WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.560 Your ability to maintain neutrality is based on your ability to be optimistic. 2 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:10.320 Welcome to the Jim Secrets Podcast where we talk about how to get more customers, 3 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:14.400 how to make more per customer and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons 4 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:18.000 that we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. 5 00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:25.280 Hi everybody, happy Wednesday and I want to make a quick little video for you or podcast 6 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:29.600 about emotional work. It sounds like it's a therapy thing, but it's not at all. 7 00:00:30.880 --> 00:00:34.000 One of the things that came up from my sales guys on our side for Jim Launch 8 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:39.920 was that at this current period of time, there are there are more gyms that are getting on the phone 9 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:46.240 and they describe it as being reluctant to confront reality. And so I kind of wanted to make 10 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:51.200 something about that, which is in the in the book, Good to Great or Great Leadership, I think 11 00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:57.440 is one of those books. The author talks about Jim Collins, talks about some of the character 12 00:00:57.440 --> 00:01:02.960 traits of good leaders and he talks about one dichotomy which are two, you know, it's two kind of 13 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:08.960 things that you have to balance back and forth, which is maintaining almost unreasonable optimism 14 00:01:08.960 --> 00:01:15.120 for the future while also confronting the brutal facts of reality. And I think that as we develop 15 00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:21.280 as entrepreneurs, there's just fewer and fewer things that affect us because like I'm sure right 16 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:28.320 now, so just to give you some hope and positive feelings about yourself, right now, can you remember 17 00:01:28.320 --> 00:01:33.440 what your business was like maybe five years ago and the things that you used to stress about 18 00:01:33.440 --> 00:01:37.760 and the things that you used to, you know, bother you, keep you up at night, it might have been 19 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:44.480 a one-star review on Yelp or a client talking shit or a trainer, you know, leaving and stealing 20 00:01:44.560 --> 00:01:50.880 clients or things like that, right? And now five years later, you've just kind of, you've 21 00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:56.400 weathered a little bit, right? You're like, your skin's a little thicker. And so not to go back to 22 00:01:56.400 --> 00:02:03.520 the talent stacking kind of module of progression for entrepreneurs, but first you acquire skills, 23 00:02:03.520 --> 00:02:06.880 then you acquire character traits and then you break beliefs, right? And that's kind of a cycle 24 00:02:06.880 --> 00:02:11.840 that continues to happen at each level. And I think this one definitely falls under kind of a 25 00:02:11.840 --> 00:02:17.920 combination of beliefs and character traits. But I think your ability to maintain neutrality 26 00:02:17.920 --> 00:02:24.080 is based on your ability to be optimistic and think about the things that are going to happen 27 00:02:24.080 --> 00:02:27.040 and things that you're currently working on, things you're experimenting on, things that you're 28 00:02:27.040 --> 00:02:34.080 hopeful for. And holding on to that optimism is what allows us to then get into the mud and confront 29 00:02:34.080 --> 00:02:39.920 the brutal reality of a situation. Because I think the easiest example that I hear of with, 30 00:02:39.920 --> 00:02:44.000 especially small business owners is just like not knowing how much money you have in the bank 31 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:48.560 account, not wanting to look at your P&L, not wanting to look at your profit, not wanting to look 32 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:53.360 at your expenses. And that's the dirty work, right? And that's not wanting to look at what your sales 33 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:58.080 conversion numbers are, not wanting to listen to sales recordings, because you're afraid of how bad 34 00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:03.520 your sales team might be. Just all the things like that where it's turning over the rocks and looking 35 00:03:03.520 --> 00:03:07.520 at the little wormy things underneath and being like, all right, I'm going to confront this. 36 00:03:07.600 --> 00:03:11.760 And I think that, I don't know if you've heard this saying with like doctors, it's like there's 37 00:03:11.760 --> 00:03:18.000 no bad diagnosis. And I think that the moral of the saying is that knowing that you have cancer, 38 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:24.240 for example, it doesn't ever not really benefit you. It just hurts emotionally. But the sooner you find 39 00:03:24.240 --> 00:03:31.520 out your bad news, the better it is. And so we have to rewire our brains to start loving bad news 40 00:03:31.520 --> 00:03:37.040 and trying to frame them as instead of problems as really opportunities to come up with solutions. 41 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:42.800 And I think the best entrepreneurs, at least the ones that I aspire to be like thrive under pressure 42 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:48.560 and thrive in new and unfamiliar environments. And to be really honest with you, I think part of the 43 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:52.240 reason that laylice me to make this is that like, I've actually never been more calm and I've never 44 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:57.440 been happier. I can't remember a time more recently that I've been happier than I am right now 45 00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:02.720 than during this whole COVID mess. And I think it kind of, it's beautiful because it forces you to 46 00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:07.600 just focus on the only things that matter. And everything else just speaks of extraneous. And you 47 00:04:07.600 --> 00:04:13.040 get to have big new challenging problems that come up. And so you get to like really flex your 48 00:04:13.040 --> 00:04:18.480 entrepreneurial muscles, which is like fun and exciting for entrepreneurs. Like if you have employees, 49 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:23.280 then you should understand that they definitely aren't comfortable like you are in change. But we 50 00:04:23.280 --> 00:04:27.120 are though, because we're made from this cloth. And that's what got us into this business to begin 51 00:04:27.120 --> 00:04:30.800 with is because we love the risk. We love the change. We love to be a certain, you know, to a certain 52 00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:35.840 extent, we love to gamble. And I think that's ultimately what businesses at a large thing is 53 00:04:35.840 --> 00:04:39.600 just kind of betting on you and betting on your skill set. And it's like a poker game with an 54 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:44.800 infinite board. Anyways, I won't get into it, but I love it. And so all that to say, it's maintaining 55 00:04:44.800 --> 00:04:50.560 the dichotomy of being persistently and almost unreasonably optimistic with the ability to confront 56 00:04:50.560 --> 00:04:56.080 brutal facts and they go hand in hand. And so if you have somebody on your team who is constantly 57 00:04:56.160 --> 00:05:00.720 talking negative, it's difficult for them to even see anything positive and then they end up 58 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:05.760 sabotaging themselves. But you yourself have to think or at least for me, you know, you have to 59 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:09.760 catch your own thoughts around that stuff. I don't really feel like I have them that much anymore 60 00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:13.840 to be if I'm being really truthful with you, like the negative thoughts around that stuff, 61 00:05:13.840 --> 00:05:18.080 because I just I love the stuff that we have going on. And I don't know if you have this, but this 62 00:05:18.080 --> 00:05:23.440 has been something that's been really valuable for me is a board of all of kind of like the big ideas, 63 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:28.800 like the big, big Alex ideas of things that could just drive massive opportunity for the gyms, 64 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:33.520 could drive opportunity for our business. And so I always have these things which are new and fun 65 00:05:33.520 --> 00:05:39.040 and exciting for me. And I balance those that work that I have to do with like the meetings and 66 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:45.120 the one of ones and the, and the, you know, the doing reps and just the, the, the boring work, right? 67 00:05:45.440 --> 00:05:52.960 Most of the nation real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to 68 00:05:52.960 --> 00:05:58.560 get to a much bigger business, going to $50 million plus, we would love to talk to you. And if you 69 00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:02.080 like that, and would like to hear more about it, go to acquisition.com and you can plan anywhere on 70 00:06:02.080 --> 00:06:05.840 the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. 71 00:06:08.640 --> 00:06:12.960 And I think you have to have both because doing the boring work, like for example, and I'm gonna, 72 00:06:13.440 --> 00:06:17.280 I'm gonna, I'm gonna pontificate on this real quick. I started taking over the daily call again 73 00:06:17.280 --> 00:06:20.880 within gym launch so that pretty much for all of our customers, they can hop on a daily call 74 00:06:20.880 --> 00:06:25.680 with me every single day. And it was something that we started four years ago and it has a lot of 75 00:06:25.680 --> 00:06:34.720 benefits because I have to, it forces me to confront reality. All right, I have my front line 76 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:39.760 customers on the call. And if they want to unmute themselves and tell me to go fuck myself, 77 00:06:39.760 --> 00:06:46.880 they can do that, right? In front of everyone. And so it forces me to solve problems in real time 78 00:06:46.880 --> 00:06:52.880 and it forces me to constantly confront reality, right? I think a lot of people, a lot of businesses 79 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:58.720 would be, would, would dread talking to their customers every day in a large wide format. But I 80 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:05.280 will tell you that it has it in, in no uncertain terms has been one of the single cornerstone activities 81 00:07:05.280 --> 00:07:10.640 that I practiced over the last four years that has been I think one of the secrets to our success. 82 00:07:10.640 --> 00:07:17.680 Because in taking those calls, I won know exactly what the needs of a gym owner are today, right now, 83 00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:24.160 not last week, not an hour ago, right now. Two, I know the intimate pains that they are struggling 84 00:07:24.160 --> 00:07:30.000 right now, which allows me to improve my product at such a faster rate that anyone else does, 85 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:34.720 because I can also test things on a daily basis. Have five guys try one thing, five guys try another, 86 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:38.480 report back tomorrow rather than having to go all the way down through the chain of command, 87 00:07:38.480 --> 00:07:42.240 communicate to them all the way back up and have that whole process take a month or six weeks. 88 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:48.240 And so the reason I think that gym watch has been able to consistently stay on top of an industry 89 00:07:48.240 --> 00:07:54.000 that typically very much cycles through quote gurus, right? And it's been because we've been able to 90 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:58.720 innovate solutions at a faster rate and we've been able to distribute those innovations across our 91 00:07:58.720 --> 00:08:03.920 community to faster and more effective rate. Number one, and two, we are better able to communicate 92 00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:09.120 with our customers, right? And prospective customers because we understand their pains. Now why? 93 00:08:09.840 --> 00:08:16.560 Because we talk to them every single day. And if our product doesn't work, we know if there's a process 94 00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:20.720 that the process that needs to change like it used to be like this and now it has to be like this, 95 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:26.320 we know. And we find out before the six month lag time that it would take most entrepreneurs to 96 00:08:26.320 --> 00:08:32.800 see a huge spike in churn that then gets them wondering, I wonder what this is, right? And so 97 00:08:32.880 --> 00:08:38.240 from a tactical standpoint, how to use those two things together, the unreasonable optimism with 98 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:43.920 the confrontation of brutal facts is one, the unreasonable optimism, have your list of, or 99 00:08:43.920 --> 00:08:48.880 least for me that works is having the list of big ideas that I'm working on and pushing forward. 100 00:08:48.880 --> 00:08:55.680 And then on the flip side, being able to confront the brutal facts of reality, which in one term 101 00:08:55.680 --> 00:08:59.520 can be knowing the numbers of your business, which if you don't, obviously you should do that. 102 00:08:59.600 --> 00:09:04.800 But then also understanding that you need to hop on, you need to be with the front lines and 103 00:09:04.800 --> 00:09:09.040 rub that like kiss, you know, is it shake hands and kiss babies? Not because you need to like 104 00:09:09.040 --> 00:09:14.880 value your time, well, my time's worth more than that. It's not because the value of the intel 105 00:09:14.880 --> 00:09:19.360 of what is going to come to you in terms of the needs of the customer and how much your product 106 00:09:19.360 --> 00:09:25.120 can improve and where the opportunities exist will far outweigh the cost of time that it takes. 107 00:09:25.120 --> 00:09:29.840 And it also keeps your teeth sharp so that no one can sneak up from behind you and take you 108 00:09:29.840 --> 00:09:34.640 without, you know, under surprise. So anyways, that was kind of the juxtaposition that I wanted to 109 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:40.640 break down for you today. I hope you guys are excited about COVID as excited as I am. I'm loving 110 00:09:40.640 --> 00:09:45.840 this. I'm loving the fast-paced environment. I love the change. I'm loving the improvements 111 00:09:45.840 --> 00:09:50.800 that we've already been able to to net out for our business that even when gyms come back are 112 00:09:50.800 --> 00:09:54.640 going to create huge downstream impact for how much money they're going to be able to make. 113 00:09:54.720 --> 00:09:59.520 And so I'm just very, very hopeful for what is to come even though I think that many, many, 114 00:09:59.520 --> 00:10:04.880 many people will go out of business and I think many gyms will open back up and then only to 115 00:10:04.880 --> 00:10:10.560 reclose 90 days later because they go out of business. I think that's very real. But anyways, 116 00:10:10.560 --> 00:10:15.040 I hope you have an amazing day. I hope you crushed your goals and I hope this was of somebody 117 00:10:15.040 --> 00:10:26.400 valuable to you, hopefully, and otherwise lots of love and I'll catch you guys on the flip side. Bye!