WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 And so if you have somebody on your team who is constantly talking negative, 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.320 it's difficult for them to even see anything positive and they end up sabotaging themselves, 3 00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:13.600 but you yourself have to think, or at least for me, you have to catch your own thoughts around that stuff. 4 00:00:15.920 --> 00:00:18.240 The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. 5 00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:21.600 This podcast, the game, is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to 6 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:25.520 building acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to 7 00:00:25.520 --> 00:00:28.480 bring your business and maybe someday soon partner with us to get to a hundred million dollars in 8 00:00:28.480 --> 00:00:34.800 beyond. I hope you share and enjoy. One of the things that came up from my sales guys on our 9 00:00:34.800 --> 00:00:40.160 side for Jim Lodge was that at this current period of time, there are there more gyms 10 00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:44.880 that are getting on the phone and they described it as being reluctant to confront reality. 11 00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:49.840 And wanted to make something about that, which is in the book Good to Great or Great Leadership, 12 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:55.120 I think it was one of those books. The author talks about Jim Collins, talks about some of the 13 00:00:55.120 --> 00:01:00.880 character traits of good leaders. And he talks about one dichotomy, which are two kind of things 14 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:06.240 that you have to balance back and forth, which is maintaining almost unreasonable optimism for 15 00:01:06.240 --> 00:01:12.240 the future while also confronting the brutal facts of reality. And I think that as we develop 16 00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:17.840 as entrepreneurs, there's just fewer and fewer things that affect us because I'm sure right now, 17 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:21.440 so just to give you some hope and positive feelings about yourself, right now, 18 00:01:22.240 --> 00:01:27.680 can you remember what your business was like maybe five years ago? And the things that you used 19 00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:32.000 to stress about and the things that you used to bother you to keep you up at night, it might have 20 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:38.960 been a one-star review on Yelp or a client talking shit or a trainer leaving and stealing clients 21 00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:44.960 or things like that, right? And now five years later, you've just you've weathered a little bit, 22 00:01:44.960 --> 00:01:49.760 right? You're like your skin's a little thicker. And so not to go back to the talent 23 00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:55.120 stacking kind of module of progression for entrepreneurs, but first you acquire skills, 24 00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:58.320 then you acquire character traits and then you break beliefs, right? And that's the cycle that 25 00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:03.600 continues to happen at each level. And I think this one definitely falls under kind of a combination 26 00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:10.800 of beliefs and character traits, but I think your ability to maintain neutrality is based on your 27 00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:15.920 ability to be optimistic and think about the things that are going to happen or things that you're 28 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:20.640 currently working on, things you're experimenting on, things that you're hopeful for. And holding 29 00:02:20.640 --> 00:02:27.040 on to that optimism is what allows us to then get into the mud and confront the brutal reality of 30 00:02:27.040 --> 00:02:32.640 a situation. Because I think the easiest example that I hear of with especially small business owners 31 00:02:32.640 --> 00:02:36.480 is just like not knowing how much money you have in the bank account, not wanting to look 32 00:02:37.200 --> 00:02:41.200 at your PNL, not wanting to look at your profit, not wanting to look at your expenses, 33 00:02:41.200 --> 00:02:45.200 and that's the dirty work, right? And that's not wanting to look at what your sales conversion 34 00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:49.600 numbers are, not wanting to listen to sales recordings because you're afraid of how bad your 35 00:02:49.600 --> 00:02:54.240 sales team might be. Just all the things like that, where it's turning over the rocks and looking 36 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:58.160 at the little wormy things underneath and being like, all right, I'm going to confront this. 37 00:02:58.160 --> 00:03:02.080 I don't know if you've heard this saying with like doctors, it's like there's no bad diagnosis. 38 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:07.360 And I think that the moral of the saying is that knowing that you have cancer, for example, 39 00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:12.640 it doesn't ever not really benefit you. It just hurts emotionally, but the sooner you find out 40 00:03:12.640 --> 00:03:19.360 your bad news, the better it is. And we have to rewire our brains to start loving bad news 41 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:25.120 and trying to frame them as instead of problems as really opportunities to come up with solutions. 42 00:03:25.120 --> 00:03:30.160 And I think the best entrepreneurs, at least the ones that I aspire to be like, thrive under pressure 43 00:03:30.160 --> 00:03:35.760 and thrive in new and unfamiliar environments. And to be really honest with you, I think part of 44 00:03:35.760 --> 00:03:39.360 the reason that lay last me to make this is that I've actually never been more calm and I've never 45 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:44.160 been happier. I can't remember a time more recently that I've been happier than I am right now 46 00:03:44.160 --> 00:03:49.120 than during this whole COVID mess. And I think it's beautiful because it forces you to just focus 47 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:54.480 on the only things that matter and everything else just be some extraneous. And you get to have big 48 00:03:54.480 --> 00:03:59.040 new challenging problems that come up. And so you get to really flex your entrepreneurial muscles, 49 00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:03.520 which is fun and exciting for entrepreneurs. If you have employees, then you should understand 50 00:04:03.520 --> 00:04:08.240 that they definitely aren't comfortable like you are in change. But we are though, because we're 51 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:12.000 made from this cloth. And that's what got us into this business to begin with is because we love 52 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:16.160 the risk. We love the change. We love to be assert to a certain extent. We love to gamble. 53 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:19.760 And I think that's ultimately what businesses at large thing is just betting on you and betting on 54 00:04:19.760 --> 00:04:23.520 your skill set. And it's like a poker game with an infinite board. Anyways, I won't get into it, 55 00:04:23.520 --> 00:04:29.360 but I love it. And so all that to say, it's maintaining the dichotomy of being persistently and 56 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:34.640 almost unreasonably optimistic with the ability to confront brutal facts and they go hand in hand. 57 00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:39.600 And so if you have somebody on your team who is constantly talking negative, it's difficult for 58 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:44.640 them to even see anything positive in the end of sabotaging themselves. But you yourself have to 59 00:04:44.640 --> 00:04:49.120 think or at least for me, you have to catch your own thoughts around that stuff. I don't really feel 60 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:53.840 like I have them that much anymore to be if I'm being really truthful with you, like the negative 61 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:57.680 thoughts around that stuff, because I just I love the stuff that we have going on. And I don't know 62 00:04:57.680 --> 00:05:02.560 if you have this, but this has been something that's been really valuable for me is a board of all 63 00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:07.840 of the big ideas, like the big Alex ideas of things that could just drive massive opportunity for 64 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:12.560 the gyms could drive opportunity for our business. And so I always have these things which are new 65 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:18.000 and fun and exciting for me. And I balance those that work that I have to do with like the meetings 66 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:22.560 and the one-on-ones and the doing reps and just the start the boring work, right? 67 00:05:24.880 --> 00:05:29.600 Hey guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version 68 00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:34.080 of this, which usually has more facts, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff, 69 00:05:34.080 --> 00:05:38.240 sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check out my YouTube channel. 70 00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:42.720 It's absolutely free to check that out if that's what you are into. And if not, keep enjoying the show. 71 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:49.280 And I think you have to have both because doing the boring work, like for example, and I'm going to 72 00:05:49.280 --> 00:05:53.360 I'm going to I'm going to pontificate on this real quick. I started taking over the daily call 73 00:05:53.360 --> 00:05:57.280 again within gym lunch so that pretty much for all of our customers, they can hop on a daily call 74 00:05:57.280 --> 00:06:02.000 with me every single day and it was something that we started four years ago and it has a lot of 75 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:11.120 benefits because I have to it forces me to confront reality. All right, I have my front line 76 00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:16.640 customers on the call and if they want to unmute themselves and tell me to go fuck myself, they can do 77 00:06:16.640 --> 00:06:24.080 that in front of everyone. And so it forces me to solve problems in real time and it forces me to 78 00:06:24.080 --> 00:06:29.920 constantly confront reality. I think a lot of people, a lot of businesses would be would would 79 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:35.680 dread talking to their customers every day in a large wide format. But I will tell you that it is 80 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:41.200 it in no uncertain terms has been one of the single cornerstone activities that I practiced over 81 00:06:41.200 --> 00:06:46.960 the last four years that has been I think one of the secrets to our success because in taking those 82 00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:53.440 calls, I won know exactly what the needs of a gym owner are today. Right now, not last week, not 83 00:06:53.440 --> 00:06:59.920 an hour ago, right now. Two, I know the intimate pains that they are struggling right now, 84 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:05.280 which allows me to improve my product at such a faster rate that anyone else does because I can 85 00:07:05.280 --> 00:07:10.000 also test things on a daily basis have five guys try one thing five guys try another report back 86 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:13.600 tomorrow rather than having to go all the way down through the chain of command, communicating 87 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:19.040 them all the way back up and have that whole process take a month or six weeks. And so the reason 88 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:24.400 I think that gym watch has been able to consistently stay on top of an industry that typically very 89 00:07:24.400 --> 00:07:29.600 much cycles through quote gurus right. And it's been because we've been able to innovate solutions 90 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:34.320 at a faster rate and we've been able to distribute those innovations across our community to faster 91 00:07:34.320 --> 00:07:39.600 and more effective rate number one and two, we are better able to communicate with our customers 92 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:45.600 right and perspective customers because we understand their pains now why because we talk to 93 00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:51.600 them every single day. And if our product doesn't work, we know if there's a process that the 94 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:55.440 process that needs to change like it used to be like this and now it has to be like this, 95 00:07:55.440 --> 00:08:01.040 we know and we find out before the six month lag time that it would take most entrepreneurs to 96 00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:07.200 see a huge spike in churn that then gets them wondering, I wonder what this is right. And it's 97 00:08:07.200 --> 00:08:12.560 from a tactical standpoint, how to use those two things together. The unreasonable optimism with 98 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:18.400 the confrontation of brutal facts is one, the unreasonable optimism, have your list of at least 99 00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:23.520 for me that works is having the list of big ideas that I'm working on and pushing forward. And then 100 00:08:23.520 --> 00:08:30.400 on the flip side, being able to confront the brutal facts of reality, which in one term can be 101 00:08:30.400 --> 00:08:34.400 knowing the numbers of your business, which if you don't, obviously you should do that. But then 102 00:08:34.400 --> 00:08:39.520 also understanding that you need to hop on, you need to be with the front lines and rub bet like 103 00:08:39.520 --> 00:08:44.080 kiss as it shake hands and kiss babies, not because you need to value your time times worth more 104 00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:50.480 than that. It's not because the value of the intel of what is going to come to you in terms of 105 00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:55.120 the needs of the customer and how much your product can improve and where the opportunities exist 106 00:08:55.120 --> 00:09:00.800 will far away the cost of time that it takes. And it also keeps your teeth sharp so that no one can 107 00:09:00.800 --> 00:09:17.600 sneak up from behind you and take you without, you know, under surprise.