Stout-Heart Fitness with Matthew and Elspeth Jimmink

people, coaching, gym, work, started, money, point, business, owner, feel, hard, stay, clients, beginning, piece, fitness, identity, week, pay, learn

Tyler 00:01
What was the hardest lesson you've had to learn since owning a gym?

Elsbeth 00:07
Well, I think for me, one of the hardest lessons was having people not stay at the beginning, especially, you know, I was pouring my heart and soul into this, and then having them, it just not be their thing. And that was, you know, that kind of hurt my feelings and then learning like, Okay, this is going to weed out the people that don't fit what we're doing, and it doesn't fit our culture. So now I don't see it as a negative. But at the beginning, that was really hard for me. Yeah.

Matthew 00:41
I think for me, it was not trying to be everything to every single person. So it's sort of along the same lines, but, you know, you walk clients at the beginning, and you make it relevant. Right, someone comes along, there's like, hey, you know, I need you to help me train for a marathon. And they're like, Okay, like, that's not my area of expertise. But let me you know, let me try. So now being in a place where it's like, no, we know kind of what our our field is, we know our main focus on doing that really well, rather than just trying to do everything for every person and convince them that you that you can,

Elsbeth 01:22
Yeah, it's a lot less stressful to not have to convince people that what you're doing is great. You know, they see it, they experience it. And that's so much easier than what we were doing at the beginning.

John Fairbanks 01:33
Well, so take us back, take us back to the beginning. You know, that's a hard lesson that gets learned. And I think all of us have struggled with that in one way or another no matter what level of business you're in, or what type of business you're in. So how did you all get there? How did you get started kind of what were those first early mistakes, we all kind of suffered through kind of where what was your start of this journey that you guys call stout heart fitness?

Matthew 01:58
Yeah, so we I was already coaching some with a CrossFit affiliate that we had been going to and doing both like classes and Personals and then we had, through a whole bunch of series of events got started up with strong fit and Julian, you know, and, and we just as we were learning that stuff, we wanted to we just had a heart to like want to, like really be able to work with people, like we saw the impact that was having with us a lot of the things that that we were doing, and we saw other people that were like, Okay, we could they they need this too. So we wanted to be able to share that really with others.

Elsbeth 02:40
So we basically started in a garage, a friend's garage, because we don't have one big enough to have a gym. So we started in someone else's garage that was already equipped. It was already equipped, you know, with like, just the basic, like the basics. And this friend was like, just come start, just start it.

Matthew 02:59
She's like, don't pay any rent, just like started doing some classes, get some people to just like come. So it was so we just started

Elsbeth 03:05
At the very beginning. One of them was my sister, one of them was my mom. And that's how that's how it started. And yeah, those are some of the things they're still there through. Oh, and one of the people was the owner of the house. So

John Fairbanks 03:24
That's awesome. Glad dialer. Well, that's

Tyler 03:27
I always, always, when people talk about starting gyms, there's two ways to La there's a lot of ways to do it, I guess. But there's the way I did it, which is like, take all the money that I have, and some money that I don't and all the money I've saved and just liquidated at what any price, any interest rates, any tax penalties, I gotta pay, and then go in and open this gym and just you're on the hook right away. And I would like to convince everybody in the world to not do it that way. It's very hard. It's very difficult. The way you guys did it is I always tell people, like start with clients. You know what I mean? If you don't know and you want to get into the business of coaching that way of doing it it's like Yeah, well I go broke on equipment like if you have a few people what a great way to start you've got a few people why go into debt first. What Oh, what a weird backwards way that a lot of people do this Me included like I should make sure this is hard financially before I start instead of just starting at Square and just knowing like you don't gotta make it harder to start doing the thing you just start doing the thing. That's really cool.

John Fairbanks 04:29
So why would you do it that way? Why would you be so smart? No. Why would

Tyler 04:37
You explain to me learn the hard way somebody learned from somebody else but know that instead of breaking the bank

Matthew 04:47
I yeah, I think a couple of things. One, we did actually get some advice from people just to like hey, you know what, just just get started and don't like why would ya like why would you like to put that much risk out there to take it It started with in the first place like, see. And as we did we realized like, oh, yeah, we're still learning, like what kind of coaches we are. We're learning, like what kind of a community we want to build, like, if we don't know any of those things like, how are we even going to build the gym to be what we need it to be externally, we know what we need at this point.

Elsbeth 05:16
And I had never done coaching before I hadn't been a coach. So for me, it was like, starting at Ground Zero, like, just starting to get the experience, I really believed in what we were doing. And I wanted to share it with people. So I knew I just had to start.

Matthew 05:31
But the other part of it too, is just like, there wasn't, there wasn't like we have, like 10s of $1,000. In the bank, we didn't have any assets, we could liquidate to, like do that. So it's kind of, well, if we're gonna do it, we're either trying to figure out how to get a pretty loan, that we're not going to be really happy with down the road. And I think someone had told us to, it's like, if you do that, you're gonna always be you're beholden to that, like, you're constantly like, even more so of like, I need the clients, I know, I really need to get these clients, regardless of client for me or not, because I have these bills that have got to be paid, or I'm out of business. So

Elsbeth 06:07
And one thing about the two of us is we really like to do our own thing. We don't like people telling us what we need to do. So it was more simple. It was a better way for us to do it.

Tyler 06:18
Yeah, it's been hard on our hands in your business. For sure. Yeah.

John Fairbanks 06:24
No, um, we Tyler, Tyler and I have talked about like the benefit of I guess this is a harder way of saying it's a benefit of like being poor and Bootstrap and stuff of like, there's a lot of hard lessons that get learned of like, what can I do with duct tape? Can I build a gym with duct tape, like how much duct tape is like too much duct tape that people pay me to come?

Matthew 06:52
As true. And the other thing too, I think that has been good for us is like it kind of emphasizes. It's like, people aren't coming for the like, if they're coming to us, they're not coming for fancy equipment. They're not coming for the air conditioned facility. They're coming because they believe in what the two of us are doing. And and, and that's the sort of that's if they are then they're going to be a good member of that community. And I think the community reflects that now. Yeah. Because none of them came for any of that. Like it is, it's nicer now. But none of them started off because it was a super nice facility or the greatest equipment. It was because of the coaching and the community. So

John Fairbanks 07:34
yeah, and I think that's another thing we've joked about before here on the podcast, the idea of like, no one's showing up because the back hyper machine that you got, like it's gonna be all those intangibles, how they make you how you make your people feel. And I guess that definitely kind of moves in the direction of as you guys have got this started, you've bootstrapped it, you've kind of started to learn who you are. And then more importantly, kind of who your people are, who your tribe is, all the all these people that you're wanting to build, and how you want people to feel. It's how did you transition from kind of a place where you're like, Wow, this is more of like a hobby and all, like, all my family members are now here to where now it's almost starting to become real, like really real, like people are actually now coming. And it's almost like could this be a full time thing? Is this a real thing? And no longer just an experiment? Yeah, yeah.

Matthew 08:32
I think the point where we kind of decided that it was actually the spring was it spring of No, no, it was yeah, it was spring of 2020. Right before it was perfect.

Tyler 08:47
Great timing guys. Success is like 80% timing.


Matthew 08:52
We had the timing down. That was, I think I would say, like February. Yeah.

John Fairbanks 08:57
Maybe even January. What a time around that corner. Hmm. Especially in California. That's awesome.

Matthew 09:03
Yeah, and I think it was a big part of is we were starting to hit our stride as far as we had enough members and that's always obviously been like the number one marketing advertising for us is just people that believe in it enough that they're like okay, well we were starting to create some some things where they could invite people to the gym easier because we realized like we've got to make that easy for people to invite their friends and family to see like what it is they're doing that they're so excited about. So we're starting to kind of hit our stride with that and get more members in

Elsbeth 09:32
And he was working a part time job at that point. Like he didn't have a full time job. I was still at home with the kids homeschooling and still threw a full time job on top of that. Yeah. So part time job and then yeah,

Matthew 09:53
Like that Job was just slowing down and the owner was like, Hey, I don't know how much work you know, I have that for you here too. This point anymore. And I was like, Well, I'm like, I could go try to look for something else. But we're like, kind of right on that edge of like, I think we could just make this work if we just go all in on it. So we did and then a month or two later, everything shut down and started to shut down.

John Fairbanks 10:16
Perfect timing, because you definitely would have gotten laid off by the dude that was kind of like, oh, I don't know, and be like, Oh, you were definitely going to be a low man on the totem pole for that.

Matthew 10:24
Right? Yeah. So it was kind of like, in some ways, it's kind of like, well, okay, if we're going to do this, I don't know, I kind of believe we're in that. If you decide to, like, make something work, like you're going to find a way to make it work, you may have to change the way you're doing it. But if you know what you're doing, there's an actual need for it. Which I mean, if we've seen there really is you figured out a way to

Elsbeth 10:46
And if you're desperate enough, desperation has a way of driving you to get a lot accomplished. Yeah. Does

Matthew 10:52
Stress abuse, the mother of invention?

Tyler 10:54
Yeah, yeah. Well, for a lot of people, in a lot of ways, like the pain gets great enough, and you'll change anything at this point, you know, but like you, I think you're absolutely right, in that, like, if you want the thing, you're gonna do the thing. And there's, and there is a thing that most gym owners who kind of stick to it like, probably aren't going to be told that they can't make it work. You know what I mean? You'll just do it for less money, or we'll do it in a different way. Or, yeah, we'll do it part time. But like, you're probably always going to have your hands on that thing, if it matters to you. And I think once people get to that point, like, you know, the answer, John's question was like, that's when it becomes really real, where you're like, No, no, I'm just, I'm going, I'm jumping this, there's no, there's no parachute. There's no nothing and the whole world's crumbling down around, you know, March of 2020. That was where we were. I think that's tremendous.

John Fairbanks 11:41
Yeah, one of my favorite ways of working with the favorite people we've ever worked with are folks that are like, alright, so I have this idea. Go on. Okay, I want to jump out of the plane with all the stuff first, I'm gonna throw all the stuff of how you build the ship, parachute out the plane, and then I'm gonna jump out after it. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna see, can we build this thing on the way down and land safely? And I'm like, Yeah, that's awesome. Let's do that. That's a good idea. So that's super cool. And,

Tyler 12:12
But not adopting that philosophy to every segment of your business model. Only did that piece to commit, right, your commitment was at that level, but you didn't do what I did, which is essentially, like, mortgage yourself into that position, you know, which is like an absolute nightmare. Oh, crap. I'm committed, like, more than I even want to be at this point. And so what's been going on since then? How has it been making things work? Have you guys adapted devolved doors, open doors closed one step in line?

Elsbeth 12:48
All of the above?

Tyler 12:51
Changes, the only consistent thing?

Matthew 12:54
Yeah. So right after it happened. We were I think, like everybody kind of scratching our heads like, Okay, does this mean everybody's going to cancel their memberships? Like, how do we still provide them what we were doing, and still hopefully make money? So we kind of think like most people would try to do things online. And we did it for a couple, two or three months. Yeah, it was horrible. I didn't like it at all. Well,

Elsbeth 13:19
I mean, what we do is so hands-on. That was like, just not fun at all, but made it work.

Matthew 13:27
Yeah, we did lose a few members. But I think again, kind of going back to the community, like people believed in what we were doing so much. Like even if they I don't even know I'd be interested to go back and ask them if they felt like they were getting the similar level of input and service from us. But so I don't know. But regardless of what they felt like they were getting, most of them stayed on, which was really cool.

Elsbeth 13:50
Started back up again, in the summer, a lot of people, you know, ended up coming back, which we're really grateful for,

Matthew 13:57
We did actually lose a few more people right at the tail end of all that which was interesting. It wasn't right at the start, which I thought would happen. It was more kind of like as we were opening back up,

Elsbeth 14:06
I think as people lost jobs and things like that,

Tyler 14:09
The costs start to spread around a little bit, and everybody has to start to adapt to their situation.

Matthew 14:14
Right? Yeah. But as we started to come out of there's people to like, Man, I just need to get, I need to do something. And I think, because of what we were doing of working a lot like on emotional health, a lot tied with the physical, that it started to resonate with some people coming out of that, you know, locked down and just feeling like they were separated from people like, oh, I realized that I'm not just overweight, or I'm not just out of shape, but I have there's other issues going on. And so what we were talking about of those two being tied together, the emotional physical health really started to resonate with people coming out of

Elsbeth 14:48
That. And so we did start moving a little bit more into emotional health after the whole COVID thing. So I would say that both of us have gotten even better at training people for that. So that's definitely a change that's happened since we've since we started all this is more emphasis on that. We have moved, we've moved garage gyms to someone else's garage, but we're still in a garage gym keeping the overhead low.

Matthew 15:15
Bigger, it's bigger. It's more Yeah, it's kind of or like its own facility now rather than like right into it. Yeah, yeah.

John Fairbanks 15:23
And most importantly, are you still training now? The owner of that house?

Elsbeth 15:27
Sometimes? Yes.

Matthew 15:31
Yes. And still the original.

Elsbeth 15:34
Still my mom still minds sinister.

Matthew 15:37
But it's, but it's yeah, it's definitely I would say we've kind of hitting like another year now even from like, you know, there's that one, like, right before the harvest shutdowns and everything that we hit that point of like, okay, we can make this work of now we're getting to a point like, Okay, now, we're sort of in that uncomfortable stage of, we need to grow more. And we need help more people to like, actually be helping in the gym. But we don't have a lot of work for them yet. But it's, you know, it's like that, okay, we're gonna have to stretch again to kind of make that, that next step.

Tyler 16:10
So I think once you do that enough to what you find out is that like, you'd like you inherently understand that you're resilient enough, you're like, Ah, I can adapt this I can do this I can be when money's tight, I can keep it cool. I can, like I can, I can capitalize, you start to just gain trust in your abilities throughout this process. And then, but then your business just becomes more resilient, like all those, those ebbs and flows. And, you know, there's peaks and valleys, but like, as all of that comes across you, you get to probably like, alright, well, this is just what this is, again, and I think that you, like you said, you seem like you're, you're much better equipped, and much more confident in your model, your coaching and all of it now, as opposed to like, geez, can I? Can I do this? Should I do this? Do I even bother in the other person's garage? How does this go?

Matthew 16:58
Yeah. And even gonna, say at the very beginning, yeah, to you just wonder if people even want you to coach them. Now you're at a point, you're like, Oh, okay. So long as I find the right people, they're out there, I just have to do a better job of like, my message reaching them, and you'll have clients.

Tyler 17:14
So you always could have done a soloist business. I mean, you always could have done, you always could have sold, you know, six week booty groups. You know, you could there's all sorts of those things. And there's nothing wrong with doing things like that in the context of a larger offering, I think, but you could, you absolutely could have had more members in the beginning. But like you didn't want to do that thing. You wanted to do your thing. So I think the fact that you guys like to stay hunkered down and craft an identity and do your thing and do it carefully, I think is still really, really, really important. Because that's the thing, John, I talk to businesses all the time, because they let that stuff run away from them, you know, and then they don't understand that what they actually have is valuable because they don't really believe in it. They never went all in on themselves. They went all in on like, kinda, yeah, I just want to do this, you know, that becomes all your sales pitches, and it's just it's less, it's less you. Yeah, and it's hard to do when people keep that stuff in, check the whole time through, stay tuned in on that the whole way. And everything else, you can just get better at everything else, but you're not gonna, you can't substitute for that. Otherwise, you're doing somebody else's thing, somebody else's business, and it always sucks.

Elsbeth 18:27
Yeah. Yeah. It's hard though, when you just need to pay the bills. It's really hard to stay focused on it. And we've totally lost focus before. And then kind of gone Wait, what are we doing? This isn't this isn't why we decided to start this up. This isn't what we want to do. So you know,

Matthew 18:43
Feel like every time we feel that kind of check of like, I'm not liking what we're doing here. It's always time for us to like, kind of step back and be like, are we getting away from what we really know, we're supposed to be on what our actual identity is. And every time? The answer is, yeah, so it's like, okay, so how do we refocus and, you know, continue to grow, continue to hopefully provide a better experience, but it's focused on it the way that we know we're supposed to do it?

Tyler 19:09
Well, and to know that now, your understanding as it evolves, and maybe in the beginning, like, you know, elsewhere, you say, like, Oh, gee, I'm new to coaching I've never coached before. And so it's hard at that point to go, oh, this should take care of me financially. Because you're at that point, you're like, I should be killing it. My bank account should be chock full. I'm brand new to this, I just started. You don't normally have that expectation of yourself or of what the business should get back to you. Because you're just always pouring and pouring and pouring and pouring and pouring into it. But as time goes on, everybody gets to the point where they go, Oh, I'm done. Like, it's time for me to start valuing. I know what I got. I know it's good. And it's okay for me to want to make a good living doing it and to find ways to do it. I see a lot of gym owners who craft and identity Well, the way you guys have, end up doing that and don't Do the other things, which is like, Oh, I've got a really good identity. And now let me use that. Because the people that like it should reward me financially, it should not be my identity, it shouldn't be my me falling on my sword trying to help people all the time. And that's tough that took me a lot of you, that took me a long time to try to get past this, like, oh, this stuff should be the stuff should help me to, you know, business should help me It shouldn't just help other people should help my family and spend so much time away. And so to see people tuned in the whole way through

Matthew 20:32
It has to help you too, because eventually you can't help people anymore if it's not helping you.

Elsbeth 20:37
And part of what helps people is us being passionate about it. And if I feel completely drained and dread going into the coach, then I'm not going to really help anybody. So making enough money to take care of my family makes me a lot more passionate about what I do. Honestly,

John Fairbanks 20:58
Yeah. One thing that's interesting is you guys have talked about this, owning who you are. And I think anytime we're new, I think we all are gonna it's one of the things you've talked about, like this ebb and flow that you've experienced. Sometimes we get away from our center, and then we come back to our center and kind of have that feeling and that constant reassessment that's happening. But certainly, whenever we're new at doing anything, we all suffer from this impostor syndrome, which is like, you know, it just like, like Tyler said, is the ideas like, no, no, I'm brand new at this. And then we hear phrases like, you fake it till you make it and I'm a total fraud. I'm a total fraud. Do people even like me? Like, these are all those things that are like, will they come back? And interestingly enough, because you went all in, on like, the eve of self destruction for all gyms globally, you kind of allowed yourselves to where you could say honestly, now at the end of it, or at least really kind of at been in it for a long period of time like that people are here for a reason. So that impostor syndrome kind of starts to dissolve a little bit. And then it kind of gives you that confidence of like, No, we're gonna do it the right way. Because we've always been trying to do it the right way. And I think just making the effort, and you guys have done it, the hard you've chosen, it could have been harder, right? Certainly, if you mortgage to the hilt, but you've done it the hard way, you've got it like pure sweat and equity. Like that was the angle from the get go like ground up work,

Tyler 22:30
Because sinking money in the beginning can save you a lot of work, by the way. That's the piece I've known of every project I've started is that I don't end up with a bunch of money to start these projects. So why don't we do it and it's like, well, I got to do a ton of work. Now this is just the way this works. And I appreciate that, you know, that startup method, I don't. I don't fault anyone who starts a project with a fat stack. It's a good way to start trust , but I have a good eye for people who start and do it and do it themselves. And that's

John Fairbanks 23:01
Because you guys have learned every piece of your business. So there's no piece there's no piece of marketing and how you treat people when they walk through the door and text message like tech all the things you could outsource and spend money on and do all these things to make it smoother and sharper and completely lose the like you're in stole 100% of the way you've now done the hard way to her now you kind of have this such a solid foundation that now it's kind of like all right now I could be like you just said we couldn't start bringing people in to help us and do get some help. And so what is that process? What are those things that you guys are looking at now you're kind of kind of coming into we're almost like you're closing another chapter and opening it up to start looking at people and being like no, I think we need I think we need help or we we need assistance kind of what had been the first few things you guys have been looking at now you're coming into that chapter?

Matthew 23:59
Yeah, I think well the first stuff is like some of the help with some of the administrative stuff so we have had a couple of people that have been you know, helping out with some of that. A lot of just

Elsbeth 24:11
A lot of it still falls on Matthew Yeah, and then that's not why we started at the gym as we don't have a passion for administrative work.

Tyler 24:20
What are you talking about? If you did if you did there's just not enough of it in the gym because there's enough of it not enough to get paid good doing admin work either that's a bummer.

Matthew 24:31
Yeah, so yeah, so not a bad thing that i But the more I do have that the less that I always feel more disconnected from the business itself the more I end up doing that so having people that I can know will do a good job and I don't have to constantly be checking you know, I like I'm still aware of what's going on and making sure like okay, invoices have been submitted for some of the different work we do and stuff like okay, but not having to constantly have that in the back of my mind taking up space. When I could be you know, actually working with people is doing more of the big picture planning. And then the other one

Elsbeth 25:04
Another coach, we do have one person who helps us out. But we could use more help with that, because we're at that point now where it's like, okay, we need to open more classes, but we don't. There's not more of us.

Matthew 25:17
There's not a lot of bandwidth left. Yeah. And also to just being like, okay, it'd be nice to go away for a week, the two of us actually, like, not one of us have to stay attend the shop, you know,

Elsbeth 25:27
Which has happened. You know, Matthew has gone to visit family in Texas, taking the kids and I stay here. It's like Sunday, it'd be fun if we all could go together. Yeah. Can't happen quite yet.

Matthew 25:39
Getting closer, but getting closer.

Tyler 25:41
Well, we have a dry, nice, good friend, Nick is kind of the same way. I remember when I had moved to Europe. He tells me he says, he says, Oh, I'd like to come out and see, I'll have to come and see us sometime. And it was like within a month, he had just bought his gym. So I became a gym owner, and had a baby. And I was like, dude, I'll see you in five years. I'm out here. Whatever time you have, there will not be money either. But, yeah, it's funny how that works. And well, there's a thing John and I have talked about quite a bit too. And we do this a lot in our business. It was a long road with gyms, because so much of the coaching philosophy and the presidents and especially in your guys' thing is, is based on you and your personality like it takes. It's going to take a long time for you to go. I'd let somebody else be the first person somebody talks to when they come into this gym, like, yeah, that's a big step. Yeah, people don't, people don't understand there's gyms out there with big huge systems and things like, but they don't understand this process of bootstrapping from the bottom up, or that's a thing, you have to eventually get over or maybe not. But you have to start thinking in those terms like John and I where we go through the steps like, I do a thing. And I recognize immediately the fault in me doing it. Or at least that I realized we can't do this, I can't do this 10 times a week. So if this thing or whatever, whatever task it is, is 10x we immediately have to start looking to outsource it, because now I'm the bottleneck. And I'm more valuable than that. And you guys start to see yourself in that same way as you go through like crap, I'm all the only coaching that can be done is us. This is a problem now where we've reached a scale limit, we're stuck. And so it's like, well, now new coaching, I need no, I need to find a better way with my members of my product offerings to get shook up, it becomes a whole thing. But once you start looking like that, and thinking like that, you're in the right place. And I always you know, John, and I have friends that are like brand new gym owners like just started. And we'll get into this probably before we go, but they have to get to that point. First we were like, I'd love to tell them, I jumped to this. But like when money's tight, and you're just doing the stuff, it's gotta be you and you really want to own the product that's going out on the floor. So you can't just give it to one of your clients right away. You know, it just becomes a point that everybody it's a hill, everybody has to climb up and get to the top of and then decide where they want to go from there and which pieces they need to keep and which pieces they need to start offloading. But it sounds like you guys are right, right about at the right spot, which is good. It only took all of COVID. And you're still here. And then you're still asking the right questions, which is good.

Matthew 28:14
Yeah. Yeah, I think even just trusting the people we have now with another coach, sometimes it's like you want them because those people you know, they've stayed faithful to us for a reason. And they believe in what we're doing, that's pretty much been the two of us. And like she said one other coach part of the time. So it's we're kind of very careful and picky about that, which is, you know, we want to make sure if we're entrusting our people in the hands of someone else that they're ready for that. Yeah, yeah.

Tyler 28:44
Well, John, you want me to jump to the wrap up questions. We have one more. Now,

John Fairbanks 28:48
I have one more would be I got one more it would be so there's been ample I guarantee you, as we've all have experienced whenever we're starting something that's truly ours. And we're not. We've gone all in. And I always feel like when you're this close to really doing something amazing. That's when adversity is going to become one of its greatest, right? And you've gotten there and as you guys come up to every new chapter, I guarantee you there's going to be like these fingers that reach out and they come to get you and pull you back in. Like man, it would be so much better if somebody else paid me and I had a guarantee like, you know, paycheck every two weeks or whatever. Like whatever that thing is that lurks what keeps you from wanting to just keep grinding it out because you got like there's this hill that forever you're climbing right as a gym owner. Because once you hit like, Oh, we've made it like this is the furthest we've gotten we're ready to kind of turn the next chapter that really is just like base camp. I just thought for a minute horizon

Tyler 29:55
And you realize there's a lot more hills and they're all like

John Fairbanks 29:58
All theirs we got so So, and what's crazy is it's like it's by your own doing your own choosing, you're doing this to yourself. You're like, I just love, like self inflicting this pain, and wanting to do more. And, and as long as you're, as long as your foundation, like, like you guys talked about this constant reassessment and coming back to your core, coming back to who you are, as long as you've done that work ahead of time, and you know, who you are, as you start kind of making your way up the mountain, there can be lots of different ways of going about doing what you do. But you make sure like, Are we on the right mountain? Is this even the right direction that we're going, but once you get there, and you kind of get the base camp be like, awesome, like, this is a new thing. Like, alright, that one, I want to go to that one now. And then off you go, it'd be so much easier to just have somebody be like, Oh, carry, like, we'll carry over here. It's been for mountains, it's over there. And, and it's completely unrelated to what you're doing now. But like, what keeps you from doing that? To just kind of stop the fight? Why do you keep doing what you're doing? And what keeps you from quitting? Right, the gym owner's life that you're in now? Yeah, yeah,

Elsbeth 31:08
I think a couple of things. One is, sometimes I want easier, but when I actually think about it, that ends up sounding really boring. Like, because then you don't ever get to really challenge yourself and see that next thing. You'll just, it doesn't sound that interesting to have something just given to you that you didn't have to kind of, you know, battle for. But also, you know, I mean, there are definitely times where I'm like, why are we doing this, like, let's just go back to the nine to five, you go, you go find the job, I'll just focus on school with the kids and taking them to all their stuff. And, um, but then, you know, when someone comes up to you, and they're crying, and they say that you've completely changed their life, and they're in a better place mentally and physically than they have ever been or been in a long time. That's what, for me, is like, this is why we do it. This is amazing. Like, I'm not just gonna die without ever having affected the world in some way, in some positive way. That is a really good feeling.

Matthew 32:17
And I think, having done both, I'm comfortable now being like, Okay, I'm not an I'm not an employee, arms, I'm yeah, I'm not an employee, I'm like, a, I'm gonna have to do something entrepreneurial. That's just I can't. I don't think I can go back to that, and do what we're doing, like going in. And like she said, seeing the impact you're having on people, that makes it to where I'm like, Okay, I'm not just doing this to make money. I'm not just taking people's money selling them a product, like I'm actually having an impact. And that makes it to where I want to go every day and be like, Yeah, let's keep doing this, you know, because I feel like to me, at the end of the day, it's like, the money is necessary. It's great. But the thing that actually makes me wake up in the morning be like, let's go, let's do this is having that impact on people's lives. So

Tyler 33:05
I feel you there. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that really mirrors a lot of what you know, for a lot of gym owners will probably say something very similar. You know, for me, it was reflective of the transformation I kind of had in my life that I found fitness and moving. And just in general, I really appreciate it, it changed my whole trajectory on what I wanted to do, what I thought I wanted to do and what I was capable of. And that was the piece that I wanted to share. So I definitely feel you guys on that because that's very, very similar to the reasons that I kind of opened my agenda was that my wife is starting and my wife is trying to spread this stuff around as well. So yeah, that's commendable. It's not because the money was stacking high. You know,

Matthew 33:46
There's a lot of other, probably easier ways, even entrepreneurially to make some stacks of money faster.

Tyler 33:54
So yeah, but maybe, maybe the rewards, the non monetary rewards aren't as fulfilling as they certainly wouldn't connect to you. To you in that way. I know. I know. I know chefs and cooks that feel the same way in the way that like Elspeth described when some when people come in is like I just see somebody really enjoy my food and I love I love cooking for people I love the thing I love looking at face me I couldn't care less about that. I could do it if I cooked food and people as cool as I'd rather go away now that's for me that doesn't register to me on the fitness thing. It absolutely does. So I think you guys definitely found your thing. We have one question we want to send you guys off with and have you guys answer before we send people away. And this one is as if you could give one piece of advice to someone who maybe wants to follow in your footsteps or wants to open a spot based on your experience right now to this point. What's one piece of advice you'd like to give to somebody in the gym owners again the gym owner space

Matthew 34:55
somebody that's starting up Yeah.

Elsbeth 34:59
I would say, spend less time stressing about getting your clients in and spending more time figuring out who you actually are as a coach? What are you good at? Kind of things make you want to do this?

Matthew 35:14
And I think to tie to that, I'd say if you've got to start coaching. Like, don't just sit there studying, trying to figure things out, figure out your business plan, can I make this work financially? Like actually starting coaching people? You know, there's ways to do it with you know, minimal money upfront, so start doing that. And yeah, learn who you are as a coach, because that's gonna be your product. Yeah. And you know, you have to know what it is, and believe in it before anybody else will. So

Elsbeth 35:45
Make sure that you're actually training in that way too. That's been big for us is the way we train people is the way we train ourselves as well. I love it. Yep.

John Fairbanks 35:59
How many guys are thankful for joining it? folks want to be able to follow you, they want to follow whether you want them following you personally, following the gym kind of following your journey keeping up with you on everything that you're doing. It sounds like you're doing all the right things. You've done it all the right way, your way. First, it makes you very interested to see what happens next. How can they follow you best?

Matthew 36:24
The West, the vessel is pretty good to be on Instagram. It's all just one word to start fitness. They can follow us on Facebook too. We've got a page on there that doesn't actually update as much and then they can also visit our website it's Steinhardt fitness.com And then the Instagram is where we'll typically put up like we'll have more like updates on stuff we're doing and we'll put a trade to put up several times a week stories of like showing our classes and what we do and and we're actually will have hopefully some new content here soon to working with someone on to be able to put up on some of those platforms too. So awesome.

Tyler 37:03
Awesome. Well, thanks a bunch guys. I really really appreciate serving so first user first interviews job so firstly, you guys

John Fairbanks 37:10
Are officially our first interview.

Tyler 37:16
So congratulations are in order I suppose. Thanks a lot for

Tyler 37:26
All right, John.