getting antsy, and I couldn’t focus very well, and everybody was agitated, it was really hard. I started feeling really frustrated because it was like—we’re all in this one house and our business is here and our kids are here and laundry is here and everything is here—we need some space.

And for us, we don’t really feel like we need to go away and do work. We can come up to our office space and close the door. But we have to have those boundaries, and being present with the kids.

So, not checking your phone every time it dings, and really having a very set schedule. And if you need to hire a babysitter to get stuff done, you’ve gotta do it—because those kids are gonna start feeling that agitation from you if you are constantly trying to get something done but also trying to be with them and also switching the laundry and also trying to figure out dinner …

Just kind of compartmentalizing things and having really set—this is where I work, this is the time that I work, and this is when I’m with the kids. I’m gonna be present with them and I’m going to go outside and go to the playground.

And being present in work and then in your home life, not trying to do everything all at once, because it can get so crazy.

Yuri:   Just a little, just a little.

Megan:   Yeah.

Yuri:   I have a friend who kind of reframed how she looked at hiring.

She said, okay, well I’ve got kids now, my business is going to be very different, I’ve got to start delegating and outsourcing a bunch of stuff, and then what she realized was like, “Well, what if I just had someone look after my kids, so I could actually do my work?”

And so, you mentioned having a babysitter, it’s not like you’re delegating parenting, but you’re giving yourself a couple of hours of freedom during the day or at night, whenever you work, to just focus on what you have to do, and then you can be present with your kids.

But I think … I tell people, if you want to be more productive, have kids. You cannot waste time like you could when you’re single, right? Or when you’re kid-less.

Megan:   Yeah.

Yuri:   It’s a really good, kind of, constraining setup in your life. So, lots of cool lessons from parents, for sure.

Megan:   Yeah. And outsource if you can, you know, I mean get help wherever you can. And if that’s somebody offering, “Hey, do you want to send your kids over for a play date?” Say yes. You know?

I mean, this summer we only had a babysitter one day a week, and it was from 9:00 to 3:00, and so it was that one day—we hustled and then we just kind of switched back and forth the rest of the week, and it worked.

Just find what works for you, and you’re gonna have to play around with it some.

Everybody’s kids are different, everybody’s temperaments are different. And if you can get them involved in what’s happening, they feel like they’re a part of it. My kids love hearing what I’m doing, and they love seeing my husband set up the lighting for shooting a video, they help him do that, and my husband, Rhett, he does all the editing and all the back end stuff. And so, he teaches them along, while he’s doing it. This is how you edit a video, and this is how-

Yuri:   That’s very clever. You’re building employees.

Megan:   Yeah! We’re building little helpers. [laughing]

But, they want to be involved, they think it’s really cool, and we’re teaching them skills along the way. And so that’s another tip—make it a family business, how can they be involved?

It’s funny, because we’ll go on these nature walks and my daughter will be like, “Can I have your phone? Because I want to take pictures for your website.” And I’m like, okay! [laughing]

Yuri:   That’s awesome.

Megan:  So, just get them excited about it too, and that’s really helpful.

Yuri:   That’s great. It’s definitely a good tip.

So, you talked about, when it comes to your business, you want to do things that are more than just providing information to your audience. What do you mean? What does that look like?

The transition from physical to online business

Megan:  Well, I started in a private practice and I’ve been in private practice for about five years now, and about two years ago I went online, because I felt that—which I’m sure a lot of people feel in their private practice—that I can only do so much.

I can only talk to so many people in one day, I’ve got this message, and I need to share it with more people than I can reach on a one-on-one basis. And so, we had been doing a lot of educational things online to get the word out, you know, put some products out, e-books, and master classes and things like that.

But now, just kind of thinking, “How can I take the personal, one-on-one work that I do, to the masses?” Not just educating the masses about emotional wellness, anxiety, mindset and all that stuff, but how can I actually provide some rock solid tools?

And so, we’re looking to do some 30-day experience type of things, where we really get deep with people, even in the online space. Some really deep, private work that we can do that will hopefully change some lives. You know?

Because I see it happen all the time in my client work, but I want to be able to make that kind of effect on a larger scale. So, we’re playing around with a lot of fun stuff, and it’s all good.

Yuri:   That’s good. It’s important to always be thinking ahead of the curve, because as you know, it’s a very competitive space and you have to be able to stand out. And whether that’s like, throwing the f-bomb around in everything you say—which I don’t think is the best way to do it—or coming up with innovative solutions to help your customers, which is what you guys are doing. I think that’s very smart.

Megan:  Yeah.

Yuri:  So, with that said, what has worked well for you from a business building/marketing standpoints, up until this point? Specifically with the online business?

How to excel at networking

Megan:    The things that have worked best for me are collaboration—so, networking and finding connections with people.

For me, personally with my business, I see clients one-on-one, I do energy work with them. And so the way my business really took off is—I reached out to local alternative doctors and I said “Hey, this is what I’m doing. Can I do some free sessions for you so you can experience it, and then if you like it, maybe you can refer your patients to me?”

Yuri:   That’s great.

Megan:  I did that, and my business literally exploded overnight.

And I was booking six months out, it was just crazy.

So, things like that, if you’re starting within your own community. And then, branching out into the online space, same thing—it’s networking, it’s reaching out to people that have a similar message as you and saying, “Hey, let’s chat. I see that you’re doing this, I’m kind of doing the same thing, how can we help each other? What can I do for you? Is there anything that I can bring to your business that would be helpful for your tribe?”

And I think just reaching out and seeing how you can help other people. Instead of like, “Hey, how can you help me?” No, no, no.

You need to go out and think, how can you be of service to that person’s tribe or client base or e-mail list or whatever? So, a lot of collaboration, a lot of networking, and then just playing around.

Because everybody has got a different niche, and my tribe personally really likes online classes. Like, live online classes. And so, within my own list or within my own private Facebook group, I’ll just advertise—“Hey, I’m gonna teach this class on healing anxiety or healing emotional eating or how to muscle test” … And I’ll poll them.

I go to Facebook, I set up our poll—“What do you guys want to learn about?”

The power of asking your audience

Healing food intolerances. Okay, got it.

So, then I say, “Okay, we’re gonna do this $18.00 webinar master class.” It’s one night, it’s recorded, and I sit down and talk to my computer for an hour.

People join live or they watch the recording, and I get a ton—a ton, a ton of people join these classes.

And so, you have to kind of play with … Who is your market? Are these busy moms that don’t have a lot of time to read a whole book or to take a whole e-course? Are these people that just need to know what to do real quick? I teach them a quick class? They love that.

So, it’s really playing around. It’s taken me a while to really figure out what they want. But ask them what they want. Send out surveys, send out polls. What do you want to learn about? How do you want it delivered? Do you want videos? Do you want to read something?

Just start giving them what they want. Because I know, for me, especially with the business, I have an idea of what I want to do. But it’s not necessarily what people actually want to consume.

But asking them—asking how you can help them, and if that’s your tribe or somebody you’re networking with, how can you help that person?

Yuri:   So much gold there. Like, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t taken down like three big nuggets just from what Megan shared there, you’re crazy. I want to recap some of the things I just pulled out of that.

So, first you said—when you were local, you were going to other practitioners and saying, “I want to give you a free session before anything.” It’s such a smart move—it’s the try before you buy model, right?

It’s very intuitive, I think, for a lot of people to think about doing that offline. But for whatever reason, when people come online, I’ve noticed a lot of them are like, “Oh, I don’t want to give away my best stuff for free.”

It’s like—no, no, no. Give away your best stuff for free, let people experience how awesome you are, and then they’re more likely to refer you or do business with you, which was exactly what you experienced when you had this huge number of referrals from those local practitioners, which is such a good idea.

You talked about networking. Everyone that has been on this show has said, the fastest way to the end result is … Network.

Get in front of the right people. Hire a coach, hire a mentor, it’s all the same stuff. That’s such a cool thing that’s come out as well, from what you just shared.

And ask your audience.

I mean, like, man—I can’t even begin to count how many ridiculous ideas I’ve launched without even asking my audience. And not that the audience always has the answers—because I think there’s some innovation from the entrepreneur that comes into play—but it’s so smart.

I mean, just ask them what they want to know about. And then give it to them. It’s as simple as you mentioned, creating a poll on Facebook. It doesn’t have to be much more complex. So that’s great. Thank you for sharing those nuggets of wisdom.

Megan:  Of course.

Be Consistent

 Yuri:  So, let’s talk specifically online here—over the last two years, what’s been the biggest challenge that you’ve faced in your business?

Megan:  The biggest thing is staying consistent, for me. And that’s really what I’ve recommitted to lately—okay, I have to stay consistent. Because when I am, that’s when traffic explodes on my website, and when sales go up.

Yuri:   If you’re consistent with like, content production, or…?

Megan:   Yeah, with whatever you’re doing. For me, yes—content production. So the plan that I’ve committed myself to is one video a week—and usually I’ll just do a Facebook Live in my group or on my Facebook page, upload it to YouTube, transcribe it and make it a blog, send the blog out to Pinterest, send it to Instagram, re-feed it through Facebook again, and just keep doing that…  Every. Single. week.

And this is what I did—two years ago, when I decided to come online, I said, “I’m just gonna start a blog and I’m gonna commit to one blog a week for a year. So, 52 blogs, I’m gonna commit to that.”

And it was just one of these things where i was like, “I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna stay consistent, and I’ll know.” Like the universe will show up and I’ll know if this is where I need to keep putting my time and my effort.

And it grew really fast. It was like, all of a sudden, overnight, I was connecting with all these huge bloggers that I had been following for years, decades, basically, while I was on my own health journey.

And it was like, “Oh my gosh, these people are like, reading my blog. People are pinning this, they’re sharing it.” And it was just like, “Okay, yes I have to keep doing this. People need this information.”

And so, that’s where I started—I just committed to doing a blog post every week. And where I am now is, I’m committing to doing a video every week, and just staying consistent. That’s not a sexy answer, but when you’re online, it’s that consistent content that’s gonna keep things fresh for you and keep people going to your website and driving business.

Yuri:   Work the big bird. And honestly, the less sexy your business is, I think, the better off it’s gonna be.

Megan:   Yeah.

Yuri:   Because the thing is, a lot of people, they confuse entertainment for what actually matters in the business.

And by that, I mean like, we get bored of what we do much more quickly than our audience does. So, we’re like, “Yeah, I’m gonna try this new thing because I am personally bored of doing what I’ve been doing.”

But consistency is definitely a huge asset.

Megan:  And it can be hard, and that’s the challenge, you know? Life happens. And there’s weeks where it’s like, “You know what? I don’t want to do it this week. I feel tired.”

Or something’s going on. My husband is traveling and one of my kids is home sick, and life just kind of happens … And then all of a sudden, it’s three weeks later and I’m like, “Oh shoot, I haven’t done anything.”

So, it’s creating that time to stay as consistent as you can, which can be a challenge, but which can be a huge payoff if you can-

Yuri:   And I’m guilty of that as well, because … I’ve started and stopped four different podcasts. This is not going to be one of them. This is going to be forever, for as long as I can foresee.

But, I think what happens, at least in my case is, when you don’t have stuff structured into your calendar … It’s like working out. If you don’t actually have it scheduled in your calendar, it’s just too easy to say, “Eh, I don’t feel like doing it today.”

Megan:   Yeah. Exactly.

 Yuri:     You have to have that accountability to be like, “Okay, 2:00pm every Monday, this is my block of time for this.”

Do you find that to be challenging because you work at home? Because you’re your own boss, versus if someone else told you to do that?

Megan:   Yeah, exactly. And it’s creating those spaces and having those boundaries, creating that schedule for yourself. You have to have that discipline.

And I think, for me, in the business, another tip I think is—my husband and I would look at these other entrepreneurs, and it was like, “Oh, they have this overnight success.” And we’re like, “Oh, this blog post. Oh, Hay House is gonna pick this up, this blog post, and then we’re done.

We had these really great ideas, and it’s not a bad thing to hold those goals, but—the consistency. And it’s not these overnight successes that it might look like on the outside for other people. Those overnight successes happened because of probably years and years of  consistency.

So, not to get caught up in, “Okay, I’m putting this YouTube video out, it’s gonna go viral, my life is gonna be amazing in a week, and this is it and I’m done.”

Not that I ever actually thought that would happen, but you can get caught up into thinking something like that might happen—and if it does, that’s great for you. And if it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong, it doesn’t mean that your message isn’t great, and it doesn’t mean that you’re not gonna get to where you want to be and you’re not gonna make your goals.

It just means, keep going.

Keep going, just be consistent. We see that one story of, you know—my video went viral or this publishing company picked me up or whatever. But what came before that? It was years of putting a lot of sweat equity into that business.

Yuri:  Exactly. That’s a very, very good perspective. And it’s true.

I really feel that entrepreneurship is the ultimate spiritual journey, because you learn so much about yourself and you deal with so much of your own junk, that you would never have really been faced with if you were a nine-to-fiver, for the most part.

 Megan:  Absolutely.

Yuri:    And that’s why like, I love like, Louise Hay—who sadly passed away recently—you know, she started Hay House, I believe in the second half of her life. I think she was in her late 50s, early 60s, when she started Hay House.

We look at the McDonald’s thing with Ray Kroc, he was a sales guy. Door-to-door, shop-to-shop, for 30 years. Never really hit anything, and then he stumbles upon McDonald’s at, like 52 or 53, and became the wealthiest man in America in the space of like half a decade.

I find it really, really helpful to listen to stories like that and see movies, like in the case of The Founder. Because it’s such a great reminder that it’s never too late, but it also doesn’t happen overnight.

Megan:  Yeah.

Yuri:    And as you said, you have to put in the sweat equity and it doesn’t matter when you’re starting, because there’s so much possibility nowadays.

 Megan:     Yeah. So, just keep going, and stay excited, but stay grounded and don’t get disappointed when you think you’ve put out this huge passion project and it’s not being received in the way that you want.

It just means, get back to the drawing board, keep tweaking, keep going and just trust in those goals. Continue to hold the vision of that end goal that you have for yourself, and put a smile on your face and keep going.

Yuri:   Yeah, totally. I call it delusional optimism.

 Megan: Yeah, that’s a good one.

 Yuri:  You gotta have it.

 Megan:   I’m very delusional.

 Yuri:   Yeah, I think we all are. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing. Well, we are. I mean, it’s like, “Hey, you’re gonna fail 99 times out of 100, but you gotta keep on going.” “Does that sound like fun?” “Um, yeah, okay. Let’s do it.”

Megan:   Let’s do this. Let’s go.

Big mistakes and learning lessons

Yuri:   So, let me ask you this. What’s a big mistake you’ve made in your business? Maybe you don’t regret it, because everything is a lesson, but what was like, a really bad move at the time—something you’re maybe not too proud to admit?

 Megan:   Not too proud to admit … I don’t know. I’m trying to think. Not to be too optimistic, but everything really has been quite a learning experience, and I guess I think of it differently than a fail. But … I think, early on when I was starting—we touched on this earlier—but two years ago, I would just start putting things out because I felt really passionate about it, and it wasn’t necessarily what my audience wanted.

And so, I liked doing it because it was satisfying to me, but when it wasn’t well received, I was like, “Aw, that’s kind of sad.”

Yuri:   Yeah.

Megan:  And that’s where I’ve had to change some of what I talk about, to tailor to what my people really want to learn about and what they want help with. And I had a hard time … I’m kind of transitioning into talking a lot more about anxiety, and I really resisted that because I mean, I dealt with it for years. And panic disorder, and the whole thing.

So, I can definitely speak to it. But it’s like, I’m not the anxiety girl. I don’t want to just talk about anxiety, I want to talk about the happy stuff. I want to talk about mindset and healing yourself … but that’s not where they’re resonating with me.

They’re resonating with me when I touch on anxiety, and when I poll them and I ask, “What do you want to learn about?” It’s anxiety.

And so, for me, I think the biggest “fail” is putting the stuff out there that I just want to talk about, and not really listening to them, and hearing them. Hear when they’re saying, “That’s great Megan, cool. But like, how do you not have a panic attack when you’re driving?”

And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll get there. Let’s talk about mindset.”

So I think, for me at the beginning, I was definitely spending a lot of time creating content, creating products, and people wanted something a little different. And so, it was a lot of … I don’t want to say wasted time, because it’s all good content and it’s all been satisfying work to me, but financially it hasn’t come back to me in the way that I wanted. Because I think I wasn’t really speaking to them in the same way.

Yuri:   Yeah, and you’ll probably find, as you mentioned, a lot of times—they’re most concerned about their most immediate pain.

Megan:   Exactly.

Yuri:   “Let’s sit and do mindset stuff”—that’s like a nice-to-have. But like a must-have is like, “How do I not have a panic attack … today?”

Megan:  Right.

Rapid-five questions

Yuri:   And that’s a really good lesson to keep in mind, for sure. So, Megan, this has been awesome. Are ready for the rapid five?

 Megan:   I am. I’m a little nervous …

 Yuri:   I’m gonna call them the rapid five, I think. Yeah.

 Megan:   We’ll see. I hope I’m up for it.

Yuri:  So you have no idea what these questions are. I haven’t told you in advance. We’re just gonna go right into it. Whatever comes top of mind, just shout it out.

Megan:   All right.

Yuri:  Cool?

Megan:   Cool.

Yuri:    All right. Your biggest weakness?

Megan:   Ah, passion.

Yuri:   Your biggest strength?

Megan:    Passion.

Yuri:   So funny, everyone says the same thing. Both sides. But it’s true though.

Megan:   Oh yeah. Well it’s like, I get so excited about stuff—which is great. I’m like, ideas and passion, and I wake up in the middle of the night writing down a new business idea … but it’s also my downfall.

It’s like, stay the course. Stay the course. Yeah.

Yuri:  Awesome. Okay, number three. One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Megan:  One skill I’ve become good at … Getting behind the camera. Learning to do videos. I was nervous at first, and then I’ve had to just learn to roll with it, so, yeah.

Yuri:  What do you do first thing in the morning?

 Megan:   Have tea. I make tea, go outside, sit and watch the sun rise. We live on two acres, and we’ve got chickens and a garden. It’s so beautiful here, and we live right in the mountains in Virginia, and so I go outside, I drink my tea and I go for a walk and I do yoga. Every single morning.

Yuri:  Sounds terrible. I don’t know how you do it.

Megan:   Yeah, it’s horrible.

Yuri:  Okay, finally, complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when.

Megan:    When I am really enjoying myself.

Yuri:   Awesome. There you have it guys and gals, the one and only Megan Buer.

Megan, thank you so much. What is the best place for people to stay in touch with what you’re doing online or maybe get in touch with what you’re doing work wise?

Megan:  Yeah, I’m all over the place. So, my website is harmony-restored.com, I’m on Facebook—Harmony Restored— r then my personal is Megan Buer. I’m on Instagram, I’m on Pinterest, you can find me all over the place.

Yuri:    Cool, awesome. Megan, once again, thank you so much for taking the time, sharing so many amazing nuggets that, again, if you’re listening to this, rewind this and play this again in slow motion. I’ve got a whole sticky pad of notes here just based on like 10 things that Megan has talked about.

So, Megan, thank you so much. This has been awesome.

Megan:  Thank you, thanks.

 ——————————————————————

So, I don’t know about you, but that was a pretty amazing interview.

Megan dropped some serious knowledge, some serious nuggets of wisdom. As I mentioned, I took several, several lines of notes on my sticky pad here. Just some really great nuggets, loving how she talked about the importance of connecting with others to really accelerate her growth. Because when you come online, for the most part, you know no one. Right?

You’re an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and if you don’t go out of your way to connect with others, it’s going to be very tough to really crack the code of building a successful online business.

Loved how she talked about creating boundaries with her kids, and if you’ve got kids as well and you work from home—that’s something that is super, super important. And there’s just lots of other great nuggets as well.

——————————————————————

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Transcription

Hey! What’s up? Yuri here. Welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast.

I’m super pumped to be with you once again today, because I’m going to share five costly mistakes I’m happy that I made while building my online business.

I say that with a degree of pride because I’m a huge believer in failing forward fast, and when it comes to failure—I might have the gold medal on that one, in terms of how many times I have failed or I have failed to hit my goals.

It’s been a learning process. I mean, being able to continually strive forward, even in the face of adversity … Winston Churchill, one of my favorite quotes of all time, he says something to the effect of, “Success is going from failure to failure with unbending enthusiasm.” And for me that really strikes home because, I don’t know about you, but I have failed repeatedly. And I don’t really look at it as failure because every single time I learn.

I learn, “Okay, this didn’t work. These people didn’t care about this. This offer didn’t work out. Let’s try something new.”

So in this episode, I’m going to share a recent video that I shot, which deals exactly with this topic—these five costly mistakes that I’m happy I made. Hopefully they will save you time, money, and frustration.

So we’re going to jump right into it.

 

I want to share five costly mistakes that I’m actually happy that I made because I’ve learned a lot from them. If you make mistakes, that’s great—the key is to learn from them and hopefully not make them again.

The only reason that I’m able to be one of the leading online business strategists for the health and wellness industry—having worked with New York Times bestselling authors, seven and eight-figure businesses and everyone in between—is because I’ve simply taken a lot of action, I’ve made a hell of a lot of mistakes, and I’ve learned from them.

I’ve used the approach of fail forward fast, and I’ve learned a couple more things, I’m maybe one or two steps ahead of some other people—and I’m able to use that insight and wisdom to help their business. I want to share five big mistakes that hopefully you can learn from as well.

1. Guidance and positioning

All right, so here’s the first one. When I was starting my online business, I had no guidance. This was back in 2006. I had no idea what I was doing.

I was taking advice from anyone and everyone, even those who were not qualified. I had a personal training client at the time, because I was still training clients a little bit at that time … And I had developed this new workout program called Fitter U, and he said, “You should take this and get into trade shows. Get a booth. Get people exposed to it.”

I was like, “You know what, that’s a great idea.”

So I invested $35,000 to create all these products—boxes upon boxes of this workout product— and we went around Canada to four different trade shows over the course of that year to exhibit them.

Well, guess how that went. It didn’t go very well, okay?

What I realized from this experience, was a few things. First, don’t take advice from people who are not already doing what you want to do—that was a big one.

Second, trade shows suck, especially as a vendor. If you’re just going to go there and kind of meet to network and build some relationships, cool. But as a vendor, it’s a terrible positioning play. Now, let me explain that.

For three of the trade shows, we were just exhibitors. We just had our booth set up, we had some iPods set up with the workout so people could come and listen, because it was my voice on your headphones guiding through the workouts.

We gave people the opportunity to listen—but here’s the thing … When you have a booth and you’re one of many hundreds, you’re literally trying to flag people in to consume your stuff. It’s very similar to going to a restaurant or walking down the street and there’s a restaurant with the maître d’ outside on the sidewalk waving a menu in front of your face with some kind of special deal.

Now, let me ask you this: Are you jumping to get into that restaurant? Does that really entice you to go into that restaurant, or would you rather cross the street and run away?

Probably the latter, right?

That’s because the positioning is terrible. When you look desperate, nobody wants to do business with you.

It’s a weird psychological thing. We always want to do business with those who seem too busy to do business with us—because it’s a matter of social proof. We don’t want to be duped. We don’t want to make the wrong choice … So if we see somebody—or a restaurant—that is really busy, well, we’re happy to wait in line because that’s social proof that it is the place to be.

Now, by contrast—at one of the trade shows, I actually spoke on stage. We had our booth, and I also spoke on stage.

After my talk, I came offstage, and I had a line of people coming to me, asking questions. You’ve probably experienced this too if you’ve been to some type of event where a speaker comes offstage and all of a sudden everyone wants to talk with them.

Why does that happen? Again, it’s positioning.

You’re onstage—you’re literally up here, and everyone else is down there. From a positioning standpoint, if you are onstage, you are positioned as a credible authority. That’s a very different position than being behind a booth and trying to flag people over to you.

What happened at that specific trade show was that, after speaking on stage, we had a swarm of people come to the table, come to our booth. And that’s because they had seen me as this authoritative leader creating “pseudo-celebrityism,” if you will, just within the trade show, and now people were flocking to our booth.

Positioning is massively important.

So if you can leverage whatever you’re doing credibility-wise, PR-wise—whatever it can make a huge difference.

I’ve been on Dr. Oz. I’ve been on The Doctors. I’ve been on pretty much every media outlet I can think of, and the only reason I’ve done that is to position myself as a credible expert.

I leverage that in a very specific way to build pseudo-fame within my space, okay? That’s really important.

Again, I wouldn’t recommend doing trade shows, but positioning is really important, especially in a very competitive online health and wellness space.

2. Under-promise, over-deliver

Okay. Second big mistake, second costly mistake, was I did a launch. My first launch that I did online was actually a few years after I started my online business, and this makes it even more embarrassing.

I kind of knew what I was doing—or thought I knew what I was doing—at the time. We had a product called Fitter Than the Pros,and I was basically going to go out and interview other health and wellness experts in the online space who were doing really well, and ask them, “Hey, how do you stay in such great shape while building a great business?”

I thought, “Everyone will want to know this because it’s kind of ‘behind the scenes.’ These people are big influencers and maybe their followers would want to see what they’re doing behind the scenes,” so I’m like, “This is going to be amazing.”

We had 12 people interviewed and I thought this was going to be the next thing since sliced bread. Just so you know—this was before summits became a thing, okay? In this case I was essentially selling entertainment and motivation. There was no real kind of problem that I was solving.

And I made these big promises to our partners. I said, “Listen, this is going to be the biggest launch ever. We’re going to do multiple six figures. Just promote it through the lists. It’s going to do great.”

A lot of these guys and girls were pretty smart, so they may have taken me with a grain of salt, but nonetheless I was out for drinks with some friends the night before the launch began and I said, “Guys, get whatever you want—literally, it’s on me. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

They’re like, “What’s going on?”

So I told them, “Listen, we got this big thing going on. I’ve got a big launch. We’re going to make a ton of money, help a ton of people, so I just want to celebrate ahead of time, okay.”

That was mistake number one because I got stuck with a big bill that I didn’t want to pay after.

So, the next day I wake up, and I look at my stats, and we’ve got crickets. I’m thinking, “Is there something wrong with the website?” So I check the website, everything’s great.

Okay, what’s going on?

Couple days go by, couple sales come in. At the end of five days, five-day launch, we did a total of $5,000 gross. Now, I say gross because we paid 75% commission to our partners, so we left the whole thing with maybe $1,200 in revenue for us.

So that was a big waste of time, if you want to think of it that way. But worse than that was the fact that I made a lot of big promises and didn’t deliver on them.

So the lesson here is under-promise, over-deliver.

The other thing is … Do not approach joint venture partners with an untested concept. Test your stuff internally. Test it on Facebook ads. Test it in some way where you can go to your partners with confidence and say, “Listen, here are the numbers. We’ve tested this out. I’m very confident it’s going to work for you.”

That is a much better approach, and you will not look like an idiot as a result of doing that.

3. Hiring a coach

So that’s the second one. Number three is not having a coach, not hiring a coach sooner.

Again, as I mentioned—my first couple years online were a big struggle. I’m telling you, I’m a slow, stubborn learner. It took me four years to finally get some momentum going after I started my online business, and the big shift there was that I actually hired a coach and joined a mastermind.

The lesson there is that I didn’t know what I didn’t even know. I was exposed to stuff that I had never even thought of before. I was given proven strategies, proven paths to follow that would accelerate my success and prevent even more mistakes from being made.

So if you don’t have a coach, if you’re not part of a coaching group or a mastermind, I strongly suggest you look into one. If you’re interested in some of the stuff that we’re doing, you can reach out to us and we can see if you’re a good fit, but nonetheless you need to find a group that is right for you.

4. Live events

The fourth big mistake is not going to more live events.

Again, I didn’t go to live events until four years into my online business. What I tell people is like, “Listen. If you want to build your online business, spend more time offline.”

Build relationships in person. That’s how you actually develop lasting relationships, not only from a business perspective but actual friendships. I’m very grateful that a lot of my close friends now are colleagues, people in our space who are doing very, very good things in terms of their success financially as well as the impact they’ve had on this world.

And that would not have happened had I not attended these events and initially met them there.

So don’t be a hermit. Don’t sit behind your computer. Get out, meet people, and that’s the best way to really start building your online business.

5. The one-man show    

The fifth big mistake was the one-man show.

Like I said, I was a stubborn, slow learner, but I was also a rugged individualist. I thought I could figure all this stuff out on my own, so I didn’t start building my team until about five and a half years into my business.

So what I’d recommend for you is this. Make a list, okay? You’re going to take a sheet of paper, draw a line in the middle.

On one half of that paper, you’re going to write down everything you love doing. What are the things that you love doing, that energize you, that you could do all day long? For me, video is one of them.

On the other side of the page, write down everything you hate doing, and I say hate as in there’s emotional charge, like you never want to do this again. Editing would be one of them for me.

So you have this list, and it’s probably going to be a small list of stuff you love doing. There might be three to five things. But you’re going to have a very long list of things you don’t like doing.

This could be cutting the lawn, it could be editing, it could numbers, it could be whatever it is for you.

So, from that list of stuff you don’t like to do, you want to group some things together that kind of go together and use those as your initial job descriptions for someone else to do.

Once you’re at a point where you can hire somebody, even if it’s just a couple hours a week and you’re spending maybe 100 bucks or 200 bucks, whether it’s for a virtual assistant or an in-person assistant, or someone along those lines, you can start to offload the stuff you don’t love to do and focus on more of the stuff that you love to do.

And when you’re able to do that, well, guess what happens? You actually really enjoy building your business, as opposed to dreading the fact that you, “Oh my God, I got to do this and this and this.”

So, start to think about building your team slowly but surely. For me, the way I think about it is, “The bigger the dream, the bigger the team.”

I’ve forgone some profits in my business to put that money back into our company to build our team, so that I have more freedom in my life, and I’m only able to do the stuff I want to do. For me, that’s a worthwhile trade-off.

Anyway, those are the five costly mistakes that I’m happy that I made because I learned a lot from those.

Hopefully these five mistakes save you some time, frustration, and money, so you don’t repeat them in the way that I did. If you found them helpful, then that’s great.

 

That is all for today, I want to thank you so much for joining me and hopefully enjoying this episode. Every Monday, remember, I’m back with a solo round. Sometimes I’ll take snippets of videos with previous content that I’ve created. Sometimes I’ll take snippets from some live talks that I’ve given. Sometimes I’ll just be with you one-on-one and we’ll have some fun either way.

Transcription

Hey, hey, Healthpreneurs, what’s up? Yuri here. All right, so today, I’m excited that you’re with me again, because today’s a very special day. It’s another episode of the Healthpreneur™ Podcast. Every single episode is special in my eyes.

I put a lot of heart and soul into each of these interviews, bringing you some cool inspiring guests, who are health and fitness entrepreneurs, doing great things to inspire you to help you grow your business, and obviously using the internet to amplify your awesomeness to reach even more people.

It’s been a funny couple of weeks, and I want to share a little story with you before we jump in today’s episode.

I was having a conversation with someone recently about podcasts, and they’re like, “Dude, you’re like one of the best interviewers with respect to podcast.” I was like, “Thank you so much. That means a lot to me.” I told him, “It’s funny, because I’ve started and stopped four podcasts”.

“Why have I done that, and why am I doing this again?,” in terms of why am I starting another podcast?

And then I realized, the previous podcasts were great.  They’re still on iTunes if you want to check them out, but, I was doing too much in the process of the podcast.

What I realized was if I can build a machine around me, if I can build a great system around the podcasting process, where all I have to do is show up and have these great conversations, that, for me, is where the magic is.

That’s what I’ve created with the Healthpreneur™ Podcast, and I’m super excited.

I don’t know if I’ve been as excited about any content-delivery type of platform as I am about this current podcast, but I’m here to tell you that I’m not going anywhere.  I’m going to be here for a long time to come, with many more episodes, and many more interviews.

If you haven’t yet subscribed, be sure to do so today, because you’re not going to want to miss any of the amazing guests that I’ve got coming your way.

Today, we are talking with a very interesting lady. Her name is Amy Lewis, and she’s a little bit different than a lot of other guests in the fact that she runs, for the most part, a brick and mortar fitness studio.

She’s a 47-year-old mother of two, and lives in a very small, low key area in Vermont.

Now, check this out. The town has a population of 800 people, and she’s been able to build a multiple, six-figure business training client in her studio in this little town.

You might be thinking, “Okay, Yuri, what the heck does this have to do with helping me build my business online?”

It has everything to do with you, because you’re going to discover some amazing lessons in this episode. Some important mindset things you need to understand.

How to overcome certain obstacles, whether or not you’re in a big market or a tiny little niche online, or you’re only dealing with people who only want to grow their right bicep not their left, there is opportunity for everyone.

This interview with Amy is going to highlight that, and it’s going to remind you of the power of going small.

Let me tell you a little bit more about who Amy is, and then we’ll get into the interview.

She’s really big on working with women over 35 years old who want to get in better shape.  She’s really pumped about helping 1,000 residents in her area achieve amazing health and fitness goals by the year 2020.

She’s a NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Weight Loss Specialist, a Precision Nutrition -Nutrition and Lifestyle coach, and just an awesome person.

If you want to learn more about Amy and what she’s up to, you can head on over to her website at fusionfitnessvt.com, and without any further ado, let’s bring Amy on to the show.

Amy, how’s it going? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How are you doing?

 

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[Amy] I’m doing great, Yuri. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today. I really appreciate it.

[Yuri] Yeah, I’m excited.  You’ve done amazing stuff, and we’ll get into what you’re doing in a second, but I want to know what’s new and exciting in your world. What are you excited about these days?

[Amy] Although I love summer and I’m excited there’s still time left to get out there and do some paddling, hiking and all that great stuff, I’m personally excited about all the awesome things we can do here in Vermont.

But for me, what’s even more exciting is watching the folks I work with, feeling their strength that they’re building, as we work together and as they get into the next season’s activities.

They’re coming in every day and telling me every day how much stronger they are, so it’s so much fun to see that.

I see the transition as the kids go back to school. I really love to go through these times of change during the year, because it always brings a new beginning. It’s awesome.

Creating a thriving business in a small town

[Yuri] I’m interested to talk about where you live, because you’ve done something very unique, which I don’t think a lot of people would consider doing.  You have your studio in a town of, what, 800 residents.

[Amy] Yes.  There’s 800 residents who live here year-round. The local community gets very small once the ski season is over.

[Yuri] You have a studio in a town of 800 people, which in a lot of entrepreneurs’ minds are thinking, “Well, that’s way too small of a market,” and you’ve done very well.

What have you done to really capture a great segment of the population, to help them towards their health and fitness goals?

[Amy] It’s really nice being in a small town, because everyone really does know one another, so you end up chatting with people wherever you are about health and fitness.

I also live in a resort town.  Killington is a big ski resort town and is known as the Beast of the East.

Whether you live here locally or not, people want to be active.  What I’ve done is reach out to the local community and offer them a way to improve their health and fitness, get the fit and healthy bodies that, frankly, they deserve, so that they can do all these amazing things with friends and family, and feel great when they’re doing these things.

Not only do we offer workouts and workshops for mindset and nutrition, we offer this amazing community, and that has drawn people in.

The community that I’ve created here just draws people in. They feel comfortable. It doesn’t matter your age, your shape, your size, your ability level. Everyone feels comfortable once they’re in.

It’s really the community feel that I’ve developed here in the studio, and then the outreach beyond the studio to folks and just chatting it up.

[Yuri] You now have word of mouth and people talking about it all over the place, but when you first started, how did you get people to walk in the door?

Did you partner with other businesses in the area? Did you hand out fliers to everyone’s door? What did that look like when you were starting?

[Amy] A little bit of all of that.  I did reach out to local businesses and let people know what was going in.

I was already working with a few clients. I’ve been in the industry for a long time, and getting back into working with people in person. Those people were talking about their experience with friends and family and more and more people were finding out about us word of mouth.

I did go to local businesses, and one of the things that I did was film little, five-minute, commercials asking these local businesses a few questions about how they got started, what their passion was, and a few tips they could give people, and shared those videos on Facebook and on my website.

Essentially, I was sharing the great experiences I had with the local businesses here, and then they in turn, talked up the studio.

Really, the goal was to help other businesses to gain visibility.

Where we’re located, it’s a long way into town and you have to go over a pass, and the winter gets dicey, so people want to stay up here on the mountain as much as possible.

What we were doing was showcasing different restaurants that had health eating options and go to other complimentary business for health and fitness as a way to help them, and they ended up wanting to help me as well

It was really great to be able to give before I really had much, and then in return, folks came to me as well.

[Yuri] That’s so smart.

[Amy] I also reached out to the local newspaper, and let them know that even in a town of 800, that I had a goal to help 1,000 local residents achieve a health and fitness goal by the year 2020.

They came in and did a piece on the studio opening, along with a press release.  They tried it out, took pictures, and that was in the paper, too.

I was able to use the pictures they gave me on social media.

It was a great way to give people information, tips they could apply right away without ever setting foot in the studio, and then creating some curiosity around that.

At this point, being more established, I find the person-to-person, creating relationships, and getting the stuff out there on Facebook is what works better than a flier, unless it’s something brand new.

[Yuri] For everyone listening, what Amy just said is so valuable. To give you some perspective, we lived in a small town called Port Perry for five years as we’re starting our family.  It’s a small town, not 800 people, but it’s about 9,000.

I was going to this gym, which was a 24/7 type of gym.  I never saw anything about the gym anywhere in the town.  There was no cross promotion with other businesses.

I remember the trainers or the workers in there would be sitting in their office, playing on their phone. There was no proactive part to really grow their client base.

It’s the tale of two gyms. You got your studio where you went out from day one and added value before you asked for anything in return, and then you have the case that I just mentioned where these guys are just sitting in their office doing nothing and expecting miracles to happen.

It’s such a great example of why you’ve done so well in a very small town.

Have you always had that mindset even before you had your studio of being this person who’s like, “Okay, I’m going to make this happen no matter what, if someone says I can’t, I’m going to show them how to do it or show them that I can do it.”?

Has this always been part of your mindset?

[Amy] Did I always have the mindset? I don’t think so. I did have that work ethic instilled in me. I always strove to do better than I did before. I was always in competition with my own self.

I was a teacher for 10 years, and a friend of my husband came to help me set up my classroom, and he said, “Who are you competing with? Why don’t you just do what you did last year?”

That wasn’t acceptable to me. This is a new group. I wanted to do better. I wanted to improve. I’ve always had that instilled in me, to always try to be my best.

My dad was an integral part in that. He’s gone almost 21 years now. He always said to me, “Whatever you do, always try your best, and always be kind to people.”

Those things that we tell our kids, even though we can’t always tell if it’s getting through to our kids, well, they are. I’m proof of that.

Amy’s story: Crohn’s disease, her growth mindset

Growing up, I had Crohn’s disease.  I had it since I was 12, and I went through all kinds of procedures.  I was in and out of the hospital, had emergency trips to the hospital, often, and eventually had surgeries for bowel resections.

They wanted to do another bowel resection, which would have been a colostomy, and I was in my 20s, and I was like, “No way. There’s got to be another way.”

The doctors weren’t so happy with me, but I didn’t want that, and I was being told I couldn’t have children. I would never support a pregnancy. I said, “There’s got to be another way.”

I was determined, and so for two years, I did a strict diet and supplementation program. I could not work out with the intensity I wanted to, which was hard, but I was able to do gentle yoga and meditation, and through that focus, after two years, the doctor who agreed to monitor me said to me, “You’re going to put me out of business. You have no evidence of the disease anymore.”

Crohn’s Disease isn’t something people think that you can get rid of. I have scars from my surgeries, but no evidence of the disease, and I have two beautiful children.

I will not pretend that I don’t have mindset issues that I work on, but getting things done and not failing is … There are failures along the way, but not being the ultimate is something that’s always been a part of my life.

[Yuri] That’s awesome, and that’s why entrepreneurs rule the world. No offense to employees and nine-to-fivers, but that’s why I love speaking with entrepreneurs like yourself, because that mentality of constant growth and contribution is embedded in our DNA. It’s just amazing. I’m glad that you were able to share that with us, so thank you.

What’s the biggest challenge you faced in your business?

Obstacles, goals, dominating your niche

[Amy] Well, there’s a few. You got to keep the wheels turning. I’ve listened to Grant Cardone who says, “Don’t rest on your haunches.”

One of my obstacles was resting on my haunches, getting myself ramped up, and say, “Oh, everything is rolling along nicely.” When that happens, things start to slip. The great part of that is recognizing that and being able to say, “Well, this was working and how can I celebrate my clients? How can I move this forward,” and it’s doing all the things that were working.

One of the obvious obstacles is the population. Even though I’m in a town of 800, the town that I live in, which is the next town over, has a population of 600 people.

There’s smaller towns around. There’s probably about 2,200 people immediately, and then there is a bigger city, and believe it or not, people do drive up over that pass.  People act like it’s another galaxy sometimes. It’s really funny, but people will drive up to us.

As I previously mentioned, reaching out and not thinking about the bottom line, and focusing instead on what value can I add, it all ends up coming back to you

I remember worrying about money.  I would worry and worry and worry. I don’t have enough. I don’t have enough. I don’t have enough. I did in fact have enough.

I worried myself into not having enough money, so I said, “Well, if it works that way, it’s got to work the other way.” Indeed, it does. Focus on what your goals are and move beyond those obstacles.

I have built a business up to six-figures with 800 people in my town. I’m now reaching out online, because quite honestly, I want to make a bigger impact in the world. I love my community, and I want to help as many people as I can here.

There’s a big wide world out there of people that are looking for what I have to offer, and I want to be able to add to them as well.

[Yuri] That’s terrific. 800 people doesn’t mean 800 potential clients, because I’m sure there’s young and old, and there’s going to be a certain percent of the population who has no interest in what you have to offer.

You might be dealing with a smaller segment of that, and I think that’s even more awesome, which is a great lesson for anyone listening, is that you don’t have to be on Dr. Oz, right?

Just focus on a small niche and dominate that. I think you’re a great example of having done that.

[Amy] You know, Yuri, the great thing about doing that is that even in a town so small, it’s not like there’s a ton of fitness places, but there are fitness businesses.

Because we each have a different niche, we’re able to work with one another and say, “You know what, listening to what your goals are, I really don’t think we’re the best fit for you. However, this person over here has a great program. I’d like to send you over there because I think that’s a better fit,” and that really allows us to have credibility and be able to help people even if they’re not our ideal client.

I generally work with women 35 and up. It doesn’t mean that every client is a woman, and it doesn’t mean everyone is 35 and up, but that’s really who I target.  I am 47, so I fit right in.

You don’t have to, obviously, fit into your ideal client, but it’s great. It’s a great thing to be able to work with other people within the same industry.

[Yuri] Again, what I’m getting from this is that your town is a very similar experience as what happens with a lot of online businesses.

One of the things I noticed when I started my business online was that everyone is so collaborative instead of competitive.

When I was training in a gym in Toronto before all this, way back in early 2000s, it was like the trainer beside you is your competition. You don’t want to give away clients.

When I came online, everyone was like, “Yeah, I’ve got this really cool complementary program that I think your audience would love.” Hey, I’m not doing that, so yeah, sure, I’ll just recommend over to you.

That’s pretty much what you’re doing in Killington, which is just a great example of how there’s more than enough for everyone, and it’s just such a cool reminder for everyone listening that’s its win-wins for everyone.

[Amy] I grew up in Rockland County, New York, which is about 20 miles northwest of Manhattan. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum, and again, it comes to mindset.

When I was in New York in a one-on-one training studio, I didn’t feel like I was competing with the person next to me, because even when I was in my 20s, the clients I got were the post-rehab people.

I’ve always worked with people 35 and up even from that time, so the other trainers would send those people to me. They didn’t want to work with those people. They didn’t know how to work with people coming out from post-rehab.

For me, it was a great fit, because I wasn’t training people for fitness shows and bikini competitions.

Even within a facility, you can find your niche., It’s so important to find it, and then just put your blinders on and laser focus.

Don’t worry about what the other people are doing. Otherwise, you get discouraged and caught up in the whole, they are doing better than me, and really, you have so much to offer.

I’ve branched out online now as well, and the people that I have worked with in the online space are super welcoming and helpful and it’s wonderful to be in a collaborative situation.

Forget about the money, focus on what you want

[Yuri] Let’s say someone is where you were years ago, worrying about money, and maybe not having the mindset that you have now.

What guidance do you give them? How do you steer them in the right direction? What advice do you give them to really build that mindset that’s going to help them succeed?

[Amy] The advice that I give is to really take the time to sit with yourself and figure out your vision for your life if money were no object.  You just do a brain dump so that you’re not thinking, and you’re not starting to say that you want to move to Maui or whatever your thing is, that you don’t start to negate it. You just want to do a brain dump.

Then notice your feelings. If you’re worrying about money, there’s no way you feel good. You want to feel good. We’re really designed to be happy. We’re not here to be miserable and stressed.

If we’re worried about money, and I’ll speak from experience, you can have panic attacks, stomach problems, digestive issues, and that doesn’t feel good.

Instead, you start focusing on what you want and not I want more money, I want more money, I want more money, but why do you want that money? What are you going to do with it? Are you going to donate? Are you going to feel great because all your bills are paid, and then you’re going to be able to take a vacation, or give your kids another experience?

Whatever you want to do with that, focus on it in a feel-good place, and that way you can start to attract to yourself the good things.

I know it sounds a little woo woo, but if you look at the thought patterns and the negatives that have come to you, you flip that and start to think positive.

In each moment of you noticing you’re not feeling well, you’re feeling bad, or you’re feeling panicky, what can you do to feel good? What can you focus on, or what is not quite right that’s making you feel that way?

It takes practice to turn your attention from what you’re worried about and start giving to others. It might be something as simple as opening a door for somebody or giving someone a smile, or maybe someone is struggling and you give them a quick tip.

Those things are all free. You don’t have to spend any money.

Write someone a thank you note. Do things so that you’re adding value to other people’s lives. It doesn’t have to be monetary, and that energy and that value will come back to you.

One thing I like to do when I’m feeling like, “Okay, I need more money,” is picture myself as a money magnet, and I literally close my eyes and picture myself standing there with my feet apart and may arms out, and money just flying and attaching to my body.

That’s what has worked for me. I hope that’s helpful.

[Yuri] Well, I call it delusional optimism, which is kind of what you’re talking about.

You have to feel as if, it’s already here, it’s already happening.  I’m all about the woo woo and the law of attraction. I’m a huge believer in that.

There’s a big disconnect that I recognized a little while ago, which is, it’s one thing to think, “Yeah, I’m going to have more money,”but it’s very different thing to feel that.

If there’s a disconnection between the thinking and the feeling, well, the universe is going to reward the feeling more than the thinking.

I love how you talked about, do things for others. It’s one of the easiest ways out of stress. If you’re feeling crappy, it’s because you’re focused on you. Focus on others. Open the door. Write a thank you note, as you mentioned. It’s one of the easiest de-stressors. It’ll make you feel better. It’s so good.

[Amy] It does, and I do want to mention one thing, because with the law of attraction, there’s a misunderstanding that you can just think positively and things will happen.

That’s not the case. There is a lot of hard work, grit, heart, determination that goes into it. The thing is, when you focus on what you want and you feel good, you must do the things it takes to get there if you’re passionate about it.

If you’re not passionate about it, you’ve got to abandon it.

I remember having a project come almost to fruition and saying to my mentor, going over where I was, where I wanted to go, stopping myself and saying, “I’m just not passionate about this.”

He said to me, “You need to drop it.”

I was like, “But I’ve spent so much time. I’ve spent so much energy.” He said to me, “If you are not passionate about it, you’re not going to help people with it. I don’t care how far you’ve come. I don’t care how much you’ve invested, time, money, you have to drop it and do what you’re passionate about.”

I wasn’t happy at the time. I was mad. I listened though, and I’m grateful that I did.

Your passions can change. Obviously, you’ve got to feed your family, but then look to that thing that you’re passionate about, and then you’ll take the action steps to get there.

[Yuri] Yup. If the energy is low, it’s got to go.

Amy, are you ready for the rapid fire?

Rapid-fire questions

[Amy] Ready.

[Yuri] All right, so I’ve got five questions to end this bad boy off with. It’s been a great conversation. I’m really happy with where we’ve gone.

Whatever comes top of mind, first thing. Are you pumped? Are you ready?

[Amy] I’m ready. I’m nervous.

[Yuri] All right, here we go. Your biggest weakness?

[Amy] My biggest weakness is I have a gut ball. Second-guessing myself and talking too much.

[Yuri] Cool. Your biggest strength?

[Amy] My compassion and my willingness to work hard and do whatever it takes.

[Yuri] Nice. One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

[Amy] Developing my listening skills and really closing my mouth.  Asking a question and using the technique I used when I was a teacher, which is just shut up, right?

You ask the question, and then be quiet and allowing the client, however long it takes them to answer, and give them the space to answer.

[Yuri] Very nice. Great insight. What do you do first thing in the morning?

[Amy] First thing in the morning, I wake up, I stay in my bed and I revel in how good I feel. I always find something to feel good about before I get out of bed.

Then I have a whole morning routine, and this is something that I had learned and developed in my time working with Craig Ballantyne.

I get up, brush teeth, wash my face, but then I always sit in silence and just breathe.

I do my affirmations, so I see myself as if to really envision myself in those affirmations.

I do some reading. It really depends on the day. I do some journaling. I always write down what I’m grateful for in the morning, and I do it at night too, and the night before I write down what I need to accomplish the next day, so I’m not worried about it allowing it to sink in overnight.

I do my visualization, my breathing. I read. I do my affirmations, and I do my gratitude journal, and then I head out. I usually have to head out early in the day. Then my exercise gets in there. I love to do it first thing, but I just get it in when I can.

[Yuri] Good for you. Final question, complete this … Well, it’s not a question. Complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when …

[Amy] I know I’m being successful when I see my clients making major changes. It’s not even major changes. It might be a small baby step, like they got here. I’m quite serious.

I know I’m successful when I’m able to hold this space for my clients and help them to take that next step toward their health and fitness goals, and they really are baby steps, and helping them to understand it’s all progress not perfection.

[Yuri] Beautiful. That’s great. Amy, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your experience, your journey, your wisdom with us.

What is the best way for people to check out what you’re doing perhaps online or if they’re, obviously, in Vermont, in Killington?

[Amy] The best place to find us is to go to our website, fusionfitnessvt.com. It’s F-U-S-I-O-N-F-I-T-N-E-S-S-V-T dot com.

[Yuri] Cool, and we’ll make sure to link up in the show notes for that.

[Amy] All right. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Yuri. Let me know what I can do for you. Let me know if you need anything. I’m happy to help.

[Yuri] Awesome. Thank you so much, Amy. It’s been a lot of fun.

[Amy] All right. Awesome. Have a great day.

[Yuri] You too.

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Wasn’t that such an awesome interview? I mean, talk about big thinking in a small environment. That’s not easy to do, because we are shaped by our environments.

A lot of times, it’s very easy to fall into the standards and the expectations of those around you. I’ve noticed this firsthand, because I lived in a small town, as I mentioned in our conversation with Amy, for about five years.

I noticed that that kind of small town feel was rubbing off on me, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to move back to the big city, not that we live downtown, but just in a more metropolitan area.

Nonetheless, it’s great to see people like Amy who are doing great things, and impacting a lot of people. You don’t have to impact a million people to change the world. She’s impacting people in a very personal way, in a very local way, and that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that.

There’s no gold medal given to the most people impacted, most number of Instagram followers. None of that stuff really matters, because at the end of the day, if you can work with people and really touch their lives, that’s what matters the most.

I think what Amy shared with us is a great example of being able to do that no matter what environment you’re in, right?

If you’re in the online space and you’re thinking to yourself, “Oh, I don’t want to narrow down my niche because there might not be enough people who are interested in this,” well, let Amy’s story be an example to the contrary.

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Follow Amy Lewis At:

https://fusionfitnessvt.com/

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Transcription

In today’s episode, I’m excited to have a conversation with Peter Baker. Now, Peter is a fitness expert and writer, as well as an online trainer. He’s been doing this for a few years out of Tampa Florida and he’s got some really cool stuff to share with us today.

I think you’ll really appreciate part of his journey—especially an interesting story he shares with us from working at Coca-Cola. Plus, he’ll share some of the magic tricks he used to do when he was younger and some of the lessons and insights he’s garnered over his journey, that I think will really help you with your mindset and help you grow your business.

So, without any further ado, let’s get into our interview and have some fun!

 

Yuri:    Alright Peter, welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. How’s it going my friend?

Peter: Well it’s a very hot and rainy day in the great state of Florida.

Yuri:    Oh my goodness. That’s scorching down there at this time of year.

Peter: Oh yes—Always, always.

Yuri:    And you’re in Tampa, right?

Peter: Yeah I’m in Tampa.

Yuri:    Very nice, very nice. So we know that you’ve been kind of in this space of fitness and helping people get in great shape—really helping to transform their bodies. And you have some really cool stuff coming out with respect to glute training and so forth…

But outside of what you do on a daily basis, why did you start doing what it is that you do? Was there a pivotal moment in your life that you were like—”You know what, this is what I like and this is what I want to do, this is what I’m called to be doing.”

Do you remember a moment like that?

Peter: Well, it’s more like there’s a few of them. So when I first started exercising back in 2006, there was a gym not too far away from where I lived in this small Florida town called Plant City. And I looked in the mirror one day and I said, “Man I’m fat as s**t, I need to fix this!”

So I went to the gym and I worked with a trainer who did okay… And then I was thinking, “well, this seems like a kind of a cool job.” (This was back in 2006 before people were doing online training and whatnot.)

So then one day I realized I just wasn’t getting any stronger—so my trainer hooked me up with this guy who claimed to have worked with Louis Simmons at West Side Barbell. And I believe he probably did, because the guy knew a lot of that type of training— basically what came out years later in regards to what Louis was doing at the time. You know, the conjugate method and all that stuff.

So I got pretty strong, which was cool. Although that guy eventually wound up getting arrested—I think—for methamphetamine, which is very common in Florida. So then I was hanging out with another guy there and he had some kettlebells—so I got into the whole RKC kettlebell thing.

And then at university—I went to University of South Florida here in Tampa—I started a kettlebell club, where we basically just got on the field, took my kettlebells and lifted them and had fun. I think that was in 2008.

So it was sort of a gradual thing. And then, you know, I worked various jobs…

Going from a job at Coca Cola to starting a fitness business

In 2011, I started working at Coca-Cola—at a call center. Eventually I wound up on my last legs there… I started hating the job and I was basically doing just enough to not get fired, and uhh… hating life.

So I was like, “Well… Maybe I should do my own thing and start my own business.” Come around 2014, right at the beginning of the year, I told myself something. I said, “maybe I should quit at the end of February.”

Well it turns out I did something innocuous… I think I forgot to clock out? And that actually lead to me getting fired. So I knew I was going to get fired, but with the red tape process there it it took forever. So I was like, “I’m just gonna chill out!”

I took a month vacation because I had the time accrued—so I got paid for it, which was nice. And I put all the events in motion to start training people. So I rented studio space nearby and started doing that.

I came back in February and they said, “Oh by the way—you’re fired.” I’m like, “okay.” And that was it.

Yuri:    Perfect. That’s awesome. You’ve gotta love corporate America right?

Peter:  Yes.

Yuri:    When you were working at Coke, did you have like, that inner being saying “what the hell am I doing here?” Like you have that entrepreneurial kind of pull, pulling you out of that? Like the job was kind of sucking away your soul—did you experience that?

Peter: I never would have defined it as an entrepreneur pull, but I basically did everything I could to do the least amount work. I read books—fiction books. That’s where I finished most of what they had written for Game of Thrones at the time. I read all those books in between phone calls.

Since I worked 14 hour days, there were times with a lot of lulls in between our phone calls. So I’d surf the internet and read fitness articles and study all that stuff. Of course I didn’t learn jack about marketing at the time, like I probably should have. But you live and learn.

So I wouldn’t quite describe it as that. I just said—”you know, I should probably do something else.” So it was a little more nebulous.

Yuri:    Yeah, and I think that’s part of your journey which is great. So you mentioned to me as well, that you were formerly a prefect for the house of Slytherin. What is that, for people who don’t know? To be honest I don’t even know.

Peter:  Oh, well Slytherin is a house in Harry Potter—generally regarded as the bad guys, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. They are just highly ambitious people. And if you’re familiar with the character of Severus Snape, he was a Slytherin. So a prefect was basically the head of the house, because basically it’s like a boarding school—except, you know, they do magic and all that stuff. So it’s kind of a joke.

Yuri:    So you didn’t do any magic.

Peter: Well I actually was a magician since the age of seven, and I did win second place at the 1997 Ford Estate magicians convention. But that was all sleight of hand not the Harry Potter type magic.

Yuri:    Well that’s pretty cool. So have you noticed any kind of similarities in terms of why you enjoy the magic… Compared to what you’re doing now? And the reason I ask is that when I was young, I wanted to play pro soccer—and I loved soccer and I was able to do that in my early 20s.

And then I realized about 10 years later that what I really enjoy doing is performing. And it didn’t really matter if it was on the soccer field or on a tennis court, or speaking on stage in front of a lot of people. Really it was just lighting up a group of people that excited me—so I don’t know, did you ever find any kind of similarity there for yourself?

Peter: There is a lot of similarity. So you know, I did magic. I did theater—I started college as a theater major, although I didn’t go through with it. But I started as that and I didn’t really get out of it. They wanted me to take tech classes where I had to learn how to do whites and stuff, and I was like, “I don’t wanna do that. I just want to be on the stage.”

So I quit the major, and then I briefly majored in music but they didn’t have a program I wanted, so then I switched again. And even then, I wound up getting a degree in religious studies. I did a lot of presentations and a lot of writing there. And there were performative aspects there, because I would present these papers I wrote to various people.

And you know, it’s the same thing now—especially now, and I’m sure you see it all the time. Building a brand on social media you do have to be on, gosh, almost all the time really.

And so yeah, there is a performance aspect. It’s not like it’s disingenuous—I mean it’s very much me. Maybe a little bit more me than me, if that makes sense?

Yuri:    Yep.

Peter: It’s kind of like overacting on a stage. So people in the back can hear you. So yeah, there’s definitely an element of that to it.

Yuri:    Yeah, I think that’s a good point you make. I think a lot of times—online especially—you see a certain person or a character, friend, celebrity, whatever. Sometimes they are who they are, they’re true to themselves.

A lot of times they kind of amplify who they are, strategically—or maybe just because that gives them the ability to do so without worrying about what people think of them as much. But that’s an interesting distinction there.

So you mentioned also that paying bills is nice. Like I asked you what one of your notable accomplishments was and you mentioned that. And I thought that was interesting, so talk to me about that.

Peter: I mean when I first started, it was like “man, how am I going to pay rent now?” And then somehow I managed. And then I’m like, “man, this is good,” because, you know, during that first year you’re still struggling you’re thinking you should probably get a job.

So I got a second job—bouncing at clubs here in Tampa. And man, that definitely was not fun. I actually wound up getting fired from one of those jobs too. And that’s the last time I ever worked for anybody but myself, doing it on my own terms.

Yuri:    Yeah. You’re basically unemployable, which is perfect.

Peter: Yeah. I basically am. It’s like you said, the corporate America structure—maybe if the company was different or whatever it might have been different circumstances, but who knows. But yeah, for a while it was like, “Man, I’m still managing to pay my bills. This is Nice. I should keep this momentum up.”

How to start building your fitness business online

Yuri:    And so, talk to me about the journey from initially training clients in person to venturing online to do more of the online side of things.

Peter: Well, I was paying a really good price for my studio. If I told people the price they would be insanely jealous—like, under 200 bucks a month. I kept all the money I made from training people. Pretty cool, right? I was sharing it with a couple of people so we basically split the entire cost of this warehouse unit there and it had all the weights and stuff—I brought in some equipment.

But it got to a point where I had more online people, and I got down to, I think, two in-person people. And some of them would come in once a week for their sessions, as opposed to like three times a week.

So you know that was kind of economical. Then this year—January 6th, actually—I wind up getting into a car accident. Nothing was terribly damaged except for the car. So basically I don’t have a car now. So you know it kind of worked out pretty nicely.

Yuri:    Sure. Everything happens for a reason. How did you go about getting those initial clients? So you had the clients through training offline. And then what were you doing to really attract and acquire people to train with you online who maybe you’ve never met in person?

Peter: Uhhh… Man, that’s a good question. So, the first client I ever had was a guy that I worked with at Coke, and he’s pretty big success story because he used to be like 500 pounds. And I think at his lowest point he got to like 230 something. That’s significant.

Yuri:    That’s like half his bodyweight.

Peter: Yeah, so when I was sitting at home one day, right after I took that month vacation Coca-Cola—he sent me a text and was like, “I think I’m ready to start the training.”

I’m like “Oh, well that’s fantastic!” So of course I gave him a hell of a deal—because he was the first client that paid me. So I did that and you know… I just did the usual social media stuff, saying—Hey, look what we’re doing. He’s not killing himself, he’s still eating. He’s eating better, but still having fun with these foods and being social and all that.

And then you know, local people would contact me and I would try to move them online because, for one thing, it’s cheaper. And I know everybody says that, but I do like the fact that it is cheaper for a lot of people. Some people have families and stuff, so it is good for that.

And you know, if they’re willing to video themselves for form checks or questions or whatever (and I emphasize that to all of them—don’t hesitate to send me a video if you need it) we can get a lot done that way.

And then, you know—just communicate. So that’s really it. I mean that’s like the most important thing.

Yuri:    That’s cool. And I like how you showed—for those listening—that you don’t have to run Facebook ads or do all of this crazy stuff. You kind of just tapped into some of the people you already knew and made it more affordable and more convenient for them by saying, “Hey, why don’t we do it this way?”

I think that’s a great way to start. And for anyone listening—I think it’s just encouraging, because you don’t have to do all these crazy campaigns. It’s just like, “Hey, who do I already know that I can maybe reach out to or connect with and see if this be a good fit?”

Peter:  Yeah, and to that point there’s a degree of knowing you that I think everyone should really master. Like, obviously it would be a big mistake to go to my family and say “Hey, [cousin], pay me for this.”

Because most of the time they won’t. Even some of your longtime friends—people that you’ve known for 20 years and went to school with—won’t pay you because they view you in a different context. And it takes a little bit to get out of that context.

So, in 2015—a year after I left coke—if I were to go up there and say, “Hey, let me do some seminars for you.” They probably would have laughed and told me to go f**k myself, because they remember me as the guy who was always reading and slacking off all the time.

Maybe now if I went there, things would be a little different because they’ve had lots of restructuring of their staff at this particular place and all that.

But people that I know or have known still do contact me, and the usual dialogue is—”Yeah, I saw you doing your thing a couple years ago… Okay I finally want to get on that.” And it’s like, wow, you’ve been following me for years and haven’t said anything?

That kind of upsets people too because the people who are getting a lot out of what you’re doing won’t say as much. But it’s cool when they finally do.

Yuri:    Yeah it’s cool. Well it’s the same reason why it’s very tough to get your own family, or your own parents to take your advice. “Hey mom you have this issue. Here’s this thing you may want to check out.” And it’s like—”okay, cool.”

If they hear it from a friend—as opposed to a doctor—they see you in a very different manner. They see you as that little kid, or whatever. I’m always thinking about this stuff because positioning is really important.

And I think it’s just another example of how you’re positioned in a relationship. People have this preconceived notion of who you are, and sometimes it’s tough to break that mold.

The importance of patience in starting your business

Peter:  Yeah it definitely is. And I could see where, for somebody just getting started, it can be very discouraging on so many different levels.

Yuri:    Yeah. So what do you say to that person who’s starting out—who is trying to get clients, or maybe trying to sell their services or products online—and it’s just not happening the way they thought it would.

If you were sitting down, having coffee with them, what would you tell them?

Peter:  Well, if they were in the fitness business—actually I should probably do this one day—I would ask them, “Hey, have you ever program hopped?” When you do a workout program for three weeks and then switch for another two weeks to something different. Or you do ketogenic dieting, and then two weeks later do paleo dieting and then in another two weeks do the South Beach diet.

You have to stick with something and you have to keep doing it and give yourself a longer time to assess things. I think patience is a huge factor. My idea of a long time versus somebody else’s idea of a long time is vastly different.

A year? That’s not really that long. I mean it can seem like a long time, especially when you’re just starting out, but really it’s not a long time.

Yuri:    No. It flies by fast.

Peter:  Yeah. People are like, “Yeah, I started following you three years ago on your website and you had no idea.” So really you don’t. You only know your side of things within a short amount of time and then other sides become clearer as time goes on, if that makes sense.

Yuri:    Yep.

Peter:  And you still won’t know everything, but some things do become clearer as time goes on.

Yuri:    That’s cool, that’s good advice. So, patience guys—just keep at it, and you’ll acquire wisdom as as you go through this whole process. Which is what all of us do.

Peter:  Yeah, and if you have a good, successful reputation where somebody gives you money—you can repeat that. You just have to kind of reverse engineer it. “Okay, how can I get people to do that again?”

Yuri:    Yeah, totally—it’s a recipe.

Peter:  Yeah.

Yuri:    That’s awesome. What’s been the biggest challenge you have faced in your business. Was there a particular moment in time really like, “holy s**t, how am I going to make this happen?” or was there a season in your business?

What was something that really kind of stands out for you?

Peter:  That’s a good question. It’s more like, how to scale it to where you can accommodate for growth. And I’m not huge by any means, but it’s mostly just the mundane stuff like keeping track of how much cash you’re making and all that stuff. Looking at the numbers and saying, “Am I growing? What am I doing? Am I reaching out enough to expand so other people can hear me?”

A lot of us do the online coaching thing and then we write for websites… So, alright I’m doing this for a particular website—is there something similar I could do to expand? You know, just keeping track of those small details, because they add up.

Yuri:    Yeah, which is what I think entrepreneurs love doing—small minutiae—which is nice. I completely agree with you, and I think a lot of our listeners can as well—they just want to do their thing, right? And not have to worry about the books and all this other nonsense.

Peter:  Yeah! So you have to get to a place where you can hire somebody to do that. But you have to do it for yourself a little bit. I mean, in the early days there are some good investments you can make so that you don’t have to screw something up yourself.

Like, the first iteration of my web site was pretty ugly looking. And then I finally went to somebody I know who works for “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” And for anybody listening—if I’m allowed to do this—you’ll get a discount if you mention Peter Baker. And I can even give you the contact info for her.

But she does really good work and she said, “Hey, I’ll do this for you for this amount of cash” and I say, “All right, that’s good.” So my web site improved tenfold by doing that.

Yuri:    That’s awesome. Very Cool.

So the challenge of the mundane stuff—just keeping track of all that—if you can think back to that stuff, what’s the big lesson you’ve learned from that experience or from that whole process?

Peter:  Whatever gets measured gets improved. You know it’s just like in your training, when you workout and diet—if you want to improve it, keep track of it.

Yuri:    That’s good.

Peter:  That’s really what it comes down to.

Yuri:    Yeah. That’s awesome. And so right now as you’re building your business, what’s the one thing—the one strategy that’s working for you?

Is it Facebook ads? Is it just personal reach?

If you were to say, “this is my secret sauce to helping me grow my business and impact more people”—what’s that been for you?

Strategies for building an authentic voice in your marketing

Peter:  I think most of it just comes down to me being myself.

You know, that’s what it is. I have a I have a good ability of taking complex things and making them pretty easy—and I try to make them funny. Like, if you’ve ever seen my Facebook post about any exercise demonstration, I always try to make it funny. Kind of in the way that Marc Fisher would, which is why, incidentally, I love that guy.

We’re very similar in in that regard—just make it memorable and make it so memorable if someone plagiarizes it, it’s so goddamn good that they know it’s you! Like, they don’t have to take it and copy and paste it into Google to trace it back—just make it so good that you know it’s memorable.

Yuri:    Well it’s funny too because when I saw your Skype handle, I started laughing. And I’m not going to give out your Skype handle, but you basically put “F*ckin” (that’s you part of the Skype handle). And I’m like, yeah—that’s clever, that’s well done. So I can see where you’re going with that for sure.

Peter:  That’s kind of more of an inside joke to me because way back when, I thought it was cool just to have a blog and I didn’t know anything about marketability…

My blog was called Death Metal and Deadlifting and my name on there was Peter—actual expletive—Baker. So I made the Skype handle because people wanted podcasts and stuff like that, and I never really had a Skype handle.

Yuri:    No, yeah. It’s clever and it’s good, I’ll definitely remember it.

So Peter—knowing what you know now, if you were to start your business all over again what’s the first thing you’d start doing? Or how would you do things differently?

Peter:  I think I would probably start being myself right from the get-go instead of easing into it. And I would probably have focused on writing from the beginning as well, like actually getting really good at it from early on.

Yuri:    Sure. So did you find it difficult because you were trying to be like someone else and it just took time to find your own rhythm? Or what did it look like?

Peter:  Umm, well I think every new writer kind of goes through that—you know, trying to be like somebody else. Because you have people you read a lot and then you want to start writing like that person because they’re awesome or whatever. And then you kind of start using the same words and everything…

But mostly it was just a lack of practice, I just don’t think I’ve put in enough reps of writing to really craft a voice like I have in the past couple of years.

Yuri:    That’s cool, and that’s a very common response that I get when I talk to guys and girls in the fitness space and the health space in general—this notion of putting in the reps. And I think for us it’s the opposite of foreign. It’s so familiar to us because we’re just used to putting in the reps, whether it’s our workouts or our habits.

So it’s cool that you brought that up.

Peter:  Yeah!

Rapid Fire Questions

Yuri:    Alright man, so let’s finish off with our rapid fire. I’ve got about five questions for you, they’re kind of like fill in the blanks, and we’re going to plow through these nice and quick.

So I’m going to keep you on your toes, I’m not going to tell you what they are until they pop up. So are you ready?

Peter:  Yes.

Yuri:    Alright, so here we go. Your biggest weakness?

Peter:  It’s probably all that minutiae stuff, like keeping track of everything. I suck at it.

Yuri:    Nice. Your biggest strength?

Peter:  Breaking down complex topics for almost anybody.

Yuri:    Very nice. I can definitely relate to that one. One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Peter:  Writing.

Yuri:    Cool. What do you do first thing in the morning?

Peter:  I ask myself I really have to get up.

Yuri:    And the last one… Complete this sentence: “I know I’m being successful when…”

Peter:  I can keep paying my bills!

Yuri:    Awesome. Love it. Well, Peter—this has been fun man. Thank you so much for taking the time. What is the best place for people to follow what you’re up to online?

Peter:  You could follow me on Facebook—www.facebook.com/peterbaker4. And I’ve got a website too, it’s www.peterdbaker.com

Yuri:    Awesome. Peter, once again thanks so much taking the time—sharing your journey and your wisdom. This has been a lot of fun.

Any final words you want to impart to our listeners?

Peter:  Just put in the reps. That’s all it takes.

Yuri:    Put in the reps. Love it. Well thanks again Peter, have an awesome day.

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Yuri’s Take

So there you have it guys—I hope you enjoyed this interview with Peter. We had some fun discussions and there’s some really cool lessons I think.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, remember to go to iTunes and subscribe to the Healthpreneur™ podcast, because I’ve got some serious interviews coming your way to help you stay on track with your business, to keep you inspired and give you some strategies and insights.

All of this can help you keep on sharing your message and grow your business, so you can impact more people in this world and obviously live an amazing quality of life in the process.

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