Transcription

Welcome the Healthpreneur podcast guys. Yuri Elkaim here. Today is a solo round, a solo sermon as I sometimes refer to them.

Today we’re talking about nine things nobody tells you about being an entrepreneur. The audio you’re about to listen to has actually been extracted from one of my YouTube videos where I talk about this.

I thought I’d come in and formally introduce you to this topic and let you know that this is going to be an extraction from a previous video that I had recorded. Nonetheless, these are nine really really big points. If you want to write them down or if you relate to them (I’m sure you will) you’ll definitely appreciate this.

So without any further ado, let’s jump into these bad boys.

I want to share with you a couple of things, nine things specifically, that most people never tell you about being an entrepreneur. I want to kind of pull back the curtains and give you the no BS truth about what I’ve learned in the past eleven years online, running my own multiple seven figure online business, but also being an entrepreneur at the core of my being and my DNA.

If you were to do a chromosome test and get a DNA genetic code for me, you would find entrepreneur somewhere in that mixture.

 

1) There are no overnight successes 

The first thing no one tells you—maybe you’ve heard this before, but I’m going to remind you—is that there are no overnight successes. All of the overnight successes that I know of took about five to ten years in the making.

The thing is, we live in a world that rewards the event, the outcome—and we forget about the process. We forget about the fact that a lot of these Hollywood actors were broke waiters working three different jobs while taking acting school and they couldn’t get a part for ten years.

Then finally, boom, they landed a part and it changed their life. Now we see them rolling out onto the red carpet and looking all glamorous. We forget about the journey.

And it’s even more pervasive in the entrepreneurial space. We see Richard Branson and Elon Musk and all these amazing entrepreneurs doing great things in the world, and unless you’ve read their autobiographies or books about them, we forget about the journey.

That leaves us with a very skewed idea of what success should look like, or what’s required to achieve that success.

So don’t get hung up on the Instagram images or the bells and whistles, the bling bling, because honestly, none of that stuff matters and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, diligence and persistence. Got it?

2) Sometimes, being an entrepreneur sucks

The second thing is that being an entrepreneur sucks sometimes. There are days where, honestly, you just want to lay in bed. And when I say you, I really mean me.

Not every day, obviously. That would be called depression—which is obviously a topic for another day—but there are days when you just don’t want to get out of bed. Stuff is just not going your way and it’s always cloudy and raining on you for whatever reason.

Well, you know what? As an entrepreneur, there are days when you can stay in bed. And, if you have a team of people that rely on you, there are days that you can’t stay in bed. Understand that it’s not all peaches and roses.

And that’s why a lot of people are not willing to go down the path of entrepreneurship—because they don’t have what it takes to go through those dark times so that they can see the sun or the rainbow outside of that darkness.

But I can tell you—even though there are days when you just want to stay in bed and curl up under your blankets and hide from the world, it is well worth it. I would never trade any of those days, which are few and far between, with any of the stuff that I’ve been able to do with my business and the people that I’ve been able to serve.

It’s truly truly an amazing privilege to be an entrepreneur.

3) Happiness is proportional to your ability to be comfortable with uncertainty

The third thing no one tells you is that your happiness as an entrepreneur, I believe, is directly proportional to your ability to be comfortable with uncertainty.

I often talk about this with my wife. I would go crazy if I knew that I had a fixed income for the next x number of months or years, working in a job. If I knew exactly every month I was only making $5,000, I would slit my wrists. It would be insane.

I would much rather have the uncertainties, the ups and downs of business, of revenue higher some months than others and not knowing if I’m going to make as much as I did last month, or none at all—than having that predictable certain income where there’s no end in sight.

It’s like, “Okay, if I want to save for this house and go on this vacation, I have to save for this number of months based on what I’m earning,” blah blah blah.

As an entrepreneur, you want to take a trip somewhere? Guess what? You create value. You create a surge of income through some kind of promotion or some type of new, awesome thing that you put in the world—and you basically afford yourself that travel experience, that house, that car, whatever it is that you want.

And that’s an awesome, awesome thing. Because entrepreneurs are creators. You are a creator, and as a result of creating, guess what? You’ve created stuff that’s of value, hopefully, in this world … And simply as an exchange of value, people give you money.

That’s a beautiful thing, especially when you can see the future of a rising trend.

You’re like, “Listen, last year I made this amount of money (as a business or personally), and this year I think I have a really good sense that I can make more.”

That’s great, because you are in control. You are in the driver’s seat. You determine how much you make. You determine what you do.

You’re not building somebody else’s dream. You’re building your dream. That is an amazing position to be in.

4) Entrepreneurship is in your DNA

The other thing that I truly believe is that entrepreneurship is not something that’s teachable. Again, this is debatable and maybe you have a different opinion, but I don’t believe that people can go from being a nine-to-fiver and just being happy as an employee to being a full blown entrepreneur.

I really believe that as an entrepreneur, it’s built into your hard-wiring. It’s in your DNA and over time, you kind of start to unlock it.

Maybe from an early age you were stubborn and didn’t want to listen. But you were super creative and you had attention deficit disorder, you couldn’t sit still in class.

Instead of being medicated, let’s celebrate that, because that is an amazing trait, an amazing ability—to be able to be creative and think outside the box and not want to sit in a class for six hours a day and follow this rote way of learning.

If I look at my kids, I can sense at a very young age, it’s there. I’m not going to force it on them, but it’s there. I’m going to work with them, hopefully bring it out—and ultimately for them, whatever they want to do is all that matters.

But what I’m saying is, if you have that entrepreneurial DNA, it’s something that can be harvested over time. If you’re somebody who never wants to take risk and do your own thing, that’s not going to change. I really don’t believe it is. Anyway, that’s my opinion.

5) Being your own boss is the ultimate form of security

The ultimate form of security is being your own boss.

Now, this is hilarious. I think we live in a really twisted world sometimes, because let’s say you go to the bank to get a loan or a mortgage on a new property you want to buy. What the bank is going to look for is … first and foremost, they’re going to be like, “What is your employment? Do you have a steady job working for a good company? Put in your time? Clock in, clock out? Awesome.”

That, they actually favor, from a risk perspective, because they think that is more stable than you owning your company.

I’ve bought three properties in my live over the past ten years, and as a self-employed entrepreneur, I can tell you that you have to jump through some serious hoops to purchase a property, especially in Canada.

I’m happy that’s there, because we have a very good housing market in Canada, but at the same time it’s ridiculous.

Let’s say that you work for a company who has hundreds of thousands of employees, and guess what? I’m going to give you a little sneak peek behind closed doors. As the CEO of my own company, I have a team of 12 people.

At any moment, after shooting this video, I could fire any one of them if I wanted to. Now, I’m not going to do that because they’re amazing, but I could.

I don’t know about you, but does that sound like a very secure position, as the employee, to be in? No.

How many examples do we need to see of big companies laying off thousands of people, just shaving them off like dead skin. No thought. Done. So what do you do? You have a little severance package, a couple of months, maybe a year, and that’s it.

You go to the bank, and they expect that to be the ultimate secure job—It’s a fallacy.

The ultimate security is you. You are your best source of security.

Obviously there are times of uncertainty, but again, you control your life. You’re not in somebody else’s hands. You’re not like this puppet, and you have a puppeteer above you calling all the shots. Never forget that.

6) There’s not a lot of success at first

Number six is … There’s not a lot of success at first.

I use my example, which is not the typical example, but for the first three years of my business online, I struggled. I had zero success.

Now, I’m hoping that you’re a little bit smarter than I am so you’ve kind of seen some progress earlier on. The thing is, don’t expect overnight miracles. Your business was set up yesterday. You have no website. You have no products. You have no content. All of a sudden you think you’re going to be making money? Not going to happen.

That’s why I do what I do. I want to show you the path of least resistance to better results in a quicker amount of time. That’s why I have Healthpreneur and I’m helping all sorts of amazing health and fitness professionals take their online business, or take their ideas, and turn it into an amazing business that helps so many more people.

Again, it’s not about “I have an idea, product, I’m going to make tons of money.” It doesn’t happen like that. There’s a process involved.

You have to be realistic with that.

It’s very similar to you training a client—if you’re a personal trainer, for instance, and your client has never worked out before in their life. Guess what? Are they going to have some soreness initially? Absolutely.

If you don’t let them know about that ahead of time, I think you’re kind of giving them a bit of a disservice. If you say, “Listen, Jane, you haven’t worked out before. You’re a little bit overweight. We’re going to do some basic stuff today, and I want to let you know you’ll probably feel a little soreness for the first few workouts. Cool?” That’s just part of the process.

If you tell them, “Listen, you’re not going to feel any soreness. You’re going to feel awesome right from day one,” you’re kind of lying to them. And that’s not cool.

That’s why I think it’s really about having these expectations, and realistic expectations about what to expect in your business. It’s not all peaches and roses as I’ve said before.

7) The best school is the school of hard knocks

The seventh thing that nobody tells you about being an entrepreneur is that the best school is the school of hard knocks. I had a friend of mine who’s a close friend I’ve known for 20 some odd years. He was at the end of finishing his schooling. He did his CA. He did all that stuff.

Then he had this sum of money. He was like, “What should I do? Should I start a business or do my MBA?” Based on his upbringing and the culture he’s from, obviously schooling was very important, so he invested all that money, which was about $100,000, into doing his MBA.

Now I have a conversation with him. Is he happy doing what he’s doing? Not really. He’s doing data entry, for lack of a better term. He’s doing some other stuff. Nowadays MBAs, PhDs—it’s overrated, guys. It’s overrated.

The best opportunity you have to learn is by actually setting up your business and learning on the fly.

Make the mistakes. Blow some money on something that you thought was going to work. That’s how you’re going to learn.

You’re not going to learn from a textbook or some theory in class about Business 101 or entrepreneurship—“Here’s how to set up your own shop.” It’s all nonsense.

My wife started a jewelry business on Etsy and she’s done amazingly well. And it’s been an amazing learning curve for her. She has learned everything she’s had to do, from packaging and shipping, to making the bracelets, to advertising.

All this stuff, she’s learned in a year because she had to. She’s been forced to. She’s been thrown out into the ocean and the ocean says, “Listen. You can sink or you can swim.” That’s just the way it goes in the world. That’s just the way it goes as an entrepreneur. Again, it’s a great position to be in.

8) It can get lonely sometimes

That leads me to number eight, which is the flip side of that—as an entrepreneur, it can be very lonely sometimes. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re kind of doing what I was doing for the first few years of my business … Where I was just sitting behind the computer trying to figure things out, it’s a very lonely space.

That’s why I committed to going to live events, to joining a Mastermind group, to actually connecting with people—because it’s amazing when you can connect with other people over an uncommon commonality.

You and I have an uncommon commonality, which is we are uncommon entrepreneurs in the health, fitness and wellness space. Not everyone is like that, right?

There are entrepreneurs in all sorts of different fields, but we are specializing in the health and wellness space. That’s an uncommon commonality.

So when you can connect with people like you, you feel like you’re part of a tribe. There’s a bigger meaning. Now you can connect with others who get you.

I’m sure you’ve had this at some point—especially if you have an online business—where even your family is like, “Yuri, what is it exactly that you do?”

I don’t know about you, but that’s like the worst possible question to answer. How do you even answer that to somebody who doesn’t even speak the same language as you? It’s like you’re speaking Japanese and they’re speaking Arabic.

I don’t even know how to explain what I do to the average person. Even to my family members. In fact they thought that they kind of understood what I did after they saw me on Dr. Oz. They were like, “Oh my God. Did you see Yuri? He’s so successful! He’s on Dr. Oz!”

None of that stuff matters. But to the average person who doesn’t understand what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, a lot of that superficial stuff—the bells and whistles and the bling bling—they really think that you’re doing well.

What I’m saying is that when you can surround yourself with other people in your space who are also entrepreneurs, who are also helping others, who get what this whole online game is all about. Who understand what an opt-in page is, what an email list is.

I was audited by the CRA, Canadian Revenue Agency, a couple of years ago because they didn’t understand how our business operated. It took me weeks to explain and show all the statements. “This is how this works. Do you know this thing called Amazon? You ever buy a book on Amazon? It’s kind of like that but it’s not the same.”

So the world is slowly catching up to what we do, but they’re still far behind. You want to be surrounding yourself with people who get it, and who can support you at a personal level—because again, it can be lonely—but also at a professional level where they can help you in your business and so forth.

Being lonely sucks. It’s one of the leading causes of unhappiness and early death among seniors who lose their spouses, for instance. You want to really be surrounded with others who can support you in your journey, and you can support them as well.

9) Entrepreneurs and small business drive the economy

The ninth and final thing that most people don’t tell you about being an entrepreneur, is that entrepreneurs and small business drive the economy.

That’s it. It’s the base of the economic system. It’s not coming from the big Fortune 500 companies.

Because, think about this—all those big Fortune 500 companies were initially a small business. They were initially started by somebody who had a vision or a small team of people who wanted to accomplish a similar goal.

Over time—decades, hundreds of years—they built up and grew into these prominent companies. That’s awesome. Good for them.

But understand this. Everything starts with one individual who has an idea. And that’s amazing.

Think about this—the camera that I’m shooting on, this room that I’m in, the computer that you’re watching this from or the smartphone that you’re on … What was that?

That was an idea.

An intangible, untouchable thing that somebody had in their head and said, “You know what? Let’s make this happen.”

And guess what, guys? Entrepreneurs are the only people who do that stuff.

The employees, the workers, the people actually doing it—they’re valuable, extremely valuable. But nothing happens without that initial idea or vision that comes solely from the risk taker, from the visionary, and from the person who sees a better future for him and for his fellow humans.

And that’s why I love being an entrepreneur. I hope you do as well.

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If you’ve enjoyed this, share it with your friends who are also health and fitness entrepreneurs. Be sure to subscribe to the channel for more awesome videos to help you take your health or fitness expertise into a thriving online business.

Remember to join us over at the website healthpreneurgroup.com, where I’m sharing awesome resources and tools to help you accomplish these very goals. Until our next video, have an awesome one. Go out and change some lives. I’ll see you then.

Could you relate to any of those? I bet there were a couple in there that were like, “Yeah. This is definitely me. I can relate to this.”

If so, that’s awesome. Once again, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe to the Healthpreneur podcast on iTunes. We have three amazing episodes coming your way every single week.

Mondays are my solo sessions where I’m with you one-on-one. Wednesdays and Fridays, I’m bringing you some amazing guests to help you stay inspired and motivated to keep on keeping on, even when the going gets tough, because the world needs to hear your voice.

The world needs your message. They need to hear your story because what you are doing makes a difference in people’s lives.

I really believe that what you have to offer is unique. It doesn’t matter if other people do something similar, you have a unique perspective. You have a story that other people are going to connect with. Never forget that.

Introspect. Don’t compare. Focus on your lane. Do you and keep on going on.

Transcription

 Today’s guest is none other than Jennifer Fugo.

I’ve known Jennifer for a number of years. She attended one of my mastermind events and has done some amazing things with her blog, GlutenFreeSchool.com.

Jennifer has been getting some very high rankings and a lot of traffic for some very competitive keywords in the gluten space

As you can imagine, gluten it’s a very competitive space.

She’s done very well and I’m happy for her progress and success.

Let me tell you a little bit more about who she is.

Jennifer is a functional nutritionist and CEO of The Gluten Free School.

In her clinical practice, she helps women with chronic IBS problems which are obviously a pain in the butt. No pun intended.

Jennifer helps them get back to pooping like a normal person while simultaneously empowering gluten sensitive women to finally break up with gluten.

She’s been featured on Dr. Oz where she’s appeared twice as a guest. She’s also been featured on Yahoo News, CNN, E-How as well as several prominent gluten free magazines.

She’s got great content which has enabled her to be featured in many publications.

Jennifer has also written a best-selling book that hit number five on Amazon in the food allergies category which is a very competitive space.

One of the things that she’s most proud of, at least this year, is she’s taken three vacations.

The reason why I mention that is because we’ll be talking about the importance of disconnecting from your business.

So now that you know who Jennifer is, without any further ado, let’s bring her into the show and have some fun.

 

Jennifer welcome. How’s it going?

[Jennifer] It’s going well. Thank you for having me.

[Yuri] Yes, it’s a pleasure. It’s been too long since we’ve connected. I think the last time we hung out was in Toronto at our mastermind in May or June of 2016.

[Jennifer] Yes and it was my first time to Canada.

[Yuri] Isn’t that crazy. What did you think about Toronto?

[Jennifer] I loved it. It felt like I was going to Europe, but it felt familiar. There was an American familiarity to it.

For instance, I was in Italy this past April. It was very different, somewhat similar, but different enough where I felt like I was. away.

[Yuri] If you’re American and you’ve not come to Toronto, you guys are crazy. Part of my mission is to extract more Americans up north because Toronto is an amazing city. Everyone is blown away by how big it is. It’s the fourth largest city in North America and it’s awesome.

Jennifer, I’m happy that you had an enjoyable time when you were in Toronto and that we got to hang out. It was a lot of fun.

[Jennifer] It was. And there’s also a lot of good gluten free food there for anybody that can’t have gluten. I was very impressed by the opportunities the restaurants provided and were willing to go through to make sure I ate safely, so it was great.

[Yuri] It’s a very healthy accommodating city with a lot of health conscious neighborhoods and restaurants. I get fresh pressed green juice delivered to my house on a regular basis, which is amazing.

Traveling, outsourcing, and staying focused

What’s been going on with you?

I see you’ve been traveling. I saw you were in Italy posting pictures showing all this kind of stuff. It’s been a good year for you.

What’s new and exciting?

[Jennifer] I finished my master’s degree in clinical nutrition which opened a lot of new doors. I had closed my practice for a couple of years and then reopened October of last year.

As I’ve been slowly building my business, I recognize there are so many different pieces to it that need some love and attention.

What I realized was that I can’t do everything myself and began hiring people to help me.

I recently hired a copywriter, and a marketing administrative assistant to be the liaison between myself and my business to help connect me to food companies and how we may work together and partner together.

I have a practice with an administrative assistant that’s helping me get the flow of things down as we upgrade to different software.

For now, that’s been a huge step.

I already have a social media marketing team.

I’ve been working with a woman I hired almost five years ago who handles my social media and she is amazing. She’s always five steps ahead of me. She’s better than me at that job.

I realized how much of value that’s brought specifically because I don’t want to sit on Facebook all day posting 10 articles a week or 20 articles a week on my Facebook. I want to do any of that.

[Yuri] We’re not supposed to do that?

[Jennifer] No

[Yuri] I’ve been wasting all this time. I’m just kidding.

[Jennifer] What you do Yuri, is so different. I watch your videos and there are great reminders of things I’ve forgotten. You remind me that I’m making a mistake or that I sometimes need to up my game.

I really enjoy watching your videos.

What you do is different than what I do which is posting about my blog, giving content and memes to keep people engaged.

It’s nice to have somebody on my side that’s able to do the things that I just I don’t have the time or energy for.

I don’t want to be on Facebook as much as I am now and it’s been so nice to minimize that.

[Yuri] I completely agree with you and I think you’re talking mostly about my profile page and maybe my Healthpreneur Group.

The Yuri Elkaim Fan Page which is health and fitness, has that same machine you’re talking about where we have all our stuff scheduled out.

To be honest, I don’t even I don’t even know what’s going on over there. That’s all being taken care of by someone else.

I’ll pop in there every now and then to do a Facebook live because I enjoy doing that.

I think social media is powerful, but I think a lot of people spend way too much time on the minutia that’s not really moving the needle, but it can also be very powerful if it’s done properly.

I’m happy to see that you’re expanding your team and giving yourself a bit more freedom and travelling.

Did you travel all of Italy or did you do more of the Amalfi Coast and up the coastline?

[Jennifer] My husband and I had this dream of renting an Alfa Romeo because we both drive manual transmissions. We wanted to do a road trip in Italy. We flew into Milan and we drove to Lake Como and then we drove down through Genoa and across Portofino.

As we drove further down, we stayed in Los Spezia which is the base of Cinque Terre. We drove across through Lucca to Florence where stayed for three days and then went to Bologna, Parma, Modena, and back to Milan where we flew out of.

It was a fun and interesting experience. I don’t remember how many hundreds of miles it was, but it was an interesting experience.

It was really cool to take a break from my business for those 10 days and go experience a different part of life.

Eating gluten free in Italy

One reason we wanted to go to Italy was from a foodie perspective because my diet is gluten free and oftentimes I avoid things like dairy and eggs.

I’m sure it would surprise a lot of people who know me that I’d choose to go to the capital of bread and pasta to treat myself and my husband to this food excursion. You would think it would be so gluten heavy, but it wasn’t. We almost didn’t want to come back because the food was so amazing and it was so easy for me to eat.

[Yuri] That’s awesome because you don’t associate Italy with gluten free.

You know Dr. Peter Osborne, right?

He was at an event we ran in Florida a couple of years ago and he was telling me that he’d just come back from a 10 day trip to Italy.

He’s just very much like you like you – no gluten.

I’m like “how does that work?”

He’s like, “Oh yeah. No problem. We found these cool restaurants and it was all good”

I’ve never thought of Italy being as progressive as North America is with regard to being gluten-free, and obviously it is.

[Jennifer] They test all the children at a young age for celiac disease.

We stayed with friends of our family in Bologna and I was a little nervous to tell them.

They were like “Oh yeah. We’re friends with you on Facebook. We know we already know what to expect when you said you’re coming to stay with us.”

They don’t understand why people in the U.S. are a little more difficult and get upset when you say you need to change something in your diet. Their focus is they want everyone to be able to eat together. They don’t really care what is or is not on your plate, as long as everyone eats together. That’s what matters most to them.

During my stay, that was something that resonated so deeply with me. It was that sense of family and togetherness.

“Who cares whether you’re having gluten or not. Let’s just all eat together as a group, as a family, as a community.”

It was a life changing experience many times over.

[Yuri] It’s so cool how you can have “less than healthy food”, but feel so good afterwards because of the ambiance, the energy and the happiness versus stressing out about your food.

[Jennifer] I encourage anybody if you’re afraid to travel internationally. One thing that stood out to us was that many times the restaurants would cite up to 14 or 15 different allergens on their menus. Things you wouldn’t expect like celery. They are so much further advanced as far as food labeling is concerned than we are in the U.S.

Best of all, they don’t care and they’re not judgmental. I never got a nasty look.

They’re like “No worries. We have that in the back, or we can adjust it for you. No problem.”

[Yuri] You have the domain, GlutenFreeSchool.com which is a great URL.

I’m going to give you a better one which might work better the next time you are in Italy.
FreeGlutenSchool.com.

Come on guys. Eat all the bread you want. It’s all good.

Taking time off as an entrepreneur

Time to get down to business. You travelled for 10 days and you’ve taken a couple of trips this year.

What’s it been like to have that distance and space from your business? What has having that space from your business brought back to you physically, emotionally, and mentally?

[Jennifer] It gave me a sense of clarity and that 30,000-foot view of not just my life, but also how I am within my business.

I didn’t take a vacation for possibly three, maybe four years before this.

Part of the reason was because I was in grad school and it’s very difficult to take time off. I was also afraid that if I left my business, what was going to happen?

It’s an irrational fear to have. Taking a week off is not going to kill your business. You just have to be smart. You have to plan for it.

I’ve made it a point this summer to take long weekends, to go away with my family, and enjoy time because that time has been invaluable to me and it has helped reduce my stress overall.

I now find that when I do sit down to work, I’m so much more focused.

The target audience that I talk to are women in their 50s and early 60s who are very family centric. This is a part of their culture, their livelihood, and what is important to them.

I have adopted and tested that out and what’s it like to be with your family, to really be in that moment, to cook and eat with them and go away with them.

I have realized there is a whole part of my life I was missing out on and as a result, it’s made me a lot more passionate about what I do.

[Yuri] You have to have that space. I’ve got three kids and the space from the kids is important because I really appreciate them that much more when I’m with them. If I were with them 24/7, they would not be alive. It’s the same in business.

If you have that space for business, it gives you more clarity, and you come back more refreshed.

Knowing what you know now about where your business was a year ago, or three years ago and seeing the power of taking time off, would you have done that earlier even with the way the business was set up back in the day.?

[Jennifer] Yes. If I could go back in a time machine I would tell myself to schedule time off. What I’m shooting for next year is to take an entire month off.

[Yuri] Go for it. It’s amazing. I took a two month sabbatical last summer. It was the best.

[Jennifer] I remember that and I really enjoyed seeing your energy when you came back from that.

It does change you to take a step back, reboot yourself, and come back with a fresh frame of mind.

[Yuri] It’s a paradigm shift I think for entrepreneurs and business owners. We live in a culture especially with social media and a lot of different influencers talking about the importance of grind and hustle, and outwork your competition.

There’s this badge of honor for putting in 20 hour days, but you can’t do that.

You can do that for a short amount of time if you have to, but you’re going to burn out.

What I appreciate where you are now, you’re recognizing the importance of that balance.

Even if that balance is not 9:00 to 5:00 every day, you work hard for a little bit, take a couple weeks off, do your thing and find your own rhythm. It’s really that important.

[Jennifer] I’m Italian. My great grandparents came here from Italy. Family and time off to Italians in general time is very important.

From my understanding Europeans typically take six weeks’ vacation every year. It’s sad that in America we have to kill ourselves.

A business coach had said to me…

“Look, you have to be honest with yourself about what type of lifestyle you want to live. If you’re going to shoot for a $5 million company, the job and the way your life is going to be structured is going to be much different than being comfortable with doing $250,000 or $100,000.

It’s OK whichever you want to choose, but choose a lifestyle that’s going to work for you that you can handle. One that’s not going to be overwhelming. You can always choose at some other point to say OK I want to up my game and go to this next level or goal, but a successful business is successful based on what you want your life to look like.”

It was very freeing to hear him say that.

[Yuri] What are your thoughts when you hear people say I want to scale my company to 10 million, or 100 million?

[Jennifer] That’s a good question. I know there’s a journey out there. I’m not sure if that is the journey I want to have.

I have had a lot of wonderful experiences in my life. I would ideally like get somewhere into six figures and be very comfortable. Once I am at that point I can reassess based on my life and where I want to be.

I’m a little hesitant to go dreaming so large. The more I’m finding out from meeting people that are so far ahead of where I am, that have gone further distances, there are some things I don’t know that I want.

For instance, I don’t want that many team members. There are practical things you need to think about and complexity issues that come along with each zero you add on.

Right now, I’m just looking to get a lot of groundwork laid so that next year will be a much different experience. From there I’ll make my decision about what I want to do beyond that.

[Yuri] I think it’s important because a lot of people look at different businesses and think,
“Oh my god that’s what I want to do. That’s what I have to do.”

You end up modeling something that’s not true to you.

If you build a business around the life you want to live, that really should be all that matters.

As long as you’re providing value and contribute to others, you don’t have to have a billion dollar company.

I think everyone has their own path and some people want to build those companies and that’s awesome. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but I think it’s important to honor yourself and have the mindset of:

“I think this is the type of business I want to run. This is the type of life I want to have. I don’t need a thousand employees. I don’t even need ten. I’m going to do this.”

In your journey, what was the one big challenge you think back about over the past couple of years? What was that one moment where you’re, “Holy Shit! I can’t believe I got through that.”

What was that big challenge and how did you get through it?

 Recognizing challenges, dealing with them, and moving forward

[Jennifer] This is a great question. This is something I talked about with somebody who works with me and had recently cried over something in her business.

She asked me if I ever cried over something that was so frustrating.

I did have a similar experience. The last time that I cried over my business was January 1, 2016.

I know that date because I had sat down at my computer to get some tax documents ready for my accountant.

At the time, I was using the hard copy version of Quick Books, and my company wouldn’t open up.

I tried the backup file and that wouldn’t work. I went on my hard drive and couldn’t find the file. I was freaking out because several years’ worth of financial data had disappeared.

Long story short. It was my fault. I learned you had to be careful with how you back up data, especially on hard drives, so that is an important piece of this.

As I sat there sobbing, my husband was great. He just let me cry it out and said, “look we’ll figure this out”.

I got in touch with my accountant and told him the problem. He gave me a very feasible solution that worked out.

What I learned from this incident was so powerful because I realized it was time for me to step up my game. I had to stop distrusting a lot of the online applications and programs.

That is a critical part of your business.

I migrated everything over to Quick Books Online, and by the way, this is not an advertisement for Quick Books.

There was a sticking point that was preventing me from making that leap. I didn’t trust the service and I didn’t see the value in it.

I didn’t see the freedom that I could gain from having a service that backs everything up for me, having the ability to call customer service any time of the day, or that my husband could work on it from any computer. It made things easier, and more organized.

That has been a big lesson for me. Now, when I have to add on another service or integration, instead of being resistant to it, I now think about it in terms that this make my life easier or will make someone on my team’s life easier.

Integrations have made my life so much easier, as long as they work.

For people that are in the beginning of their business, yes, there are going to be moments that are going to break you. And you will cry.

Yuri, I don’t know if you’ve ever cried over your business.

I realize there were things sitting inside of me that either I wasn’t willing to deal with, or it was a moment where it became very clear that I had to make a change.

Recognizing that, instead of saying I failed, or fixating on I failed, those moments that felt so emotionally jarring, turned into some of the most pivotal points of change within my business and how I operated.

I think I’ve gotten past my moments of crying.

My tolerance for addressing things over the last two years has really improved tremendously.

If anybody is dealing with things where you end up in tears over clients or anything like that, give yourself 10 or 15 minutes, deal with it, address it, and let it all out.

Then you focus on what’s the next step. How are you going to get yourself out of this? How do you fix this?

If you spend your days telling yourself “I’m a failure”, you’re not helping yourself.

It’s sort of like a child when you put them in time out. You give them that time to deal with their stuff and then you can start getting back to normalcy of how you move forward.

[Yuri] There’s a level of maturity that you acknowledged there. You go through this challenge and initially it’s like, “Oh my God. How am I going to overcome this?”

But then you do it, you look back on it, and you realize it wasn’t that bad.

The way I look at it now, if crap really hits the fan, or something comes up that is a big obstacle or challenge, instead of freaking out, you need to think, “What’s the next step?”

I look at it as a game. I’ve got a cool challenge to overcome so I can add that to my reference list of things that I have overcome.

It becomes a little more interesting that way as opposed to being paralyzed by “Oh my god. I’m never gonna get through this.”

[Jennifer] The simple solution is to ask your yourself who is on your team or who do you know that you can ask for a referral.

Here’s a recent situation I found myself in.

I have this upsell issue because of my newsletter service.

This has been a thorn in my side for the last six months. It’s a tech problem and I hate tech problems.

I finally got my tech guy on the phone the other day and he’s like “Oh you know we can do everything with this in Infusionsoft.”

I was like “Really”. I don’t have to pay for another service or put another plug-in on my website? I don’t have to do any of this stuff?”

To my surprise, his answer was “No. We can build all of this.”

It’s important to surround yourself with people that are better than you are at in particular areas. They can help guide you in moments where you’re like “I don’t know what to do”.

[Yuri] As you’ve grown your business online, what’s been the biggest needle mover for you in terms of marketing or getting your products out there?

Marketing, listening to your tribe

[Jennifer] Listening to my tribe. I’m doing surveys, reading people’s e-mails, going through all the letters I get sent, and looking at it, I realized, “Wow, I really missed the mark”.

What was an eye opener for me, I had been under the impression the ideal woman I could serve in my private practice were women in their 40’s.

Thinking that this demographic was my true avatar, I’ve been talking to women in their 40’s.

It turns out the demographic that comes to me that I serve, are women between the age of 55 – 60. That is a much different age bracket. What is important to them is different from women who are in their 40’s.

It’s important I listen to them so that I can focus on them, and provide the value they want and need.

Even though in your mind you might decide this is who I want to work with, make sure you listen to them, you talk to them, and that it’s a good fit.

[Yuri] If you’re talking with 55- 60-year-old ladies, it affects how you write to them. For instance, you may be using the term “your grandkids” as opposed to “your kids”. It’s that small distinction that makes all the difference

[Jennifer] What’s important to them is so different than a woman in her 40s.

[Yuri] What do you love about your business? What do you love about having your own business and having the internet at your disposal to share your message?

[Jennifer] I love that I can connect with people all over the world and that I can inspire or empower somebody anywhere in the world.

I’m not entirely certain why, but I get a lot of e-mails from people in South Africa. I never anticipated that or that I would have a client that’s in China. She’s American, but her family lives in China because her husband works there.

I have people all over the world I’m able to provide information to that changes the quality of their life.

I help make their lives easier and better by improving their capacity to enjoy their family, to work more efficiently, and feel like they can get their household taken care of amongst other things.

It trickles down to all aspects of their life.

That’s why I love it. I am not confined by a building, and that to me, is so powerful.

[Yuri] What advice would you give to someone who is like a little Jennifer? Someone who is coming up in your shoes who has an idea for a website or a product or a membership and has some great stuff to share, but they’re not sure what to do. Perhaps they do have some stuff and it’s not working out.

If you were to sit down and have a coffee with them., what kind of advice would you give to that person?

Jennifer’s story and her advice for new health and fitness entrepreneurs

[Jennifer] The first piece of advice I would provide them is that they’ve got to test out their idea a little bit further and find out if their idea has legs.

Not every idea is going to work. Gluten Free School was not my first iteration of my business.

We want to think that every idea we have is a million dollar idea and it’s not. Oftentimes there’s probably more failures than there are successes.

I’ve had to work hard to get gluten free school to where it is. It’s taken a long time. There’s been a lot of trial and error.

I would advise someone to be very clear with their plan. Interview your ideal client to get a sense if what you’re saying or sharing is of value to the person you are looking to serve.

[Yuri] Did you find it helpful working one on one with people in a clinical setting? Did you find that to be an advantage to you for coming online in terms of really understanding your avatar or potential clients?

[Jennifer] I would say to some degree yes. I don’t want to take 100 percent credit for the growth the web site has now. That would be unfair. For instance, Google changed its algorithm and started to favor some of the posts that I had written a couple of years ago which are now getting massive amounts of traffic.

Working one on one with clients has absolutely helped me. I’m not talking to a woman in her 40s. I’m working with women who are grandmothers.

I worked with my dad who’s a doctor for about 10 to 12 years in his medical practice directly with patients.

The experience I had working at my father’s practice, seeing the issues that were preventing women from feeling empowered in the conventional medical system, is what helped me get to where I am.

Working one on one has been enormously helpful in understanding what’s important, how to really serve that audience, how to provide them with the most value, and how to speak to them from where they are.

[Yuri] That’s one of the reasons I love working with health and fitness entrepreneurs. Almost all of them have come from having worked one on one with people, so they have a good sense of who they are. They know who they are trying to serve.

When I was working with clients, I was working with them for an hour at a time. There’s a lot of discussion that happens in an hour and you multiply that by several training sessions, several years, you can’t get that data from doing stuff online.

Our industry has a unique advantage because we’re so connected to a lot of our audience, at least initially.

[Jennifer] I still do my copywriting for my newsletters every week. I write them and I respond to those emails, and I think people on my list appreciate that.

I’m not saying this is bad with regard to entrepreneurs whose businesses have grown so large that they have somebody else writing the copy for them. That’s where they are and that’s fine.

I think to some degree, by doing this, people can hear my voice. They know what I have experienced. They know I share their frustration, their troubles, and their everyday ups and downs. I really do understand it and they appreciate it.

I’ve had a lot of people write me and tell me…

“I know that when I read your newsletters, it’s you writing, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken. I know that if I were to hit reply to this e-mail, you’re going to respond back to me”.

Part of my commitment to my business is being a human being. That comes to the part of scalability.

I like that I get testimonials about my customer service. That alone is awesome.

I don’t have all these chargebacks and issues and fights with people.

I like it to some degree that there is a person. There’s personality and there’s somebody there. It’s not just some random stranger you’re talking to.

You have to decide what type of business you want. You have to decide what’s important to you so that you can remain authentic to your own personal values about how you want to interact with the public, your audience, and what’s going to work within your own life.

[Yuri] I want to ask you more question before we get to the good ’ole rapid fire.

Let’s say what happened to quick books happen to your business, god forbid. It disappeared overnight, and you had to start in a new market starting tomorrow. What’s the first thing you would start doing to get that business up and running?

[Jennifer] I would start doing research online. I’d be jumping into Facebook groups, reading people’s comments, and asking questions to test out some theories about that market.

I would figure out based on the amount of funds I have available to me what I want to do, and what’s going to be the most efficient way to get to where I need to be in the next six to twelve months.

Rapid-fire questions

[Yuri] Okay Jennifer. Are you ready for the rapid fire?

[Jennifer] I’ll try my best.

[Yuri] I’m going to ask you a quick little question or fill in the blank and whatever comes to mind, just shout it out.

Your biggest weakness.

[Jennifer] I’ll have to say tech stuff.

[Yuri] Your biggest strength.

[Jennifer] Being efficient.

[Yuri] One skill you’ve become dangerously good at to grow your business.

[Jennifer] I would say Infusionsoft

[Yuri] That’s interesting because you said Tech is your weakness.

[Jennifer] I hired a consultant for two years and had him train me on it.

[Yuri] What do you do first thing in the morning.

[Jennifer] I go to the bathroom.

[Yuri] Yeah sure. After that. After the business is done.

[Jennifer] I usually go and sit at my desk.

[Yuri] And you just sit there or do you do work?

[Jennifer] No. I’m usually just looking at current events at what’s going on in the world.

[Yuri] Final question. You’re going to complete the following sentence.

I know I’m being successful when ___________

[Jennifer] I know I’ll be successful. That’s hard because I feel like I’m successful now.

[Yuri] Let’s rephrase that. I am currently being successful when _______

[Jennifer] I am currently being successful when I do something that is outside of my comfort zone and I just get it done.

[Yuri] There we have it.

Jennifer Fugo this has been awesome. Thank you so much.

What’s going on? What do people need to know about? What’s coming up in the next couple of months that people can check out now or in the near future?

GlutenFreeSchool.com is one place.

Is there any other place they can stay up to date with what you’re up to?

[Jennifer] That’s pretty much the main spot. I have a bunch of passive programs and courses that people can go through on their own such as the Gluten Free Sugar Cleanse which is a live group program that starts January.

There’s also Kick Gluten for Good which is the Bible of all the gluten free knowledge one would ever need to make the diet and lifestyle happen in a short amount of time.

If anybody’s interested please check them out

GlutenFreeSchool.com is the best place to go to check in, say hello, shoot me an email, read some blogs, and check out the recipes. That’s my hub.

[Yuri] You guys should go and check it out. She’s got amazing stuff on there.

It’s no surprise that your ranking at the top of Google for a lot of these very competitive keywords which is tremendous, Jennifer. Well done.

Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been great to connect with you and I look forward to seeing you soon.

[Jennifer] Yes. You as well. I look forward to seeing you.

***********************************************************

Yuri’s Take

So hopefully you found this interview and conversation to be inspiring. One of the things that I love that Jennifer has been able to do the last year or so in her business is just taking more time off.

As I had eluded to, I had taken a two month sabbatical in the summer of 2016 and it was just amazing.

All I did was play tennis, I hung out with my kids and it was phenomenal. I came back so refreshed, and so much clearer.

I’ve inspired other people to start taking more sabbaticals in their business, or even thinking about how they can set their business up to take a sabbatical whether it’s a month or longer.

You don’t have to take a full sabbatical, but just giving yourself the permission to step away from your business, to have the space to think about nothing.

Perhaps have the space to think about bigger things you want to do in your business as opposed to being stuck in the forest, being in the trenches day in and day out where you’re doing the work in the business but never thinking about the bigger vision.

It’s so important that you step away whenever you can.

That’s why I’m such a huge believer in “Thinking Thursday” where you take Thursdays off.

Whatever day of the week works for you, take some time off. Disconnect from the Internet, take a notepad. Do some big thinking. Go for a walk. Spend half the day in nature. Things like that make a significant difference.

If you can get away for a week or so and completely disconnect from the business, that would be powerful as well.

While there’s a time and a place for that, Jennifer didn’t start taking vacations until she was three years into her business. As she mentioned, she probably would have still done that sooner. It’s something you want to build into your calendar before you do anything else to be very honest with you.

***********************************************************

Follow Jennifer Fugo At:

 www.glutenfreeschool.com

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Transcription

Oh yeah, Healthpreneurs.  What’s up? Yuri here.  Hope life is awesome.

If you’re listening to this episode, if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s because you are an awesome person.  That’s just the inference I’m going to make here. I want to welcome you back to another great episode.

Today I’ve got a great guest as I normally do.  We only bring amazing remarkable people on this show, not that other people are not remarkable, but these are the people I really want to highlight and bring into your world because they’re going to inspire you.

They’re going to lead you down a path of hope and optimism and open your eyes to what is possible with your business because again, as I continue to say, you have a gift, you have a message, you have a product, you have a service, you have knowledge, you have wisdom that can transform people’s lives.

You owe it to yourself, you owe it to them, to get what you know out of your head and out to the masses. And that’s what the show’s all about.

So today I’m excited to bring to you an amazing functional doctor. His name is Sachin Patel. Another Torontonian. He lives in Toronto. I think I’m bringing all of Toronto to this podcast. That’s my goal.

Yes, I’m proud to be Canadian and I’m proud to live in Toronto.

What I love about Sachin is that he is a thought leader, pure and simple. He is sharing stuff on social media that when you read it, you’re like “wow, that is thought provoking, that is powerful”.

What he’s doing with his clinic and his practice, and, what he’s doing for practitioners with the Living Proof Institute, is really cool.

I’m happy to feature him on this show, so let me quickly introduce you to Sachin Patel just in case you don’t know who he is.

He’s a father, husband, philanthropist, functional medicine practice success coach, international speaker, and bestselling author.

His philosophy is that the doctor of the future is the patient. He is actively doing whatever it takes to keep people out of the medical system by empowering them through education, self-care, and remapping their mindset.

Sachin founded the Living Proof Institute as part of his own personal transformation, and now coaches practitioners all over the world on how to step up into their power and save their communities.

To date he has delivered hundreds of community workshops. He is an advocate for changing the health care paradigm, and he has devoted his life to the betterment of healthcare for both patients and practitioners.

You can learn more about Sachin and his awesome work over at becomeproof.com.

You can get all the show notes for this episode over on the healthpreneur blog at healthpreneurgroup.com/podcast.

This is going be a fun interview. You’re going to get a lot of good stuff out of this one, so without any further ado, let’s get to the interview.

Hey Sachin. How’s it going my friend?  Welcome to the show.

 

[Sachin] Thanks brother.  I really appreciate it. It’s quite an honor to spend this time with you and share this information. I’m excited.

[Yuri] Yeah me too. It’s always great to connect with people like yourself.  I’ve admired a lot of the things you do, not just clinically.  You are a natural thought leader and you share things that gets people to think and ponder.  That’s a very powerful thing to be doing.

I don’t know if it’s strategic or it’s just the way you are, but I think it’s one of those things that really separates you from a lot of other people in the functional space. I wanted to let you know that just the case no one else has told you.

[Sachin] Well thank you. I appreciate that. I realized a while ago that regurgitating information was not really going to allow me to get my message out there.

My message is that you are your own best doctor.  What I truly believe is, that is the best way you’re going to heal, regenerate and restore your health and vitality.

The way we do that is by getting people to question their current paradigm and get them to think. I only like working with people who actually think for themselves.  Not people who are just regurgitating and repeating information mindlessly.

[Yuri] We’re in such a competitive space and that’s a very important takeaway for people listening to know.

How do you stand out in a in a space that is so competitive, where there might be a thousand other naturopathic or functional medicine doctors in your city at your disposal?  I think you’ve done a great job of doing that.

Those of you who are listening, follow Sachin on Facebook to see what he’s doing in terms of the messages he’s putting out. It really is good stuff. There’s a lot of engagement which is great.

Why did you want to do what you do? Why were you called to do this?  Was there a pivotal moment in your life?

Sachin’s watershed moment—the start of his career in functional medicine

[Sachin] As you know, hindsight is 2020. If I can trace it back to one thing, it was in 2006 when I was on the news.  I started off as a sports chiropractor. I was working my butt off working with athletes such as Olympic athletes, Marathon runners, people who are super healthy.

Being on the news really opened my eyes to the suffering that was going on out there. The news report they did was on elbow pain — tennis elbow, golfers elbow.  This was stuff that we were seeing in our office and helping people address, and then suddenly, we had the sickest people I had ever seen calling our office for appointments.  I was like ‘what gives?”.

I started interviewing them and realizing that this was a group of people who were just desperately looking for help and looking for someone to listen to them.  For some reason, they saw that in me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to listen to them, but I didn’t have the skill set to help them. Around the same time, serendipitously, I started getting case studies from one of my mentors, Ron Grisanti. He was sharing case studies of people he was helping with psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, and IBS.

These were the cases that started pouring into my office I had to turn away and it just broke my heart. It’s as if you have kids, when your child is unwell and you can’t help them.  That’s how I felt because my patients really were part of my family.

Because of this, I started realizing through Dr. Grisanti’s work that Chiropractors can do functional medicine and didn’t realize it was part of my scope.  It wasn’t part of my original training in school and he was offering a training and mentoring program which I took and it really transformed my life.

I started doing functional medicine on myself first. I had some personal health challenges I had to overcome, and it helped me to get rid of some fatigue issues I was facing, some G.I. issues, as well as some joint pain.

I knew that I really needed to get this in front of more people.

I started giving my existing chiropractic patients a questionnaire asking them about their functional health and realized that they were suffering with these issues as well.  They just never brought them to my attention because they’re coming to see me for muscular skeletal health.

That was the pivotal thing for me which was realizing how much suffering was taking place, not only in my community, but right under my own nose while I was working with chiropractic patients.

Once you learn this stuff, you just can’t go back. So that was really the pivotal thing for me.

[Yuri] That’s really cool. That’s why I love working with and connecting with people like yourself in our space because everyone’s coming from such a genuine place of their own suffering, or they had enough of someone else’s suffering, and they just wanted to put an end to it.

With chiropractic, I have to give my hats off to the profession or the people going through that training because there’s so many chiros who have done what you’ve done, which is move away from the typical chiropractic practice, to more functional medicine.

If you look at mutual friends like Peter Osborne and Josh Axe, they’ve gone that path of starting off in chiropractic and realized they could serve people more effectively by learning about some of the things you’ve mastered yourself.

It’s a very rare thing.  You don’t see too many professions like medical doctors venture off into the functional path that you see a lot of chiros are doing.  It’s something I’ve noticed. I’m sure you’ve noticed the same trend.

[Sachin] To add to that, I think functional medicine is quantified chiropractic.

A lot of the things we are engaging in our patients, are holistic principles of care.  Eighty percent of functional medicine practice is really self-care and lifestyle. The remaining twenty percent is quantifying the root cause of what’s going on.

A lot of the root causes are things that we’ve been saying for many years, that have been considered quackery for many years, and now we have the tools to objectify that patient suffering. The tools also give us the fastest path to get to that person’s health and healing.

[Yuri] Talk to me about your business. You mostly see people in the clinic but you also have a big presence online. How did you bring the two together?

The evolution of Living Proof Institute

[Sachin] For people who don’t know what we do, our practice is called The Living Proof Institute. We have a practitioner training and mentoring program that extends off of this as well.

In 2006 when I became unhinged from the traditional chiropractic practice, my journey evolved.

In 2011, I started The Living Proof Institute down in Cincinnati. It was basically built on the premise of let’s do the exact opposite of what’s being done. Let’s listen to patients. Let’s get to the root cause instead of fumbling around with their symptoms and trying to get them to feel well and co-exist within a toxic environment or toxic emotions.

Let’s get to the root cause of it and empower them so that they don’t need us forever. We’re not creating a dependency which often happens.  Even in structural care practices, patients become dependent on their practitioners.

We just wanted to get people well and release them back into the wild if you will and teach them how to survive and thrive in the environments that they were coming in.

The whole premise of this was to not take insurance so that we’re not being governed by a third party or somebody who’s never met or seen the patient, so we can do what’s right for the patient.

We started by doing functional lab testing which starts from listening to the patient. I think that’s the biggest asset practitioners can provide people is listening to them, and then using lab testing to validate what our thought processes is, and then measure and quantify what’s going on with the patient.

Eighty percent of what we do is lifestyle driven.  Twenty percent is the functional lab testing, the supplements, and their clinical care, and then eighty percent is teaching people how to take the best care of themselves and their families.

Why I think that’s extremely powerful, is because we don’t want the entire family to come in and become patients. We do our best to keep that one person healthy. They can then disseminate that information and lead by example for their family members, which is part of our initiative and our mission.

If you understand the magnitude of the problem as a practitioner, it’s not going to be everyone coming to you for help after they’re broken.  It’s going to be keeping people healthy before they get to that state, if they do get to that state. We want them to be able to initiate self-care strategies instead of running back to us to find out what’s going on.

If they can’t get to that point where they’re feeling well again through self-care strategies, we’re certainly here to help them.

Our goal is to work with people who are self-empowered and who believe in their bodies’ ability to heal and regenerate itself and are doing the things that are necessary.

They give their body the environment to heal and the emotions that are required to heal.

We’re there as a kind of a backup plan for them instead of being a first line strategy for them.

[Yuri] I’m sure you’ve gotten a ton of word of mouth referrals to the practice. Outside of that, how do you generate new leads?  How do you generate more clients? How do you grow the business?

[Sachin] There’s actually a few ways that we do that. I think the first thing is understanding the premise which is how do we keep people out of our office.  We do that through a 30-day program called 30 in 30.

We teach people, here’s the best things that you can do for yourself before you even call us.  We show them exactly what water filters we use, we give them a quick tour of our home so they understand what’s going on in our home and the self-care strategies we employ, and talk about personal care products.

We give people that ability to stay out of our office first, and then if they’re still not feeling well, we invite them into what’s called the Living Proof experience and this is their chance to come in and sit down with the clinician.

Because what we do is so different, we don’t do quote unquote just do “functional medicine.”

What we do goes far beyond the traditional thought process somebody has about functional medicine.

We invite people in and take them through a detailed intake process. We make sure that they’re a good fit because this is very patient driven versus doctor driven care. If they are a good fit, then we provide them with the right testing.

The 30 in 30 is what we would consider our feeder program. It prequalifies people in the sense that these are people who are taking some initiative in their health, and they’re still not feeling well.

That’s one way that we have patients come in, and of course, referrals and word of mouth is another way.

We also do live community workshops and this is probably my favorite thing to do because it’s enabled me to become a better public speaker, and that skill has allowed me to go on to bigger and bigger stages. More importantly, it allows me to connect deeply with my community and answer people’s questions, get nose to nose, toes to toes with people, and then that strategy is done through Facebook and of course word of mouth.

We’ve run Facebook ads to the sign up and registration form and people sign up and then they come. Even if people don’t take that next step and become a patient, we continue to nurture them because there has to be a right time for them.

What we’ve done through these live workshops is open up their eyes to a new possibility and they now know where to go to when they’re ready to take that next step.

Some people just aren’t ready to take on that responsibility. The reality of getting well is that you have got to take ownership of your health.

The third way is, of course, doing podcasts. We do webinars online, and we also broadcast the workshops that we do online, and recently, since Facebook has added this as part of their feature set, we’ve also been creating online groups, so we have a group called The Living Proof community and this is where people can come and congregate.

In this group, people can share their questions, their best practices, they can engage with other people who are on a similar journey as them, and we find that that’s a great place for myself and my other clinicians to do live Q&A’s to make sure we’re answering people’s questions.

It also serves as an incubator, if you will, for those who are ready to take the next step, and then call and connect with our practice.

[Yuri] That’s so great. We interviewed another awesome person in the cross-fit space.  His name is Rob Grupe.  He’s based in Oklahoma City and he’s doing something very similar where he’s using Facebook groups to engage with people who may not even be in Oklahoma.

It’s such a smart strategy that you’re using because you’re adding so much goodwill to people who potentially might never become patients of yours, but some of them will. I find so many practices and clinics are missing this piece.

You mentioned how if someone doesn’t become a patient right away, you’re building that relationship, you’re adding value, you’re providing support.  You don’t want to make them a patient which is completely the opposite of most models.

For everyone listening, this is such a great take away. If you really haven’t let this sink in yet, what Sachin is doing with this whole business model is brilliant, and it’s no doubt the reason for you being so successful other than being an awesome person and helping a lot of people.

[Sachin] Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Yuri] If you were to sit down with a new Chiro or Functional Medicine Doctor or Naturopath coming out of college, and they’re thinking, ‘Oh cool. I know all the stuff and now I’ve got this room and a clinic and I want to start venturing out and building my practice”, what advice would you give to them in terms of getting in front of the right people?

You mentioned workshops and live events as being powerful. Is that what you would tell them to start with, or are there other things they can consider doing as well?

Mentors and role models

[Sachin] It depends on how serious they are and if they are 100 percent committed to their success. The thing that I’ll recommend, which I’m biased towards is because it changed my life, and we use it to change other practitioners lives, is to hire a mentor. A mentorship is the closest thing that I can think of to a time machine.

You can take somebody in six months or even a year, and teach them everything you’ve learned in 13 14 15 years or more of practice, and they don’t have to make the same mistakes. They don’t have to trip over the same branches that you did, or get hit by the same branches, and encounter the same problems.

I think for those people who are serious, find a mentor, and not just a business mentor, but somebody who has their entire life together.

I encourage someone to explore not just the business side of somebody’s life, but what is the personal side of that person’s life. What are their relationships like? What is their family engagement like? Are they just all about business and all about making money, because if that’s all you want that’s all you’ll get.

When you’re hiring a mentor, you want to understand how their entire life looks because you want to be well-rounded and well balanced.

One of the things I’ll tell practitioners is that most of them have never been a patient of the process. The two worst patients you can work on are yourself and your spouse. And that’s where a lot of people start their functional medicine journey. Patient Zero and Patient One is them self and their spouse and that that ends up being disastrous.

If you’re going to get people to sign up for your care and you’ve never been a patient yourself of that process, then you’re going to be in trouble because you don’t even really know what that experience is like.

I truly believe as an entrepreneur, we should experience what we’re offering people.

We’re strangers to people right, so we should have somebody else who has an unbiased opinion about our health evaluate us and take us through a course of care.

That’s one of the things we do in our mentorship. We start with their mindset and getting them to become the best version of themselves. Once you do that, then what ends up happening is, everything you touch then becomes better.

If you only focus on building your business, it’s kind of like working out your right bicep and ignoring everything else and just wanting that one arm and that one muscle to grow.

If you want a well-rounded life, you’ve got to work on everything. You’ve got to work on yourself first, and then everything improves.

What I’ve realized with practitioners, there are three things you should want out of your practice.

The first is personal growth, the second is practice growth, and the third is community growth.

You want to have your patients, your practice, and yourself growing, but it starts with you.

You’re going to be the ceiling.  You’re going to be the limiting variable. You’re going to be that person that holds it all together, but puts it all together as well.

You’ve got to be in the best mental, physical, and biochemical shape possible before you’re going to try to get anyone else into that position.

[Yuri] You talked about role models and mentors. When you think or role models, when you think of success, who comes to mind for you?

[Sachin] When I think of success, there’s a few different people that come to mind in terms of business success. But then there’s also people that I think of in terms of personal success. Peter Osborne, as you know, is a mentor of mine. So that’s certainly somebody who we both admire and somebody who I’ve hired to be a mentor of mine. He’s fantastic. Clinically he’s amazing, he’s an amazing father, he’s an amazing husband.

Looking at the whole picture of what he brings to the table, he’s certainly one of my clinical mentors.

Dr. Ron Grisanti was one of my mentors.  He’s an amazing, giving, a humble human being.

Another mentor of mine, a business mentor of mine, but also again, somebody who is aligned with my core values is Dr. Matthew Loop. He’s one of of the most famous, if you will, social media coaches specifically for practitioners. He’s someone I truly admire and really like.

If I start dropping names, I know I’m going to start leaving some people out. Those three are the first that kind of come to mind that have been extremely influential, and then we’ve got other people like Dan Kalish. He is an amazing clinician, an amazing human being, very giving and very genuine.

Ben Lynch is another person I truly admire that I’ve become friends with over the years. Mike Munsell is another clinician you might know.  He and I have become quite close over the years.

What it boils down to are core values. What I share with these individuals are core values. Some of you who are listening might not share the same core values as I do. I think my core values are good.

The most important thing that I look for in a mentor is, does this person share the same core values as me, and if they do, I know that we’re going to get along and become friends. Your mentor should become your friend over time.

[Yuri] It’s interesting because when a lot of people think of role models or success, they think of like the typical icons like Elon Musk and Richard Branson.

What I’ve noticed is that very few of them have their shit together. They are super successful in business, they have no kids, or they have they’ve had four marriages, and their health is down the drain.

As you mentioned, I think it is important to identify with core values because you’re going to naturally connect with those leaders, those individuals, who best resonate with you, and you can model in their footsteps.

[Sachin] How I think of it is, if this person was my dad, would I be proud of that person?

While these people might have these sprawling businesses, and I don’t know too much about their personal lives, I know that many of these people have challenges in their marriages and they may not see their kids. Some highly successful people have estranged kids.

We tend to worship people who have big businesses and make billions and billions of dollars, but one of the things that I teach people is you’re a trillionaire.

Start there because you’ve got trillions of cells that are working for you that are that are your currency.  That’s the currency of life to me. How healthy are you and how happy are you?

All the money in the world is not going to fix those problems. I admire entrepreneurs.  It takes a lot of work and energy and effort to do these things and to shape industries create new economies like Richard Branson and Elon Musk.

Would I connect with that person on a personal level?  I don’t know.  Is that the kind of life I’m trying to mirror? Probably not.

[Yuri] Let’s look back over the decade or so you’ve been in business. What’s been the top of mind, biggest challenge you’ve ever faced in business?

The biggest challenges in the functional medicine industry

[Sachin] The biggest challenge we still encounter in functional medicine, because it is such a new thing, is getting people to understand what we do. That’s where our messaging has to really be dialed in.

It’s not like you can just hang up a shingle and people understand what it is that you’re offering. It’s educating the consumer. We use a lot of what’s called education based marketing and that’s kind of been the biggest challenge because it’s not like a well-established industry where you can just say “Hey, I’m the best in this industry” or “Come see me because we can offer you help. Here’s what we do,” it’s hard for people to really accept that.

Another challenge is the fact that because it is such a new thing, it’s typically not covered by insurance.

In the healthcare paradigm, that’s what people are looking for.  They’re looking for insurance coverages or they’re looking for social coverages here in Canada.

That’s something that we’ve been successful at overcoming and it’s a challenge a lot of practitioners face.

They encounter people who want things covered by their insurance and I totally get it because we pay so much money into the government.

When people understand what we do, they agree this should be covered.

This should be happily and readily paid for by insurance companies and the government. And at this point it’s not. I’m kind of glad it’s not because it allows us to do what’s right for the consumer and right for the patient.

To go back to your original question, the biggest challenge for us has always been education and we’ve successfully countered that with education and nurturing people, which then that allows us to work with people who really get what we do.

[Yuri] A lot of people in the health space want to help people who need help. For example, the person who needs to lose 400 pounds versus helping the person who is already fit, is already in shape and who just wants to take their health to the next level.

How do you find that balance? What’s your take on serving needs versus wants?

It’s like preaching to the choir as opposed to trying to convert people who don’t understand what you do into raving fans of this new paradigm.

[Sachin] We’ve got a few different programs that we offer and I didn’t get too into it.

We offer hypnotherapy as a treatment modality for potential clients and clients we work with.  We reprogram and remap their subconscious minds. That’s a standalone offering we have. We also offer a functional lifestyle medicine that’s called our Essentials Program, but then we also have a performance program as well.

Depending on where somebody is in the spectrum and what they need, we have offerings for those individuals because their goals are going to be different.

Our goal is to take somebody who’s unwell and get them into that next level of self and personal development. I jokingly say this, but it’s serious, that our program, our health care program, is really a personal development program disguised as a health care program.

We want people to take their life to that next level and become that person who then wants to you run that marathon or climb that mountain or get back into their communities and volunteer.

One of the first questions we ask people is what are you going to do when you feel well again?

If the answer is sit on the couch and go back that same miserable job that got you sick in the first place, then we’re probably not going to be a good fit for you because our goal is to change your goals.

Where we start with a lot of people is letting them know that once you feel well again, we’re not just going to leave you high and dry. We’ve got other solutions we can offer to you. Everyone’s got their own niche.

It’s not me delivering all this care.  We have different practitioners that are working with our clients that are extremely passionate in these specific categories in different areas. The challenge with functional medicine is that we can help everybody.

The things that we offer, the strategies, the biochemical interventions, the nutritional interventions, can help anybody at any stage in their healing journey or even in their performance journey as well.

This is a question that you have to ask yourself as a practitioner. Who do you want to work with and who can you relate with the most?

Some people have never had that personal health challenge, but they have had performance enhancement through this process, so maybe that’s a better person.

As a practitioner, you have to be empathetic to the person that’s sitting across the desk from you. If you can’t be empathetic and you can’t share your story or that story doesn’t resonate with that person, then guess what, you’re not going to be extremely successful in that space.  I think it’s really understanding yourself, what you bring to the world, and then attracting somebody who has had similar challenges as you, encountering similar challenges, and working them through them.

[Yuri] What’s a big mistake you’ve made in your business?  Something that thinking to yourself was, “man that was a really bad move”. Maybe something you even regret.

[Sachin] I don’t regret anything. I just want to I just want to say that because everything is a learning curve and everything allows you to grow.

I haven’t had any Come to Jesus moments with my practice. I’ve made some bad judgments in hiring people who are not listening to my intuition soon enough.

The magic of intuition

I think the biggest mistake is not listening to my intuition soon enough. The people that have been on our team, we’ve only had a couple of people that have been on our team who diverted in their own direction. They have all been grateful for working with us and none of them have regretted it.

I should have tuned into myself, my intuition a little bit sooner. Sometimes we give people the benefit of the doubt or we question our intuition. I would say to anyone listening to this, don’t question your intuition.

I jokingly say that men have three brains, and the one that’s the most important to listen to is your gut.

[Yuri]. I agree with you that intuition is the best coach.

How do you get people to listen to that? You can hire someone new, you give them a project or a task or something intercompany, and you’re expecting something better.

Do you have that intuition that this isn’t the right fit, or do give them some time to give them some feedback and see how they do the next time around? What’s worked for you?

[Sachin] Time is money. It depends on how much of each of those things you give people the benefit of the doubt.

What I’ve learned is if you have any doubt, it’s probably not the best thing to listen to your brain because that’s usually going to give people a lot of benefit.  The doubt comes from the gut. Usually not from the brain.

Just tuning into that intuitive faculty, and yes, I believe in giving people second chances. I believe people make mistakes, and if I intuitively feel it was a genuine mistake, versus somebody who has malicious intent or they just they’re just not all there and they’re not behind the mission, I’ll give them another chance.

[Yuri] I’m guilty of this too. We don’t want to piss people off. We don’t want to create confrontation. You let it go and see how it goes the next time, and a year later that person is still working with you and still making the same mistakes.

[Sachin] My tolerance for mistakes is very low. You get you get one chance and it usually doesn’t happen again.

Going back to the original question where I didn’t listen to my intuition, was more so with people who had their own mission that was apart from my mission.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has to be aligned with my mission. However, when that person is working for you and they’re leveraging the tools and resources and the training that you’re providing to then to fuel their mission, then obviously that’s not a good thing.

I always wish everyone well and I wish everyone the best and I am glad that I make it seem like it’s easy to start your own business and do your own thing right.

I feel good about that, but at the same time, I think the right thing to do for people is to identify what their vision is, and what their mission is. If it’s separate from mine or yours or whoever they’re working for, then that needs to be made very clear because we’re investing a lot of time, energy, and money into these people, and we want to make sure that gets our mission forward, and they’re part of that mission as well.

Rapid-fire questions

[Yuri] I’ve got a five rapid fire questions to throw your way before we finish off.  Cool.

[Sachin] I’m cool. Let’s find out how cool I really am.

[Yuri] You game?  You ready to go?

Whatever comes top of mind. Whatever it is, just blurt it out. Your biggest weakness.

[Sachin] My biggest weakness is I’m too direct.

[Yuri] Your biggest strength.

[Sachin] That I’m direct.

[Yuri] One skill you become dangerously good at it in order to grow your business.

[Sachin] The thing that I’m really good at is taking information that’s complex and making it very simple for people to understand.

[Yuri] What do you do first thing in the morning.

[Sachin] Have gratitude.

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

[Sachin] I’m at home and doing the things that I love to do which is having a podcast like this with you.

[Yuri]. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for taking the time. What is going on in your life, what’s going on in business that people should know about? Where can they stay in touch or maybe check out your clinic if they’re in Toronto or online?

[Sachin] We do work with people remotely all over the world. One of our things now is we’re becoming the clinician’s clinician.

We focus a lot on health care providers and health care entrepreneurs. That’s kind of the avatar that we love working with. We can work with people all over the world for the most part because we coach and consult them versus treating them.

If somebody is in need of health care and they’re tired of feeling tired and want to feel listened to, want to feel nurtured and cared for, they can always set up a time, and go through what we call the Living Proof Experience, which is the ability to be heard, and to ask their questions.  All they need to do is fill out our 45-page intake form.

If you’re looking to get started on your health journey you can go to 30in30.org and start your free 30-day program. That gives you the stepping stones and tools you need to start your health care journey.

We also have a mentorship program for anyone who is interested in becoming a mentee of ours. Our focus is how do you take your functional medicine lifestyle practice to the next level. We share our best practices and share everything that we do.

I’m very open with our providers and they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There’s nothing noble about staying up late at night reinventing the wheel.  You’re never going to win a prize for that so they can always do that and I’ll share a link that you can offer people to apply.

[Yuri] We will get this on the show notes so guys listening, be sure to get over to the show notes on the blog.

Sachin, this has been awesome my friend.  It’s always great to highlight amazing people and practitioners like yourself.

I love your approach to business and healing and really empowering the individual as opposed to having them rely on you to come in three times a week for the rest of their lives.

You are doing some amazing work.  Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It’s been a lot of fun.

[Sachin] I Appreciate it. Thank you, brother.

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Yuri’s Take

Sachin as you can tell, is a very well spoken, very intentional, great person with a big mission for what he’s up to and I support his whole philosophy, and his core values.  What he’s doing is tremendous.

One of the things I wanted to take out of the show and really hammer home, and this has come up several times in a number our interviews and episodes, has been the notion of finding a mentor.

Why reinvent the wheel when you can find someone and hire that person to show you the way to speed your success. This is something I continue to see.

The number one thing I did in my business after struggling for years trying to do this on my own was to hire a coach and join a mastermind.  That single decision was the most impactful decision that, as a result, has had a ripple effect in so many areas of my business and it’s something I truly believe in, and that’s why we have our own Luminaries Mastermind group right now.

That’s why I continue to invest over half a million dollars on my own coaching, masterminds, and live events over the past decade or so because I realized that I only know what I know, and I don’t know what I don’t know.

It’s very tough to see your blind spots and as Sachin alluded to, when you have someone who can kind of hold your hand and show you around the pitfalls and the mistakes to avoid, that’s going to save you time. It’s going to save you money and a lot of frustration because we know on this entrepreneurial journey there’s a lot of failures.  There’s more failures than successes.

Remember, failure is only failure if you don’t learn from it.

If you can make a mistake, not that you intentionally want to make one, if you put something out in the world it doesn’t work the way you want it to, learn from that, take the positive, remove the negative, move forward and that’s what it’s all about.

Having a mentor, having a coach, can really accelerate that process so you don’t have to figure this stuff out on your own all the time.

It would be like having an airline pilot trying to fly a plane without a GPS navigation.

In this day and age, having that coach, having that support system, having that accountability can really make a difference in your success, and in your business.

Let that sink in.

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Click here to apply for the Living Proof Institute Mentorship Program

Transcription

Hey guys, how’s it going? Yuri here. Welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. Today is a very special episode—I’ve got a good friend of mine who also runs one of the fastest growing most successful health companies on the planet.

You’ve probably heard of them, they’re called Thrive Market—and Gunnar Lovelace is the man behind the company. He is an amazing person, and I’ll tell you a bit more about what he’s up to in a second.

So we actually had dinner together, I think about three years ago, on a rooftop in Los Angeles—and right away we just hit it off.

First of all, Gunnar is an amazing dude. He’s an amazing person with really great core values, and he’s very down to earth. He’s not one of these big wig, money hungry CEOs. That’s not who Gunnar is, he is just a great person and he’s been very successful in business. And when you can have both of those traits, it’s just a great combination.

So I knew after that dinner that things were going to start getting really cool. He went on to start growing Thrive markets at an exponential rate—I’m talking about ridiculous types of growth, year after year. And in only three years they’ve gone from one to five hundred employees, while the revenue—which we can’t disclose because of investor privacy issues—has obviously skyrocketed.

But anyway, let me tell you a bit more about him.

Gunnar is a serial entrepreneur—he’s focused on using business and health as vehicles for social change. He is the original founder of Thrive Market, which is all about making healthy living accessible to Americans by providing the most popular organic, non-GMO groceries at 25 to 50% off normal retail prices—not bad!

It’s kind of like Costco, Amazon, and Whole Foods combined—it’s wicked.

He’s also the co-founder and co-owner of Love Heals, a jewelry business in more than 200 high-end retail stores and with over 75 employees. To date, Love Heals has funded the planting of over 1.5 million trees and sponsored over 50,000 malnourished children.

Prior to Love Heals, Gunnar started two technology companies in Los Angeles, in software education and natural language processing—both of which he sold. And in addition to his for-profit companies, he has started two nonprofits in education and environmental sustainability.

So he doesn’t really have that much stuff going on. He’s pretty lazy to be very honest with you.

If you want to stay up to date with what he is up to—and more specifically thrive market—you can go over to thrivemarket.com.

 

Yuri:                Gunnar! How’s it going, my friend? Welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast!

Gunnar:          Hey how are you doing? It’s so great to be here.

Yuri:   I know, it’s great to connect. You’re a friend, you’re a great person, you’re building an amazing company—and those are things that I really admire about you. You know, you have conversations with people who come to mind when you think of success. You think of Richard Branson or Elon Musk or whatever—but you’re one of the guys that kind of comes to mind for me because you really have your stuff together.

You share a lot of the same core values as I do and I’ve just really admired the trajectory that you’ve taken with Thrive.

Gunnar:  Thank you. It’s been a lifetime adventure and like all entrepreneurial paths—fraught with uncertainty, difficulty, and challenges. But it’s been such a gratifying experience to be growing the business, and great to be here with you!

Yuri:                Awesome. So I’m sure everyone knows about Thrive, but I want to ask you—why did you start the business? Was there like, a pivotal moment? What was the journey that led you to start the company in the first place?

Gunnar’s personal story and motives

Gunnar:          I mean, very honestly, it just came from a very personal place. I grew up really poor, with a single mom, and I saw how hard she worked to make healthy choices. And it always seemed crazy to me that food with lots of chemicals and processing costs less than food with no chemicals and processing.

And so there were periods as a child where we lived off of… Bread and carrots, that my mom would blend together to make this sort of weird, simple carrot bread.

So really just a lot of survival trauma around food and just basic survival needs very early on.

And then when my mother remarried, my stepfather was running a food co-op out of a hippie commune in California, so I got to see firsthand the power of group buying—as a way to make food more affordable and build community.

And as I went on in my own entrepreneurial career, I always felt like there was an incredible opportunity and responsibility to disrupt access to healthy food. And again—at a very personal level—I’ve been a hypochondriac most of my life, so that’s made me very interested in all sorts of health regimens and supplements.

And even more broadly, I’ve been really fascinated by and interested in finding organizing principles that can bring people together around the common good at scale.

I really feel like expanding access to healthy food is one of those organizing principles. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live or what you believe—people want to feel good in their bodies and they want the same thing for their children.

So it’s a lot of factors together.

Yuri:                That’s awesome—and I don’t think there’s a single person in the health space who doesn’t agree with you. But how do you take that desire—to want to make healthy food more affordable—and build this massive company? Whereas a lot of other people just continue talking about it.

You talked about the power of the collective—how did you build out this vision for Thrive? How did you get people on board? What was the business model for getting started?

Getting the MVP out there

Gunnar:          So I always tell my entrepreneur friends that it’s really important to test your ideas as quickly as possible with an MVP (minimum viable product). And having started and sold a couple of businesses previously with lots of failures (AKA: learning opportunities) along the way… I feel like one of the greatest lessons that I’ve learned is to test your idea as fast as possible—even if it’s really dirty and imperfect.

And that’s been a huge guiding principle for me personally, in the last ten years as an entrepreneur. I think it’s so easy to overthink our ideas in our armchair, engineer “the perfect mousetrap” and then we get out in the market and we realize that the consumer wants something completely different or something that’s very altered from what we originally set out to create.

Or, there’s great success.

More often than not though, I think the ideas we have go through a lot of evolution—which is really why I advocate for getting our business ideas out there as simply and quickly as possible.

So in the case of Thrive Market, the very simple MVP was…  I just literally went to my favorite brands and I set up wholesale accounts with them. Then I would do Facebook shopping events—so I would go out to my Facebook friends and say, “Hey who wants to buy Seventh Generation this week at 40% off? Who wants to buy Health Forest products at 40% off?”

The shopping events were so oversubscribed, there was so much demand and interest from my friends—and I was just doing it as an exercise a social experiment.

I’m receiving all the orders, packaging them and shipping them to people—and I realized two things…

1) There was a huge demand to access these products at wholesale prices.

2) I needed to find a more scalable way to do it—rather than one-off shopping events on Facebook.

Yuri:                That’s amazing. So I want to come back to what you said about just getting the MVP out there and getting feedback from the market.

What do you say if someone is sitting beside you and they’re like, “Well, I’ve got to make sure my product is perfect because the branding, etc. is so important to stand out and make an impact in people’s minds.”

What do you say to that person?

Gunnar:          Well, I think branding is important. I think it is important if it’s a consumer-oriented product. If it’s an enterprise type product, then the branding is still important but not as important.

I think that in the context of a consumer-based product, you can do really high-quality branding but keep it very simple. That can be splash pages or simple survey pages, sign up forms that have a landing page or a squeeze page that test an idea or a concept to see what the receptivity is at the top of the funnel.

So I think that can be done really simply, and I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. I think we can have a really high-quality brand experience and recognize that we don’t need to create every single detail page prior to testing the validity of our core thesis.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s great. So you started doing these Facebook shopping events, they’re doing really well—you’re like, “Okay I’m not going to continue packaging and shipping all these myself.” What’s next? How do you get from that to starting Thrive?

Gunnar:          So I think, most broadly, the success of any organization—nonprofit, for-profit—is really based upon the quality of the team. I used to be a terrible micromanager, so it’s been a real evolution for me…

But I knew this was going to be a hard, very complex business—lots of moving parts, a huge backend, huge middleware of technology and a huge consumer-facing marketing competency. So based upon that, I wanted to have really great co-founders.

I found my first co-founder—-Nick Green, who’s now the CEO of the business—and that was probably the best decision I’ve ever made. We complement each other so well. And then our third co-founder who’s also just incredible—he’s our CTO—and a fourth co-founder—Kate, who helped us initially set the brand.

Rejection: The story of Thrive Market

So I think we really had a great kind of core competency base covered between all of us. And I think—we can talk more about what it means to really nurture a team later—but I think the other piece that we transparently really struggled with was raising money.

So after Nick came on as the first co-founder, we were self-funding the business. You know, doing the classic venture capital roadshow between L.A., San Francisco, New York, for three or four months.

We met with over 60 venture capital firms—every single one of them rejected us.

And obviously, it’s a total pain in the butt—nobody likes asking other people for stuff and then being unanimously rejected. But ultimately, it was the best thing that ever happened to us.

We ended up pivoting our strategy and raising the first $10 million for the business from influencers like yourself, who really understood the problem and heard from their audiences that they want to live a healthy lifestyle—but they can’t afford to do it or aren’t near a health food store.

And so we had this whole community of influencers come in as actual investors in the business—often investing in us as the first time they’d ever invested in a startup company.

And then as a result of building this whole coalition of relationships and friendships that evolved out of these partnerships, we built an internal content marketing agency and competency in really harnessing and complementing and synergizing the capabilities of these influencers that have really engaged audiences as a way to grow the business.

Yuri:                Amazing. So take me back to the sixty rejections from the VC firms… What’s the discussion there? What’s the mindset? Where does the fortitude come from to keep going when you’ve dealt with that much rejection.

Gunnar:          So VC firms typically are male-dominated, and they didn’t understand the market as well. There were two main arguments…

1) “We think the solution is already solved—go to Whole Foods.”

2) Nick and I had never done e-commerce before. So they didn’t believe that we could execute on something as complex as this.

And so those are the two prevailing themes and the rejections—and I think that persistence is really one of the most important attributes of an entrepreneur. I grew up really poor, so I didn’t have the luxury of being stopped by rejections.

I mean my first company that was a web development shop first flashed a database company in Los Angeles in 1989. I would literally get on the phone at 5:00 am, and cold call ad agencies from the East Coast and I would just follow the sun to the west coast—and literally cold call for 12 to 14 hours a day.

And so, you know, I got like… Hundreds of rejections.

But I would cultivate relationships and there would be a few accounts that would land, and that was what we grew our business off of. So while it’s discouraging to get rejections, I think one of the most important things for an entrepreneur—particularly in the context of how many challenges we face as a species—is to really be honest with ourselves about finding things that we love to do and that we’re truly motivated to do.

Because at the end of the day if we don’t have real conviction about what we’re doing, we’re not going to have the staying power and fortitude to make it through the necessary challenges.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s a great perspective. What I get excited about is when I see someone who has a past in like, door-to-door sales selling knives at some MLM company—and they’ve dealt with constant rejection.

Those are the people that I want to have on my team. I don’t know if it’s a skill set, but it’s almost like a second skin you develop—finding alternative routes to the same outcome.

And I think it’s just such a great part of development, whether it’s from a sales perspective or just kind of connecting with humans and seeing what really works as opposed to what doesn’t. So it’s cool to see that you went through that.

Gunnar:          Yeah, and it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. You know, I’m a deeply insecure human being. And at a certain level, I think most of us are—we’re confronted with regular, daily fears and insecurities that we have from the conditioning we’ve received, traumas that we’ve had in our life.

These are the things that make us who we are and these are the things that we have to work with, and there are blessings in our curses.

I’m still very much confronted with my own limitations and insecurities, and I think that one of the most important things that we can do as a species and as entrepreneurs is to really recognize and push through those things.

I mean, one of my favorite teachers that I’ve been doing meditation with for about 20 years—I love what he says about courage. Courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to persist in the presence of fear.

Yuri:                That’s so true. So talk to us, give us some ego boosting facts and numbers about Thrive. Like, when did you officially launch Thrive? Was it around four years ago?

Gunnar:          It was actually a little less than three years ago—we launched in October, end of October 2014 with a soft beta and then formally launched in November 2014.

You know it’s been a total rocket ship. I mean there was one employee out of my house four years ago, we’re over 500 employees today. We have over 800,000 square feet of warehouse space that we own and run.

And after being rejected by over 50-60 of the top venture capital firms, we pivoted our capital strategy and ended up raising money through influencers. The business was able to really leverage that coalition of partners to magnify the growth and subsequently, we’ve been able to raise over $160 million for the business.

A lot of great success, a lot of huge challenges along the way. And at the same time, we’re just a little gnat. I mean, the grocery market is a trillion dollar market, so we have a long way to go before we really feel like we’ve come close to expressing our mission—which is really democratized access to healthy food, and that healthy food and healthy living is not a privilege for the wealthy few but a basic human right.

Yuri:                Well I think you guys have been very disruptive in the sense of what you’re doing in terms of making healthy food more affordable. But also I think from a business model it’s been disruptive because I can’t really remember if there are any other businesses that had a capital raising model similar to what you guys have done.

But subsequently, I’ve noticed probably half a dozen in the past year or two that are now kind of emulating your successful business model—which is pretty awesome. I guess it’s nice and flattering when others copy you.

Gunnar:          Yeah I mean I think at the end of the day it just makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you’ve got value aligned stakeholders who can really move the needle for you—why not share with them generously?

I think the other key thing for entrepreneurs that I’ve had to really work through and learn is… It’s not how much of the pie you own; it’s how big the pie is.

And whether it’s with your co-founders, whether it’s with your employees, whether it’s with key partners or suppliers that can really make a difference in the unit economics of your business, whether it’s with marketing partners… Why not align incentives?

Obviously, have it be performance driven—but I believe in really generously aligning incentives across a broad pool of stakeholders, particularly if you’re solving a big problem that requires a lot of hands to help make the vision into a reality.

And I think that’s been a really unusual strategy. We have over 350 investors on the cap table and that’s very unusual for a business our age. I think it’s a great thing that people are emulating that, and I think it’s a really powerful way to think about capitalizing a business and growing a business outside of the normal institutional capital framework.

Yuri:                So how did you go from someone who was kind of a self-declared micromanager, to being okay with giving up a lot of your stake in the company, and saying, “Okay, let’s build a bigger pie and I’ll take a smaller piece of it”?

I think a lot of people also have this discussion—is it better to have a smaller business that is more profitable or a big business that is not as profitable? I think a lot of times people confuse the two. They look at it like it’s either one or the other.

But what have you noticed from day one, as you’ve grown Thrive to where it is now? In terms of maybe, profit margins or your personal lifestyle? What are some of the insights that you’ve garnered over that time?

Being an effective leader

Gunnar:          Yeah, so you’re asking a bunch of great questions there.

You know, I think that with the micromanagement piece… I had some really good success as an entrepreneur, dropping out of college and starting an educational software company and then selling that really quickly—I got really, really fortunate.

So that really set me up, that changed my whole dynamic. It moved me from extreme survival orientation as a full ride scholarship student—having to steal all my food in college and dumpster dive and live illegally in the woods—to selling a company a couple of years later.

So even in the midst of some of that early success, I subsequently had a lot of failures after that. I think that when I really looked at the realities of the life I wanted to live and the impact that I wanted to have—I recognized that I needed to really improve my leadership skills. And I think that’s a constant process; it is never done.

The complexities of being an effective manager I find to be one of the most interesting and humbling arenas to play in, and I really view it as one of the most complex difficult forms of yoga and spiritual exercise that I can imagine. It’s much easier to go retreat somewhere than it is to be a positive, happy, healthy entrepreneur and set up a positive, effective work culture.

So I think that’s a really big piece. And you know, basic tools like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey has been a great ally for me in that. I keep re-reading that book over and over again, even today.

So that’s one piece, and then the second piece you touched on—a small profitable business versus a larger partnership oriented business… Again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a small profitable business and really, the most important thing that we need to do is get clear about what we want. That’s a primary organizing principle that allows us to make decisions from a place of real clarity and purpose.

And if our goal is to have a simpler life, have a healthier life… You know, throw off a lot of cash… There’s nothing wrong with a small profitable business, and that’s a really beautiful, respectful decision to make. If the goal is to solve a really large complex problem or grow a truly massive business… Well, we all need partners and stakeholders and then it really becomes kind of a broader process—how do we set up the ownership structures and the incentive structures to really align incentives across the organizational capabilities that are required to execute on that mission?

Yuri:                Yeah, I mean, it’s so complex that I can’t even wrap my head around it. It’s amazing, the evolution you go through as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as a person—to be able to handle new challenges and just grow yourself so the company can grow as well.

I want to talk about teams in just a second because I think you’ve touched upon the importance of that. But you talked about some challenges that you guys obviously have faced in your time growing the company… What’s the biggest challenge you guys faced, what did you learn from it and how did you overcome it?

Gunnar:          So at a very personal level, the continued challenge of being an effective leader has been the most humbling thing that we as co-founders have gone through. And it’s just a very different type of organization when it’s 5, 10, 20, 40 people than it is when it’s 500 people.

So that’s a challenge in and of itself that has been monumental. And we’ve made a lot of the classic mistakes that, you know, are really difficult. And then I think the truth is that the type of person that can handle a business at $5-10 million in revenue versus $100 million in revenue versus a billion dollars in revenue—it’s a very different type of capabilities and it’s a very different type of organization that can really handle, and channel, and facilitate that type of scale.

So on one hand, we’ve had the challenges of really nurturing and building a positive workplace culture… And on the other hand, we’ve had to really be critical of ourselves and refining the capabilities of the team more broadly to align with the scale of where we’re taking the business.

And sometimes those things clash with each other—when there’s a need for bringing in new leadership, for example… Players in the organization aren’t always able to grow as quickly as the business is scaling and so how do those dynamics get managed?

And that’s a very natural challenge for a fast-growing business. But it’s one that we’ve clearly struggled with as well.

Yuri:                And what’s your take on hiring “A” players versus kind of young, coachable up-and-comers and kind of molding them through the process? Especially in a fast growing company, where sometimes the company might grow faster than you know your capabilities can manage.

Gunnar:          Sure. I would say that “A” players can be moldable folks in themselves, but I think that the truth is, if you’re going after a really complex big problem, generalists that are willing to do anything early on are fine. But as the business matures you really need people that understand those areas and have pattern recognition from previous experience at scale in the same areas so that they aren’t making the same mistakes.

The organization can’t afford to be making rookie mistakes that a really well-intentioned, highly capable, motivated generalist might make approaching a problem for the first time.

And, transparently, I’m a generalist. Nick is a generalist. You know, we’ve become experts in areas but we’re not supply-chain logistic experts. We’re not product development experts. We’re not engineers.

And as a result, we’ve had to really consciously go out of our way to find amazing people and really get them excited about the vision. And I think we’ve benefited as a business. I think this is another really important contextual opportunity—if the business is focused on solving a problem bigger than just making money, but it actually has a well-articulated mission, it will attract and retain a different type of person that isn’t going to approach it just as a 9-5 job.

They recognize that, yes they’ve got a livelihood, they’re making a good income, they have options to make more money, they’re part of the equity pool… But perhaps as importantly and more importantly they recognize that everybody is part of a greater mission.

I mean, we did a giving activation yesterday with our employees when we were packing boxes of food that are donated from our members at checkout. And it’s just so beautiful to see all the departments in the company represented, and how excited and passionate people were. And what kind of like relational fiber and positivity it generates amongst the folks that participated in that volunteer work day. And then everybody goes back into the employee pool and they feel really happy and connected to our mission as they go back to their respective expertise.

Yuri:                That’s pretty awesome, man. So with 500 people in the company… You, as the visionary—what does your day-to-day look like nowadays?

Gunnar: You know it very much changes. So, my goal—and our goal as an organization—is to just add outstanding value to our members and constantly think about every decision we make from the perspective of making our members feel like they’re getting value out of their membership to Thrive Market.

And that means, at a very basic level, saving time and money, accessing organic groceries that they love at wholesale prices shipped to their home…. But it also means connecting them to the broader set of initiatives that we do around our social mission, the content building community, the advocacy work we do.

So that’s just kind of fundamentally the way we think about building our brand. And every strategic decision is informed by, “how do we add value to our members?” So when I think about the things that I can do, that I’m uniquely capable of—you know, I’m just constantly thinking about those areas—my natural superpowers gravitate me towards partnerships, press, the social mission, evangelizing the business, some product development…

And then, just frankly, I’m so in awe of my co-founder Nick, as CEO of the business now. He’s got so much on his plate—he just had a baby—and so I’m constantly trying to look at ways that I can support him because at the end of the day he’s really holding it all together at this point.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. How do you know—let’s say it’s day one and you’re building your company, and you are the entrepreneur, the visionary, the CEO—at what point do you get to where you know, “Maybe I’m not the CEO or COO. Maybe I’m the visionary. I need someone else to run the company.”

How do you know when that happens and how do you find that person if you need support?

Accountability

Gunnar: Yeah. So, I think there’s no perfect answer to that. I don’t think there are any absolutes in that. I think the core thing is—if the business is struggling, or growing really quickly and struggling under that growth; it takes a real honest assessment of, “what does the business really need?”

And also, “what works for me?”

You know, I’ve been grinding away for 20 years as an entrepreneur, ever since I dropped out of college, and I still work very hard but I’m not actually as effective in my ability to contribute if I’m not sleeping well, and I’m not handling the basic things. Like, when I sleep well, get exercise, eat well—I’m able to see really clearly and see opportunities that can have really significant outsized impacts.

Nick and I were co-CEOs until recently and that was fabulous—we learned a lot, we share power well, and I think that’s a core dynamic. At the end of the day, it’s not about being right; it’s about getting it right together. That’s a really important kind of mutual understanding that needs to exist amongst partners.

If people are coming together and there’s a heavily competitive dynamic—it’s just not going to work. And that doesn’t mean that healthy competition isn’t a good thing, but in the context of core partnership, senior leadership—it needs to be a culture of reciprocity.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t challenge each other and have a debate of ideas—you know, we have no doors on our office and we encourage everybody to bring anything to us directly anytime they want—but at the senior leadership level, we’ve really gone out of our way to build a culture and model behavior that is very performance driven and metric driven, but also a culture of reciprocity, generosity, and respect.

And I think that with Nick coming in as the second co-founder of the business—we had the opportunity to really do that with each other for the first time as entrepreneurs at scale. And as a result, that kind of behavior gets modeled out in the organization.

It doesn’t mean that we get it perfectly or our team gets it perfectly, but I think really having a commitment to cultivating personal emotional intelligence and taking radical responsibility for ourselves, recognizing that we ultimately have the power to affect this—positively or negatively—and that the organization is a direct reflection of where we’re at in our consciousness and our leadership style.

So something isn’t working in the organization—yes, there may be a specific employee or problem that needs to be resolved, but more importantly, it’s actually a reflection of a problem with our leadership style.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s a great perspective. The book Extreme Ownership talks about how, as the leader, you pretty much have to assume responsibility for everything that happens underneath you because in some way it trickles down from you whether it’s through modeling or the culture or something else.

And that’s very mature in that respect because not everyone has that same perspective.

So you mentioned performance and metrics as being something really important for helping you guys grow and part of your culture. How do you guys keep track of that? Do individuals have specific metrics and KPI’s they have to hit, or are they kind of team based? And if those goals aren’t met, how do you deal with those types of situations?

Gunnar:          Yeah, so every department has reports and KPI’s that roll up into our master KPI’s that get recorded daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. So the whole organization has accountability and transparency.

Now there are things that don’t have hard KPI’s, like our giving program—yes, we can measure how many people come in, how many people purchase, how much money our members are donating, that we need to give away. But there’s softer, brand building stuff there.

So not everything is going to have a hard black and white KPI. But you know, at the end of the day we’re very much a logistics technology company and those things are KPI driven. So our service level agreements across the organization—whether it’s “What’s the response time when the site goes down?” “What’s our response time when somebody places an order to how long it ships?” “What’s the response time when someone submits a complaint?”

So, we have a lot of different interlocking service level agreements between departments as a way of really driving constant improvement to our member experience base.

Yuri:                Nice. And if someone on a team or within a department isn’t performing to the level you want them to—based on set metrics—is there a policy in place? To say, “Okay, lets coach this person a little bit more” or “Okay there was a miscommunication…” or is it like a “two strikes and you’re out” type of thing.

Gunnar:          You know, it depends on the leader and how they manage the department. But we have a whole human resources team that we call our talent team. And we do a lot of things that create opportunities for people to communicate challenges that they’re having and for managers to provide feedback.

And we haven’t totally gotten there consistently, but one of the most important things—I think—is that it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody when there’s a real performance conversation happening. It should be obvious along the way.

And that’s a really important distinction. If it’s coming as a surprise to somebody, as part of a quarterly or bi-annual review… Then there’s a real breakdown in the ability for bi-directional information to flow freely—and I think that’s a real problem.

Yuri:                That’s a good distinction. That’s a big one. So I want to ask you about—either in Thrive or maybe one of your initial companies— what’s a big mistake you’ve made in business? And I guess, something like really bad—maybe you’re not too proud of talking about it, but what was that? What was that mistake, and what did it cost you?

Gunnar:          I mean, I think that the two we already touched on… First of all, overthinking a business before getting market feedback.

So, I had a startup called Good Life and you we just way over thought the business. We could have licensed a piece of technology that wasn’t perfect for $7500 and gotten out in the market in literally 60 days. And instead, we spent more than a year pissing around trying to build something perfect and 2008 came along and wiped us out even as we launched that product that we’d spent a lot of time perfecting.

We were already generating about $60-80,000 a month in revenue. But by the time we had spent as much money as we had in as much time as we had… We were just in a very vulnerable place and then 2008 came along and just wiped us out.

Yuri:                Wow. Alright man, this has been an amazing conversation. I’m really pumped that we’ve been able to have this. Are you ready for the five questions? The rapid fire?

Rapid-fire questions

Gunnar:          Yeah! Bring it on. I mean, I’ll do my best. I’m on my toes, but I’ll see what happens.

Yuri:                Alright. So, Gunnar—your biggest weakness?

Gunnar:          I think it’s that piece of really constantly developing the really optimal positive work leadership culture. And I’m a super passionate human being, so I’m constantly working to moderate the intensity of my passion so that I don’t overwhelm my team members or the managers that I interface with across the department. Because, you know, I get really excited about stuff and it can be overwhelming for people.

Yuri:                [laughing] I don’t think any entrepreneur can relate to that. What is your biggest strength?

Gunnar:          Ummm, I mean… I think I would also say my excitement and enthusiasm. I think it’s a curse and a blessing. I’m really good at sharing ideas with people and getting them excited about those ideas.

And I think one of the things that I love about life and entrepreneurialism, in general, is the ability to have an idea, and then set up the conditions to manifest that idea into reality. And I literally think of it as a magic thing that we are able to do as human beings.

And we’re so blessed to have the problems that we have and the capabilities that we have—I just think it’s such an amazing time and we have such a profound opportunity to really set ourselves up in a better way and that whole act of creation is really at the core.

Yuri:                Yeah, it’s so true. And that’s why I love entrepreneurship—because we are magicians. We take things out of the ethers and turn them into physical solutions.

Gunnar:          Yeah, it’s so, so awesome.

Yuri:                It’s amazing. Alright, so one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Gunnar:          I think that I’ve become really good at content marketing and really understanding user behavior and how to align incentives and drive powerful content. We’re in this really fragmented 21st-century media economy where people don’t trust their traditional sources.

And so if you want to build a consumer brand using the Internet you really have to understand how to do it. You know, the era of a monolithic brand is dead. And we need to have the capability to flex our brand into different channels—and that’s something that I am constantly learning about, but I’ve developed a lot of skills around.

Yuri:                Awesome. Can you give us one example of how you guys run a content marketing idea?

Gunnar:          Just bringing influencers in as investors and then—what’s the type of content that we work with our bloggers to share with their audiences? So, it might be a content piece about why we should care about toxic ingredients in our cleaning supplies and it’s an educational piece about hormone and endocrine disruption and how your pores dilate when you take a warm shower.

And then, really problem solution framing—that’s how we tend to do all of our content marketing around problems that we’re trying to solve. So it’s just working with our stakeholders to get those types of messages out in a way that aligns with their values and what their audience is expecting them to communicate to them.

Yuri:                That’s great. Super smart, and it’s simple too. It’s not like, rocket science, but I think you guys have done a great job with that.

What do you do first thing in the morning?

Gunnar:          You know it really depends. I either try to get exercise first thing in the morning… Or, you know, I do have a kind of an unhealthy habit where I’ll snuggle with my girlfriend and our dog in bed and I just read news for a little while. I know that’s not the best use of time but I like lounging in bed for 15 or 20 minutes and reading a little news.

Yuri:  That’s cool! It’s so funny because everyone has their perspectives on morning routines and rituals and stuff—and I think there’s a lot of shame and guilt that people have. They’re like, “Oh my god! I didn’t get up early enough and do my thing!”

But I agree with you. I’ve got three boys and sometimes if I don’t get up early I just want to snuggle in bed with them, you know? And I think it’s okay; it’s good—because those times are not going to last forever, and I think you just have to honor yourself and where you’re at.

Gunnar:          And look—we’re going to be on the planet for a very short period of time and then we’re going to die, and that’s just the way it is. So we need to create opportunities for us to have those types of basic human experiences. And that actually gives us the fuel to fight the good fight.

Yuri:                Exactly. Alright, last one—complete this sentence.

I know I’m being successful when…

Gunnar:          I know I’m being successful when I am positive, well-rested, and organized. I think at the end of the day if I am able to get enough sleep I’m able to bring my most positive self to every day.

Yuri:                Love it. That’s great man. Gunnar, this has been awesome my friend. Thank you so much for opening up and sharing a lot of the stuff happening behind closed doors at Thrive.

Gunnar:          Yeah! And I so appreciate your work. The first time I had dinner with you, I knew we were going to be friends. I look forward to a lifetime of friendship and partnership.

Yuri:                Absolutely, likewise.

Gunnar: Have a beautiful day. Thanks, everybody.

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Yuri’s Take

Okay. So first and foremost, if you’re not currently a Thrive Market customer, you probably should be if you’re in the U.S. I don’t actually know if they ship to Canada yet—I’ll ask Gunnar that but I’m not quite sure they do.

But if you’re in the U.S. and you want amazing, quality, organic goodness delivered to your house at wholesale prices—then get a membership to Thrive Market.

And to make your life even easier, we’ve got a special discount for you and the best way to get that bad boy activated is to head on over to the show notes at the blog, healthpreneurgroup.com/podcast, find the episode with Gunnar Lovelace and you’ll find our special link with your discounts to enjoy all the goodness from Thrive Market.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a company with such explosive growth in three years. It’s crazy. I remember when Gunnar was just launching Thrive, and to see where they’ve come in such a short period of time…It’s beyond what you think is possible.

I mean it’s crazy to go from one employee to 500 in three years—logistically, what that looks like, it’s just incredible. And as Gunnar talked about in this episode, for him one of the big challenges is this continual growth of being a leader and how to really lead and build a team that is going to help satisfy this mission that they’re on—to make healthy food accessible to everyone.

So again, whether or not you’re building a massive company like Thrive Market… That’s not the point. The point is, what are the lessons we can take from those who’ve walked in front of us? What are the lessons we can learn from somebody who has built a monster business? Again, we can’t talk about revenue numbers because obviously there are some privacy issues with their investors and so forth. But we’re talking about a very, very, very, very large company.

What are the lessons you can learn from what they’ve done? Some of the mistakes that they’ve gone through. Some of the things that you, as a solopreneur, if you run your own business or maybe with a small team. Things you’re not thinking about that might allow you to get ahead of the curve after having heard this conversation with Gunnar.

Again, these are conversations—for the most part—that you’re not going to really have access to unless you’re coming out to one of our live events like Healthpreneur Live and so forth, where a lot of these individuals might actually be coming as attendees or speakers.

But I want to bring these amazing people to you, so that you can enjoy these conversations and discussions from the comfort of your own home, from your iPhone, wherever you are, and really learn from them. Take a few notes, get that “aha!” moment and move forward with that.

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Sign Up For A Thrive Market Membership 

As we mentioned earlier, if you’re in the U.S. and you want amazing, quality, organic goodness delivered to your house at wholesale prices, get a membership to Thrive Market.

And to make your life even easier, we’ve got a special discount for you by clicking on our special link: https://thrv.me/yuri-20off3

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Transcription

Hey guys, Yuri here—Hope you’re having an amazing day. I think it’s about to get better after you listen to today’s episode because I’ve got a very special guest. All my guests are special, but I’ve really enjoyed the conversation I’m about to share with you, with Keith Norris.

Keith Norris is the co-founder of Paleo FX—which is the world’s largest paleo event. So what we’re going to discuss today is really the journey that he’s gone on with these events over the past seven years and he’s going to share some of the challenges, the struggles that they had when they first got going, to the massive run and success they’ve had recently.

There are some really cool nuggets, takeaways and important reminders—no matter where you are in business—that I think you’ll really appreciate from this episode. He’s also going to share the one person who made all the difference in that very first event back in 2011 that Paleo FX probably wouldn’t be in existence without—so you’re going to want to find out who that person is.

So let me officially introduce you to Keith.

He is a serial entrepreneur, physical culture enthusiast, lifelong learner and explorer of consciousness. He is an owner and co-founder of Paleo FX, as I mentioned, which is the largest event in the world. He’s also a partner at as Efficient Exercise and ARX Fit, as well as being a founding partner at ID Life.

He lives in Austin, Texas with his beautiful wife Michelle—who’s also the other co-founder of Paleo FX—and their four rescue mutts. I think you’re gonna enjoy this one guys, so buckle down and get ready to be inspired. Let’s get right to the interview.

 

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Yuri:                Hey Keith, how is it going my friend? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

Keith:              Yuri! Doing fantastic here in Austin, Texas in the heat.

Yuri:  Yes I know it’s great. I’m talking to a lot of people that are in Florida, Texas—so they’re just melting in the heat, and I live in Toronto where it gets pretty hot in the summer as well, but wintertime not so much.

That’s awesome. So what’s new and exciting? What are you jazzed about these days?

Keith:              Well, as always, I’m jazzed about Paleo FX! Paleo FX has become pretty much my 24/7 business endeavor right now. I do have a few other business endeavors that I’m involved with, but Paleo FX is taking the lion’s share of my time at the moment.

Yuri:                Oh, I can imagine. For anyone listening who has not put on a big live event—it becomes a full-time job. If you’ve been to Paleo FX, you know what’s entailed. There’s some amazing speakers, amazing opportunities for connecting with some of the biggest leaders in the Paleo space and the health space, and you guys have done an amazing job.

So how long has Paleo FX been going on now? For four years?

Keith:              Six! This will actually be the seventh iteration coming up, which is amazing to me it’s like a child, when you turn around and go, “Oh wow! They’re seven years old.” Yeah. How did that happen?

Yuri:               Well I’m a huge fan of experiential events like that. Because I think when humans come together, that connection—you can never replicate that online. And I’ve actually had an event planning company university, and it’s funny that almost 20 years later I’m doing more events and small workshops in the health and business space.

So I’m fascinated by all this kind of stuff and how you can build out a great event. Now, why did you start paleo effects, like seven years ago?

The Value Of Community & The Birth of PaleoFX

Keith:              Yes, so to your point, it really has boomeranged back into a personal experience thing, right? We can get all the information we want online and a lot of times that information is free—and it’s good information if you know how to sift through and you know how to parse the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

But one thing you cannot replicate is a live audience with people who are like you, coming together and networking, interacting, sharing ideas. As human beings, we need that tribal connection, and I don’t know that we knew that outright when we started Paleo FX.

I mean we did want to get together with our peers and rub shoulders, sit down and break bread—which is probably not a good paleo term… Break bacon, maybe—across the table with our peers and share ideas and just be with the tribe.

As this show has matured, we found out that attendees come to the show primarily for that reason—because let’s face it, they can get the information online, they can read books.

And all of that is fantastic, I mean thank god we live in this day and age now where that’s possible. But it has separated us a bit and individualized us a bit from the tribe. And it’s good to have events like this where you can come together and actually be with people and interact.

Yuri:                Yeah, totally. It’s something people look forward to on a yearly basis—it’s kind of like Christmas! Like, hey we’re going to get together with the family again and see all the distant relatives that we haven’t seen since last year.

Keith:              Yeah, absolutely.

Yuri:                So what was like, the seed? Was there a moment in time where you like, woke up out of bed or were taking a shower and you thought, “Oh my god we should do this!”

Was there an exciting moment, a pivotal moment, where you guys decided, “this is something we should do”? Is there something that stands out?

Keith:              Yeah, in fact, there is. So my wife Michelle is actually the CEO of Paleo FX.

Yuri:                As she should be.

Keith:  Yeah, she should be. Keep peace in our house and keep everything peaceful. You know she’s a fantastic CEO—she’s made for that position. I am not. I’m more of the creative visionary type and day to day operations are tough for me to do.

So we fall into our natural abilities quite well, and we complement each other quite well along with the Paleo FX team. But to answer your question how did this all kick off…

Michelle and I were at the Inaugural Ancestral Health Symposium, which is a sister conference of ours—a much more academic leaning conference. When you go to an AHS event, it is an academic event. And we need that in the paleo-sphere—we have to have that academic credibility to keep us afloat.

Our motto is soul and sustainability backed by science. So we have to have this continuing science coming out, and we have to have a mechanism to support that. So that’s just a shout out to our friends at Ancestral Health for putting on that symposium.

So anyway, 2011—the inaugural event is at UCLA in Los Angeles, and I spoke. Michelle and I went out, and this was the first time that many people in the paleo community had actually seen one another up close. We, of course, had a big online community by that time, but many of us had never met one another in person.

So that was a fantastic event. Again—very, very academic.

I’m also involved in Efficient Exercise—I’m a partner in Efficient Exercise, here in Austin, Texas—which are brick-and-mortar gyms. And the whole time I was at this conference I was thinking, this is just fantastic, this information is so good and so deep, so vibrant.

But how am I going to relay this to my clients?

My clients really don’t care about the specifics of the science. They just want to know it works and they want to know that I vetted it and that’s all they really care about. And if they choose to deep dive into the specifics here and there, they can. Because I can send them literature to read and whatnot. But really on the day to day basis, they just need to know how much to work out, how to work out, what to eat, and how much to eat. And that’s really what they need.

So we were actually sitting on the plane in L.A.X.—on the tarmac—getting ready to take off and fly back to Austin… And we were just kind of de-briefing, chatting, and we thought, “what if we put on a very, very small show that was just that?” It was a theory to practice show, or a rubber meets the road kind of idea. A very practical side of what we just went through for the last three days.

And that was that was the birth of Paleo FX.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. That’s such a good lesson, I think, for anyone listening. Because a lot of times people struggle with like, “What do I add to the marketplace?” What you just mentioned there is a prime example that you took, in some way shape or form, complexity and you kind of distilled that down for the everyday person and you said, “Okay, why don’t we create this thing that can kind of meet them halfway?”

And that’s beautiful. I think that’s why business is amazing because you look at a potential problem, and you look at the market you want to serve, and there’s a disconnect—so let’s kind of fill that gap. I think what you guys have done with this is terrific.

Keith:              And that’s business and entrepreneurship—”how can I solve somebodies problem?” You solve a problem, and you solve it in a very simple way—something that can be replicated, something that they understand—and you instantly have a business model.

Now all you have to do is take it, out market it, and you know, the yadda yadda yadda—what we all know as entrepreneurs. But the initial seed has to be, “what problem can I solve?”

Yuri:                Yeah, totally. And so starting year one, how did you fill the events? How did you start getting in front of the right people, getting the right speakers involved, when you weren’t the prominent figure you are now in the paleo scene?

What’s It Like Starting An Event Business?

How did you start to get the word out about the events and how did people start to, kind of, mark this on their calendars as something they have to be at?

Keith:              Yeah, so one thing I didn’t know before going into the event space was how crazy you have to be to get into the event space. So being totally naive helped, right? We had no idea what we were getting into.

Michelle was a chef—or is a chef—and she has done events, and she knows what goes into event planning, although not nearly to this scale. And so, of all of us, she was like, “You know I want to do this, but this is going to be an undertaking—I don’t think you guys understand how much of an undertaking this is actually going to be.”

And at that point, it was Michelle, myself and my partner at Efficient Exercise and at ARX Fit—which is an equipment sideline that we had going on. Actually, I shouldn’t say it’s a sideline, it’s a full-time business for Mark Alexander—for me it’s way on the periphery.

That’s just to say; we were totally involved in other things. And Mark and I thought, you know, “How hard can this be?” Michelle, on the other hand, is trying to bring us to reality and go, “No, it’s going to be hard! Events are hard to do.”

So we went full forward.

Michelle had to take on I would say… 99% of the of the work leading in because Mark and I simply didn’t have the time nor the expertise to pull it off. We’ve since learned, we’ve come a long way and now… Myself specifically, I can speak that I’ve put a lot of my vision into Paleo FX, but Michelle had to do the heavy lifting.

The Power Of Influencers

To put on a show like this, you have to have that initial seed to get things started because nobody knows what you’re doing—nobody has any clue what you’re trying to put on. It just so happened that we were good friends with Robb Wolf, who was prominent in the paleo sphere. Your listeners might not be real familiar with Rob…

Yuri:                Shame on them—Rob is the man!

Keith:              Yeah, he is a luminary in the in the paleo world. And we just caught up with Rob and kind of gave him a 30,000-foot overview of what it was we wanted to do. And we said to him, “We need a headliner to get this thing kicked off. And we realize that you have no idea what we’re doing. But can we sign you up as a headliner to kick this thing off?”

And he said, “You know what—you’re right. I have no idea what you guys are doing. But I love you guys and whatever you’re doing. Absolutely, sign me up.”

And so we did, and we were off and running with Robb Wolf as the headliner. And we have worked him to death every year since. [laughing]

Yeah, so we blame Robb for the craziness that is Paleo FX now, because really without Robb or someone of that caliber we were not going to be able to get this thing kicked off.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s pretty cool—because that’s not easy to do! It’s a very different animal because social proof is really important, I think. With live events people want to see who’s speaking at it, and… If I’m going to spend three days there and take time out of my life and spend the money—Am I going to be surrounded by the right people? Are the speakers going to be people I want to hear from?

Now when you have someone notable like Robb, it’s not only beneficial for the attendees but also for speakers in future years—you’ve probably noticed that everyone’s jumped on the bandwagon now because they want to be at Paleo FX and that kind of all started because Robb took a leap of faith and saw what you guys wanted to do and that probably helped out a lot.

Keith:              It did. I cannot understate his contribution to Paleo FX because it really—and I do not exaggerate—without him it would have never gotten off the ground. All the best planning in the world would not have compensated for not having that headline speaker to kick things off.

And, you know, he supplied that for us. And he has been at Paleo FX every year, and we work him hard every year. For people who have not been to a Paleo FX event—our speakers don’t just come in and give one talk in there. They give talks, they’re on panels, they are “assaulted in the best way” by the attendees, and there are thousands of attendees. And every time they walk off stage, they are just surrounded by people who have questions and comments and people who want to thank them for changing their lives.

And it’s a beautiful thing to see, but it is taxing for the speakers to do three days of that. In fact, we have to assign handlers to the speakers to make sure that they can break away from the crowds in a decent amount of time—because people like Robb and most of our speakers would spend all day on the floor talking to one attendee after another if they did not have an exit plan to take them to the green room and let them recover a little bit before we work them again on a panel!

So yeah, it’s a beautiful event. I can tell you that people have asked me before, “What is the thing that you regret most about the show?” Because that’s kind of an unusual tact, right? You know, I love this. I love Paleo FX; I love the message that we’re putting out.

And I can say that the biggest regret I have, or the hardest thing that Michelle and I have to go through every year is turning down speakers.

Because we get over 500 applications every year for people who want to speak and I can tell you that some of these applications are just out of this world good. There are so many smart people out there. Oh my god, it really… On the one hand, it makes me thrilled for humanity that there are that many passionate, intelligent people out there who want to spread this message.

But on the flip side, we can only take like 25% of that at best. And that’s that’s a tough decision to tell somebody who has just sent you an application that’s out of this world—that, you know, we just don’t have room this year.

Yuri:  It’s such a good lesson in perspective. Because here you are a couple of moments ago, saying you had no speakers the first year and thankfully you had Robb Wolf—and now you’re turning down most of the 500 applicants every year.

And for everyone listening, you know, if you’re starting your business or looking at others—I always tell people, don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle. Because when you see someone launching successful events or a product, or a course, and they’ve got this massive following, and you’re not there yet…

Be realistic about the journey that’s involved in getting there, right?

Keith:              That’s so true. I mean, it’s a hackneyed saying, but the saying that “It took me 20 years to be an overnight success” is so true in entrepreneurship. And sometimes it’s longer than 20 years. We just have to be willing to do the grind; you have to believe it.

It’s not an easy endeavor, it’s not at all.

And the marketing side of it makes it look like it is, right? I get it because I was there too—I used to be in the in the corporate world, and I would look to these people like Tim Ferriss, at that time, and I thought “Wow, that looks cool. That looks like what I want to do. I want to be in that realm.”

Now, I was older and wiser and I kind of understood, “Hey, that’s probably not as easy as he’s making it look. I get it that there is a lot of 16 hour days involved.” But the upside is those 16 hour days are pointed towards something that I truly, with all my heart, believe in—and that makes it so much easier.

Yuri:                That’s great. What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about putting on their own event? Small or large. Maybe three tips or mistakes to avoid.

Keith:              Yeah. Wow, so Robb Wolf is at the top of my head right now because we just talked about him, but you have to come in with… Whatever your topic is, whatever that event is going to be about—you have to line up that first headliner.

That has to be number one on the list because you can have a fantastic venue, it can be in a great city, you can have all of this background… But unless you have that first speaker to come in and believe in your message too—then you just can’t get going. You can’t get momentum; you can’t get that first turn of the flywheel, so to speak.

That person has to come in. Because in our case, for Robb, it wasn’t just attracting attendees. It was attracting other speakers. So other speakers were like, “Huh. What is this thing that Robb is doing? What are Keith and Michelle doing down in Austin and why is Rob involved in it?”

And so then we started getting contacted by other speakers, “Hey, what are you guys doing?” But you have to have that number one going in.

The venue is hugely important, the aesthetics of the venue. As long as we can, we will resist going into a big convention center type of thing.

Yuri:                Why? Those are amazing! They’re so… intimate. [laughing]

Keith:  [laughing] Exactly! So, I love Austin, but if you go to Austin’s main convention center, you might as well be in New York or Chicago. Once you’re inside the convention center, there is no feel of anything Austin in there.

Which is why we stay at the Palmer Center—which is part of the convention center business in Austin, but it’s a very distinct building. It’s right on the lake, it’s got a beautiful view of the downtown area, it just has the aesthetics going for it.

Now, on the backside of that—it’s a very difficult space to work in as far as putting on a show that we want to put on. So we have to jump through some hoops to do that. But the aesthetics part way overrides any of the negatives of the location and the technical side of it.

“Mission Motivated Vs Money Motivated”

Yeah, and then it comes down to marketing. Most people putting on events are going to be mission motivated versus money motivated, right? These are the type of entrepreneurs who come in with a message that they want to spread. That is already in them. They don’t come at entrepreneurship looking to necessarily solve a problem.

And there is nothing right or wrong about either path. It’s just they are a different breed of entrepreneur. They are more of the message spreaders versus the entrepreneurs who are more bottom line motivated.

Yuri:                Sure—the Messiah’s.

Keith:              Right, yeah. And they are. And the downside of that is those people generally aren’t as business savvy as the other branch. For myself, you know, thank goodness Michelle did have a very good business mind going in.

But yeah, you see this happen many times. I mean I’m in the strength and conditioning field, and you see this happen many times with trainers who are very, very passionate about training—but they’re not necessarily business people. You see it with chefs, especially—very, very passionate about the art but they are just not business people.

So all of that is to say that if you’re not a business person at heart you better partner with somebody who is in a hurry because believe me, this is a business. You can’t just throw up a tent and put on an event. I mean, there are lots of subtleties to it, and I have seen event after event after event just bleed to death. All the passion in the world but no business underpinnings and they’ll just bleed to death.

Yuri:                That’s so true.

Keith:              So yeah, those would be my big tips.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. And that’s one of the reasons why I started Healthpreneur. Because I noticed, as you said, there’s so many amazing strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, natural path doctors… Who have an amazing gift to transform people’s lives and they’re great artists. They’re great at what they do. But putting on the CEO or the entrepreneur hat is not their thing.

Keith:              Yeah, it’s not. Nor the marketing side of it. And you’ll find that many of these people are a bit allergic to marketing, right? Because they associate marketing with a negative kind of used car salesman type thing.

And I did too, to a degree—but then I finally came around. I understood that if I have a fantastic message and I have the best marketing possible behind it, that is a home run.

Yuri:                Absolutely.

Keith:              You know, shame on me if I have a crappy product and just a fantastic marketing machine behind it. But what if I had a fabulous message and a rocking marketing machine behind it—and that’s a winning combination.

Yuri:                Yeah, totally. I couldn’t agree more, and that’s why I love things like this podcast, right? Because this is essentially marketing, where we’re just informing, teaching, sharing inspiring stories… And at some level, it’s kind of motivating people to move in the direction of a better future.

And it’s not salesy, you know, it’s just like, “Hey, we’re having a conversation, providing some value…” and it doesn’t have to be like that car salesman stereotype.

Keith:              Yeah. And people are savvy to that now too. I mean, the consumer is savvy—they can read between the lines. And so it behooves people who are marketing to come at people like the intelligent consumers that they are.

Yuri:                Yeah, absolutely. So over the past seven years of Paleo FX, what lesson did you have to learn the hard way? And how can you help others avoid that mistake?

Keith:              Whoa. There were sooo many. Let me tell you this—we have a saying here in Texas about getting drug behind a truck.. And we were drug behind a truck many, many times.

Well, I’ll tell you about a funny story that, which was a lesson learned. So the first year that we had Paleo FX, it was in 2012 and we thought it would be a fantastic idea to hold the event in conjunction with South by Southwest.

And I don’t know, many of your listeners may or may not be aware of South by Southwest, but it is the biggest music, technology, movie festival I would imagine in the U.S. It is a massive event. And it will shut down Austin for three weeks.

People who live here in Austin—those who can will actually just Airbnb their houses and just leave.

Yuri:                Smart, might as well—right? High demand?

Keith:              Yeah! Oh, super high demand. That is to say that this city is just throbbing for that two and a half, three weeks.

So we thought that would be a great idea because “Hey, we’re going to have this massive influx of people into Austin. Why not have the event right during South by Southwest?”

And we were not sanctioned by South by Southwest in any way. And not that they shunned us, it was just too late to be sanctioned as a South by Southwest event. So we were like “Okay, well we’ll go ahead and do it anyway.”

Let me tell you, that was the worst mistake.

We went so far in debt the first year just because of little things that we didn’t think of like… “Oh, we have to get hotel room blocks.” You can’t imagine how expensive those were during a period like South by Southwest, when you can’t even find a hotel room in this town.

At one point we needed a transportation van—just a 20 person van, just a simple transportation van to shuttle speakers back and forth. And we called one of the rental companies here, and they laughed at me.

They’re like “Do you realize what’s going on in Austin?” And I was like, “Well, surely there’s a transportation van.” They said, “You will have to go to Dallas, Houston, or San Antonio to get a van.”

Yuri:                Oh my goodness.

Keith:              Which is—that’s far. Geography-wise from where we’re at, that’s a trip—that’s a few hour trip.

So anyway, yeah to get a van we had to drive down to San Antonio, which was a two-hour drive down and two hours back, just to get a van.

I mean, but everything… Lighting for film crews, event space. I mean you just name it—we ran into a roadblock at every turn.

And did we benefit by having the show during South by Southwest? I don’t think so. I don’t think we benefited at all. But we did go into debt—pretty big time debt—and we always laugh and say there was only a Paleo FX 2 because we had to climb our way out of debt, so we had to have another event. [laughing]

Yeah. It’s funny, but there was a seed of truth in that—it was like, “Well, we’ve got to roll the dice again because we just can’t let the ship sink.”

Yuri:                [laughing] Yeah, that’s a good tagline—“Paleo FX 2, birthed out of necessity.”

Keith:              [laughing] Yeah, it really was. I mean seriously—and this is probably another lesson for entrepreneurs too—If we looked at the first Paleo FX purely through business eyes, it was a failure.

But we knew, subjectively, from being at the event… That we have something here. And we just have to go back and turn the knobs a little bit, regroup, have this during a different time—obviously, we’re not going to repeat this during South by Southwest—but we’ve got something here.

I mean every person, every speaker was so enthused, we were like “We have got something here. We have got to figure out a way to get this thing limped through the next edition.”

And we did.

I mean, we took on personal debt—which, that’s a whole other entrepreneurial study. You know, time and time again entrepreneurs take on personal debt—especially mission-based entrepreneurs because they believe in what they’re doing. And that’s risky. That gives you gray hairs, and it keeps you up at night because not only is your LLC close to bankruptcy, but personally you are as well.

Yuri:                How did you get through that time? Like, I mean, I’ve definitely been there several times, and I love that. I would rather go through those ups and downs than have a steady paycheck working 9:00 to 5:00. That’s just my DNA.

In those moments of despair, like “Holy shit, we’re in this much debt,” or “Damn, I gotta take out a second mortgage and invest in the company,” what’s the thinking there? What’s the belief system? What are you saying to yourself as you’re going through this process?

Keith:              You know, Michelle and I talk about this, and so that’s one thing—that’s an added stressor when you are a married couple in this business as well because you can’t get away from it.

I mean it is our life. It is like having a child, really. It’s part of your household, and it is tough. And there are periods of time where you’re like, “Do we really believe in this enough to continue going? Or should we do the smart thing and cut ties while we’re ahead?”

And we’ve had that discussion over and over again, and it always comes back to… What do we believe in? Do we believe in this message enough to go through this hardship? And again it’s like a child, if you believe in that child enough—and obviously, you do, parents love their kids, they’ll go through anything for their child.

But I really think that in this particular business, in this situation, Michelle and I are both, so mission motivated that, yeah, we’ll go down with the ship.

And not to be overly dramatic, but we’ve been very close a couple of times to going down with the ship. But we believe in the message so much, and it always comes back to that. Do we believe in the message? If yes, then continue forward.

If not, then we need to fold up the tent and go do something else. But it’s always come back to—we believe in the message this much.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. That’s a really powerful lesson. So if you were to kind of culminate all your years of experience, and knowing what you know now… If you had to start a new Paleo FX for a new company, what would be the first thing you’d start doing or maybe what’s something you do differently?

The Systems & Processes Of An Event Company

Keith:              Uhhh… I think—and this can only be done after the fact, but—we went into this process for the first couple of years with really no business plan. We just had an idea and a mission, and we put it out there, we really didn’t have a business plan, and we didn’t have any systems and processes set up beforehand.

I can say that now Paleo FX is a pretty tight run machine. We have systems and processes put in, but it was a lot that way before.

Yuri:                Just like McDonald’s wasn’t, right?

Keith:              Right. And I don’t know, in an event, if you can go in with systems and processes because each event is so unique in and of itself.

Now, surely we could have had some rudimentary systems and processes. But we didn’t even go in with that.

I mean, we really didn’t expect this Paleo FX event to turn into what it is. I mean it was a total surprise to us. We thought going in, you know, we’ll have this and then maybe we’ll have another one in a couple of years… It’s kind of like one of those, “When we feel like it” things, we’ll do it.

But we did not realize the magnitude of the enthusiasm of the attendees and the speakers until after we actually put on the first event.

And yes, it was a financial disaster. But the other side of that was, “We have something here. This is something we can work with. Let’s run with this thing.”

So, systems and processes. I think if there is a way to bring those in beforehand that would be a huge help, because we beat ourselves to death the first few years trying to put together these systems and processes.

Yuri:                That’s a good lesson. It’s funny because a lot of people don’t think about systems and processes until they get to the point where they are making a lot of money. But they’re still working their butt off in the business, and they’re like, “Holy cow, how do I get more freedom?”

But guys, if you’re starting a business from scratch, just start documenting what it is that you’re doing. Even if you just put aside one hour a week, it makes such a huge difference, because as you mentioned, it’s like you have a well-oiled machine afterward.

And that’s a true business, right? It’s not a business really when you’re grinding way every single day, doing everything yourself. And the only way to remedy that is to have those those processes documented, which is so powerful.

Keith:              And I would say another thing is not to be afraid to pivot away from what your original idea is. So we went in thinking that we would film every session, every speaker, film all of those and that the real money would be made on the selling of this digital material that we had.

And we couldn’t have been more wrong.

We did not think, going in, that vendor sponsors would play even a minor part in the show. And that was totally wrong. Vendor sponsors now drive this entire movement. They drive the show.

Yuri:                Yeah, well it’s beneficial for everyone.

Keith:              Yeah, it is. It totally is.

But, you know, when we went in in 2011—when we went into this there were very few vendors or sponsors who we would have considered to be paleo. There just wasn’t that many. And so when we went in, we thought, “Well there’s not that many, we’re not going to make any money off of the vendor sponsor deal. So we’re going to have to make money on ticket sales and digital sales.”

And we have totally revamped that idea.Like I say, now vendor sponsors drive this show.

Yuri:                And it’s probably a lot easier now as opposed to year one, where you had no proof of concept.

Keith:              Oh yeah. I mean—I laugh—the first year we had 12 vendors. I don’t think we had any sponsors, so to speak. We had 12 vendors on our little mini vendor floor and maybe two or three of them paid to come in. And it was minimal, minimalpay to come in. The rest we just begged to show up and put up a table—so we some space to fill.

But the good thing about this is the entrepreneurship that took root after that first event was amazing because we went from 12 in that first year—and nine of them came in free…

Last year we had 150-ish sponsors.

And we turn away vendors and sponsors repeatedly—just like we turn away speakers—but we turn away vendors and sponsors because they don’t fit our paleo criteria. If we were just to open up the floodgates, it would be amazing the amount of vendors and sponsors we would have, but we have to keep very, very tight quality control on who comes on the floor. And that’s an undertaking itself which is a whole other arena of processes and systems to try to get control of that.

Yuri:                That’s amazing. I mean there’s been so many great lessons in this conversation so far but, for me at least, I think one of the big threads has been this idea that there’s a big difference regarding supply and demand as you go through the journey.

Starting off—it’s not gonna be easy, guys. Once you get to a point where you’ve done seven successful events, it becomes a lot easier to attract the people into your world. So if you’re starting off selling a book or course, or putting on events—give it some time.

Because as Keith has talked about, I mean, look what is possible when you have a good track record behind you.

Rapid Fire Questions

So Keith, as I always like to do, I want to finish off with a couple of rapid-fire questions. I’m going to throw five of them at your away, you have no idea what they are, and just give whatever response comes to mind first.

Keith:              Sure. Yeah!

Yuri:                Your biggest weakness?

Keith:              Biggest weakness is… I work too hard.

Yuri:                Biggest strength?

Keith:              Biggest strength is my passion.

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

Keith:              Public speaking.

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

Keith:              I have a cup of coffee. Strong, black.

Yuri:                Bulletproof? [laughing]

Keith:              No, [laughing] just straight up black.

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

Keith:              I know I am being successful when I have—oh how can I say this in a very concise way—when I have affected public policy.

Yuri:                Beautiful. Awesome. Dude, this has been great. So you guys have, obviously, the Paleo FX conference coming up in 2018. People can get their tickets now I’m assuming.

What’s the best place for people to check out the conference, grab spots, and keep up to date with what you guys are working on?

Keith:  Yeah, the clearinghouse is at www.paleofx.com

Yuri:  Awesome. There you go, guys. Any final words of wisdom?

Keith:  Yeah. You know, I always tell people that we evolved as a species as obligate movers and opportunistic eaters. And if you put that in the in the context of the Paleolithic period, you know that movement and diet mean everything.

And if you don’t have that health underpinning, that will really hamper you in any outside endeavor you want to do—whether that is studying, whether that’s academia, whether that’s entrepreneurship or whatever it is. But you really have to have the underpinning of health to be able to truly flower and to be whatever you’re going to be.

And so my passion is to unlock all that human potential that’s imprisoned in poor health.

Yuri:                Amen, brother. That’s awesome. It’s a great message.

So, everyone, I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Check out paleofx.com and grab a spot for the next one coming up in 2018. Keith, once again, thank you so much for taking the time. And I will talk to you guys later.

Keith:              Right on Yuri. Thank you.

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Yuri’s Take

Talk about a great interview, right? Like, amazing stuff. I don’t know if you found that as insightful and inspiring as I did, but as I mentioned in my conversation with Keith—this underlying thread of trying to really do your best to avoid comparing your beginning to someone else’s middle…

Because remember, we look at Paleo FX as it is now and we completely lose sight of where it was in year one. And the same thing goes for your business, for your life. If you’re doing very well in your business, if you’ve had a lot of success—obviously you’ve had a lot of ups and downs on the way, but—it’s very tough to remember where things started out.

I remember in my business—and I share this all the time—when I first started online, it was a struggle for three years. I mean barely making enough money to pay the bills and to see where things are now is quite amazing. In contrast, it’s also very dangerous for people to model my business or look at someone else’s business and be like, “That’s where I need to be today.”

Because we tend to forget the number of hours, years, the time that goes into this journey called entrepreneurship—and there are ups and downs all along the way.

There are successes, many more failures and hopefully a lot of learning in the process—and that’s really what I’m trying to bring to you and extract out of these conversations…

No matter where people are at, they’ve gone through a journey, and a lot of them have been where you are or have gone through a path you’re going down right now. And I hope that these conversations will stimulate an idea, some type of ongoing energy motivation to keep you moving forward in the right direction.

Because what you’re doing really does make a difference in the world.

***********************************************************

Follow Keith Norris at:

https://www.paleofx.com/

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Transcription

Healthpreneurs, how’s it going?  Yuri here.  Hope your day is going great.

Today’s episode is a special one because we have the Godfather himself.  No, not Marlon Brando, but Mr. Craig Ballantyne.

Craig Ballantyne is arguably one of the original gangsters.  He’s one of the original fathers of the online fitness space. He was my first mentor when I was having challenges growing my business online.

He was the coach and mentor that I turned to in order to be part of his mastermind along with Bedros Keuilian, back in 2009 – 2010.

It made a huge difference in my business and I have to give Craig a lot of credit for not only what he’s done for my business, but also, what he has done for a lot of businesses in our space.

A lot of influencers that are now big influencers, were initially clients of Craig.

I’m excited to bring Craig on the show because he’s pivoted from the online fitness side of things into really helping you become a much better version of yourself while helping you become more productive, and accomplishing your biggest goals.

He’s done this through his Perfect Life System.

He’s got a great book called The Perfect Day Formula and he’s also got an upcoming retreat called A Perfect Life Retreat.

He’s just a great guy, with a great message and a big heart so I want to officially read his bio for you.

Craig Ballantyne is a high-performance coach and the author of The Perfect Day Formula – How to Own the Day and Control Your Life.

He has been a contributor to Men’s Health magazine since 2000.  Ever since discovering how to beat his anxiety, Craig holds Perfect Life Seminars across the globe teaching thousands of CEOs, entrepreneurs, hollywood actors, professional athletes, and executives how to overcome any obstacle on their path to success.

On his website, EarlyToRise.com, you’ll find his daily essays on success, productivity, time management, health, wealth, and personal development.

Craig lives just outside Toronto which is where I live in Canada.

Without any further ado, let’s bring the man on himself.

 

Hey Craig, how’s it going? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

[Craig] Thanks so much, Yuri. This is going to be a lot of fun.

[Yuri] What is new and exciting in the world of Craig Ballantyne these days?

[Craig] I kind of retired from the fitness space and so I haven’t been doing much there.  I’ve put all my energy into my book, The Perfect Day Formula, and The Perfect Day Formula Kit, which is like coaching in a box.

I have a big event coming up in the fall called The Perfect Life Retreat, which will be in San Diego.  We’ll have Lewis Howes there and a couple other speakers.

It’s really me helping people do the work of getting the clarity they need, build the energy, momentum, and action steps they need to be successful in their personal and professional lives.

[Yuri] It’s obvious there’s been a big gap that has been created since you left the Turbulence Training brand and the fitness space.

From an outsider’s perspective, I feel like you’ve fallen into your true purpose on the planet with The Perfect Day Formula.

[Craig] Well I appreciate that and I feel the same way. I really love this stuff as much as I like the fitness stuff.

It was like pulling teeth for me to talk too much about fitness stuff. I just wanted to get it done and then move on to what you’re talking about which is helping people in a more holistic approach.

While we want to take care of our energy and our health, we want to help people get more results in the bigger things in life so that they can have more time for their families and that’s where both you and I have diverged and away from a lot of people in the fitness space who are still there.

Craig’s evolution from trainer to holistic coach

[Yuri] Let’s back track a bit.  Like many of us, you started off as a trainer working 26 hours a day with clients.

What was the pivotal moment when you said to yourself, “listen I got to take this thing online. I need to leverage my time.  I need to really impact more people.”

What did that journey look like going from the one-on-one to starting an online business back in the day?

[Craig] I was working 25 hours a day, eight days a week just to be specific which I’m sure many people listening can relate to.

When I was starting my online fitness business in 1999, I had started my first e-mail newsletter.

Back then my model was Men’s Health.  If you open an issue of Men’s Health, yes, there’s a lot of fitness stuff.  But there’s also information on how to get a raise, and how to be a better father.  I really wanted to cover every area.

Back in 2001 or 2002, I stumbled across Early to Rise which was started by my mentor, Mark Ford.  I loved it from the minute I started reading it.  I began contributing to it around 2005, right around when Turbulence Training really took off.

I had contributed to Early to Rise for about two years.

Then I got focused on the online fitness stuff which was helping other people.  You and I had gone to seminars together, and I was helping other people like yourself and Vince Del Monte get started in this online world and help get the first steps going.

I helped a bunch of people do that and then I wanted to learn how to become a better writer, and a better speaker.

I eventually bought Early to Rise.  It was a long evolution.  It wasn’t like I did this overnight.

I believe that anybody, anywhere, can change anything, anytime they want. It doesn’t matter if it’s changing a health habit, or changing their career path. You can turn on a dime.

You need a plan in place.  You need take action steps.

Don’t ever pigeonhole yourself into being a fat loss expert or a nutrition person if you want to do something else, and know you can have a bigger impact. Don’t let anybody stop you. In fact, there’s been nobody stopping me.  It’s not even stressful, or difficult or complex. Just do what you want to do.

[Yuri] What do you think stops people?  Is it that internal mind-freak that holds people back from getting where they want to be?

[Craig] I think a lot of it is “Oh my goodness. What are other people going to think of me.”

This goes from the clients that walk in the door of our personal training studios, to us going to a big seminar such as your Healthpreneur Seminar.

They’re thinking “I know I want to do this but what are my parents going to say?  What is my business partner going to say?  What are my clients going to say?”

A lot of people, especially who have gyms, have such a hard time leaving the gym.

“My clients are going to be upset. I’m not there all the time.”

They will be a little bit, but you can reframe that and you can go from helping 300 people in a training studio to 3000 people through a YouTube video every day or 300,000 people through a Facebook Live.

You have to step up to what you’re really capable of.  Going all the way back to when I was just getting out of college, my mom said to me one day, you know somebody with your degree just got a job in the factory.

She wanted me to get an accounting job or something. She was worried for me and a lot of people are worried for us.

But if we know ourselves, we know our talents, we know our skills, we know our dreams, we’ve got to go in that direction.

Writing the movie script to your life

[Yuri] If someone is starting off., they have these big ideas, these big visions for what they want to do, but they find themselves spinning their wheels or they’re held back by these mental blocks.  If you were to sit down and have a coffee with them, what advice would you give to that person?

[Craig] Well we would work backwards and I would say that most people don’t usually have that vision in place. That is the first thing I would do.

I would get somebody to be very specific on where they want to be in three years from now and I call it writing the movie script for your life.

Think about it as if you were about to watch this movie, let’s say about Yuri, and all the things Yuri has accomplished in in the next three years.

Let me be clear.  It’s not what he’s going to accomplish, but rather what he has already accomplished.

Doing this lets me know where you want to be.  It’s what I call your dream destination.

Think of it like this…

I’m sure you’ve taken your kids to Disney World or thought about taking them there.  Disney World is a dream destination.

How do we get to Disney World?

We know we’ve got to fly to Orlando and get a rental car and drive to Disney World.

It’s a straightforward, straight line to success.  Having a vision for your life is like having that dream destination. Once you know where you want to go, it’s a straight line to success.

So now I work backwards with that person.  In order to be there three years from now, what’s our quarterly plan? What is the number one thing you need to accomplish in the next 90 days?  And we list that out.

Then we work backwards from there. What’s our fast start guide for the next 30 days? What do we need to do in the next 24 hours, the next 72 hours, the next seven days, two weeks, three weeks, and 28 days in order to accomplish that 90-day goal?

When you work backwards, you can get so granular on this that you know exactly how every day, how every workday needs to look to reach your dream destination. That’s how powerful it is.  That is what I would do with somebody to help them stop spinning their wheels.

[Yuri] That’s great advice. It is simple in theory. Obviously, it gets easier with practice.

You define the whats and the whys, the big vision, and then you work backwards and figure out the how.  One of the things that I’ve noticed a lot of people struggle with is if they don’t know the how.

What if they don’t know what the big needle mover is for their business over the next 90 days?  How do you guide that person to helping them focus on what really matters?

How to buckle down and get things done

[Craig] That’s a great question and it’s so important.  Most people are doing too many things that don’t really matter.  This goes not only in their day to day, but in their morning routines and all the stuff that they’re trying to do.

They’re trying to do 19 things where they only really need to be doing one or two, so it’s a matter of the introspection and self-reflection that most people just aren’t doing.

We sit them down and ask them a bunch of questions and figure out OK, if you want to have more clients in your gym, what’s working now?  What’s driving in all the people?

I own a couple of gyms with partners and they send me weekly reports and they’re doing all these charity things, and lead boxes, and this, that, and the other thing, but they’re not spending time on the Facebook ads that sends them 90 percent of their actual members.

Most people are filling their time with procrastination activities.

I would dive deep, ask a lot of questions, and call them out on their B.S.

I would pinpoint what really are the big lever’s here.

I’m going to tell that person, “listen you’re doing all of this and you really need to be focusing on this. I know it’s the hardest thing on your list and I know that’s why you want to avoid it, but it is the most important thing on your list.”

I’m sure you can relate.  It’s like when you’re were writing your book, Yuri.  I’m sure there were days when you were “I want to do 19 other things besides gluing my butt to this chair and bleeding out of my eyeballs and writing this book.”

But this book is what has allowed us to accomplish a lot of the things you accomplished today. So that is the power.  It’s about funneling down, funneling down, funneling down, peeling the onion to figuring out what really matters and make a plan to operate on those things that really matter.

[Yuri] Going back to the books for a second, I wrote three books in the space of five months combined.  The only reason I was able to do that is because I implemented what you talk about so often, which is get your most important stuff done first thing in the morning.

Every day, Monday through Sunday, from 5:00 a.m. until 7:00 a.m., that was my writing block.  I did that until the book was done, and that was such a powerful thing.

If you’re listening to this and you’re not using that first hour or two in the morning to do your most important work, the way I looked at it was like wow, I just gave myself 60 extra hours per month.  You can’t even buy that time if you wanted to.

[Craig] Can I just say something about that Yuri?  You nailed it by doing the most important stuff first thing in the morning.

Too many other people, they want to do yoga, meditation, gratitude journaling, free form journaling, interpretive dance.  They do 19 things before they actually do anything, and that’s what’s holding them back.

If somebody out there is thinking “you know this book isn’t coming along fast enough”, it’s because you’re not doing it.  This is absolutely the first thing you do when you wake up.

Have a greens drink or a coffee, and then sit down and write because then the rest of the day is going to get filled in by other people, even if you plan strictly.

Unless you’re a full-time writer like my friend Nick Sparks, and I’ve talked to him about his schedule, he does nothing but write and he has other people to do everything else.

Most people listening to this may want to write a book. They’re not full-time writers. They’ve got to run a gym and you’re not going to be able to write a book between 3 and 5 p.m. while running a gym. You got to do it first thing in the morning so I thank you for saying that, and I thank you for being on the team ‘Get it done.’

[Yuri] Thank you for the inspiration.  For years, the morning has been a constant battle for me. I find that I need a focused project that is consistent day in and day out.

From 5:00 in the morning or 6:00 in the morning I’m going to write sales copy, or write my e-mails or write the book in this case.

For me, when I have that tangible focus in the morning, I don’t have to think about it. From 6:00 – 7:00 am, this is what I do every single day.

[Craig] That’s the best way to do it.  One little extra trick for people that are considering doing the same sort of thing is if you do just a tiny bit of planning and outlining the night before, it makes it even easier.

When people wake up in the morning and they’re like, “I’m going to go and write Chapter Three of my book,” and they go down and sit in front of a computer and there’s a blank Word document sitting there, that can be tough, especially at 5:00 in the morning.

If you just put three bullet points on there the night before, such as, Chapter Three, I want to cover this, this and this, so instead of writing a fifteen-hundred-word chapter, now you just have to write three blocks of 500 words.

You can do that for anything, whether it’s a workout, a nutrition habit, filming videos; as long as you have something to make the path easier, it’s going to be easier.

I stole this from Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Switch where they talk about wanting to have the path cleared for the elephant to walk down it, which is their analogy.  It made so much sense to me and I’ve been thinking about that all the time.

It’s a great analogy for exercise folks when we tell our clients, “when you wake up first thing in the morning, do your exercise and have your workout clothes right beside the bed” so there’s fewer excuses and fewer distractions.

[Yuri] I want to get back to the business of Craig Ballantyne and all the stuff you’ve worked on over the years. Out of all the stuff you’ve done, all the businesses you’ve had your hands in, what’s been the biggest challenge you’ve ever faced?

When you think back, off the top of your head, what was the one really big obstacle you had to overcome, and what did you learn from it?

How can I build community?

[Craig] You know right now we have a big obstacle with our mutual friend, Ray Ortiz, in our boot camps in the Toronto area.  I have boot camps in South Carolina as well with a different business partner, Daniel Woodrum, and it’s easier to fill the ones in South Carolina.

It comes down to one word which is powerful for online businesses, offline businesses, personal relationships, and that’s community. It is very difficult for us to keep the community going in a big city like Toronto.

We’re on the outskirts, so you know looking at Vaughan and Markham, you know it’s people who get in their cars, they’re busy, there’s not a lot of opportunity to make connections when you’re driving around Markham like you do in Mount Pleasant South Carolina.

There’s just no family atmosphere and it’s and it’s been difficult.  Ray has figured it out at one location, in Markham, but we’re still struggling with Vaughan, so that has definitely been a learning experience.

It’s something everybody can benefit from just thinking, “how in my business, online or offline, can I build community”.

Yuri, you shared a great example of sharing more personal stories, particularly with the coffee thing.  You you have always been so open and always had the open kimono in your speaking, your storytelling, in your writing, and that’s how you built the Yuri community.

It’s so powerful and it’s the same way that I have with my anxiety stories, that now, I unfortunately, get messages from people in the emergency room because I’ve told my anxiety story.

They’ve also encouraged me to write another book on helping people overcome anxiety so I can build that community. The more community you have, the more you are able to help people.

That is the one-word big lesson.

[Yuri] Let’s talk about anxiety for a second because you’ve been very open about this in a lot of your communications. Anxiety can take a couple of different forms. For some people it’s called stress, for others it maybe full-blown panic attacks. Why does this happen especially for entrepreneurs?

[Craig] In general, I’ve come down to this theory.  The more time you spend inside your head, holding things up, not sharing, the more difficulty you’re going to have with anxiety.

Thinking only about yourself, or thinking only about your sales numbers and worrying.

When you switch the script, or flip the script and you start to think about how can I be giving and generous to people, how can I focus on other people’s problems, how can I help other people and do nothing but make an impact on other people and be so unselfish, and totally forget about myself, that is the cure.  Whereas being wrapped up inside your own head is the problem.

That is the general aspect to it whether it is, like you said, just daily stress at the end of the day at 5:00, or whether you are thinking about going to the emergency room.

[Yuri] That’s why being an entrepreneur is so great because we’re really value adders and problem solvers.  As you said, if we can focus on serving others, we reduce the focus on ourselves, which naturally dissolves a lot of that stress and anxiety.

[Craig] A lot of this is perspective.  You can think, “Oh my goodness. I didn’t close eight out of 10 clients this week. Oh, what a rough week.” And then you’ve got a client who comes in who’s thinking about divorcing her husband, and you’re “Oh, perspective, perspective”.

The number one skill every entrepreneur needs to have

[Yuri]. In your experience, what do you think is the number one skill entrepreneurs must possess for success?

[Craig] Good question.  I will say persuasiveness in all its aspects. Whether it is persuading somebody to buy something, or persuading somebody to be part of the mission and the team, you have to persuade.  You have to always be selling people to join my team, join my team, join Yuri’s business.

You’re a great digital marketer, you can go and work for anybody you want, but I’ve got to persuade you to be part of this mission because we’re going to work well together and really change lives.  You know you can go and work for this other person, and they’re a great person, but they’re not going to have the impact that we have.

You have to have that persuasion in every area. You have to persuade your kids to brush their teeth.  You have to persuade people to join your team. You have to persuade people to buy your products and services.

[Yuri] How does someone develop that?

[Craig] First of all, there is some formula to it. Going back to the book Influence by Robert Cialdini and thinking about that stuff, I took a lot of psychology classes in university and loved them. They were some of my favorite classes because you know as humans we operate on some weird levels for so many reasons.

You want to be able to go and understand the scientific principles of selling and persuasion and then from there it’s a whole lot of trial and error and role playing.

One of the things that I’ve been doing in the last year is a lot of phone sales of high ticket items like $5,000 and $25,000 coaching programs. I’m working with Bedros. I hired him.  I hired one of my best friends for sales coaching and we did hours and hours and hours of role playing and thinking about the objections.

What I realize as I’ve done so many of these sales calls, is that all I do is listen.  I just listen and let people talk themselves into the sale.  The beginner sales person doesn’t listen and they do too much talking and they talk themselves out of the sale.

A lot of people just want to be heard. They want to get things off their chest and at the end you’ll be able to summarize it.  You’ll go, “This and this and this. Can I help you with that?” And they’ll say yes.

It really is a lot simpler than a recovering introvert like me made it out to be.

[Yuri] The less seasoned person in that situation would feel more uncomfortable and nervous and feel they need to ramble on and talk a lot, as opposed to sitting back and asking the right questions.

[Craig] Yes, it is very much like that.  I always like to say that Bedros is California cool. When you look at his style he’s like, “Hey, bring me your problems. Tell me where you’re at. Oh, I’ve got a total solution for that.”

It is so not a high-sales pressure pitch.  It is just…

“Hey, let me connect the dots here. Let me show you.

 OK so you said they were struggling here, here, and here right.

Yeah. Yeah, I said that.

Oh OK.  So, if I could help you do this, this, and this., you’d like that, right.

Yeah, I’d love that.

Well that’s exactly what I can help you. So let’s just look at the terms and conditions here and get started.”

Coaching and marketing

[Yuri] I want to get real with you here, not that we haven’t been real, but I want to ask what is a big mistake you’ve made in your business?

Something that was a really bad move that made you say, “oh man, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”  What did it cost you?

[Craig] Being cheap and not hiring coach soon enough. I could have hired a coach in 2003. I waited three years.  It cost me millions of dollars.  It cost me years of getting my books out as well as a lot of personal development and growth.

Get a coach immediately because they are going to give you the expert advice and accountability everybody needs.

[Yuri] OK Craig, I would love to get your coaching but I can’t afford it.  What do you say to that person?

[Craig] Virtual mentors.  Watch their YouTube videos, read their books.  In this day and age, you can get so far for free.  That’s what I did.

Back in 2003, I bought a manual for $97 and made $4,000 from it.  I read it a couple more times, and made another $4,000 every time I read it.

I then invested in coaching from the person.  It’s just a ladder up until you can afford their seminars, their masterminds, their one on one, whatever it is that they have.

[Yuri] You’ve been doing this for more than 15 years.  What have you noticed in terms of trends and changes. How is the market different now than it was maybe a decade ago in the market?

[Craig] I wouldn’t say the market is too different, I would say it is the marketing. It’s very social media based these days

I will say one thing about the market is that they are very open to one on one coaching.  I see a lot people successfully building businesses from social media to coaching.

While those things can be manual labor intensive, people are looking for that personal customized touch.

[Yuri] What do you think is a dying breed when it comes to marketing? For instance, people are saying that video sales letters are not as effective as they used to be.  Are people more intelligent and resourceful looking for reviews and more authenticity?

[Craig] I would say they are still very swayed by everything they’ve always been swayed by since the beginning of time.  They’re more swayed by celebrity than anything else these days.

First of all, you can manufacture celebrity.  The numbers prove the celebrity of the individual. “Oh, they have 10,000 Instagram followers”. Clearly, they’ve got some type of celebrity cachet, or they have 500,000 Instagram followers.  “I’ve got to do what this person is doing.”  It’s currently very celebrity based.

However, I don’t think we’ll ever get away from good communication.  God communication will always work.

For example, going back to video sales letters and saying they don’t work – bad video sales letters don’t work; good video sales letters do work.

Somebody was asking me the other day, “do you think we should not send a daily essay from Early to Rise because it’s too much information?”

My take on that was I still read certain aspects of the newspaper every day, and I would read more of it if it was better.

It’s just a matter of fact that we have to step up our game and our content if we’re worried about people not reading it.  It’s not that people won’t read, especially our audience.  They’re older. They read, but we just have to make sure we bring our A-game with every single message we put out there.

[Yuri] How do you help people filter through all the noise?  For example, let’s say you’ve got to write a sales page, or you’ve got to create a video sales letter, or you’ve got have a YouTube channel.  How do you get people to narrow down on what is right for their business?

[Craig] It’ll be a combination of funneling down that we talked about before and figuring out what’s the big lever that can really move your business ahead. It would take a lot of knowing their business and then knowing your skill set.

For example, do you have the skill set and the personality to sit in front of a computer and write a sales letter.  If you can’t sit down for more than 15 minutes like some high energy trainers, which we know they can’t do it, and while we’re not going to try and pull teeth here, what can we do?

We have all these other bullets in the gun from video sales letters, to YouTube channels to Instagram.

That’s the great thing about this day and age.  It’s not like when you and I started where you only had the option of a written sales letter.

It was either online or print.  You really didn’t have much choice back in 2003 and now you have everything.

Now I need to get to know as much about my client and the one bullet they need in their gun.

But the great thing is that everybody can find that one bullet, match it up, and make a really big impact with it.

If Craig started a new business, he would…

[Yuri] Let’s say you sold your claim, your stake, in Early to Rise.  You said you’ve had enough of this.  There’s no more Perfect Life work. None of that stuff.   I want to go into a completely new market maybe sell dog biscuits for Bally the Dog.

If you were to start in a completely new market, what’s the first thing you would be doing in this business?

[Craig] I would survey Bally the Dog.  I would put out three dog biscuits and see which one he liked best. After he ate all three of them in one second, I’d be like OK, that’s not a good use of my time.

Then I would do a deep dive.  I would need to what are people fired up about in that dog biscuit world or whatever world.  I would need to get to know the people in that niche and sub-culture, because you want to come out with an authentic message right from the start.

You don’t want to go into something just with a numbers only based approach. You really need to know the people, combine that with a numbers based approach, knowing what it’s going to cost per lead, per customer, how much you can get in your cart when you do a good funnel like Russell Brunson would call it.  There’s a lot of research.

I would just go and hang around those people and I would really try going into something that I knew a lot about the first place.

[Yuri] Do you believe that taking more action is more effective, or better than taking quality action?  If you only had to choose one, which one would you take?

[Craig] My own personal actions might blow my answer here, but I would say it’s the quality action.  It really is.

I have this conversation with my business partner a lot, because he always says, “Oh man. You do so much.  It’s so awesome. I’m so inspired” and I’m like, “you actually do smarter things than me and the fewer things that you do, have a bigger payoff, in some cases.”

There is a case for both.  However, once you know what you’re doing, generally, erring on the side of more action is going to help.  If you are just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks because you’re just beginning, you need to spend a little bit of time and introspection.

Good coaching is going to help you eliminate a lot of the stuff that most people waste their time on.

[Yuri] Do you think quantity of action can help with the quality of action as you refine your craft, or is it even better just to say, “Hey, I’m going to go to the master and have him pave the way for me?”

[Craig] Take a look at Tim Ferris.  He’s really hacked a whole bunch of stuff from hacking his swimming lessons, to hacking his writing, to his tango dancing, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that.  I hack my books now by using Tucker Max’s Book in a Box company as opposed to sitting there and bleeding because I really think the process fits my style.

I would go to the master first because there’s just so many masters out there who have been there, done that, who will save you years, and then they can turn you loose on the massive action.

Rapid Fire Questions

[Yuri] You ready for the rapid fire five questions?

[Craig]. Yes, that’s always my favorite part of these shows.

[Yuri] Whatever comes top of your mind, the first thing that comes out your mouth, it’s all good.  What’s your biggest weakness?

[Craig] My biggest weakness is envy.  I’m overcoming it.  I’ve always envied other people and it takes a lot of energy from me.

[Yuri] I am sure in today’s day and age a lot of people can relate to that.  What is your biggest strength?

[Craig] My biggest strength is introspection and self-reflection.

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

[Craig] Before you say grow your business, it was going to be falling asleep in cars, but now it is communication.

[Yuri] What do you do first thing in the morning?

[Craig] I walk downstairs.  I let my dog climb on my stomach, I pet him, I have a greens drink and I go immediately to writing.

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

[Craig] I get feedback from strangers in countries I never heard of, that I’ve changed a lot.

[Yuri] There you have it guys.  The man, the myth, the legend himself, the Godfather, Craig Ballantyne. Craig it’s been awesome to have you on the podcast.

You’ve been a mentor of mine for so long and has been a Godfather as everyone calls you for many other people in our space.

I want to thank you for the amazing work you’ve done, for the amazing work you continue to do, and for continuing to raise the bar for everyone in our space.

[Craig] Thank you so much. We’ve come a long way since the basement of System Fitness where we first met.

[Yuri] I know, it’s crazy.

Where can everyone stay up to date with what you’re working on, and where can we find out about all that awesome stuff you’ve got going with The Perfect Life Retreats and all that good stuff?

[Craig] My favorite social media these days is Instagram, so Instagram dot com forward slash RealCraigBallantyne (instagram.com/realcraigballantyne),  Not the fake one.

Perfect Life Retreat Dotcom (perfectliferetreat.com) for the event in November.  I’d love to see everybody there and change their lives, and structure the day to dominate.

[Yuri] There you go guys.  We will have that all linked up in the show notes. Craig thanks again buddy, it’s been awesome, and we will talk to you soon.

[Craig] Thanks so much. Great show.

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Yuri’s Take

So a pretty powerful interview, right.  As Craig continues to demonstrate over and over again, he’s always looking to serve, always looking to give, and help support others. That’s one of the reasons why he’s such an influential figure in our space.

If you have the chance, be sure to learn more about his event, perfect life retreat dot com. It’s going to be a tremendous event. I’m going do my very best to be there.  I’m going to move around one of our own mastermind meetings to see if I can make that happen, so hopefully I’ll be there. Hopefully you’ll be there as well.

You’ll be able to connect with a lot of other amazing people in our space, and obviously, learn from Craig, himself.

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Follow Craig Ballantyne At:

https://www.craigballantyne.com/

https://perfectdayformula.com/

https://perfectliferetreat.com

https://www.earlytorise.com

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Transcription

Hey guys, Yuri here! Now, today’s interview is absolutely mind-blowing. It will shock you, it will inspire you, it may even bring you to tears. I am speaking with an absolutely amazing trainer who is, in my opinion, much more than a trainer.

His name is Rob Grupe, and he’s going to share some stuff with you in this conversation that is really going to shock you. To see somebody transform the way he’s transformed, to be able to impact the people he’s been able to impact on this journey… It’s absolutely remarkable. It’s very inspiring, very remarkable.

So let me introduce you to our guest today—his name is Rob Grupe, and he has overcome several drug addictions and spent seven years, six months, and 18 days in prison—he’s going to share the story with you. And after several near-death experiences, while being eighty pounds overweight, he decided to turn his life around through health and fitness.

So he started his journey as a personal trainer and worked his way up, now owning his own gym in Oklahoma City called Twice-Bitten CrossFit—which is now the largest CrossFit gym in Oklahoma, sadly one of the most unhealthy cities in the United States. And through his gym, he’s been able to help over a thousand people personally achieve health and fitness success through his programs at his facility. Now he’s on a mission to continually search for learning opportunities and experiences that positively change his life and the lives of others, the way they think, inspire strength, desire, perseverance, and motivation to have a physical emotional and spiritually awesome life.

So I’m not going to divulge too many more details, but you’ll discover how awesome this guy is in this conversation. So without further ado, let’s jump in, let’s bring Rob onto the show and let’s have some fun.

 

Yuri:        Alright Rob, welcome to The Healthpreneur podcast! How’s it going, man?

Rob:        It’s going well! Going well, for sure.

Yuri:        Awesome. So what’s rockin? What’s new and exciting these days?

Rob:        Man, we’ve just been continuing to grow our community at Twice-Bitten CrossFit—a gym I own here in Oklahoma City—and it’s been a journey, man. Just trying to do our best and really impact our community. Oklahoma City is, unfortunately, one of the most unfit cities in the nation. So I’m really trying to put a dent in that.

Yuri:        Well that’s great, man, because when you think of the Midwest, you don’t really think of it as the picture of health and fitness, right?

Rob:        Right.

Going Down The Wrong Path With Drugs

Yuri:        So it’s great that you’re doing such awesome work and impacting so many people. And we’ll talk about some of the stuff you’ve done with your gym and your CrossFit box, but I want to go back to a really interesting “beginning” that you had where you were addicted to drugs. You spent seven years, six months, and 18 days in prison, had several near-death experiences. Like, okay, let’s kind of rewind and start there. What was that all about?

Rob:        Okay, so which part?

Yuri:        Well, how did you get sent to prison for seven years?

Rob:        Okay. So I was brought up in a really good family. And I ended up hurting my lower back—well, actually let me start before that.

I got into selling drugs, got into the wrong path, hanging around the wrong guys… Started selling drugs and there was one time in particular that I ended up having, I think strep throat.

Yuri:        And was this back in your teens or twenties?

Rob:        Uhhh, back in teens or early 20s. So I had some painkillers, and I decided to take one, and it made me feel great. From there, it was just downhill. I had no idea about addiction or anything like that, and before I knew it, I was just in deep.

I was taking drugs, selling drugs, and before I knew it, I ended up getting caught by the police. I fell asleep at the wheel and woke up to the police pulling me out of my vehicle, and I had drugs and a gun on me.

Yuri:        Wow.

Rob:        So, yeah, things had really spiraled out of control. And it was a first offense for me. So my attorney at the time assured me that it would be no big deal—some probation, or something like that. But it didn’t work out that way, and they ended up giving me a 20-year prison sentence on a first offense.

Yuri:        Oh my goodness. That’s crazy!

Rob:        Yeah. Yep, so life really changed for me that day. But it really hit me, and I realized really quickly that this was the reality of the situation, and that I had two choices. I could either let it define me and be a victim, or I could make every day count, make this a stepping stone and come out of it a better person—somebody to add value to the world. You know, and that’s what I did.

Yuri:        That’s tremendous, man. Good for you. Because a lot of people can go down the former route, right? And I don’t think everyone has the mindset or the wherewithal to choose the path you chose. So that, kind of, mindset—was that something you’ve always had? Just like, “I’m going to be the Victor instead of the victim. I’m going to take control of life as opposed to let it happen to me.” Is that something you’ve had or was that something you got shocked into, because of this experience?

Rob:        Well, you know, I feel like I’ve always been an influencer. And before I got into drugs, when I was very young, I got into fitness and bodybuilding. Probably when I was 11 years old, that was my first passion. And what veered me off that track was the lower back injury that got me hooked on painkillers as well.

So I was an influencer, you know? And up until the drugs, I influenced people in positive ways—to work out, things like that. So once the drugs entered the picture, I was influencing people in more of a negative way. Myself and others.

Growth Mindset Over The Victim Mentality

So when I started my sentence and was really able to clear my mind, I developed this deep moral obligation that I really wanted to right that. That I wanted to spend the rest of my life influencing people in a positive way. And that’s one of the reasons that I share my story now—is because I think that it helps people to realize that no matter where they’re at, they can come out of that, can come out stronger on the other side of any adversity or challenge in their lives. So that’s really become my mission, what I feel like I must do.

Yuri:        That’s amazing, man. It’s tremendous even to hear that coming out of your mouth, very inspiring. So you had a 20-year sentence, you ended up serving seven and a half years. How did that happen?

Rob:        So the way the system works is, you have a level system. So like there’s day-for-day time, and then there are four levels. So level 1 is just day-for-day, level 2 is your day-for-day plus 22 extra days, level 3, 33, level 4, 44.

So if you’re level 4— that means you’ve been good, things like that—you’d get those extra days per month. So one month is like seventy-something days, does that makes sense?

Yuri:        Sure.

Rob:        So that right there—and then there are opportunities for other programs. Like, I was able to complete 99 hours of college credits while I was there. I learned how to operate heavy machinery, I worked through different drug rehab programs, different things like that—and all of those added up to extra days as well. So I actually discharged the 20-year sentence in that seven years six months and 18 days because of extra things that I worked on and achieved while I was in.

Yuri:        Nice—the fast track.

Rob:        Yeah.

Yuri:        So, what is life like in prison? I mean do you watch movies and shows nowadays and think “Okay, this is complete nonsense,” or it’s actual fact? What did the day-to-day look like for you?

Rob:        Man, it’s funny. To me, I would really equate it to like a rough grade school. In that—there’s rules, there’s politics, there’s things like that in there that you just have to abide by. And it could be something you think is really stupid, but you can’t say that.

People get stabbed over stuff—somebody sitting at a table they shouldn’t sit at—it’s just crazy, you know? And especially when you’re in a facility where there’s people that are doing life without [parole]. You never know what letter they may get, or that one phone call they might get where they’re just like, “screw it,” and just go off the deep end.

Yuri:        Sure.

Rob:        So there’s just always a level of tension in the air, that you can just feel. That’s not fun.

Yuri:        Was it the type of environment where you kind of bond with a few people, pretty deeply, based on the shared experience you’re going through? Or was it kind of like every man for himself?

 Rob:        There’s definitely some bonds that get made. For me, I decided at the beginning that I was going to make every day count. I was going to focus on me, figuring out what led up to me making the mistakes that I made. How I could make sure that that never happened again.

And so the only people I would interact with are ones that had a legitimate game plan for when they got out. Which most people didn’t.

Yuri:        Yeah.

Rob:        So those were the few people I would talk with. So yeah, anytime I was out of my cell I would maybe talk to just a handful of people—and other than that I would just have the demeanor of “don’t talk to me.” Which was just kind of how you had to be in there.

From Prison to Gym Owner

Yuri:        And so now you run the largest Crossfit gym in Oklahoma, which is amazing. You’ve helped transform thousands of lives. What lessons did you take from your time in prison that have helped you in your business?

Rob:        Well, I mean, I had been certified as a trainer before, my passion was fitness—so I knew that was something that I definitely wanted to get into. Actually, wherever I was inside, I would do my own training program. I would just put my head down and do my own thing, and then people would see what I was doing, and they would seek out information from me.

So I ended up training lots of people while I was in, just as a byproduct of them seeing what I was doing and them asking me for help. I was already doing group training the whole time I was in, so when I got out I re-certified, and I went to the gym that I’m actually in now.

It’s a 16000 square foot facility, but when I entered it the first time it was a regular 24 hour gym, and I walked in there, kept it real with the owner, just said “Hey man, I’m a certified personal trainer… But I just got out of prison and I’m looking for somebody to give me an opportunity.”

So I got out September September 11th, 2012—almost five years ago. And he gave me a chance.

So I started working one-on-one with clients. I struggled at first but I ended up building up my clientele to the point where I couldn’t take anyone else on. And then, in that same building, there was about a 1,500 square foot space—which was the owner’s kind of “man cave.” He had his boat and cars and tools in there.

And through several months of me really being on him—I talked him into letting me rent that space out. So that’s where it started, as far as me group training and it becoming a CrossFit gym. But I realized very quickly that running a business, like a gym, is a lot different than doing one-on-one training. There’s a lot more moving parts.

So yeah, that’s kind of how it started. We expanded from there to a 4,000 square foot space and then eventually I got to take over the big part of the building that the regular gym used to be in—which was the 16,000 square-foot space that we’re in now.

Yuri:        That’s great. That’s awesome. You talked about how Oklahoma is not a very health conscious area, or Oklahoma City specifically. How did you overcome that? Or, did you find that was a challenge? To acquire new customers and clients and grow the facility, at all?

 Rob:        Sure. Yeah, sure. So there was a lot. One of my first clients was actually a quadriplegic person. So I’m in the gym, and I see this quadriplegic guy—who’s actually a former police officer—who has an aide that’s following him around. And he has partial feeling and movement of his limbs, but she’s just like haphazardly taking him from piece of equipment to piece of equipment.

And I just knew in my mind that I could help him.

So I ended up starting to work with the guy, and we made a lot of progress together. And so I wanted to continue that—it made me feel really good to help people. And I started, around that time, also doing small groups of two and three. And so I just had the vision of working with bigger groups of people.

And man, there’s been so many stumbling blocks along the way. Where our name comes from—Twice-Bitten CrossFit—was actually from two failed partnerships that happened, from the time that I started in that 16,000 square foot space up until where it is now.

Mentors, Emotional Intelligence, & Vulnerability

So I took on a few partners to begin with, and I learned a lot of lessons, man. I didn’t really know what I was doing on the business side, so I had some tough lessons to learn through not knowing.

So I got mentors and coaches along the way. That’s really what saved me, because there was a point in time where I really almost felt like giving up.

But in those times, man, all I really had to do was think back to what it felt like to be locked up in that concrete cell, staring at those walls, and that would that would move me forward. Because in those times, you know, I would just think about—almost dream about—the opportunity when I could just get out and have the opportunity to struggle and live paycheck to paycheck.

Yuri:        That’s awesome. It’s such a great perspective, and it’s interesting because you have that contrast. Like, you have the complete opposite end of the spectrum that most people don’t have at their disposal.

Not many people have gone through what you’ve gone through—which, again, everyone takes their experience how they take it. I think you’ve done an amazing job at really extracting the beauty or the advantages or the lessons out of what you’ve gone through to make it a positive part of your life. And I think that’s pretty amazing.

I think it’s a very attractive quality—are you open with what you went through with your clients and everyone who engages with you?

Rob:        So, I am now. And that was a big breakthrough for me. It was something that I didn’t hide from people—like, if it came up I would talk about it. It wasn’t something that I was just openly like, “Hey, check this out.”

So I was at a mastermind event, and with the group I was in I saw an opportunity for this to come up. Normally in our mastermind group, you know, everybody sits there in our group, and we talk about the problem areas in our business—what we need to focus on, three things or whatever for the next 90 days. But this particular one was about the emotional stumbling blocks that you feel like are holding you back.

Yuri:        Sure.

Rob:        So when he got to me… Mine was me coming to terms with my former drug addiction and subsequent incarceration. And me not openly talking about that—like what if somebody finds out? Just that being kind of a fear for me.

And so my marching orders out of that were:

“Okay here’s what you’re going to do. First thing is you’re going to set up a nutrition orientation with your members, and you’re going to tell them. You’re just going to tell him the story. And then you’re going to write an e-mail, and you’re going to send that e-mail out to your list. And then you’re going to do a video, and you’re going to put that video on Facebook. And after you do those things you’re not you’re not going to have to worry about it.”

Yuri:        So how did you feel about that, when that was your marching order?

Rob:        Oh man, it scared me. It scared me. I knew he was right though. I knew he was right, so I did that. And people responded really positively to it.

And just this last year I got to speak at Fitness Business Summit and tell that story in front of over 1,000 fitness business owners from all over the world. So that was another step of scary as well.

But yeah man, I think people relate to the transparency and being open with struggles in life,  because that happens—not on that level, but—to everybody.

Yuri:        Yeah totally. The saying is like, “cracks allow the light to shine through.” And so often we try to be proud—hey, I’m this successful person, or I’m kind of close guarded—and I’m sure people just kind of open up more to you, they’re more receptive to you based on you sharing your story. And that’s awesome, because I think it allows them to feel more open as well. Is that something you’ve probably experienced with your clients?

Rob:        Oh absolutely. Absolutely. People have been much more open to me about things, and struggles in their life once I shared that. Once they know that about me.

Yuri:        Yeah, that’s great. So I lost my hair when I was 17 to an autoimmune condition, and I regrew my hair in my early 20s. But then it fell out again—about five years ago—after getting a shot at my doctor’s office.

And by that point I had built a pretty substantial business online—and a lot of people were asking me, “it must have been really tough, when you’re 17, to lose your hair,” and I was like, “Honestly, it wasn’t really that bad.”

But what was the scariest moment of my life was covering up my hair loss—you know, when it happened again. And I was painting on my eyebrows every single day with my wife’s makeup, for two years. And I got to the point where I said, “You know what? Forget this. I’m not doing this. I’m wearing a mask, it’s ridiculous.”

So the scariest moment of my life was shooting a YouTube video to say this like, “I’m coming out of the closet” type of thing, right?

Rob:        Right.

Yuri:        The scariest moment of my life—but what I realized, very much like what you’ve said, is that people were so appreciative of the fact that I just kind of opened up about it. And it permitted them to be okay with who they were and to open up as well. And that was a big lesson for me, so it’s cool to see that you had a similar experience with you opening up with your story too.

Rob:        Yeah, definitely man.

Yuri:        That’s awesome. So who or what motivates you to build such an impactful business, with what you’re doing?

Rob:        Man, one of my biggest mentors for sure and somebody that’s helped me with a lot of breakthroughs is Bedros.

Yuri:        Oh, yeah. He was my first coach as well. He’s great.

Rob:        Yeah. I mean it really hit me one day. One of the things that he said was that “people are crying themselves to sleep at night because they don’t know about the information that you have to share.” When I was so stuck on myself, like “Who am I to share my knowledge? I’m a convicted felon,” and I didn’t feel worthy, right? So it was that particular moment that just really hit me and spoke to me and made me start taking steps forward.

Yuri:         That’s tremendous. So for you to continue growing—because you said you want to help 10,000 people through your facility in the next year—what’s the motivation? What’s the drive that keeps you going when the crap hits the fan? When things don’t work out as well as you’d want them to? What really keeps you moving forward in the right direction?

Growth, Contribution, & Empowering Your Team

Rob:        Man, I just believe for myself and others that there’s always another level that you can take it to for personal growth and development. One of my biggest driving forces is growth and contribution. And I’m a big Tony Robbins fan as well.

So I do everything I can to continue developing myself. I’m always just ravenously hungry to learn new things and have new experiences and be around the most successful people I can be around, you know?

And then, in turn, I can take that and I can bring that information to my team and my clients. And my team can better deliver that to my clients the more I can develop my team. So I want to be able to continue developing myself, but I really want to take care of my team as well. Because the better I take care of my team, the better my team can be an extension of me and make the biggest impact with our members. And if we’re doing a good job with them they can become leaders too.

Yuri:        That’s awesome. Did you find it tough to transition from doing everything yourself to starting to bring people in to grow your team?

Rob:        Yeah! Sure, man. When you’re, I guess, an artist—in the sense that you believe that nobody can do it as well as you.

Yuri:        Yeah, of course—we’re all the best trainers. [laughing]

Rob:        Yeah! [laughing] So letting go and allowing somebody—empowering somebody—else to do the job is definitely tough. And with each piece that I had to let go, it was tough. But then after I did it, I was like, “Oh man, how could I have not done this sooner?”

So I find that there’s always another level of that going on as well. Just learning how to be a better, more effective leader, and empower and bring the best out of others.

But yes, that’s definitely been a process that’s gone piece by piece, and I’m very thankful for the coaches and mentors that I have, that I get to talk to about things like that.

Yuri:        Yeah, and it is great to have that perspective because a lot of times, we don’t we don’t even know what we don’t know. And I remember when I first worked with Bedros and Craig, I mean, I had no clue about a lot of the stuff that I was eventually exposed to, and I very quickly jumped on it and took action.

I tell people the single most important decision I ever made was to go to actual live events, like masterminds, and hire a coach. Because you’re going to get connected with amazing people, who are going to raise the bar. And then you’re going to be getting guidance from people who’ve walked the path before you.

So, trying to think that you can figure this out on your own is very naive. And that’s where I was for way too long. So it’s great to hear that you’ve had a very similar breakthrough with your journey.

Rob:        Yeah, man. Yep.

Yuri:        So, if you were to sit down with a new gym owner, new business owner, and they’re like, “Man, I don’t know what to do here I’m kind of stuck.”

What advice would you give to someone who is starting down the path that you’ve already gone down? I guess at a meta level, not like granular. But in terms of just helping them get through their challenges and meet their goals more realistically.

Rob:        To get coaches and mentors. My first experience, when I got on board with my coaching program, was I ended up in a room with Craig and Bedros. It was us two and like five other people—that was my first experience, and I didn’t really have the money to even go there in the first place.

Then when it got offered to me, to get onboard with the coaching program, I just knew I had to do it. And even though I don’t know how I was going to come up with money, I was like, “I’m going to do it. I’m just going to do it. I’m burning the boats, I’m either going to make some things happen, or they’re going to run my card and there’s just not going to be anything there.”

Yuri:        [laughing]

Rob:        [laughing] That was the way I looked at it.

So my advice to somebody would be to get guidance. Get a coach, get a mentor.

I visited my daughter last week in Houston, and I had the opportunity to drop in a few boxes. And my goal and mission there was just to go in and add value. Because I can remember a couple of years ago, being in my box and just thinking “Man, you know I wish somebody could just come in here and just start showing me what to do. Start telling me what to change.”

And so I just had that in mind as I went into the places and was just like a customer going in there to take a class—but then afterward, just sharing anything and everything I could think of that I thought would help.

Yuri:        That’s awesome. Well, I think you’re very remarkable in the sense that you’re very coachable and willing to grow. Which, as you mentioned, growth and contribution are very important to you. And I think they’re two of the biggest values most entrepreneurs have… Outside of freedom, probably.

But it’s tremendous, because there’s a lot of people who are not willing to get the feedback! They’re not willing to be shown a better way to do things, and I think that’s a tremendous trait that you have.

Rob:        I appreciate that.

Yuri:        Yeah for sure. So you’re kind of on this mission to impact a lot of people, you want to take things to the next level and hopefully make a dent in the Midwest—which I’m sure you will. What do you think is one of the most important skills entrepreneurs must possess for lasting success?

Rob:        I think the willingness to be coachable and to take action. I think, as entrepreneurs, we’re easily distracted. A lot of idea faries, right? Something I still struggle with.

But when you’ve got a good coach or mentor and they lay out for you, “Hey man, this right here is what you need to focus on. I need you to do this, this and this.”

So you just do it. You just do it, even if it’s not perfect, then you just implement, you take action on it and you can make tweaks and changes as you go. But to just not be scared and take some action, and not be worried—thinking, “Oh man, this is going to look stupid,” or “What are people going to think about me?”

Just do it.

Yuri:        Nice. And who cares what they think? It doesn’t matter. It’s all good. It’s a lot tougher to be inside the arena than the spectator in the stands who is throwing popcorn and chirping, right?

Rob:        You know, I love that quote. I forget who that is, but that quote about being in the arena and all that. But yeah, definitely. Definitely.

How Rob includes Craig Ballantyne’s “Perfect Day” Model into his life

Yuri:        Yeah, totally. That’s awesome. So for people that are listening who might have a gym or a CrossFit box—-or just a business in general. What does a typical day look like for you? Do you have any routines or rituals that you are pretty religious with?

Rob:        Yeah! So one of the people that really helped me with that was Craig, for sure. I remember one of the first times talking with Craig… The way my day would go is I would work and not come home until 8:30 or 9:00, sometimes—and my brain would just be like mush. And so I would go to bed, right?

Yuri:        Yep.

Rob:        So I’m talking to Craig and he’s like, “Man, you need to do a brain dump at night, and then you need to make your to-do list for the next day and put down the number one thing that you need to get done the next day.”

And I’m like, “Man, at the end of the day I’m just mush and I can’t do that.”

He’s like, “Okay. Well, do it anyway.”

Yuri:        [laughing] In Craig’s monotone, quiet voice.

Rob:        Yeah! So I started doing that and it helped for sure. My typical day, I get up between 5:00 and 5:30. I get up, make some coffee, and I’ll start journaling. I’ll do a little journal entry and then I’ll start on whatever task I have set up for myself that day.

And I’ll also try to do some deep reading—on some handheld book—which is also something that I just introduced back into my routine. Lately, I had gotten away from reading handheld books, I would do mostly audio books—which I still do—but now also I am reading a book I can hold in my hands. I do that every day now, as well.

Yuri:        That’s awesome. Just in case you guys listening are wondering who this guy Craig is—Craig Ballantyne. I guess we just talk like everyone knows him, because he’s kind of the godfather of the fitness space online.

But dude, this has been great. This has been a very inspiring, very remarkable journey that you’ve been on. Before the rapid-fire, where is the best place people can stay up to date with what you’re up to? And if they live in Oklahoma City or around it, how can they find out more about your CrossFit gym?

Rob:        A couple of ways—they can go to our website, at twicebittencrossfit.com. And we also have a free coaching group, that’s called Get OKC FIT on Facebook. So anybody can join that, I post videos in there, nutrition information, workout information, all kinds of good content regularly.

It’s a way that I’m really trying to help people in the Oklahoma City area for free. And so anybody out there that wanted to join that group that wanted to learn or even add some value—that would be awesome.

So yeah, those are the two ways to get a hold of me and see what’s going on.

Yuri:        That’s awesome. And if you guys run an offline business, what he just mentioned is golden. I’m blown away by how very few offline businesses—whether you have a chiropractic office, a gym—what you just mentioned, Rob, in terms of just adding value through an online platform like a facebook group… Even if 95 percent of those people don’t become customers or clients, there’s going to be five percent of people who you are going to touch at a level you may not have touched, unless they’d come into your facility in the first place. It’s just a smart way to add value and put out goodwill, and it’s only going to repay itself several-fold for you, for sure.

Rapid Fire Questions & Learn More About Rob

All right, so are you ready for the rapid fire?

Rob:        I think, we’ll see!

Yuri:        Let’s do it, man. All right, so no pressure but it’s big time here. So here we go. Whatever pops to the top your mind.

So, your biggest weakness?

Rob:        Biggest weakness would be… I think, my communication skills sometimes.

Yuri:        Okay. Well, you’ve done a pretty good job here. Your biggest strength?

Rob:        Biggest strength, I think, would be being influential. Especially when it comes to a topic that I’m passionate about, that I can do everything I can just to naturally sell it and try to get my point across.

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

Rob:        I think I would have to say… Probably, selling.

Yuri:        Nice, that is an important one. I was gonna ask you a question about what you do first thing in the morning—but you already answered that. So I’m gonna throw in a question out of left field.

What is your favorite lift? In terms of CrossFit workouts or just stuff in the gym in general?

Rob:        I would definitely have to go with kettlebell swings.

Yuri:        Nice. Single? Double?

Rob:        Single!

Yuri:        Sweet. What do you normally swing?

Rob:        Either a 55 or a 70—I try to do 300 swings day. I got that off of a challenge, and actually the lower back injury that I got about 16 years ago and I still deal with that. And when I started the 300 swings a day challenge it really helped my back feel a lot better. Since then, I’ve just continued with it. And I just freaking love kettlebell swings, now—55 or 70.

Yuri:        Kilos, or pounds?

Rob:        Pounds.

Yuri:        Either way, that is still impressive.

Rob:        [laughing] Yeah, kilos— that would be beast, man.

 Yuri:        [laughing] Exactly. Alright, complete the sentence: I know I’m being successful when…

Rob:        When I feel like I’ve really added value to the situation.

Yuri:        Beautiful. Awesome. Well, Rob, this has been a tremendous conversation. I’m really happy to have the chance to connect and get this done. Once again the URL is twicebittencrossfit.com.

Alright guys, check it out if you’re in the Oklahoma area—even if you’re not, follow what Rob is up to—as you can tell, very inspiring guy, he’s got his head on straight, doing some pretty awesome things.

And I’m just happy that you were able to connect with us on the podcast today. So Rob, thank you so much! And hope you have an awesome day.

Rob:        Alright, man. Thank you. It was a pleasure talking with you, Yuri.

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Yuri’s Take

Talk about an inspiring interview, wasn’t that? I mean if you’re a human being with a heart and empathy and compassion—you must have been moved by that interview with Rob.

Tremendous stuff he’s done, and to see how he’s gone through that journey of being someone who’s selling drugs, to ending up in prison and getting his life in order is truly remarkable. So I hope you got some really cool nuggets and what I really enjoyed about our conversation was his mindset.

Being the victor as opposed to the victim, taking control of his life and taking responsibility for the things that he didn’t do so well that led him down that path. And then taking responsibility for his future and being someone who is so willing to grow, and learn, and contribute. And those are such important traits to being an amazing human, but also having a successful business. And I have no doubt that in a follow-up with Rob five years from now—you’d see his business just absolutely explode, much more than it has already, just because of who he is as a person.

And my hope for you is that either you’re already that type of person, or you can take some insights—one “a-ha!”—from our conversation and be like, “You know what? If he’s gone through this and he’s created this, I can do this too. I can do something similar in my own life.”

And that’s what this is all about.

Follow Rob Grupe At:

https://twicebittencrossfit.com/

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