(upbeat music) evolution podcast. My name is Jane Erbacher and I’m your host. I just wanted to do a pre-intro intro to this week’s episode because I’m really excited about it and everybody’s getting really used to me being excited and I guess if I wasn’t excited you’d all think that something was wrong so it’s like you that I am excited. But I’m coming to you again from New York, my favourite place in the world.

I absolutely love it. I’m heading off to Austin this week to reunite with my friends Dave and Courtney from of the lion then heading to Portland Oregon with project Rowan project ski with my friend Nick Eldridge I’m running a workshop with him out of his gym His business is called higher standards fitness and I’m so excited to go up to Oregon I’ve heard that it’s absolutely beautiful and Everyone keeps saying to you I’m gonna really like it because there’s great outdoors stuff and there’s really good coffee and so I was like, yes, I like both of those things very much.

Then heading back to Salt Lake City, so Utah, absolutely love Utah for the Jim Jones advanced course and I’ll also be running my Rowan ski workshops out of Jim Jones on the 19th of August. Then head back to LA, then I go across to Iowa. So Iowa City and I’m running a workshop out of alchemy strength. So really excited to go to Iowa. So lots of cool stuff happening for me.

But this week’s episode really deserved an intro because it’s with what I would say are some of the best fitness entrepreneurs in the whole world. And that’s Joe Vrigio and Dan Goodman, the founders, creators, brains and brawn of Varsity House. And these two are absolutely incredible. And when I started this podcast, so about 18 months ago, I was just a little bit over, one of my real missions was to talk to the people who were, that just had passion, like oozing out of them for what they do.

They’re clearly getting up every single day and they’re going for what they believe in. And Jo and Dan absolutely epitomise this and they are, it’s not just in business that they’re successful, but it’s in there every day approached their life. So it’s their attitude. And so I decided after the episode with them that I wanted to do a bit of a series this coming month, which is how to turn passion into profit.

And I think that a lot of us get really scared when we do work in our passion to actually charge for it or to take any money for it. And what I’ve really come to learn this year after turning my passion into an absolute career is that the way to sustain a career in your passion where you are helping people, where you are, you know, try to have an impact on the world is to actually be able to pay yourself.

And if you can’t survive working in your passion or working in your craft, then you can’t deliver what you need to deliver. And if your goal is to impact the world and impact people, then you need to take care of yourself in a way that enables you to do that on a, on even a small scale or a mass scale. So, John and Dan are a perfect example of two people who believe so wholeheartedly in changing the world and having an impact and helping people and educating and empowering and inspiring.

And they do it in a way that takes care of them and their family as well. And they don’t put themselves second to that. And I think that’s so interesting and so important to learn from this because so many of us almost apologize for our partner. And it always comes back to a self-worth thing. Am I enough for somebody to pay for? And so if this is something you’re thinking about and I get emails every single week from people who ask me about how they can change careers and turn their passion into profit and and this is how.

Listen to everything they say and this is how. So I really hope you enjoy the episode. Thank you so much for the ongoing support and make sure you do reach out to me if you’ve got anything to say. I would love to hear from you. My email address is probably the best. It’s Jane. airback Each week on the podcast you’ll meet game changes who have created extraordinary lives and you’ll listen to stories and lessons to empower you to make the changes necessary to your life.

The Your Revolution podcast is committed to fitness, health, nutrition, mindset, community, education, empowerment and betterment and we hope that you can take what you learned here and apply it to your very own revolution. Hello and welcome to this next episode of the Your Evolution podcast. My name is Jane Eberbacher and I’m your host. I’m so excited.

I can’t handle this though that we are so technologically savvy here at Varsity House. We have hooked up like a full on like I feel like I’m on the radio. It’s out it’s out as we are. It does we are. Oh we are. This is Web Radio. With DJ prophecy in the building. To you, Marty. Thank you Trevor. Swaggy too. Oh yeah I’m happy to do this. It’s fun for me.

So I am so excited I am at one of my favorite places in the whole world and I was trying to add up on my hands today how many times I’ve been back to Bassey House and I can’t add it up for today’s the first time I’ve actually driven here so how was the ride was it sketchy? I’m so excited to be here at Bassey House absolutely one of my favourite places in the world I keep looking for excuses to move here and maybe I could become your daddy.

That’s it. You’re hired. For sure. I am here with Joan and Jan, the owners, creators, brains and brawn. Both of them are brains and brawn. Neither of them is one or the other. And I am really excited because we’ve got both of them here for the podcast day. Travers the brains. Travers the brains. Yeah. Definitely. But I’m really excited because we’ve got both of them here for the podcast day.

Travers the brains. Travers the brains. Yeah. Definitely. But I’m really excited. It was funny because I’ve talked to both of you individually about whether or not I would interview you independently or whether I’d have it as a team situation. And up until today I was planning on interviewing you separately because you both bring so much individually to the business and also to the world and also as my friends individually.

But I also feel like together as a partnership you’re an incredible example of how to run a business. So I’ve decided to first order me together so I’m not going to ask one of you to leave the room now. You made the card. You can’t separate us. No, you’re John Dan or Dan and Joe. We’ve been married for 10 years. It’s true. And I also thought I did say to Dan, imagine if I put your podcast up before Joe’s, I know I’d be dead to him.

I would definitely call some beef. But thank you both so much for being here today in your gym, which I absolutely love. I really, really, really wanted you on the podcast this time, ’cause I wanna talk about Varsity House and what an incredible place it is that you’ve created, but I also wanna talk about what you are both creating now with the business of strength.

So the loose banner under this heading for this podcast is how to turn passion into profit. So that’s what I really to talk about today. So I’d really love if each of you could give us a brief introduction on kind of what’s led you to now, Joe, you’ve been on the podcast a year ago. And I actually still, I don’t know if I’ve told you this, I still receive emails at least weekly about your episode.

Yeah, it’s really cool. So a lot of people in and out of the fitness industry, you’ve had a, you’ve real mark on so I think that that’s a real testament to you So I’d really like to hear from you first Dan Just on kind of what your path here has been because people haven’t met you in Australia a lot of them And I’d really love them to to meet the Dan that I know there is one thing I will say before this though I still remember when I met you guys for the first time Jim Jones intermediate and We’ve talked’ve talked about this because immediately I was like, I’ve never met guys like this.

Like you guys are like big football guys. And I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to have anything in common with you. And I was a little bit scared of you both. And I have to say that you’re both two of my favourite people in the world. And I did say this too in the car though. I haven’t met such engaging, interested, interesting and proactive people.

You’re both doing what you need to do every day. You’re not resting on your laurels and I think that’s awesome. And I think that the meathead heading, I think you should wear that as a badge of honor for us. It just kind of goes with the territory being named Joe from Jersey. >> Totally. But yeah, totally does. And both of you are so savvy, so intelligent and such great men.

And I’m just I’m really excited that people get to hear from me. So thank you so much. >> Thank you for having us on the show here. And it’s awesome having you in Jersey or New York yet again. >> We’re like right on the border on the board early. But we still go with which straight Jersey still Jersey. The residents is still both in New Jersey. Oh, great.

Okay. Our story. I mean, I know Joe’s been on this podcast before, but for everybody that doesn’t know, I trained actually with Joe as an athlete. So our partnership really started really organically like that as coach and athlete where I had worked at some other gyms before and I was still playing football at the University of Rhode Island. And one summer I came back and my little brothers started training and we started bringing some family and friends to the gym and Joe just said, “Hey man, I think that we could probably start business here.

” For the next couple of weeks, why don’t you try to bring a kid to the gym every day and for every kid you bring here, I’ll give you $100. I was like, “Pfft, you kidding me? ” – That’s the best. – Like car loads, the little kids with terrified looks on their face. I was like, “Man, I could do this. ” – Get in there and work out. – I can do this easily.

So we did that for summer and made quite a bit of money doing that. And when we left, they said, you know, I went back to play my fifth year. I had a scholarship university, Rhode Island. I said, you know, I’m gonna obviously go see this through. And, you know, all the while though, we put together a business plan. I came home from school mid-year and three months later, May 1st of 2009, we were in our first space and, you know, the rest is kind of history where, you know, that’s where Varsity House started to form.

We started Varsity House number two and, you know, from that point, the first three years was really just full on grind. We worked nonstop, tons of session hours. We had no systems in place. We really had to find each other in terms of our business partnership. And after year three, we really decided like, hey, you know what, we have to hire some help.

We have to find some people to help us really move this business forward and that’s when we get out and got some coaching and that’s when we started putting some operating systems in place. Really without even knowing we were doing it. – Yeah. – And fast forward, we went through the Jim Jones certification process. We spent a lot of time with other business coaches.

Like I said, spending a lot of money on our development as people and business owners. And, you know, we knew that we wanted to get into the educational side of fitness. We just kind of didn’t know if we were going to go what route we were going to take. And we said, man, like we’re getting a lot of questions about business and business development.

Like maybe we could start doing an educational program on business. And that in the last year’s been the creation of the business’s strength. And you know, it’s been, you know, I know I could speak for myself. It’s been, it’s been a lot of fun the last year or so putting on, you know, we’re going to have our second installment of the business’s strength coming up in August.

And that’s here at Bostie. That’s here. We’re going to be giving a talk at Jim Jones in two weeks and then we’re actually going over to London at the beginning of 2018 to give a talk and to give up. – This is a strength. – This is a strength with Steve Kalanko. – Yeah, at Rage. – Yeah, it’s gonna be great. – Awesome. – Everybody in London have to sign up.

– Yeah, it’s all fun. So, I mean, that’s nine years in a nutshell, but we’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’ll let Joe take it over from here ’cause I know he probably wants to retell the story and he’d probably have a different take on it. – I mean, look, everything kind of fell into place and there’s a lot of things that people could say, like, well, you got lucky with this, You got lucky with that.

But there’s no such thing as luck in a business. And we just made– I don’t know. We just made conscious moves alone away. So partner up with Dan in 2009, going to the gym. We did not have any systems. But we had a training program. We had a training plan that I had been using. And I had found. So the one thing we knew we had was a really good training program.

And before we even knew we had it, we had a really great mentorship program for developing coaches. And before that we even knew it, our first coach was Big Mike, right? He was our first intern, right? And I definitely think I told you this story in the last one. But Big Mike interned and we worked him like a savage, you know, 50 hours a week for like $250 every other week.

He was getting made. It was terrible. It was definitely like, you know, it was definitely illegal. But you know, Mike had already been training for a long time and was a super strong dude and was like really into it, but like had no idea how to program for athletes and stuff like that. So I spent a lot of time teaching Mike. Dan had already been through a lot of training, obviously through his own training with college and then years of training with me prior to us becoming businessman.

So he had learned the system kind of just by absorption throughout most of us, you know what I mean by being in it and doing it for you know, three years before we partnered up. And so so we had a good training and we had a mentorship. And those are two of the absolute fundamental components, right? You have to have a great product and you have to have the way to develop great employees.

And we kind of started that process right from the beginning, kind of without even knowing it, right? And obviously all of that has completely evolved. And now we have this like, you know, a giant manual for our interns and we have like weekly meetings, they have tests, they have, you know, quizzes, they got projects they have to do when they’re here and sometimes it’s evolved into a very top-notch mentorship program for an entire summer.

We’re like back then it was like big much just watch what I do and pay attention. (laugh on the day of our staff. I believe it’s the way to truly scale a business. Yeah, and we’ve always and and this is something I’ll say on the business side. This is a little nugget for all the strength entrepreneurs out there is is that we always believe in paying people salaries.

We don’t pay people by the hour because then you get hourly employees. You get people who are looking to come work their hour and peace out. You know I mean so we always paid somebody as either a full time salary or a part time salary and locked them into specific shifts times and requirements. And even if you were a part time employee, let’s say like Leslie at the front desk right who’s a part time.

Leslie’s amazing right. But she has a specific role she is the Billings department right so her job is specific so I gave her you know it’s giving people ownership it’s giving them responsibility right from the beginning and it’s paying them salary and it’s giving them the ability to grow as a person and as an employee security then security everything you still think about your job a lot to save money.

CrossFit gyms do this a lot. And this is no knock on CrossFit gyms because it’s not CrossFit, it’s the owners of those gyms. But a lot of CrossFit gyms and smaller box gyms, they want to save money. So it’s like, hey, can you come teach two classes a week and I’ll give you $50 per class. Well, how is that getting an employee that has any investment in what you do?

And then they’re teaching it the other box around the corner as well. Right. Here you can’t coach anywhere else. If you coach somewhere else, you can’t work here. Totally. You know, I mean, you know, so that’s kind of an odd thing. So that started right from the beginning. And when I look back now, 10 years ago, and it’s like, man, that was, that was actually pretty damn smart.

And we didn’t mean it to be. It was really like, you I remember sitting down with Craig and our accountant Craig was coming in a little bit. We should make Craig sit down to the podcast. Craig come here for a second. You can be terrified right? But like I remember sitting down with him and Justin and be like what should we do? I mean I was like well just give him what you can afford lock them into something.

You know, you want to build a good employee, make sure that you give them the opportunity to grow and own something. And I don’t mean own something like I own a piece of the company. I mean, own something within the company. Like Mike is in charge. Mike has always been in a sense, the head strength and conditioning coach. He’s always been in charge of writing athletic programs.

He’s always dealt with the athletes and had a piece of that in terms of, in terms of, you know, when he looks down at the gym floor now and sees Adam doing what Adam does, Sean doing what Sean does, Joey doing what he does and how Simone’s developed into an awesome coach, he can look down there with pride and say, you know what, I help create that.

I help foster those abilities. I help foster the gym and when the success of the gym is a big piece of his ownership and in our training programs and what goes on in the gym floor. And that’s allowed us to do stuff like this, because Mike’s down there training right now and working with guys right now. So that’s been a big part of the development and the story.

I think what led us to business strength was like what Dan said was every time we went to it, we’d go to a training workshop and people see our gym and they’d be like how do you guys get in clients? What about you want to learn how to train athletes? No, no, no. So who does it? How are you guys doing your marketing? Who does the operation? We get into an hour long conversation about the business.

I’m like, what about training athletes? Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I think it’s really it’s funny too. I think actually on your video you can see the business. I’d be like, what about trading athletes? Nobody cared. Nobody cares. I think it’s really, too. I think actually on your video, you can see the score. I went over with the index yesterday and I posted about it.

I wrote the article on Monday about Starbucks. But from their CEO, we just talked about Starbucks is not an advertiser. Everybody thinks there’s this huge marketing conglomerate. You don’t see them marketing on the Super Bowl. You don’t see Starbucks billboards. And what they talk about is the development and on Facebook ads, we’re not putting in paid advertising in the newspaper, we’re putting our time, money, and expertise into developing the next great strength and conditioning coach.

– Totally. – The next great head of operations. – Yeah. – Because that’s enabled us to do the things that we wanna do and further our career as strength entrepreneurs where we no longer have to do 50 session hours a week and we didn’t have to take a pay cut to do it. You know, where a lot of people are like, oh man, I got to shift gears and I got to go try and do this over here, but am I going to be able to pay rent?

It’s like, no, I know I’m going to be able to pay rent because we have great people that we allow to do their jobs. I mean, you know, Trevor that who’s sitting in the room right now room right now, he’s our general manager who’s the de facto complaint department. Anytime anybody has a problem around the gym, they go to Trevor. But he’s become a resource for everybody that works here.

And by and large is we know that we’ve got great, reliable help at the gym all the time. And putting ownership on people, right? Putting ownership on people, I think a lot of times also forces them to level up. So it’s like as soon as I told Mike, I remember the conversation, I remember sitting him down like Mike, and this was years ago, we’re talking 2000, I think right after our trip to Westside, so like 2011, right?

You know, I’ve been working for two years. He’d been doing a great job, totally immersed himself into training and stuff like that. And I said, Mike, you’re gonna be, you know, you’re gonna be, we’re getting business cards. So I said, you know, head strength and conditioning coach, I remember his eyes lit up like, you know, it was like head strength and conditioning coach.

Does that mean I’m in charge of strength and conditioning? Yes, that’s kind of what that means, right? But it was a prideful moment for him. He’d worked his ass off. So it’s like, great. Now, so there was a little bit of acknowledgement, but it gave him ownership. And he’s like, I’m signing up for these workshops. I’m doing this. You know, this summer, he’s going to Eric Kressy is a great practitioner, big in baseball and shoulder mobility flexibility, correct exercise, stuff like that.

And Mike trains all our baseball players. Yeah. So he’s going to Eric, going to Kressy’s workshops and stuff like that. And he’s super excited about this. So he’s always trying to love himself because he takes a ton of pride in that title. And on the head strength and conditioning coach here at Varsity House, he does all the technical strength and conditioning teaching with our interns and stuff like that.

So giving him that title is forced in the level up, creating a position for Trevor, calling Trevor the general manager has forced him to level up. Trevor was always a super talented IT guy, computer, graphics, video, pictures, art, stuff like that, right? But then going to the other side of the table and becoming a businessman and a leader and being able to conduct a meeting at the front desk with the girls and our front desk staff and the other coaches and be like, hey guys, you know, here’s the stuff we have on the table.

Here’s what we have to do. Here’s our new onboarding process or whatever it is and help to implement those things has been, you know, that happened because we said Trevor, you’re going to be, you got it. When we go new gym, you’re gonna be the general manager and I need help with the X, Y and Z and you’re gonna make this happen dude. And that’s it.

And it’s like, you know, step up, you know, and everybody has, but I think it only happens when you force people to if you leave it again that we go back to that part time employee thing. Yeah. Part time employee means part time investment. You know what I mean? So there’s really little invest. So even even your part time employees, you can really help I don every day.

It’s not really. It’s just sitting there like looking the front desk, waiting for somebody to come into gym with nothing to do. – Right, but even more so for the strength entrepreneurs that are listening, that are running their own spaces, is for the coaches that work here, on top of creating a salary system for them, and talking about empowerment, we also are providing our full time coaches with paid days off, which does not exist in this issue.

We’ve also provided them with continuing education allotment of funds for each person where we have not just Big Mike, but I know Joey’s going to the person performance. Trevor’s going to the WordPress level one and two for the development of our website. You know, Joe and I are headed back to Jim Jones in the next couple weeks and Adam just went to Bajros’ Fit Business Summit.

I mean, everybody here on a monthly basis is going to learn and they feel empowered to come back and share that experience with everybody because it’s really more of a team like-minded approach as opposed to, you to, I know people have asked in the past like, oh, well, big Mike’s, he’s the head of strength conditioning, but he’s going to this or that.

It’s like, yeah, I mean, all that does is make our team better and if our team’s better, then I’m better. Totally. We can’t go to everything. So it’s like, you know? And what’s the point? Because’s like, something that you’ve set up so well with your business, and I think this is why people are so interested to learn from you from a business side, is you don’t need to be in amongst every single operation of the gym.

– Tell me. – For it to be successful. And it’s crazy to have your, like it would be crazy for you too. And so the interesting part about that I think is that so many gym owners, I’ve got a couple of questions from something you’ve said, but so many Jim owners have their ego attached to needing to be involved with every aspect of the gym. How have you both separated that?

How have you both said Trevor’s better at all of that than us? And if he’s the– – Arguing? – Arguing? – I’m being smart. – No, but I want to make A, I want to make money. So if you want to make money, you have to let go. That’s the first, that’s like, you go to any major, you go to Tony Robbins, right? You go to any major business entrepreneur. And the first thing he says, you got to learn to delegate.

You got to learn to let go. You can’t do everything. That’s one. Two, especially for me, and I know I’ve talked to you about this personally, but one of the absolute best moments was absolute best moments was, you know, seeing Dan and Mike turn the corner as coaches and seeing Dan lead an entire crew of high school athletes empower them, train them, write the training program, train the team, give them the speeches, you know, they and you know, when they came in the gym, they were looking for coach Dan.

You’re like, “Is Dan here? Is Dan here? ” You know what I mean? And he had made the connection, the bond, and fostered the relationship, you know, facilitated the money aspect of it with the coaches and the parents, and really took ownership. And it was like, “Man, that’s the moment for me as the gym dad in a sense. ” And it was like, “Wow, that’s what I was looking for.

That’s what you need. ” So it’s like now with Dan seeing Adam take that leap, you know what I mean? Where me and him both helped Adam grow and Dan spent a lot of time with Adam on the business side, the marketing and stuff like that. And to see Adam becoming a phenomenal coach, he’s an amazing coach. And also he’s a really sharp kid with a really good business mind.

To walk into our office one day while having a meeting like, “Hey guys, I think I could really help you out with this, this, and this on the business side. ” Because this is his best process. And for what it’s worth, you know, on that side, like, you know, he took a chance and, you know, he got shit done, you know what I mean? So it was like, ” like hey I could help you out, but you gotta make it happen So so I think that the egos a big part I see it a lot I get a lot of people in the industry who I Don’t know they think they’re saving money by not hiring people around them and they’re really losing a lot of money and short-term They may be you know well.

Yeah, so I mean look I get that sometimes there is a money issue But I also see a lot of in the industry, you don’t do a lot of traveling. They do a lot of there’s a lot of lifestyle people, you know what I mean? So you got money, you got money to travel around the country and do like a what’s that work? Right. So, you know, we didn’t go anywhere for a long time.

We didn’t spend any money. You know, I lived, I went from making good money, one of my own gym to barely taking a cent for myself for a few years to put money back in the business to see it grow. We do that today. When we moved here, we cut our salaries, we put money back in the business to see it grow. We do that today. When we moved here, we cut our salaries, we put money back in the business to see it grow.

We, we’re spending two and a half million dollars on building a new gym. You know what I mean? Like, you know, we got to make some. – Totally. – Yeah, so. – And it’s an issue of priority then, because it’s like, that’s the thing, because what I kept thinking was how many people who would own a gym that would say, “I just can’t afford to pay somebody a salary.

” And it’s like, it’s about what you then prioritise. Because it’s like, how do you develop your gym if you’re in your gym working on everything all the time? Let’s just say too, like, I think some people get worried about hiring employees. I just think that you’re hiring the bat. There’s something flawed in your hiring process. If you know personally, you can look introspectively and say, “Hey, look, this is definitely IT is a clear weakness.

” It’s a clear weakness for him. Well, shit, we need to figure this out. In comes Trevor, who has a background and a in that. Why wouldn’t you get the best? So why wouldn’t we lean on him for that? And obviously I want to learn more from him, but I’m not going to tell him what to do in his own field. Yes. You know, and look, I mean, you could just go back in our old YouTube videos in the first YouTube videos, the ones that I did myself.

Yes, and you could see that there’s a zero quality or ability. What takes him one hour can take him three minutes. Yes. So now what have we created? Same. We’ve created time. You know, we’ve put more time back on our plate. So if we go out and we hire a great coach, they go through our internship process, you know, and they go through the betterment program of being here at varsity office, it’s like, why do you need to have your finger on that person all the time?

You know, you’re just, you’re just inhibiting their growth. And that, that is just going to do that person and yourself a disservice. What was it we said the other day? It’s like, um, you know, can you afford not to train your, no, I use it as a quote. I’m like, it’s forget what it was. I’ll read a disservice. – But what was it we said the other day?

It’s like, can you afford not to train your– – No, I used it as a quote. I’m like, it’s a fan of it. – I forget what it was. – I’ll read it verbatim. – I’ll read it, yeah. It was really great. It’s the truth though, for certain. Hang on a sec. – So I actually use this quote with the interns yesterday when you posted it. – Yeah, yeah. – But it reads like this, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.

” – Yes, oh my God, that’s so good. Did you write that? – What’s that? – Did you write that? – No, I didn’t write that. – Oh yeah? – I can’t take credit. – I wrote that. – We’re small, but not this. – I used to, the quote was still me on it. – Yes. (laughing) – That is so true. – No, so we spend an enormous amount of time in meeting people. So when I talk to people, right?

Dad’s ringing me. (laughing) What’s going on? So I tell people we have a team meeting every single week. We have an advisory board meeting every single week. We have a leadership meeting every single week. I have individual meetings with almost every person in the gym every single week. You know what I mean? I meet with the interns more than once a week.

– But what do you know? What’s the common theme here? It’s education. – It’s all education. – And communication. – The hours didn’t go away. People are like, “Oh, you know, what are Joan, Dan, Sippin, Peanut Coladas Pina coladas branch. No, it’s educational process. Instead of taking 40 session hours. Now it’s 10 session hours for highly important and and schedule teams.

And and now it’s 30 hours of development of our team. Yeah, I would say right now for this summer, it’s more like been like 25 and 25. Whatever. Whatever it is. I mean, right now this summer me and Dan, I mean, look, and I don’t want people to think that, you know, we’re not still, we’re still in the thick of it. Me and Dan are doing probably upwards of 2025 sessions a week training hours on the floor.

So, you know, 20 booked hours is actually like 30 because of all the before and after time. You know, it’s not like at three o’clock when I have a session, I run down on the floor at 259. So I’m down there for a half an hour before it even gets going and stuff. So you have that. We’re training hard. We’re developing processes. We are always trying to streamline the operations and the client experience, you know possible.

So I try to treat the business. Imagine if you were a coach, right? A lot of people in the industry want to be great strength conditioning coaches. So imagine you were going to take a football athlete, American football athlete, and coach them up for the NFL combine so right? So they could get into the NFL and you’re going to break down all those drills.

They’re 40 yard dash, they’re pro agility shuttle, they’re broad jumped, they’re firts and all those things. And we’re going to go back and forth and we’re going to smash to those drills and we’re going to break them down to the nth degree and I’m going to create this 16 week plan week plan and I’m gonna work backwards and I’m gonna spend hours obsessing over you know should they do hammer curls or barbell curls as their as their arm finisher or whatever should it be you know a You know 10 by 2 speed day or should it be a you know 5 by 4 power day whatever they’re right and but and then when it comes time to their business, it’s like, oh, I’ll run around with a head cut off.

You got to break down every single process. You got to analyze it. You got to develop a system for it. So whatever it is, you identify a need, create a solution, you know, create a plan to fix the solution, whatever that might be, and then you gotta implement it and teach it to everybody, right? So that we’re all in the same page. So, you know, where I used to maybe do 40, 50 hours of training a week, now I do half that, but I spend the other equal amount of time doing those things and breaking down those systems so that other people can do them, so I don’t have to so I never there is very rarely ever a time where I have to go to the front desk to fix something that’s happened with a billing issue scheduling programming anything at the front desk it’s like no I never had to deal with that.

The girls are well versed we’ve gone over everything they have a giant manual down there and now they call Trevor first. Yes. Also too. And we talked about it privately. I think what separates, well, I know what separates Joe and I as strength entrepreneurs is that we’re still doing it. Yeah. Like we’re still here every day. We’re still, I mean, we may travel for things and we may have seminars and we are doing some consulting work, but we’re not five or six or 10 years removed from the business where we had a successful business and now we’re just telling everybody what to do.

There’s still trials and tribulations here as to what’s working, what’s not working. Hey, we just did this check-in for charity program. It’s working awesome. I spoke to an Anthony from Sweden this morning about it and he’s going to implement it now and it’s like, wow, like, it’s worked. – Yeah. – It’s working present day. – Yeah. – We’re not a lifestyle entrepreneur.

– No, I never wanna not train people to yourself. – That’s what your heart is as well. But something I learned from you last year in the podcast was, which is exactly what we’re talking about right now. And I actually presented on it in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, a month ago. – You steal a lot of stuff? – I quoted you and I had a big picture of you and I talked all about you.

I know. – Oh, it was a good one. – It was the back of you. No, I’m joking. I was in it again. (laughing) No, but something I really learnt from you explicitly said how important it is to work on your business and not just in your business. And I’d heard that in bits of like, you know but we really did talk about it a lot and that’s something that I think that you both do really well and it’s so this whole thing that we we come from an industry where you do come in and you do an hour or two here or there but it’s not an hour or two here or there in the fitness industry it’s everything and I think that the difference between a successful fitness business and one that’s really struggling is people that get caught up working in it all the time, just training people.

And it’s like what you guys have recognized is your heart is in the training side of things. That’s where it all started for you. But your growth happens in the business side of things. So developing staff in the areas where you don’t need to be is working on your business. And that’s putting time into those meetings. That is you at work. You’re not here sipping peniclators or make sure it’s– – But that allows me to do the higher quality things that I want to do.

– Exactly. – So now, so me and Dan, and I’m not, look, do I still love trading the little kids and stuff like that? Yes, do I love trading my female athletes? I would train female athletes 10 hours a day. There’s so much easier to deal with than me, that’s right But I love, you know, but there’s something that I mean, you know, when we’re in like last night, we got the music cranking.

It’s our lower body day. Everybody squat and lifting and training. I mean, I get goosebumps and shit. We’re fired up and I love that. So, but I would like, you know, but again, I can only do so much training. But what what systemizing the business has done was allowed us to focus on, you know, the 20%. I train the people, I train the athletes, groups and individuals that I wanna train.

I’m doing podcasts now, we’re developing other areas of the business. We wanna be seen as, I’ve talked to you about our vision boards and stuff like that. We talked a lot about that stuff. And our goal, our 10 year goal is to be recognized as a world leader in strength and conditioning. And that means that I want us to be a beacon for other strength entrepreneurs, other strength coaches to see what we’re doing both on the training side, the business side, operationally, product development, everything and see how it went.

Those guys run a tight shop from top to bottom from the training and also that we are seen as great strength coaches as well. So that has always been my for me personally. My number one goal when I got into the business was to be a great strength and conditioning coach. How cool is that? I mean in the next couple of days I mean you’re here today. Yeah.

We’ve got have got Ryan and and and Big Red Jacob staying at my apartment tonight from Australia. Awesome tomorrow for our Tomorrow for our Friday finish we’ve got Wade. Brady’s coming on Monday so in the next we’re going fishing trip at Momsom Sunday. – Yes, you’re pretty. – We’ve got five or six people from Australia coming to our, in my head it still seems to be like a garage gym because it doesn’t feel like much has changed even though it has.

It’s still deep down That’s how I feel about it. I mean, it’s like I treat it like that though a purpose I treat it like you know the Patriots right the New England Patriots football team Yeah, right if won a million Super Bowls They’ve been though every AFC champion 15 years. I think they’ve been the 13 AFC championships, right? So there are there they’re probably the greatest dynasty in football that’s ever greatest yeah Greatest team, right?

Tom Brady’s arguably the greatest quarterback. Bill Belichick’s arguably the greatest coach every year. Bill Belichick gives his empowered speech to the team when they get back in for a team. Here’s what everybody’s saying about us that we can’t win again. You know what I mean? And they have that chip on their shoulder and it’s like the us against the world mentality.

And that’s how we’ve always felt because I think that, you think that you know and look I’m not gonna put words in dance mouth because I know Dan’s a little saltier than I am with some of the some of the let’s call some of the people that came up when we came up together and they treated us like shit you know what I mean and there were people that like wrote us off and like wouldn’t give us the time of day and looked at and Dan’s like now and now we’re like and half of them have gone out of business so So now my day is.

You know suckers. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so for me it’s like you know I still you know I’m just a blue collar guy. You know I don’t come from a ton of money. My family still works. My mom still goes to work every day. My mom’s 73. You know it still works. And that’s just my mentality. Like I’m gonna come. I’m gonna work. I’m gonna push myself.

I going to do the best I can I never sit on my hands it’s like oh great we’re doing a million a year awesome we could just let it ride you know let me get a couple let me get operations guy and a couple more trainers and then cut myself down I’ll stop in for two three hours a day and see what’s going on like that’s not happening yeah I think another thing with that is that anybody that’s asked us for help, we always provide help.

Yeah, I think you know when I was definitely a little bit younger, I definitely would be a little vindictive towards people that I would reach out very nicely or people that I knew and just talk about you know, hey, can you know, ask one simple question and the people that don’t have time to send an email back or send a text message like you know what like who are you yeah like you know really are you you’re not you’re not a celebrity like you know this is yeah so I don’t know I think that’s what Joe’s talking about now I definitely can you know at a point now where you know I’m happy where we’re at but definitely feel like we’ve definitely got a lot more to prove and I love I love helping people.

We’ve had Ryan here all summer. It’s my mission to make sure that he has an amazing experience, that he leaves here with tools he needs to maybe he wants to go open up his own gym, and I wanna make sure that he goes with the tools he needs to make that happen, but also leaves you feeling like he’s got a real friend in the business, a mentor, somebody he can call, rely on.

And I will absolutely be one of the first people on a plane to his place when it opens up and stuff like that. I’m excited for him. And I mean, what else, what else brings better karma and energy back to your life than helping other people? You get so much more out of having a lot of gratitude and seeing seeing him the pride and the look on his face the first day they know whatever they cut that ribbon open that door to his new gym to you know and knowing that you know we had we just had a positive influence and we could just easily been like when he was like hey man I’m looking to come out the states for a couple months I’m gonna be at work for a few months but we’d love to come out and be like I be like, “Ah man, we’re busy.

” You know what I mean? It could be like, could have just blew them off and been like, whatever. Now we connected with Ryan pretty, pretty deeply when we were in Salt Lake and I knew he was a great kid and all. But it’d be really easy to just be like, “Eh, totally. ” Way too busy, buddy. You know what I mean? I pick him up, he has no car. I pick him up every day.

I drive him home every day. He comes over on Sundays for dinner with me and my wife, you know what I mean? So it’s like I bring in a mom’s house to go fishing with me. You know what I mean? We’re invading our apartment tonight. They all see invasion. My mom’s out. My mom’s like, are they big eaters like you? I was like, yeah, we’re gonna have to make a lot of food.

Ten pounds of pasta. So you’re funny. You know what I mean? So it’s so, so, so, and, and, and, and he’s very respectful. Like man, I don’t want you having to go, like it’s not a problem at all. I’m doing it because I want to, but it’s also like, look, that time he won’t ever forget that, and I won’t either because I’ll be able to look down there and see him doing great and be like, man, it’s like, man, that was a really good thing we did for Ryan.

It was nice. He gave him a great, you know what I mean? It was just game, it just, it’s sure, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s I And I always look at we talked about this last time too I I’m making more than I ever thought I was gonna make yeah, right I’m making more than anybody in my family ever made yeah, like I said I don’t come from a lot of money So for me it was like you know what when I got to a hundred grand.

It was like oh my god You know what I mean like that’s real money like holy shit What am I doing myself? You know I know those people out there making 15 20 50 million 50 million a year, but it’s like, you know, and then Joe went and bought new skis and ATV truck. We had to rein them back in. Okay. Yeah. That’s before I got engaged and I knew I was getting married and the clip was going to be on.

So I was like, before we were, I knew we were buying a house. So I was like, new truck, new ski, ATV trip, you know, $2,000 in fishing gear. I’m gonna get all my toys locked in. So helping people is definitely like you look at the people who are truly successful. Most of it has come from being altruistic, you know. I don’t know too many selfish miserable sons of bitches who are sitting on a pile or they might be sitting on a pile of money, but they got no friends.

They got nobody looking up. They got nobody that says like of I saw you at varsity house last summer. I was thinking about contacting them for an internship. It was amazing. Great guys, great experience. They gave everything they had to help me in every way. I mean, that’s really important. – But it’s just don’t even underestimate how much the impact you’ve had on me.

And I haven’t even spent a six months internship. Like it’s been incredible. Like last I was here last month doing the workshops and it’s like you guys drove me around everywhere. Like took me on like a little tour. It was the best. But it’s like I’ve learned so much from you just from the energy that you put into what you’re doing and how Selfless you both are with your time if I was to call up at any time I asked you you gave me a ski program like that like anything that I’ve ever asked either of you for you are willing to help and it’s this really interesting It’s it’s like a growth mindset and it’s an abundance mindset.

It’s this idea that you, why wouldn’t you help people? This is why you got into this industry to train people. And that’s kind of the foundation of varsity house. And so it’s all well and good for businesses or fitness businesses to think to themselves that it’s mutually exclusive. Either you’re a business or you’re helping people. When if you run a successful business, you could help more people.

You both have the freedom now to be able to help somebody like me, somebody like Ryan, and the extent of that is so great. – Make a bigger impact. – Yeah. – I wanna make a big impact, and I like, I just like the feeling, ’cause I, again, like I said, when we were coming up, the gym industry as a whole tends to be very adversarial, you know what I mean?

Where it’s competition based, you know? I’m giving away my training secrets. No, you’re not doing anything that they’ll leave. – You didn’t invent it, yeah. – Yeah, you didn’t invent this new training set. You know what I mean? And so, especially locally, right? So if there was a gym, let’s say a few miles down the street, right? That’s doing something a little different than we are.

But if we reached out years ago and they would be like, you know, hating on us. I mean, we used to have a couple local gyms that were literally like hating on us on like, like blowing us up, trolling us on like social media and stuff. And it’s like, I don’t understand that. Like, you know, we never met them. Never met them once. Never met them once.

– At this meeting their time doing that, guess whose business is suffering theirs? ‘Cause they’re not investing their time into their business. – Exactly. So you can spend your time, bitch and crying, whining and hate. – And hanging onto every single guy. – And hanging on every second guy. – Exactly. Or spend time inspiring people, educating know, you know, you look around the world.

What’s the most empowering thing is education. You go to any, you go to any third world country, right? What’s the first thing they do? They go to Somalia, right? You know, and they build a school, right? You go to Afghanistan, right? One of the first things we did in Afghanistan is help them rebuild some schools and get kids that going in towards education, right?

So when you empower people with knowledge and ability, you empower them to think autonomously, you know, on their own. You give people, you give people information and knowledge that they can use to create their own, you know, let’s call it their own life at that point. You know, it’s just otherwise they’re just like, you know, so given given yourself helping like people like yourself, Ryan, the rest of the people that we’ve done working with, seeing them, you know, it become all of a sudden with a light bulb goes out into the empowerment switches like, wow, that’s like, oh my God, I never thought of that.

It’s like, well, boom, there you go. So, and that that feels great in the long way. It feels like– – But it’s also empowerment for us, like you said, when you come here last time, I’m literally, I had spoken to my dad earlier and just drive it. You know, he’s asking me what I’m doing this weekend. Like actually like, we got five people from Australia coming to visit the gym.

He’s like, “Holy shit, really? ” And I’m like, “Really? ” Yeah. I mean, honestly, like I feel so. Every time that you guys come here, like I have to make myself available. Yeah, and It just you know, it feels it. We’re really we’re really living out our passion You know, and that’s that’s you know, that’s how is extended so far and it means so much because it’s like it’s obviously a really long way for Australians to go But it’s like it doesn’t feel like that when I’m coming here like it’s like it’s so worth it like it’s just yeah, that’s great At least we didn’t screw that out.

No, it’s our turn. Yeah, yes, no come to Australia show you imagine Joe and I and Trevor sitting in the airplane next to each other I’m not sitting in the middle. It’ll be Trevor end up being Trevor stuck in the middle? I always get the short end of the stick. We flew back from Mexico. It was rough like back. We just sweating on each other the whole way like all sunburned and sweating.

Oh my god, that’s so funny. I really loved the quote you brought up before Dan about if you want to empower and educate people that work for you or not have them. Like basically, you might have to read it out again because it was so good. But I want to talk about how important staff development is. We did talk about it heaps before, but I didn’t get to interject at all.

But I think that so many people are so afraid that if their staff think that they’re good enough to leave, that they will then leave. And you see this in so many businesses and I think that the fitness industry is so far behind because a couple weeks ago I did a tour of Facebook, someone I know works there and it was amazing and I absolutely loved it.

And the questions that I was so interested about to ask were what was the core intention of Facebook when it was first created? Like was this movement expected? And it’s like the core intention of Facebook was to connect people and to communicate with people. And they’re one of their absolute core values from Dave Dot was staff development and taking care of their staff.

So on site at Facebook all their meals are provided. There’s healthy cafes and restaurants everywhere. There’s training facilities. There’s a doctor. There’s a physiotherapist. There’s there’s everything. And so basically staff go there each day and you can feel the energy. They want to be there. They want to be there. They’re taken care of and they have development paid for, they have education paid for, all these different things that so many other businesses would say, well if they get better at their job, why wouldn’t they just leave and start something of their own?

But these people are valued and this is exactly, it’s amazing because this is exactly what you’re both talking about with how you appreciate your team. And you appreciate them as human beings and as people who can actually contribute. They’re not just coming in here and signing off a timesheet, like they actually matter. And the interesting thing for small fitness businesses is how do you communicate to them how important that is for their business?

– Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so for me, it’s like, so for me, I’m kind of the operational mind here, right? And generally, it might be like Dan’s idea for a system or my idea for a system, but I’m usually the one who then kind of backtracks it from the start to finish and breaks it down. And hiring and developing great employees starts from the very beginning.

And that’s having a process for interviewing them, for getting to know them, for kind of weeding them out and seeing where they stand both personally and educationally, depending on what the role is that you have in them here doing. Let’s talk about it’s coach obviously obviously the background in strength conditioning and what their certifications and things like that are but but way more important than that because we’re going to teach our system anyway way more important that is like how they are as a person right.

There’s great book that we make everybody read. It’s called the ideal team player and by Patrick Lencioni and I got that from Ben Bergeron up in CrossFit New England. He does the same with his crew. And it’s a great book and the core value is there are hungry, humble and smart, and smart being socially smart, similar to ours, hungry, humble and committed to excellence, right?

And it really, you know, starts with that. You know, are you hungry? Are you humble? We do anything and anything. And are you socially smart? Do you have the ability to work with a variety of people from different backgrounds and different ideologies on a consistent basis and be able to understand what you should, shouldn’t say, things like that and how to get the best out of people around you.

So that starts with that, the number one. So it’s higher the absolute best people that you can and then just have a process along the way. So it shouldn’t just be like, hey, you wanna come work at the gym? Can at the gym? ” – Yeah. – Can you coach this? – You wanna do– – You don’t really fit. – You wanna do six AM? Yeah, I’ll do six AM. Great, you’re hired, you know what I mean?

– Yes. – No, that’s like, you know, not important. – Something that we talked about before the show today, and I wanna make sure that this is touched upon is that I know that people that work here at the gym, many people we’ve become great friends with. We hang out outside of the gym. It’s not forced. Our wives are friends. We hang out and we end up talking about work the whole damn time, but we definitely hang out.

We go on vacation together. It happens, but one thing that we have to fall back upon is we treat the business as business where there’s written contracts. We have operating agreements. We have lawyers draft the contracts. We have accountants, mediate, financial issues. I mean, we have yearly reviews. You think I want to sit down with Big Mike and have to go through a yearly review and tell him what he did good, what he did bad stuff like that.

He Give us their party. – Helps us come to those conclusions so that he knows it’s not just like, yep, feeling pretty good, the bank account’s looking good. Yeah, we’re gonna give you another $150 a week. Or it’s like, eh, we didn’t have a good week, we got a bad taste in our mouth. They know it’s not reactive. It’s business is treated as business, so that we could go on with our days being friends and working together towards something.

– And I always wanted like me and Dan, like one of the things too, like when we knew we were gonna bring employees, like we may have to treat, I want people to feel like this is a real career, right? So strength and conditioning as a whole is kind of a low paying career choice, right? There’s not a shit ton of money in collegiate strength and conditioning unless you get to the absolute highest, if you’re the head strength and conditioning coach at Notre Dame, yes, you’re going to make a lot of money, right?

But 90% of 99% of the jobs underneath that are, you know, well under 100 grand a year, well under most of them are under 50,000. Right? So they’re very low paying, right? You can go be a personal trainer at it like a big box gym, like an equinox or something like that. And you can absolutely make good money doing that. You can make a hundred grand a year plus training your ass off at like a gym in the city, right?

– Five a. m. – Yeah. – Five a. m. – Right? So you work almost crazy out. – Yeah, so you work almost crazy out. – And even at those big gyms, there’s very little benefits most of the time, if any, you have to pay for them and so forth. So for us, it was like, I want people to have a career. I want them to feel like we’re part of a team that there’s a bigger, you know, the brand and the company is in a sense the main goal and the development of varsity house and that there was opportunity for everyone that came in to have a piece of the action.

And by that I mean like they like I said with Mike like he has his thumb on the strength of conditioning and he gets he gets bonuses and we have a whole stuff. Everybody’s incentivized. Everybody’s incentivized person on our staff is incentivized within their department of whatever it is that they do here. And again if like I always say if you you just let, if you, if, so let’s take, I don’t know, let’s take a giant corporate company like a McDonald’s, right?

And which is, you know, there’s a book called the McDonaldization of America, right? And it’s about, you know, just like how if you, if you systemize everything to the 10th degree, right? You take away thought, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we systemize everything to the 10th degree. – We study this in sociology. – Right, you take away thought. – Yeah, yeah, yeah.

– So we systemize everything to the 10th degree here, but we empower people with thought by being able to give them some, “Hey, you’re in charge of this. “You’re in charge of this. “You’re in charge of this. ” Right? So that way, like a Trevor, if there’s a kink in the system and then it’s like, hey, dude, like you were supposed to get that done. What happened?

You know, and it’s like, it’s on him and there’s an ownership issue there. And then it’s like, hey, man, we got to sit down and like, dude, we need to, you know, we talked about this, we got to get this stuff done, you know what I mean? And that stuff doesn’t happen too much here because I look, we’re all in here. We’re in this building 10, 12 hours a day every day.

So it’s like, I know Trevor doesn’t want to see me coming into his office. That’s why Trevor has a video camera and screen in his office. The screen sees me. Go right into the bathroom. Lock the door. Trevor’s been to bathroom five times. So again, if you if you if you if you systemize the hiring process, right? order to work here I don’t care I don’t care if you know, maybe Bobby Maximus right Bobby Maximus comes here and says I want to start training Jim Jones You gotta do the internship.

I do the mentorship. You have to do it. You have to do it. I have to do it. He’s got so many things to live right So no matter who it is you got to do the internship program, you gotta learn our system, but more importantly, what having an internship/mentorship program for employees, new employees does, is it just gives them time to integrate with our staff, gives them time to integrate with our community.

– An opportunity to learn. – And opportunity to learn. – You can always learn from things like that, no matter who you are. – And then once they finally become a real employee, right? So like Adam, right, was the last, you know, real employee hire, right? And where he went from, you know, student of mine at university to summer intern to full time employee, right?

And so when that time came, when he said, you know, hey guys, you know, where we are, we already knew we wanted to hire him because we loved him, right? And it was like, great, we’re going to sit down, we have a contract, we’re going to have, you know, we’re going to have goals. Hey, you got six month goals, yearly goals, three month goals. Hey, we want to see this, this and this get done.

I want to help you this, you know, and he worked his ass off for a year, right? And we sat down with his yearly review and he smashed everything, he killed it, right? And that’s when we started, you know, kind of grooming him for operations and business side of the thing. During the internship process too, I mean, think about it, you know, you’re in school, you have 10 weeks with us.

It’s, it’s way less pressure packed than going out and saying, Hey, you know, Jane, we’re going to hire you and you need to be doing 10 classes a week, 10 private sessions a week, and you’re gonna be running operations within the next three weeks. ” You’re like, “Wait a second, wait a minute. ” – No, yeah. – I don’t even know anybody’s name. I don’t even know people’s names here.

– You’re not how it all goes. – So it’s like, we’re setting you up for failure by not giving our due diligence of 10 weeks to do what? And that’s to bring you up to speed from a relationship standpoint with us, with our team, with our members so that you can really start to feel good about being here. – Totally. And it’s an investment of time on both parties.

It’s like you have to invest in that person and they’re investing as well. So it’s like everybody’s sitting in office. And you can’t have remorse about somebody leaving you. Right? And you can’t have remorse. I mean, it is what it is. So for the most part, right? You know, we’ve had a few people leave over the years. We haven’t a lot. Most of them.

I mean, the crew’s pretty solid. And like the guys that are here now, I think is like, is the heart and soul of what Varsity House is, right? And what I want to see is Adam and Sean and Mike take the next step and run the next Varsity House. We are planning to open up a couple more. – In Australia. – Yeah, maybe. – That’s cool. – And it’s awesome. – Just winning words in your mouth.

– And I’d love to. Maybe you’re in charge of the first franchise. – Woo, yeah.. – But the– – Just running and skating. – So that’s what I wanna see from them. – Not passing down. (laughing) – You gotta have a 400 pound dent. (laughing) So that’s really the key I think. So again, it’s really just helping to find empowerment, finding the things that you like.

And as a boss, and I’ve learned a lot over the years, but you learn a lot how to, you know, how to help people find what really, you know, makes them click too, you know. So, so Big Mike loves to train, right? Big Mike loves being on the floor. He loves running. He loves writing training programs. He likes writing about training, right? He does not like numbers analytics.

He does not want to sit in this on a sales meeting and talk about leads, conversions, you know, retention, stuff like that. That is not in his wheelhouse at all. He’s checked out in three minutes. You know what I mean? So it would make no sense to like, hey Mike, you’re in charge every Monday. You got to do a report on all of our leads, conversions, Facebook groups, stuff like that.

Let us know where we’re at. You know, that would just be miserable for him. So, but we’re someone like Adam, Adam really likes that stuff. Adam’s very analytical. Adam creates all the spreadsheets for all the product inventory, cost and all that type of stuff. He loves that stuff. So that’s more in his wheelhouse. So it’s like great. And now that we know that, it’s like, great Adam, how you’re in charge of the sales processes at the front, making sure that we drive sales every quarter and stuff like that.

So, and that just comes from time, I think. And just surrounding myself with other good businessmen who’ve kind of helped coddle us a little bit too. We’re very lucky in the gym that we have some very high-end business people here who are making mega millions. And who have taken the time to not only be great clients of ours, but that we foster real relationships with.

At the end of the day, I think if if there’s one thing that you have to do and that’s take the time to create relationships with your staff with your community and the people and I’m not saying that you got to go to you know every every night you got to go out for drinks with somebody from the gym or anything like that But there are there are definitely some people that you will connect with on a deeper level Yeah, and you know just like your own personal relationships and like you your loved ones and stuff like that, if you don’t force to those relationships, they go away.

You know what I mean? They disappear. – I think that’s something that I really respect about both of you is you’re not afraid to ask for help and to continue learning as well with both of you. I do want to be right before we finish. I want to talk about the business of strength. I actually want to know what it is like. It’s like, how does it work? Who is it for?

And how will it actually help them? Okay, so I’ll give you a quick look at the business of strength created to help Jim owners know. So in all honesty, you know, it just to make it real, right? Because I think that’s what’s separate. I think me and Dan, that is our kind of our marketing niches that were in the trenches, real strength entrepreneurs trying to crush it every day.

And so the business of strength is a two day mentorship designed for strength entrepreneurs. So that’s current gym owners, wannabe gym owners, coaches who, if you were running somebody else’s gym, you’d be able to bring a ton of ad value back to that gym and level up yourself within that company. So even if it’s not your goal to own your own gym, the business of strength is still a great tool for you.

And some PTs that are like renting a space in the box. Absolutely. Any anybody in the fitness space who wants to level up as a businessman, the business of strength are going to help you. So in that time, right, in two days, you’re going to be immersed here in varsity house when the most of them we’re going to be doing here. Because I love, you know, again, you get the full experience of varsity house, right?

You’re going to train with us. You’re going to run classes with us. You’re going to have, we’re going to sit in on our team meetings. And we’re basically going to break down every major process in the gym, you know, sales, marketing, business development, product development, leading meetings, how we do all of our online stuff, our operational systems and how we break down, how I identify a need, create a solution operationally to fix it and then implement it.

And that’s one of the things, when I say operations, most people are like, what the hell does that even mean? So any operations is any process that drives action in the gym. So it’s like, great. I have, you know, so, so onboarding is a big thing that you’ve probably seen us doing live talks and podcasts on is onboarding. It’s one of our, I think we’ve, I think we’ve hit an absolute home run with our onboarding process in the last year.

We created this product called a process called VH University. And that is an operational process. Everything from starting to being, when a client walks through the door, what happens? What do we say? What do we do? What type of information do they get? What does the gym tour look like? And everything is systemized. And we talked about this at the beginning of the podcast.

And some people might say, well, that’s kindout. You know, now you’re becoming like McDonald’s and stuff. No, I’m being smart. I’m trying to be the absolute best. I’m trying to create a system that I can reproduce to teach other people so that I can grow and scale my business. People love consistency. Like they love that. That’s why McDonald’s has taken, like, because they know when they walk in there, but you have the human elements.

– Five billion. – Five million. – Five million. – Five million. – Five million. – Five million. – Five million. – Five million. – here’s what didn’t hit this year, here’s what is hitting this year. We’ll take away from this last t are going to implement your jim g to put you in situations w if you have a roadblock here how’s it gonna get done we did a lot of live sales like dialogue work at the front desk so we ran a whole we spent the whole afternoon at the front desk going through all our sales scripts one of the things that we’ve done I think we’ve done a pretty good job what is is coaching up is creating salesman Mike’s not a salesman by nature Mike’s never sold a damn thing in his life right he’s one of the best salesman we have by far.

He upsells the shit. – Because he’s, he tells the truth, too, because he believes in it. – Well, that’s, that’s the key, right? That’s the key. So, so. – You can’t sell shit products. – No, exactly. – Product, but if– – Product number one has to be good. – Totally. – The product must be good. – So, so, so again, like this, just kind of sum it up. The business strength is really an awesome immersion into everything we do here at Varsity House to really teach people, to give people the tools to implement and create systems within their business.

And really, and at the end of the day, make a lot more money and put a lot more time back in their plate to do other things that will hopefully make them more money or whatever their passions are. So we’ve had great success with it. We’ve only run one workshop so far. We have two more scheduled within the next six months. And then next year 2018, we’re going to be ripping them.

We’re going to have a whole bunch of them. We got podcasts every month now. We have an online continuity group that we’re going to be starting next year. So the business and strength online is basically going to be for strength entrepreneurs that can’t maybe can’t get to varsity house for a workshop or just want more in a sense personal coaching. You’ll be able to join our online group and every month we’re going to have a done for you product that’s going to roll out and it’s going to be like mission style like you know like hey guys the mission for this month is to streamline your onboarding process.

And we’re going to break down that process from start to finish. And I’m going to communicate with the people in the group. I want to see the programs. I want to see it. We’re going to help people. It could be implemented immediately. I love it because you’re demystifying business for these people. Because it’s like so many people get into fitness because they love fitness and they love helping people.

And in their eyes almost explode when they understand that they have to actually run a business. It’s so empowering the way that you’re educating them because you’re not making it so hard for them that they can’t do it. I just want to give them, I just want to give them, look, literally when people came to the business strength it was like, “Okay, great.

Here’s our employee manual. Here’s our onboarding process. Here’s our hiring manual and how we conduct our interviews and stuff like that. So we had all these done for you stuff and people were like, “Holy crap. ” I was like, “Yeah, I spent every Sunday for 10 years right now, this crap. ” You know what I mean? – Yeah, like 3 to 3 is what you say. – Right, so yes, it took me a lot of work.

But, you know, like, like, “Mohamara Lee,” you know, “Suffer Now” and “Live the Rest of Your Life” as a champion, you know So that a little bit of grind. Yeah, right before you get your business really rolling is the key So one of the things that started the business strength right was because we got to a point where we were very busy Yeah, because we were good you know as you can see we’re both we’re both well-liked dynamic personalities Yes, you are so so so we had a great product, we had great training.

Me and Dana, great at fostering relationships. Like I said, I’m not patting my own back, but in general, we’re good dudes and we get a shit about people and the clients. I cared a lot about the kids. They’re my little brothers and sisters and I love them. We put a lot of energy into the training, into the kids and into the programs that were going on in the gym, right?

And we created this awesome gym and it blew up, right? And it was busy shit, right? And we were like, “Oh, my God. ” I was like, we had to work so much harder to get a gym that was already busy, systemized, because now I can’t not train. Now there is no time. I was stuck doing 10 sessions a day because I had to and because it had gotten to a point.

So what I want for people with the business and strength is to be like, “Systemize now and not sit on your ass for the rest of your life but just get this shit done. ” So if training is your thing and you want to be the next Joe Rigg Riggio, you wanna be the next Joe DeFranco, you wanna be the next Eric Cressio, you wanna be a world class-strainting conditioning coach, and you wanna be, you know, seen around the world as a world-strain, that’s your goal, well, get your business systemized, and then you could allow that to happen.

Now you can go do that stuff, you know? So now you have a, maybe you develop an operations guy who comes in, you know, know Couple times a week couple out whatever doesn’t even have to be a full-time guy like up in crossfit New England there for their front desk and operations guy a girl woman was you know was basically part-time She was there like four or five hours a day, but she came in she ran the front desk and all the sales and five sessions a week and their general manager the general manager of you know, Henry, yeah, the zero, the zero, you know, there’s nothing.

Something I love about you both. I’m actually having the best time ever. And I know that you haven’t been eating to get to, but I’m just loving listening to you both something you’ve done so well. And I’m not going to dive into this, but something you have done so well that people really need to pay attention to is how well you run as a partnership.

You both have complete respect for each other. And I love what you said before, Danny, run the business as a business. And yeah, yeah, So you bring to Varsity House each of you individually. And I want to know what you feel is your purpose in life. Why do you think that you’re here and you can ask it and answer each question however you’d like. But I want to know what you each bring to Varsity House.

You can go first on this one. Yeah, yeah, it’s really hard. And what is your purpose or mission in life? Well, well, I want to first backtrack a little bit about about about about business is strength too is that it was a conversation and I keep bringing to my dad just because I resort to him for a lot of business questions. But, you know, when we’re after year three from the outside looking in, we were seemingly running a successful business like Joe had talked about where we were packed and we were looking at each other.

And just from our partnership, I would say our partnership was really it was a trying time for us because it was like, dude, like I can’t even freaking, it got to the point where we would argue all the time where we’re stupid things ’cause we had no system and we are gonna over not getting stuff done. – Yes. – And then we spent time, I’ll do it, yes.

– So, I remember vividly of just having this conversation with my dad and he’s like, hey, you guys have a great thing going now. Now it’s time to hit the gas and really create a business. ” I’m like, “What the hell are you talking about? I’ve just worked seven days a week for three years. I’ve taken no vacations. I’m not. It’s not like I’m making a fortune of money.

” He’s like, “It’s either you’re going to to toil around with this forever or you guys are going to take the next step in your partnership and really ensure that you have a future doing what you’re doing. And at the time, I remember being like pretty mad about it. Being like, what the hell is he talking about? I got to work more. I got to work more.

I think it was also too like understanding more. You know, I was understanding how our partnership, how Joe and I could both really, I could allow him to do what he was good at. And he could allow me to do what I was good at. And we both had an understanding. All right, we’ve done this for three years now. Like I’m not going anywhere. You’re not going anywhere.

And the one thing I could tell everybody is that there was mutual trust. Yeah. Is that I wasn’t, I wasn’t afraid that he was going and taking money or that he didn’t have my best interest behind my back. And I knew he knew that about me too. I wasn’t talking badly about him to whoever. We had mutual respect and we truly gave a shit about one another because I think we understood at that point that if he were to have left or I were to have left there would have been nothing.

You know so we only came to we almost came to blows one time that was the only time a Trevor was there we went out of pretty good new old office but it was a big Mike where we got there was there was definitely some desk thrown and and and screaming and pushing around. I mean we’re too a type giant me I mean at the end of the day I Know that Dan has never slighted me ever he’s never you know ever cheated the gym the system or anybody here ever It’s been it’s it’s you know just like a marriage in in every sense of the way where you get out of it what you put into it And if you’re gonna be with that sleazy gym owner partner who’s like, you know, skimming a little money on the side or like, you know, you’re down before talking shit or whatever it is.

It’s got to be the business entity has to be bigger than yourself. And I only talk about it like with shrink entrepreneurs is that like you want to be successful, start giving a shit about making sure that your clients like that hours, the best hour of their day. It’s not about that you just did a 500 pound deadlift. Nobody gives a shit. – Nine. – If they ask, talk to them about it.

It’s about them. And with us, it was about the business. The business was number one. And obviously, making time to communicate with one another is really important. – I think traveling together was one of the best things we ever did for our partnership too. You know, we took a couple vacations together. You know, once we had some money and got the business like moderately systemized, we know at the first trip we took after it was West West side.

That was the first time we met this year. So too, like just getting out of your space and just going for a meal. Like just like just decompressing a little bit. We used to go to a Greek place down the street. We bring out no books. We have lunch and we’d sit. It’s amazing. just my memoirs, memoirs of the greatest coach ever. But so one of the things that I was thinking right was that, you know, it’s funny now looking back at when we started, right?

And our partnership, right? And I really do. I really do love Dan like a brother. He’s very close friends. One of my best friends, he’s, you know, I rely on him for so much. And I know that he’s always been there for me. And he’s always been great. My mom, my, you know, my wife and stuff like that. So we have a great partnership. And I try to do the same as mom and dad or like my family.

They’ve treated me with respect from day one, right? So, um, but when I look back, right, and I remember the first conversation mean you had when we were sitting with Mark, right? There was supposed to be a third partner in varsity house and it just didn’t work out for a lot of reasons. Nothing personal. It was a financial issue. He just didn’t work out from his end on the money side.

So we wound up going in a different direction to end up being me and Dan, which worked out, which was probably the way it should have been. And I remember sitting down and we were trying to decide what we were gonna do role-wise, what our roles were gonna be in the company. I still had that original business plan. I love to pop that out one day, right?

And Dan was going to be the sales, marketing and business development guy. And I was going to be the teacher, you know, I was going to run the mentorship program. I was going to be education, implementation and operations, right? And then it was five years of us doing everything, right? And fast forward a decade, right? And now he’s sales marketing and business development, and I’m, you know, education, implementation and operations, right?

And it’s, that’s how it was always supposed to be. That’s where our strengths were always where they always were, right? And it just took,. Yeah. To get to allow that to actually come to fruition. To answer your question too. And I’ll be the first one to to answer this about your your the contribution and your purpose in life. I’m going to say purpose in life first is that when we started the gym, honestly, after it started and still to this day, is that for me, in my head, there’s no other option.

Like there was no, once we started and we put that initial investment in, it’s burned the bridges, this is working or I don’t know what the hell else I’m gonna do. And I’ve really never thought, I’ve never for one second thought about, ooh, I could do this or I could do that or maybe I should be doing this. It’s like, no, this is what I’m meant to do.

And I know that because I don’t even, I don’t dream of doing anything else. It’s not even part of the, it’s not even part of my thought process. My dream is how can we scale this to the next level? How can we make an even greater impact? And that is the dream. So I know I’m doing the right thing. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, I mean, I’ve told you before, I mean, my purpose is to educate and inspire.

I mean, I want to help people through my form of education happens to be human physiology and strength conditioning. And now as a seasoned veteran in the business side of things now with entrepreneurship in the gym industry. And that’s really what I’ve always done. I’ve been teaching at the university for 15 years. I was teaching my friends how to work out when we were 12, 13 years old.

You know what I mean? I was peeling workouts out of Flex Magazine and stuff and Magazine stuff and things like that. And we’d be down in the basement. I was, I was high, I had a chalkboard when I was 14 years old, right? And up wads, right? Before it was called a wad, it was a wad. It was just called getting fucking swole. Right? And, and, and, you know, so, and then when we brought people in, it was like, you know, and it was Dan, it was like, you know, teaching Dan how to train and taking a kid who already was a phenomenal football player, great dude, hard worker, right?

But had not really corralled the X’s and O’s of training and teaching him and Mike and all the people and just kind of edging. And now it’s on to the next. And it’s like, how many people can I share our story with, you know, inspire people to, you know, if, if, you know, to me heads from Jersey, you know, with modest backgrounds, and, and, you know, we’re educated, but I have neither one of us have taken a business course, neither one of us have are like, you know, these high level business schools, and we can go to warren or anything like that, right?

I have a mind, my degree is in molecular biology, has nothing to do with business. I never took a marketing sales or business course ever, right? But I read well, right? And I have no problem grinding. And what me and Dan, and I think I can speak for every single person in his crew, what we make up for with a, what we might lack in overall, let’s call it educational experience and things like that is work ethic.

– Drive. – Yeah, super drive Neither of you will stop learning. Like every single day you’re like, we still to this day pay for coaching. Oh yeah, always, always. I know it’s three or four podcast a week. It’s a book a month. It’s I mean, it’s something, you know, and there’s always a great tidbit that you can take from anyone, you know, so and I’ve been to coaching events where I was like, well, you know, that was great, but I met, but I met this person and now they’re close friends, you know what I mean?

Right. And, you know, you take Jim Jones and look at the community. Look at the connections it’s made for all of us and the people we’ve made. We’ve had an amazing experience here – Yeah, this is it. I would never have met you two. – And again, but as we’ve talked about before, you have to cuddle those relationships. You have to be able– – It’s on you who have to take charge.

– Totally. – To identify the people that you connect with and create a real relationship that forces into something. And in our industry, right, if you want to create a business out of it, right, well then that’s on you to figure that out. You have to be creative and inspiring enough to where people want to come to us to learn and things like that, just like people want to come to your center.

People like, they want to come learn rowing and skiing from Jane, right, and see you as an expert. But I bet you it’s a large percent of that is because of the personality and the connection connections that you’ve made with people. And I’m sure still to this day, a lot of the business is referral. Jane’s amazing. She’s come to the gym. She’s such a great person.

What a fun personality. Blah, blah, blah. So somebody tells you that, like, you know what, that’d be great for my gym too. People would love that. It’s like hey great. I mean you know let me hire Jane. It’s like great. So your personality is such a huge important part of everything that goes on. You know and I hate to say it. There’s a lot of miserable pricks in the day.

You know, strength coaches tend you know. Yeah, yeah. Percifying. Yeah. At the end of the, we’re just freaking lifting weights. – Totally. – How important in life is a 2K row? – Oh my god, no, it’s not a 4K row. You’re 500 pound deadlift. Yeah, that’s good. You know, that’s all right. – Yeah. – Good compared to what? – Yeah. – It’s like it’s terrible compared to the strongest guys.

– But like I’mrollers guys. You know, how’s your relationship with your mom? You and your wife do you have other people feel? People care way less about the exes and o’s and they’ll remember you for you. They’re not going to remember you for how much you know. Totally. That’s a great place to end. You are both the best. Just so you know, I would make this a 24 hour podcast.

I love you both. I have taken four pages of notes. It seems like I’m taking them for the podcast. Just taking them for life. You’re both amazing. Thank you, Jay. Thanks for having us. And thank you for setting up this super high tech. Thanks to the Wiz. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.. – Thank you so much. – Thank you everyone so much for listening. If you are ever here in New York, you need to come up to Varsity House.

So we’re in Orangeburg. We’re on the border of Jersey. You could tell that. I got welcomed to New Jersey when I was driving here and then welcomed back to New York. I was fine. – Yeah, same time, right? – Totally. – If you want to check out us, you could check us out at varsityhousegym. com. You can connect with me and Dan on Instagram, my coach Joe Strong is mine and Dan Goodman, Dan Underscore, Se7d, Goodman 78 is Dan’s.

The gym’s got every social media that you can imagine. And if you’re interested in coming to one of our business seminars and learning how to turn your passion into a profession, you can check that out at strength entrepreneurs. com with an S strength entrepreneurs. com you guys are awesome and I’ll be in Australia hopefully next year we will be we will be.

Thank you so much everyone for listening.