The Gym Owners Blog/Podcast/20 Ways to SUCK as a Gym Owner

20 Ways to SUCK as a Gym Owner

Saturday, January 21, 2023

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EPISODE KEYWORDS

business, people, gym, learning, money, owner, run, suck, talk, instincts, understand, clients, year, trust, work, goals, week

OUTLINE

  • ​20 ways to suck as a gym owner - 0:00
  • ​The 80% confidence rule - 6:50
  • ​Stop being the smartest person in the room and start talking to the people that matter - 14:11
  • ​Stop being so sensitive and stop waiting for the right conditions - 18:39
  • ​What’s the best time to start a podcast? - 22:25
  • ​The thing that drives you the most crazy - 28:42
  • ​Why you need to be honest with yourself - 32:45
  • ​Your goals need to scare you - 39:04
  • ​Identifying the low hanging fruit in your business - 45:56
  • ​Do your best instead of doing what’s required - 52:15
  • ​How to suck at being a gym owner - 55:58
  • ​Don’t assume that you’re always right - 1:02:53

TRANSCRIPT

Tyler 00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the gym owners podcast. I am your host, Tyler stone. My co host is John, John. Hello, Tyler, guys, this week, we're going to talk about 20 ways that you can 20 ways to suck at being a gym owner. There's a lot of things out there that people do that are working against them. And we're going to make those things very known to you. And I'm sure we're going to be real polite and cool about it. Before we get started, make sure you go to our Facebook group to join the gym owners revolution. We're creating a resource for gym owners, people that think the way that we think, think the way you think and have ideas that can maybe help you and your business. So the links gonna be in our description, join the gym owners revolution, let's get right to it. John.



Tyler 00:47

What are 20 ways like what are your what's your first on the list of 20 things that people can do to suck as a gym owner,



John Fairbanks 00:53

The number one way that you can suck at being a gym owner is just wait until tomorrow to do everything. Anything that's on your list, just wait till tomorrow, you'll have plenty of time, there's no urgency, you don't need to get it done right now.



Tyler 01:09

That's a concept that we run into a lot because gym owners get stuck in operating the business, we just get stuck. And the idea of your job as the owner of the business is not to operate the business it is to develop the business business development is your task that is your main priority. So every week that you don't create something permanent for your gym, that's going to last, it's going to serve the business for the next month for the next few years as a week where you have not done your job. Because then at this point, you're just a manager. Okay, and that's, that's wonderful, but then go manage some shit. But being an owner doesn't mean your job is to make this thing grow. So I'm waiting until tomorrow. Well, great. Now, you didn't get anything done today. And you've also kind of fed that habit, which is this habit of putting a thing off because you'll still be fine. Tomorrow is a habit that has cancer for your business. It really, really really is now tethered to that one. Number two here is just keep learning, reading and researching without doing anything. Okay. That is the thing that people do a lot of, you know, paralysis by analysis you get whether it's decision fatigue. In most cases here, in this case, it really isn't even about making decisions, it's about putting off having to do the thing. And you just think I just need to know more, I need to know more before I get into this. And as a person who's done a lot of things in a lot of different fields and talks to a lot of high performers. Okay. impostor syndrome is real. And it runs across every person that you could possibly imagine, at every level of success. Okay, so get over that thing. They understand, like, I need to know what I talked to my wife about, she's writing some copy and things like this. And so what do we do so she can tune up right in some of our own copy emails, and, you know, social media posts. So we've got about four books on copywriting, and kind of like the modern era digital copywriting and just understanding some principles. But you kind of want to wait, like, well, I don't know, I don't want to finish this book was like not fuck it, you get halfway through this thing and have some ideas, run with them, please. Because taking action is the skill that you need to have more than anything you're going to get that you're going to learn or research through. So if you get something that you can identify, that's the thing that I can do go for it, but quit staying in that learning in that learning pocket because you can only there's college does this great. Okay, how many people do you know that have gone? I know a lot of people in my life who I know have done this who got done with college where you get to kind of borrow a bunch of money and that money kind of helps with your living expenses as well. They borrow, you borrow money a little long, right? Because you got to live while you're going to school. You get no college, and then you go out in the real world, and you maybe even get a job in your field. But it's not as much money as you thought and you got to pay off student loans and you're just kind of spinning your wheels and I fuck I don't like this. So what do they do? They clam right back up and you go right back to college. Why? Because when you're back in college, you don't have to pay back the student loans while you're borrowing more money. And so I know so many people that have gone to Master's degree to second master's degree, like done all sorts of just frivolously long education, truthfully, just to defer their payments. And just in the hope that they come out with higher earning potential when the fact of the matter is not in all fields, but like you should just be out there doing. Doing things is going to get you a lot further than constantly learning. You can always learn but get off that treadmill of sitting there like absorbing information, absorbing information that you don't apply. Just words on paper as far as I'm concerned.



John Fairbanks 04:50

And this is that 8020 rule. We talked about Tyler, you just get 80% of the way there and then take action. The fact is that only you No one else will recognize whether you are nailing this at 92% or 80%.



Tyler 05:08

And here's a piece I talked about impostor syndrome a little bit, I want to tell you something. You think that there are experts out there in the world in almost anything, and there are not. Nobody fucking knows anything. And it's really important that you notice at every job, you go to the guy who's like, that's the dude that knows this shit. The moment you have a real conversation about it, you realize, oh, no, no, no, he's this person who is just very capable of navigating this process. Trust that they'll get to the right answer in the end. And that's just it is willing to stand behind whatever conclusions they come to, okay, that's your expert, that person doesn't know the right path. They just trust that they'll get it right more than more often than not. And that's the real deal out there. So don't sit there and be like, I can't start making Facebook posts. I just don't know how to deal with it. Well, I don't know, man, you got the money to pay someone to do it? No, well, then you better fucking start figuring it out. And it's, that's so that piece, I really want you to make sure that's clear for you. Nobody fucking knows anything. There are no experts, they don't exist. Okay, they don't. So whatever amount that you have information that you have on a subject that you want to pop power forward with, do it because doing and refining is how you're gonna get better. That's how you'll become the guy I used to work with, who I thought could fix anything like super technical stuff. And then as soon as I ended up working with him directly, I was like, Oh, they don't forget, they don't even know more than me. They're just willing to run forward and be accountable for the outcomes. And now that person is an ace, if you look at it from the outside, and then you realize very quickly, you can just be an ace, if you're just willing to take the good with the bad and keep improving. And you can be one today, it's not hard.



John Fairbanks 06:50

Oftentimes, oftentimes, I'll tell people, it's, it's, you know, it's like the 8020 rule. I'm like, 80% confident. Just go in there, like you know what you're doing. And the rest of it's gonna work out.



Tyler 07:01

That's why you when you said in the beginning, you're like, Yeah, you get 80% 80% of the way there and you start going, I want to be like, kind of more like 20 Let me get 20% of the information in and I'll start applying it and very quickly, I'll cover that difference.



John Fairbanks 07:18

The one thing is for sure that's true is that it's if you're if you're not a dumbass, and that you work hard. It has surprised me the overlap of the carryover from whether it's one industry to the next or one. Like anything that I'm learning, if I'm learning from this really alright, let's just jump into this next one, because it's gonna give me in that direction anyway. So another way you can guarantee that you can continue to suck as a gym owner is to keep taking advice from people that have never done what you actually wish to do. Keep listening to them, because they definitely know what the fuck they're talking about. And so definitely, this is what leads me in where it's, it's amazing. It doesn't matter if somebody has been successful, whether they've run a successful cleaning service, or a bakery service or bakery like it's a hotdog stand, right? That might be because my in-laws ran a hotdog stand for 30 to 34 years. When I sit down, I talk to my father in law about business. It's amazing the overlap and carryover of all the things that apply directly that could benefit you and I and what we do in digital sales and everything we do on the digital side all the way to anyone that has a brick and mortar location, the principles are the same. And so this is what just dumbfounded me when you start talking to people that if they sound like a dumbass, it's not because they don't know that niche. They're just dumb. Like the carrier. If you've done anything great, that carries over from one thing to the next.



Tyler 08:54

Except when it doesn't, assuming that you're learning the things that actually are relevant to your thing, because we have talked about this before the guy's learning about coaching is not necessarily learning about business. Learning about business does not need to be learned from somebody that's in the fitness business. You don't need to be neck deep in fitness, business shit, in order for you to be successful. As a matter of fact, I really encourage you to find podcasts about business in general brick and mortar. There are plenty of podcasts out there about business, find something out there about some just basic business principles done in action in somebody else's playground, if you will, okay, because that's all John and I do when we work with other people's businesses there. It's our playground so that we can test and work lots of things and we're not just purely experimenting, but what it is, is that's where we are able to run through bunches of scenarios and find out what works and then we continue to apply once we know what works we apply to universally across the board. And that's how it works but understand that learning how to sew is very different from making money as a seamstress and learning how to be successful as a seamstress. Okay. And the fact is, I don't even know how to sew, and I'd be willing to bet I could sell a lot of fucking sewing, repairs and shit, and then I'd be fucked as soon as I needed to fulfill, but you do not conflate those two things, understand that learning how to coach learning about whatever fucking bio nonsense that I mean, there's so much shit out there from nutrition to supplements to movement, a lot of it's conflicting, that will take whatever your thing is that you do and do that thing. Okay, but those skill sets are very separate, separate from your business acumen very much. The only thing I see that carries over from that primarily is you should be able to talk to people. And part of that is being able to really, hopefully, understand and empathize and care and in doing that your feet are in the door. But that has more to do with actually selling and connecting than it does with truthfully, all the other things that are required in executing a business that makes a lot of money. The next step number four, stay alone, Wolf, keep doing it on your own tough guy. It's all you. Okay, one of the hardest things that gym owners run into is you can't really even be you should not be open with your staff completely about all of the ups and downs of the business, all the ins and outs of your business because frankly, your staff are some of the problems. And by the way, even if your staff isn't, and there are other issues, revenue issues, money gets tight. You know, customer satisfaction is not very good. You need to gradually massage these parts, personnel issues, you can't just come back as chips have fallen off your mouth. I've had employers before who were like, well, if we don't, if this week, month doesn't turn around, none of you guys are getting paid. And I was like, Cassie, how that fucking goes, dude. You cannot be like fucking petty, you can't be fully open with your your members, you cannot be fully open with your staff. The truth is, if you're the main breadwinner, and your family and business is hard, you probably don't want to come home and tell your wife as Honey, this is we are fucked. I don't. If I come home, I don't know how we're going to make money next month, I don't know how this is going to work. You know,



Tyler 12:10

this for me as a man, it's like, she's what she is with me. So I can provide that. And part of providing is providing peace of mind not just providing the thing so that she should just feel like I got this under control. And if I'm coming home, and maybe once or twice, it's rough, I don't know how to. But if it becomes consistently like, I don't know, if this thing is gonna fucking work all the time. Or it's just me flushing out issues, she won't understand that I'll get it sorted. In the end. You don't have anybody to talk to about these things. So it doesn't need to be fitness people. But it can be right. It can be fitness business people, but you need to have a network, you really do. You need to figure out other people who are doing your thing. Other businesses that are just doing business things are finding out, this could be as simple as if you bootstrapped your business and you're just figuring it out, find it another business out there. It's not a fitness business that does it for somebody that may be you know, maybe you know, a guy who's just got a side hustle. And like, Well, how did he get this going? What is he doing? What did he learn how these fucking conversation, it's the most interesting conversations I have with people is about their business, because all I want to do is figure this stuff out. And usually you get them in a private setting, they'll talk and they'll talk in a lot of detail. I was chatting with a guy the other day, who makes way more money than me. And we talked for three hours, and at length. And he was like, telling me very specifically about his exit strategy and how some of these acquisitions companies are coming around and what metrics he needs to change to be relevant to them, if his Plan A falls through. And so there's like, there's a lot of things that people will share with you, if they understand that you're talking to them on the level. So be that guy, you keep hiding, and nobody's gonna fucking know what you know what's going on, and nobody can help you. But you also cannot be blasting your problems out to everybody. Because you need to show a unified front with your members in your household and with your staff. Everything's got to be a Okay, as far as they're concerned, because by the way, real quick, if your members think that your business is sinking, they will start talking about it. And if people start saying this business isn't doing very well, your business will stop doing not be doing very well. So



John Fairbanks 14:11

An important thing that you brought up Tyler was the idea that the guy makes more money than you. And I think that that's super important. Because Never underestimate the power to stop being the smartest person in the room. And if you're not talking to anybody, then you are the smartest person in the room, which is a massive problem. Yeah, but make sure you're not weird. It's like we've all heard the phrases like, you know, you are, you are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with. Well, God damn when if you're, you need to be spending time with people that do business in a big way that they are professionals to what they do. What they're the niches that they're in is completely irrelevant. Yeah, they need to be thinking big. You need to be talking to people that know how to goal set and know how to be able to read a profit Last time, like they know how to do big shit, because then they grow, I guarantee you came out of that conversation with the dude the other day to where it's, you guys came out both benefited. The fact that you have two brains that are brainstorming a thing is the term that I've really liked that I hear a lot when people talk about getting together and especially in person and networking and communicating with people on this level, is you kind of you have two brains in the conversation that kind of create a third brain, there's a third thing that comes out of that. So it's immensely beneficial. You just can't do this on your own, at least you cannot scale.



Tyler 15:39

Correct: live in a cave? Well, because you can't like some of the things before you just can't learn everything in, you're not going to put in those reps, you're not going to put in that time. Just go right to the source. Hey, what should I fucking do? Like it's so it's so much easier that way. Just want me. All right. So that's when we've got failing at trying a business he thinks means that isn't for you. Okay, guys, you're gonna suck at almost every business, the thing you're going to try to do right away. If I had to go back to my first few, like sales meetings, trying to close people, it'd be very, very cringe. Okay, it's, it's just everything from first branding, to social media posts to some strategies and some of that stuff is because the world constantly evolves. So the first strategy to be, you know, relevant or effective requires it to be kind of like in this modern context. So every month, you need to constantly be trying to get better and improve. And if you're not, you're not playing the game, which means you're always going to suck. So the first thing you're going to do, and you have opened your business, and you have 11, fucking Facebook and Instagram followers, we got to start doing something to try to get people, right. So you're gonna start making some posts, and you know, how many people are gonna show up at your door? None? Because nobody's seeing it? Does that mean it doesn't work? No. What about going to like, doing some networking, doing some sales meetings, like finally getting some sit down sales calls with people, right, or sit down in front sales interviews with people you're going through, and it just doesn't work, you're not good at it, you should quit. That's the point is that your best strategy is to quit everything from writing processes to hiring staff, guys, if you're a bootstrap business, and you've hired, you've brought in some staff, I don't know if you've done that much in the last couple of years, but like, there's a good chance they're gonna suck. Probably gonna suck no matter what, right away. And by the way, most of the people, the people like this, most of the people that you're going to hire throughout the lifespan of your business, are not going to be the ones that you're going to have doing that job for the long term. Most of them are not going to work out. Okay, but hiring a couple people, and sinking a bunch of money into developing them, and then having a fucking not work out and having to start all over and get back into coaching on the floor. You know what that is? That's just the way this shit goes. Okay, but that doesn't mean fuck it, I just coach now forever, because I can't solve this problem. No, failing at trying a thing within your business is the way that you figure out how to do the thing. That is the thing. It's the, it's the only way that you're going to sort it out, you can get yourself as as a strategy with as higher likelihood of success as possible, by doing what we described before talking to people getting the best context, like the best approach, the best information from someone else's background, you go forward with a great plan. And if it works, it's great, you'd have the best chance of success. And if it doesn't, whatever, what you need to move on to the next task,



John Fairbanks 18:39

when just stop being so goddamn sensitive. This is one of those things where you're bringing in so much baggage. And this is the self fulfilling prophecy to the nth degree. It's, we get it, we know you were once you were once a fitness or you became a coach, you didn't like people telling you what to do, or you didn't want to pay for a gym membership and you retired somebody else telling you what to do. So you started your own gym? And the answer is, I'm bad. Well, I'm, I'm not a business person. Like I don't, I'm not a business, I don't do business stuff, is the equivalent of saying I'm not good at math. Oh, I'm not good at math. And I'll be bad at math. And my kids are gonna be bad at math. You would never settle for I'm not good at squat, or double or double unders, or deadlifts or whatever, and just be like, well, I'll just not be good at that. And if I'm not ever gonna do it, and if I'll fail, then fucking give up. And so what you do is because you already know you're not good at business, you struggle or it's a little bit harder than you initially expected. And it's like, ah, well fuck that. I'm not doing that anymore. Like that was That was terrible. You don't take that mentality with anything else that you do in your world. So stop being so goddamn sensitive. You've never done business the shit then great jump in, you're gonna struggle, but keep struggling through it and then you will come out on the other side.



Tyler 20:01

And that ties right into this next one, which is called Stop waiting for the right and perfect conditions. Okay? Because these things tie together because guys are at the very beginning of picking up a skill or acquiring any sort of skill, the best phase is about the first year or two of it. Can you see new people when they come into your gym, completely D trained, completely untrained people, and they come in and they get progress, like they're on steroids, they literally get leaner, they build muscle, and they get stronger while getting better cardio all at the same time. And that's for like, six, six to nine months, probably. And then that slows, but like, it's cheating. Frankly, like if you've if you've been in the if you've if you've been training for 567 years, and you're just like, pulling your hair out, just smashing yourself into the ground for five pound PRs every fucking six to 14 months. And then, you know, a setback cost yet a year and a half. And, like, that's the reality of what it's like getting to say, you know, very high level is this, you turn everything off, you get to the very end and you're not then you're just making marginal, incremental changes and hoping that the system can keep moving forward. Okay, but don't stop at this starting line here. Don't just wait at the start line and hope that like, all right, now's the time to move. Now's the time for me to take action, like I gotta acquire all these other skills and then we'll be ready to go. Now's not the time, but we'll keep going and then it'll be or maybe you know, we'll wait till wait till January and then we'll start advertising or well you know, summers are always slow we can just accept sucking inside sales all summer. There's a lot of things like it kind of goes back to continuing to learn, learning and researching and everything without taking action. This is the theme that you're going to see in a lot of this is taking not taking action. Indecision is a decision in itself. And it's the worst choice you can make is to just be like, oh, man, it was fucking wait. Or there should be something you're moving forward on. So when it's time, the perfect time is to go right now, get in the game, and start playing. That's it. That's the perfect time. Those are the perfect conditions, whatever your thing is that you're trying to move in and just get in and start doing it. Because you're going to cover so much ground right away. So much ground. But you're going to do nothing as long as you don't have your feet in the water, nothing. And again,



John Fairbanks 22:24

It's these old adages that are consistent from one thing to the next. And all of our experience, Tyler, when is the best time to have started lifting weights? Five years ago? What's the second best time to start right fuck



Tyler 22:37

today, today. That's the same strategy. I tell people when it comes to starting podcasts, podcasts, by the way, every single one. Let's run with this a little bit because we ran into this as a mass phenomenon. When we started that podcast like 715 1615. At that moment the podcast we were in was so saturated. There's so many fitness podcasts that were already sold so big. That was Mark Ballard. And there was Rogen. And then there was all the old stuff. And I remember when I was 10, I was like, We should do a podcast, we should really start, that should be the centerpiece of what we do for it. And he's like, I don't even know how to do it. And it's like, I know I said, but if we would have gotten on this three with I said, if we would have gotten on this three years ago, we would be huge as I so let's just get in and go to take the good. So we got in and three years later, you know, when I sold and moved verses like shit, we had covered a lot of ground. And now another three years after that, guys are killing, I would say near the top of the heap, right. So just get in and start fucking doing the thing, because like you said, the best time was before. And the second best time is right now. So all you can do is go.



John Fairbanks 23:46

Eating Yeah, sitting and waiting for the perfect conditions really applies to this one. It's been a lot more real, the last couple of years. And if you want to continue to suck at being the gym owner, just sit around and expect that the government is going to come and save you. Yeah, whether they're gonna have, whether you're gonna have bailouts or grants or opera, whatever the opportunities are, or whether they're gonna let you open up or let you stay open and do your business. It's Stop sitting around, stop letting us up whatever the third party is, right? If it's the government, it's whatever, whatever that third party is, that's putting its pressure on you. And our experience, everyone that sits and lets life happen to them. sucks at what they do. Take life by the balls, and go on offense. Stop being so defensive. Stop waiting for somebody to come in and tell you is it okay? Is it alright? If I do this? Is it all right? If you do that, just fucking do it. It's one of those things where it's, you would much rather and we again, it's your attitude. If you're a gym owner, you're a certain type of person. You're probably not somebody that wants to sit behind a fucking desk nine to five. So you've been someone that's been willing to come Gotta go against the grain Anyway, go against the tide, not be like everybody else. And yet, when it starts kind of getting real, and it's like, you kind of have to step up and decide what kind of gym owner am I going to be? You can, you can get scared. And because you get scared, you don't want to fail. And so because you don't fail, you don't want to try. And you kind of just want to wait for everyone's permission and be like, Well, is it okay, if I do this? My favorite thing, Tyler, we were on that call with gym owners. And you essentially gave permission to them, that they're allowed to just change whatever they want, like in their business, because, you know, it's their business.



Tyler 25:43

Yeah, it's yours. Yeah. It's but that's such an important realization to have. It's, it's actually scary. Okay, because when you gotta you're out on a limb, you're out, you feel like you're out on an island as a business owner. And things are the way that they are because you put them there, or you allow them to be and now at this point, what are you? If you don't like it? I guess it just is. You know, like, I don't know if things suck at home with the wife. If we're going to not talk about it. I'm just gonna fuck I guess it just sucks I guess. I guess my marriage just blows I guess I'm just miserable every time I come home, no sorted out work on it figured out what are you gonna do either get out or work on it? What but something's got to happen here. Okay, like staying, like, locked in on that status quo is It's brutal. It's it's really, really, really, really tough. But there's oftentimes people get married to a process or an idea that they had before as well. This is what I've been selling people on. And it is what it is. I was like, Okay, well, who's gonna? Who you're gonna get fired? If you change this? Oh, you work for yourself. The main reason I got into this into working for myself is because I don't deal with anyone telling me what to do. I fucking really don't like it. Because the truth is, at some point, you learn to trust your instincts. So if you don't trust your instincts, okay, that's the biggest piece. That's this next one right here, trusting other other people's opinions over your own. Okay, there's value in it. Some, like don't be delusional here. Right? There's data matters, right? When it comes to sales, if nobody's buying the product that you're trying to sell, maybe your product sucks, maybe your sales process or maybe you suck at selling whatever, right? But when it comes to having instincts as a business owner, like what the next move is, you got to learn to trust yours. And by the way, trust Him and then you might be wrong at some point. And then you're gonna, your instincts are gonna tune up a little bit. John, the amount of times I have, like, kind of a bit against my gut on some things because I let logic kind of like and I'm a highly logic based individual in a lot of things. But sometimes logic creeps in, I'm gonna do the math like mathematically, John, I think let's just let's just go with it here. But something tells me every single fucking time is wrong. Every time I should have got out of deals way sooner, should have cut clients loose way sooner, should have, you know, basically torched this business relationship and moved on sooner. All these things should have been done much sooner. And by the way, I was hit by it immediately. Very, very quickly in all those situations. I'm like, fuck, let me just hang on because I'm in this situation. I'm in this situation, I guess let's just give it a fighting chance. And it never fucking works that way. Trust your goddamn gut. Nobody else knows what's going on here better than you do. Say. But you also need to understand much about food and cravings and things like this. If things got to be clear, it's got to be clear, meaning you cannot let a bunch of other factors. Other people's opinions come in and cloud your ship. Because you will make the best decision for yourself if you really, really, really trust yourself.



John Fairbanks 28:42

And consider the goddamn source. Consider who is telling you. The one thing that drives you the most crazy in the world is hearing you being able to talk about folks that are in your area that don't do a whole lot of fucking anything and they feel highly, highly opinionated to share about oh, this one of my favorite stories. One of my favorite stories from college was our head coach in college since sat us down every single year at some practice I guarantee you as soon as he had to deal with some fucking phone call from an uncle and someone's uncle had called in and wanted to bitch about his nephew not getting playing time and again and our head coach would sit down and Meyer would go and you'd say don't have your uncle's call me and talk to me about your playing time. Because if they do, I'll have them come to practice and I'll let them see why you're not playing and this this idea where it's you get all these opinions around saying hey, you're really hot shit are you really edits that uncle knows fuck all about what's going on? Yeah, and the reality is you have to consider that goddamn source of love if you have people that this is the importance of having that network. You want to be able to have some trusted people, these Pfizer type individuals in your life that you can reach out to and say, Hey, man, I'm kind of feeling this, or I'm thinking this, or I'm seeing this, and being able to confidently make the decision, not pass off responsibility. And this is the importance where like you said to others, you have to kind of be able to own they, this is my decision, I made the decision decision, then did I fuck it up, it makes you borderline almost intolerable to be around. Because when you get a feeling, and you're like, I think it's this, there's no reason at this point, I've now been with you long enough to know, if you get a particular feeling about a thing, and Holy fuck, if I agree with you, all on my own. We gotta make that decision now. Because we've been in multiple instances where like, this feels off, something feels wrong right here. And we do stick with it. And it's we're all like you said, it's always wrong 100% of the time. But that's because we've owned that. And we've learned that



Tyler 30:56

you're only going to tune up those instincts by trusting Him, trust Him, and then you're going to know what you're going to know right from wrong, you're gonna know you're gonna know noise from what's natural. It's, it's that said, as the years go by, I think this is why old guys are the fucking worst man. So we get around some crusty old guys, they're probably right about everything all the time so this is the truth. But like, as I get older, I mean, I almost can't let people around me just say a thing that I don't agree with. Or I'm just like, this fucking moron. Or you gotta leave the situation, I got to tell him what's up. So but trust your instincts to really trust your instinct, especially in your business, when it comes to the relationships that you make, the partnerships that you get involved in everything from products to how you manage clients, you get a bad you get a client, that's a pain in the ass man. And let's say they don't know they got a bunch of money or something like whatever, they know, a bunch of other members. But every fucking day you come home and you're like, Fuck, I fucking hate working for this guy. You know, this, you have those members in your gym, you do. If in your gut, you're like, you need to understand you can get rid of them. I work by the way, every gym that I've ever worked with, that we've ever consulted with, has had a few problem members. And I would love to have a universal policy in my gym where, like, every year, at the end of the year, I fire 10% of the clients that I like the least. That would be as a gym, that's the fact of the matter is if you do if you did that, you you could always make the money back, you always can and you put you're never gonna get that sleep your loss back from fucking like letting the one of the great gym owner I know, out of Indiana's Pete, great guy, I've known Pete for years, you know, Pete Pete's now we're gonna go over to Italy, to do strength coaching for one of the American football teams over there. And so, Pete owns a gym, it's full time. He's a full time insurance guy, but also operates this very successful gym as part time. So having that space kind of allows him that, you know, the separation kind of actually allows it to operate like a system because he's upside up, you know, underwater all the time. Anyway, Pete, and I had this conversation a long time ago, and he said, you know, my wife and I would come home. And one day we're just you know, bitching about the same three or four people that we end up bitching about every week, three times a week, guys, you know, in class they were this is a pain in the ass and, and finally is wife told him, she's, it's the same people. It's just the same people. And so we went the next day, and he fucking got rid of all of them told him they weren't welcome back, refunded some of their money back and said, it's the best goddamn decision he ever made. He should have done it long before his disdain for them and the way they behave in the class and the culture and all this stuff with that assessment was accurate from day one. And he just stayed in it because he thought he needed the money. And then some point, it just it allowed it to get so bad that he did not need the fucking money anymore, no matter how much money it was. So trust your instincts, guys. Trust your instincts. And that ties into this next piece because if it is uncomfortable, stay away from it. That's the next way you can be a bad gym owner, okay, well, firing a client that's toxic. It's got to be done. It's got to be done. Okay, having a difficult conversation. It's got to be done. going out and trying to build new relationships has to be done. This is a quote, it's like you'll only be as successful as the amount of hard conversations you're going to have. Exactly. And that sucks, sucks sometimes. But I promised the highest performing people that I know. And the truth is, I say performing and that ties in with earning truthfully, who are earning and performing well and doing things that I think are innovative and interesting in the business world. They all are fucking having some hard talks with people who they need to you know, you're correcting expectations, you're, you're pulling people's performance up up to where it needs to be or you're calling people out when they're falling short. If you're getting rid of people, or you're putting yourself out there trying to talk about your product having to be open, it's just hard. It's hard and it is very uncomfortable and it's learning. But if you're not willing to do that you are not going to get anywhere further than where you are right now.



John Fairbanks 35:16

And a lot of times the hardest conversation you need to be having is with yourself, you're definitely going to be one of the most critical people you're going to deal with. And so the idea is, how honest Are you with yourself? Where are you at? Where's your mindset? How uncomfortable are you allowing yourself to get say, hey, my skills aren't where it's at right now. We're fucking up, we're not doing well, whether it's in your family, or whether it's in your business, whatever you're doing, not doing well, it's pretty hard to look yourself in the mirror and say, Oh, we're not doing well, because it's me. I'm in the way, I don't have the skills that are necessary. That's some hard fucking things you need to do to look yourself in the mirror and say, I need to step up and I need to improve.



Tyler 35:59

Yeah. That's one John. If you want to be a bad gym owner, stay average, keep the bar very achievable. Okay, that is a piece, I do think that everybody sets their goals way too low in fitness and like, the truth is the people that the people that I ended up in, didn't endear themselves to me, because I understand they got into this as a passion project, right. And it means that your goals were simply to help and to, you know, spread health and to do the thing, and you didn't put money first. But that ends up being actually a pretty low bar. Because if you're a decent coach and a decent person, you connect with people like fucking Oh, man, like you can do a hell of a lot better than what you're doing right now, you just you can, you should be all that the impact that you can have in your community is worth should be so fulfilling to you financially, in addition to all the rest of the stuff, because it has true value, it has value that people, if you coach somebody for a year, and you absolutely change their life, they lose the 50 pounds that they could never have lost. And they are a completely new person. Trust me, there will not be a singular service or person or business that they patronize over the course of that year. It is as important to them as you not one. I mean, maybe their car payment, maybe their mortgage. So you should be on par with that. You know what I mean? And their mortgages didn't give them apps. So but I do I think that guys set your goals should be higher, they should be higher that by the way, the most interesting client we ever took on who's one of the most success was like, I think we'll get into him later a little bit too. But the first thing it says is that I want to absolutely dominate the three states in my area. I want to be the biggest gym in our area. I want to be the most profitable, I want to absolutely take over. And John and I go perfectly. I don't need to know anything else. From there on. We just go that direction. Exactly. And a lot of you guys out there if you're what direction you're trying to go you I mean, what, where does this end for you? And if it doesn't end in an empire, that's fine. But it should end up well paid for the thing you do. I mean, why do you if that's not the goal for you to like, live really well. Doing this thing, like, takes a lot of money to retire? Money seems to be worth less and less every year. So you're gonna either need some other strategies to pilfer money away in order to you know, make it at the end of this when you're not able to me you're not. If we're gonna take this to the full end, you're not gonna like being out there teaching fitness out with a walker and a cane most likely to demo and lift. So how far back from that? Do you have to stop coaching on the floor? And at what point? At what point are you just going to be out of tune with the space you got to earn while the earning can be done here, and you need to build while you're capable of building. And so let's



John Fairbanks 39:04

say the fact is your goals should scare you. Yes. Right. Your goal should scare you, it should cause you pause and should make you say, Do I really do it? Is that something that's real? Like, do I really want that? Is that something that is even achievable? Is it even possible? And if your goals of what you want to do are big goals, big, nasty goals, and if they're if your goals and what you want to do aren't that then they're just too small. They have to be big enough to scare you and make you pause and say alright, I'm after I want to get after it. There has to be something bigger than it does . Money is one of those things that can come from as a byproduct. Right? A byproduct right? But it does need to be that it's then your goals of what you're trying to achieve like what you want to will create and what you want to be able to, do you want do you want to have, like you said to have an empire Do you want to be able to have where it's, you're known or that you're you live comfortably or you're financially free, like whatever those phrases are, you need to have goals that are bigger than just Monday to Monday through Friday.



Tyler 40:19

If you know, and by the way that doesn't like you said, it doesn't all have to be money, but money has to be there in order for it to work for the long haul. Right? I would love to have Jim out there that goes hard into real weight loss, like does a really good job, does it well, does it sustainably great. Give you guys another great idea. I think there's plenty of people, at least in my area that can lose 50 pounds in a year, about a pound a week, you go a little over that. And then you give them you know, every three months, we go maintenance for about two or three weeks and you pull that down. But in a year, you could get 50 pounds off a person if you train and eat well, right, you really could pound a week at CF drive. And that can be done. I would love to have a gym that got the goal that you should set I want I want 20 people to lose 50 pounds in a year, it's 1000 pound year. We're just 20 people, that's that's the shit, right? You saw that very specifically, you know, you can do a very specific group or class for that you can have a very specific program. If I charge more money for that, too. Frankly, it's a year's commitment. Maybe they gotta pay every month, whatever it is, but, but that's an impact that matters. But by the way, if your goal is I want to help 20 People lose 50 pounds this year, cool. That should be the goal. But for you to be able to do that next year, for you to want to do that next year, for you to want to chase those deals with all of the psychology that goes on from this of mine, there's a lot of people who end up in their own way. And ever, you're not gonna have a 100% success rate, it's going to be heartbreaking when it's not. Okay, money's got to weigh out the other side of this for it to be sustainable, because you need to do it. And it doesn't help if you just do it once you've helped 20 people. And once you do that, again, your legacy is how many people you help with the longest you think about helping? Are you really helping if you're too broke to do the thing for the long haul? So that piece I think, I think I think I think everything needs to compensate you for everything you do. Should because it's valuable. The next one. The next way that you can suck at being a gym owner is to prioritize looking like you have your shit together. Instead of actually having your shit together. Guys, this is the shit that I see the most. And it drives me the craziest. Okay. You there's



John Fairbanks 42:29

the number one question I get. Yeah. Can you guys help me redo my website? No. No, no, we can't. I won't? Because in our experience, what your website looks like, what your logo looks like, doesn't fucking matter. That is you prioritizing what you look like to everybody else out there, instead of just fixing it. Is that actually what's the problem right now? Is the problem that your website just has some pages that look funky, your colors are off, your logo hasn't been updated? Is that why you're not making enough money? Is that why you don't have enough members in your gym? And our experience? Never is that it's never that? Could we get the website updated eventually? And will that help systems and everything else? Sure.



Tyler 43:20

And it shouldn't be on the list. Right? Absolutely those types of things your branding should be on the list. I like to have continuity. I love John. We skinned some new logos up here this last couple of weeks for us. You know, but boy, was that not the first thing on our list? Certainly not right. But this thing man this is it's fitness. It really is more common in the fitness industry than others if I'm being totally honest as well, is that you just want to look the part which is why this is the trap prioritizing looking like you have your shit together involves emulating other stuff that's out there. Okay. This is where I have people ask me questions about this gym, or that gym or this business or that business all over the world places I've been to right. And they'll literally universally be the ones that have like, the cleanest looking social media or the most equipment, or like you know what I mean? Or like the biggest facility, those are the ones where other gym owners are like, man, that guy's got it together. Like they literally think that that business has got it all together. And I can promise you I would say it's the ratio of ones that actually have their shit together versus do it outwardly on appearance is the same. Does that make sense? Right. There's lots of gyms that look like it but their businesses are fucking fledgeling, like absolutely fledgeling. And you can have a nice facility and all sorts of nice equipment looks sharp, but the shit has made zero progress in years. Zero or skidding backwards, barely surviving or operating at a loss because these business owners can support it and you can't. Okay, or simply they had a lot more money up front. You didn't so what are you going to do? You're gonna spend your way to that and fuck everything else up, too. chase that thing, the thing that they already got that you don't need, it's very, very silly. So prioritizing, looking like you have your shit together is really, really stupid because that goes on to the next thing. Another great way you can suck as a gym owner is to keep avoiding what matters most. Okay, and priorities. Really, really, really matters here. Prioritizing your stuff is the main thing we do. Let's identify opportunities to improve what is low hanging, what's the lowest hanging fruit, most important may not be the lowest hanging fruit, but very often as the shit you can get done very, very, very quickly. So finding out what matters most and what you can get done right away. Now, the thing that you can take action on that will help your business the most right now. That is the thing you need to be doing, quit avoiding hiding, whether that's leveling up your skills, whether it's building a new process for some people, it's fear of hiring new people, or spending more money or simply investing in your business. They just stay away from it forever.



John Fairbanks 45:56

This is why you and I created the systems check in the first place. Yeah, to be able to quickly identify what is the low hanging fruit? What do you have that said about your business? Just and and here's the trick, when you go through the system check when you answer the questions, you're going to start to become painfully aware of what we believe is top priority. And all the experience that we have, all the work that we've done with gym owners and personal trainers, the top questions that we know that need to be answered, there's not a right or wrong answer in the systems check. But it does tell us a whole lot about your business. And if you're savvy while you do it, you can start to identify those things too. So you just got to be able to say like said what matters most and fucking go after those things. Oftentimes, the things that we know we need to do always make it to the bottom of our to-do list. And we find a lot of other things that help us just stay busy being busy. While we secretly avoid it, we like to put a big plaza in our closet that's full of the shit that we should do. And we keep it cloudy. It isn't until all of a sudden it all comes piling out. And you're in an oh fuck, like shit moment, I need to like I need to step the hell up because I'm in a in a world of hurt, where you can just start chipping away at those things because it's not you all know what you should be doing on a daily basis. The same way your clients know whether they should be eating what



Tyler 47:22

The truth is, there's not a single weight loss client I've had, who doesn't, if I look them dead in the eye, and I say I mean, you know the things you're eating that are wrong, right, that you shouldn't be eating. And the ones that say naive. I mean, I don't know what they're lying about either. Right? Because they know, they just know, there are very few people that don't, they don't know all the things, right. So a lot of people don't know all of the little sugar traps and unhealthy things. But a guy that drinks 12 Mountain Dews in a day, that guy knows, he knows, he just doesn't want to think about it, just doesn't want to do it, he does not want to make that change. So he pays somebody like me $400 to tell him all right, let's do it. Let's go to Six Mountain Dews tomorrow. And then in three weeks, we're gonna go to three, and then you can have one a day forever. Not really forever, but so I'll move other things around for a while. So it doesn't kill me. Right. But that's the like, people know, you know, by the way, you may not know exactly everything that you need to do is the most important thing, but you know what you're avoiding. And oftentimes, you're just avoiding you getting better by learning these skills, and you just sit back and hide in operations. The next thing you can do,



John Fairbanks 48:32

yeah, it's very distracting is this next thing, which is, hey, you should just continue to stay focused on what everyone else is doing. You want to continue to suck at being a gym owner, focus on what everyone else is doing, and not be concerned about what you're doing. Shiny Object Syndrome is so fucking real, down to where it's so distracting. And we all know what it feels like. Because you get to week four, or five of a 12 week program. And then a lot of other programs all of a sudden show up and they are really appealing that maybe Hey, I'll jump over to this one. Because, you know,



Tyler 49:07

it's getting hard. It's getting hard. I don't want to keep doing this this way. Yeah. And it consists and it is the thing that is constantly moving forward in whichever piece, right? So you're never moving forward on everything at once. So the thing that you're moving forward, just like a training program that is very specifically to move forward this thing in this way, right? But it is the consistency in that progress that actually covers a lot of ground in the long run. And very often that consistency gets it gets a little monotonous. It gets tough, it gets difficult to get stressful. That's exhausting, right? So once that starts to get tough, difficult, we're like, Let's do something else. Right? And we do that a lot in our business. You really, really really do that a lot. So the same focus on what everyone else is doing is a big problem is kind of mirrors some of the stuff we've talked about earlier. But quit quit emulating. Don't worry about the guy down the street. Listen to me. Got some gyms that we work with that have like, there's some like toxic language that goes back and forth or not necessarily back and forth just about them from other places that are that are in their area. And the best thing you can do about your competition is to simply truly behave as though they don't exist. And if someone says you about anything about him, you say, I've heard these nice guy, I heard the nice. Let's talk about what we do here. That's all you do, like move right on, you need to be above it, you can never get into that lane into that back and forth stuff, you simply need to be above it. And literally, you can put out the vibe that you really don't have any idea who they are. And if they want to have drama about something you did or didn't do, or whatever that is, someone comes to you and says, oh, this person over there said that you fucking bla bla bla, and you can just look at him go. Okay. All right, well, I'm not very worried about that. Let's keep let's talk, you know, like that's, you really need the height, the height, taking the high road is the thing that you really need to do, in almost all these cases. And on that note, you know, be careful, you'll get baited as a business owner, people will come and want to like, casually have a conversation with you to quote you talking trash about another business owner, a lot of people have nothing better to do. There's a lot of gossip that goes around amongst competition. So really make sure that if someone's texting you things like this, don't give them anything that can be quoted or shown to anybody. Nothing. Because it's very common. Someone will come, I'll come to John and I'm gonna say, I'll say all this shit about jobs competitors, so Dude, your competitor, he sucks. He's this he's that I'll say all these things, and I'll lead you down this horse because you think I agree with you? And maybe I do. And then you're gonna say like, Yeah, and he's fucking ugly, too. Well, you know what I'm gonna do because I'm just going to talk about other person kinda guy. I'm gonna go around, say, John, the guy who owns this business, he said, This guy's fucking ugly. Yeah, he said, He's, like, they just start floating around. And it's true. You said it. Here's a screenshot. So just be careful. The thing is it is just all when it comes to your competitors, always take the high road, always be above them, be above the whole situation. They either need to be very friendly on friendly terms, or they literally need to not have any space in your world. Not for your thought out for anything.



John Fairbanks 52:15

Just be so busy kicking ass. Yeah, that you don't have time to think about it.



Tyler 52:22

Yeah, I can be petty. I've done it. I sure can do it. So the next one is, next way you can suck at being a gym owner. Do your best instead of doing what is required. It reminds me of Go ahead. Reminds me of that. Sean Connery from the rock. Losers always run around whining about their best winners going home and sleeping with the prom queen. Okay, so don't fucking worry about what your best is just do the thing you have to do whatever that is, I don't. And if it's your fault, I just don't care. I just I don't whatever you need to be doing. Just start shoveling that fucking dirt and just keep fucking going here. I know there is no, there is no, your best effort is not even relevant. Because in three months, your best should be better. In nine months, your best should be way better. So I kind of don't care, I kind of expect you to do your best. And all of the fucking things. And I don't care if it falls short. I just wonder whether or not it is enough. Doesn't matter. Just do work on the thing. Just work on the thing that needs to be done.



John Fairbanks 53:30

The fact is, nobody says if you miss a deadline, you and I miss a deadline Tyler for somebody that we're doing work for. And they go well, hey, I'm missing all this stuff. Like yeah, but we did our best man. Like we did our best. Yeah, no one fucking cares. And the other thing that drives me crazy about this is that we understand that in your business, there are seasons, their seasons and everything that we do. And so you have to understand that it's doing what's required. There's an obsession lately, with a work life balance, that gotta have balance. Respectfully, no one that's built anything that's worth a shit, that matters that has done something amazing, has had balance while doing it. Now you can't do it. You can't be sleeping three hours a night for, you know, six months, eight months a year, whatever you like, you're gonna die. You won't make it to enjoy the spoils of your efforts. But the fact is, to do something amazing to really grind it out, like you said, tolerates, it takes an imbalance, severely imbalanced way into the side so that you can get something done to do something that's really something that's amazing.



Tyler 54:54

And when we talk about creating a sustainable system and ecosystem for success, that's one of the things So all right, I gotta fucking I gotta hammer on these things. Here's what needs to be done, I gotta hammer on these things well, yes, I cannot run at all because I will burn up. So the only thing I don't see true valance is like what is what do I need to have on the other side of this, that's just gonna stop me from fucking from the wheels completely coming off. And then once this has been accomplished, I can reprioritize things. But you always need to be hammering on the things that need to be done, reprioritizing and giving yourself whatever space that you need for the moment. And then on to the next thing, right on to the next on to the next thing on to the next thing. Now you cannot let all your personal relationships fall apart, you can't neglect your family and all that stuff. But you gotta be willing to still push forward. And that doesn't mean I'm not necessarily saying making sacrifices, but it means making this thing that you do needs to be a part of your life's whole system. Did I freeze, the video froze for you?



John Fairbanks 55:54

Yeah, you might be further whatever video wise, but it's alright, we can I can hear you loud and clear. And it's exactly right. It's the obsession with, hey, The Four Hour Workweek understands, to get to the four hour workweek. There's a lot of systems that need to be built, exactly some goddamn imbalance that's going to happen there. The next piece is going to be the next way that you can suck at being a gym owner is just keep asking questions about what's next. And just keep talking about it and talk more and do less. Nothing drives me more crazy than when we are working with clients. We're working with folks to be able to help them move the needle and make a huge difference in their business. And then be able to have them we go over a strategy, and then it's and then what? And then what? Okay, and then if this happens, the what if game is one of my least favorite games on the entire planet. Because at some point, we're now being counterproductive. We need you to be able to kind of step in and be able to own what's next. What's next is you need to go fucking do it, go get it done. And then keep moving, you do not need to account for every possible scenario that there is under the sun before you can then be able to take that next step. Because a lot of the things that we have done over the years, if we get I can be when chaos starts flying. And when shits moves around like crazy. My immediate goal is to organize. So shit starts getting real, I'll organize everything together. And I'll organize it and put it into things that are highly actionable steps that we can just start taking action on. And one thing that I learned is that if I took too many steps, if I future projected too far, and gave us too many things, the rigidity of those steps that we would need to try and accomplish to be able to like fix or do whatever project or goal that we had, would end up almost taking us down the wrong path. Absolutely. There has to be a time that we say, hey, let's sit back and make sure we 're going in the right direction. I heard a phrase the other day that I really like. Sometimes we can be so obsessed, trying to climb the ladder, that we don't even realize that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.



Tyler 58:19

Yep, absolutely. Gentlemen, jump right back, grab the next one for me.



John Fairbanks 58:23

Yeah, the next one is going to keep shifting your focus. So the next way to suck at being a gym owner is just keep shifting your focus, and move on to the next thing. And this is a little bit of what we were talking about before where the idea of like the shiny object syndrome stays focused. One of my favorite examples of when we talk about the power of focus, right, the Power Focus is huge, right? So you can go outside. And if you're not careful if you are, have a light complexion, right, if you're not careful, you need to put some sunscreen on. Because if you're outside in the sun for too long, maybe a couple hours on a sunny day, right, you're gonna get a sunburn. So you need to put sunblock on and we've all experienced this in one way or another. The sun can warm the whole earth over a couple hours. And that's how that works. If you take the sunlight, and you focus it down to where you take one of the huge magnifying glass things and you bring it way down to where you allow the light to be like in a one less than a meter by meter like a half meter by half meter square. Within seconds, you can melt steel, just by doing that one change of focusing and bringing everything in. So the power of your focus is huge. If you have all of your energy spread out all over the place. You will make a whole lot of movement not very far. But if you can laser focus on key things that are inside your business and have actionable steps to move that man, the direction you can go is so much further with the same amount of energy. It's just all about the focus and how you can stay keyed in on what you should be doing from one point to the next, and not fucking being a spouse and going all over the place. The next piece that we want to be able to touch on, the next thing is if you want to suck. The next thing is of if you suck, being a gym owner, is find and work with people that take all the your responsibility for your business, if you keep trying to make the effort to where if you are passing off responsibility for your business, and the number one thing that I've heard folks talk about, and in our experience it is you never outsource the marketing for your gym. And this is like the idea of the soul of your gym. This is one of the things that we use talk about where it was what drove us crazy with some large players in the space that work with gym owners and work with coaches is they oftentimes, when you would come in and start working with them, that work would end up almost taking the soul out of the business, because you just relied on the folks that you've hired to come in and help you with your business. You rely on them so much.



Tyler 1:01:27

it detaches you completely from what you're trying to do.



John Fairbanks 1:01:31

Yeah, and the soul is just gone. Because it's whatever some swipe file that you use some words that somebody wrote, and you're like, Oh, well, they're really good at business, they're really good at what they do. I'm, I'm just not involved anymore. Yeah. And man, very quickly, you're going to realize that the gym that was once yours, you don't recognize anymore,



Tyler 1:01:52

there's this fine line between learning how to delegate, versus almost completely passing off the actual responsibility. And that is different. At some point, you do need people who you trust to make decisions and to take actions. But the problem is, you're going to lose all of your grasp on it, meaning anytime you do something like that, you better be able to have feedback, you better be able to provide input into what's going on. So that you can like these have a shot at keeping things on the right track. Because that is the one thing we've seen stuff where people are getting, like running ads for their gym. And what these ads are showing is not their gym at all. I mean, it has absolutely nothing to do with their facility. It's, it's really, really, really, really, really, really rough. So then people will start coming in and go, Well, what the hell is this? Why what this isn't the place that I saw, and it's like, whoa, we just paid for these fucking ads. That is a terrible first impression for your business. And you need to be doing better than that. Absolutely. Now the next one, this is this work sort of in contrast to one of the things we've talked about earlier about trusting your instincts. But I'm assuming that you're always right, is a great way to suck at being a gym owner. You need to understand that refining it by being wrong, improving your processes, improving your decision making, improvement is the game progress is the game. So progress means you need to get better. And you're not going to grow in the long run if you just assume that I was right. And the reason this thing didn't work is because everybody else sucks. And the reason my social media doesn't work is just because I should just talk about it my way continually and just hammer through like, there's a lot that you can learn about leveling up your skill set means you need to assume that there's shit that you don't know and that you're going to be wrong about. Okay. And if you take, make so little assumptions, this is a thing that I've learned inside on technical things, technical troubleshooting. And a lot of this stuff. Same thing with client relations is with, you know, assuming what people are willing to spend or what they're willing to pay. All of this stuff, I've been painfully painfully wrong every time I walk into a situation with an assumption. Okay? trusting your instincts is very different than assuming that you're right going into it. I would I've worked with guys who would show up to assist. Imagine the guy shows up to fix your house or to fix your car, right? Let's say fix your car, and he's just dead certain that he knows what's going on right away. He's just sure of it. And so he tells you Oh, yep, yep, yep. Yep, it says that guy is wrong a lot. Okay, I've worked with guys like that. That guy is wrong, a whole hell of a lot. And you're a lot better off just coming in. And let's just go through this process, right? I can have in the back of my mind what I think is probably going on, but I do just need to objectively look through things. Okay. And now you'd still need to trust your gut. But you do need to also go, what assumptions Am I making about the situation? Right? You assume that people actually want Want this? Are you assuming that you're talking in a way that people care about? Are you assuming that people care about the same things you care about? That there's a lot of assumptions that are made. And most of them, you need to disregard. And before you move forward with the things that you're trying to do with your business, I think it's



John Fairbanks 1:05:15

it is also really good to make the difference where it's the difference of being confident with your clients, that you know what's going on, that you know how to take care of them, when you're communicating with those people. I think that's incredibly important that that confidence is there, and that you have the systems and the reps to be able to exude that confidence. But when we're talking about the business, when we're talking about your business, this goes back to the way you can hedge against my instincts, right? Do I know what the next answer is? Do I know what I should be doing? This is the hedges are having a network and building that skill set and doing all the things we've been talking about. You cannot if you live in a cave and you're a lone wolf and these are all the things that you do, and you do not get out there and you don't network with people and you don't have advisors and people that you can trust to call on. You are going to come to the right answer. But man, it's going to be painful, how you're going to learn from your mistakes if you're just always assuming that you know exactly what to do without having anyone else to help you along the way.



Tyler 1:06:27

Yeah, and depending on your market, there may not be anybody left for you by the time you go through all that process. So you're better off taking some of these shortcuts, throwing your assumptions out the window, leaning on your network to continue to improve. That's the name of the game, guys do the next right thing for your business. Follow the Facebook group get in on our Facebook group the gym owners revolution you can go to the link in our description is going to get you there. Go there we've got other gym owners we drop in all sorts of tidbits we find from shit from our competitors from everybody so anything that I see that's a value that I think can help you from a strategy to concept to some mindset stuff these things you need to understand some cool shit for you to try. That's the spot so join that group The link is in our description. Follow the show at the gym owners podcast on Instagram guests new logos thanks to Tommy D creative Tommy from mass genomics hits another home run he's done all of the logo stuff for every project I've ever been a part of. So if you're ever looking for branding or logos or something like that, shoot me a message and I will get his contact information. He rushes to work with Tommy, follows me on Instagram at Tyler Elphinstone and follows John at J banks FL. Thanks for listening everybody, and we'll see you next week.




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