From Trailer Park to CEO - Lessons from a Leader with Bryce Henson

Momentum mori. Which, it can sound cold at first, but the, the Italian or excuse me, the Latin translation is remember your death. And if you remember your death, what actually shows urgency, it shows the fact that you still have one more fight. Today is the day, now is the time. And I love that.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show, where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, nextlevelincome.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we have Bryce Henson. You're in for a treat. Today Bryce and I are going to have a great chat about his journey from growing up in a trailer park to now being the CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp. It's the world's fastest growing fitness boot camp franchise. After growing up in a broken home riddled with addiction, and starting his career at age 11, working multiple jobs and selling his plasma to fund his education. Despite facing these challenges and throughout his 20 year career, Bryce has led the sales of $175 million in professional coaching services. Today, his life mission is to teach leadership, promote capitalism, and defend free speech. And we're going to get into that in today's show. Bryce, great to see you. How you doing today, Chris?

Super pumped. Thanks so much for having me on.

Absolutely, man. I'm really excited to have you on the show. We were talking, talking a little catching up a little bit before the, before we started today. And I got to tell the audience how we met because it's just, you know, and you actually introduced me to a friend of the podcast, Dr. Doug Lucas, which is pretty cool. So kind of going back to the beginning, I work with Craig Ballantyne, who's one of my coaches, one of my advisors. And a lot of people know Craig because he was the first, first guest on this podcast. And he was the first guest because Cale Wellborn, who unfortunately, he passed away a little over a year ago. But Caleb went to one of Craig's seminars in Chicago and said, hey, we should ask Craig, you know, to be, since, you know, we, we, we talk about his books and all this thing, to be the first guest on the podcast, which he was. Craig introduced me to you. You introduced me to the Lucases, who, um, Doug Lucas has been on the podcast. Dr. Doug Lucas and You know, your team reached out and I was like, I got this, this random email for Bryce Henson as you, you know, you make the rounds here. I was like, oh, Bryce, this is fantastic. We gotta have Bryce on the podcast. So I'm super excited. Craig has a saying, your net worth is your network. And I think the fact that you're on this podcast and that little story is a nice illustration. But we'd love for you to share a little about your journey, how you got here, what you do with FitBody Boot Camp with the audience.

Yeah, well, thanks for that. I'll give you that in a second. But your net worth is your net worth for sure. And when this came to be, it was interesting. We were talking offline, like, Chris, you are my advisor, you're my, because I invest, you know, with you and your organization here. So what can we talk about? And he's like, well Bryce, of course, I mean you got to think from an investment perspective. That's my zone of genius. That's why we work there. But for, for high performers, they need leadership, they need fitness, they need mindset. So I think that's where I can add some value today. But in any case, I am the CEO of FitBody Boot Camp, which is an eight figure international fitness franchise. We're the fastest growing indoor fitness boot camp franchise on the planet. We have nearly 300 locations in North America. We're based here, corporate headquarters in Los Angeles, but we have locations throughout the States, about 90% and then about 10% in Canada. And our mission is to inspire fitness, change lives every day. And really my leadership journey, my business journey, all taught, all starts about with personal growth, with fitness. That's the foundation. So you know, that's the message that I want to impact in part on. I'll give you a high low overview got here, but there's a lot to unpack. But my first 10 years I grew up in a trailer park in the southeast U.S. in the state of Georgia. That was not because mother, who's a good sweet salt of earth lady, it turns out my father as a drug addict addicted to alcohol and gambling, not the trifecta for a good family upbringing. But that was more of a blessing disguised as a tragedy as we escaped that situation. And what that taught me, it taught me, it actually gave me a different in life. It taught me the cold reality that life is hard, there's life is full of challenge, but you know, adversity is your advantage. And that's a lesson that I've know, take I've grown So much because of that. And I think that the early years forged my, my foundation in that. But the latter 10 years as I, you know, put myself through college and university and then started my working world, it was a good situation to get, get us out of that bad situation with underneath my father's grasp. However, my mother did not have any vision to ra having raising three kids on her own. So we struggled for the better part of 10 years trying to get her on her feet. But my grandma, grandma, grandmother took us in and we, we, we made it work and we worked hard. We leaned on ourselves. We. I learned the value of relationship of really working hard and having kind of a blue collar work ethic. But a white collar mindset is really the combination that I like to attack life and I learned that in those years and then it kind of put a bow on that transition. When I was 21 years young, I moved out to Los Angeles, California. The palm trees, the blue skies, which is all that LA has to offer. However, in Chris, they don't tell you this. When you're 21, you're 3,000 miles from home, you don't have professional skill sets to offer the world and you don't have confidence, you don't have energy, you don't have to say you don't have fitness. And that's how I lived for the following couple years until I went to my own transformation of hiring a fitness coach, which you talked about, you know, having advisor in Craig Ballantyne. You're my advisor from a, from an investment perspective. So having coaches and guides is so important to kind of put a bow on this foundational part of the story. And how I got inspired to enter the fitness world was I hired a coach who was, turns out was my. One of my best friends from college was Adam. He had the six pack abs, the glistening muscles. All the girls looked up to him. I certainly looked up to that. And after a little bit of time living together, I finally mustered up to ask him to show me a little bit about this fitness thing. And really what he did for two years. But hyper focus. Over six months he introduced me to circuit training, lifting weights, clean nutri, but most importantly, Chris. He introduced me to coaching and accountability and that's what made all the difference for me. So I got in great shape. But more than that, it sh life and it really the foundation for my career in the fitness industry. So that's a bit of a high level view on who I am and how I got here.

Oh, I love that man. And you had A couple awesome quotes here that I want to dig into. The last one that you, you mentioned I wrote down was have a blue collar work ethic but a white collar mindset. We just, we just had a recent guest on that talk specifically about mindset. His book is actually entitled Mindset. And you know that that's the big thing. Like you can, you can do all the work, but if you don't have the right mindset, you know, you're not going to end up in the right spot. And I think it's, it's a testament to, you know, your first quote, which was adversity is your advantage. And you know, you mentioned I lost my father at a young age. And you know, I don't, I don't know, it may have been even more challenging to be in your position, Bryce, to have a father that wasn't a good role model and able to do that. You mentioned having your mother and that stable foundation to do that. And it's, that's it really, it really set the stage for what, what you had. And I see mindset in the, in the background as well as you say that for those people that, you know, they, again, I think you and I have lived it, you know, but for somebody that is, you know, is coming through life and they're like, yeah, you know, I think you've probably seen this Bryce, they look at you, they're like, oh, Bryce, look, you're, you're good looking guy, you're fit, you know, you're successful, you know, life's easy for you. You didn't have to deal with these chall, right? I've seen, I've had people say that before, they're like, oh, well Chris, it's easy for you, you're lucky. And I, I, these people, without a doubt, they don't know my story. And I said, what, you know, what do you mean by luck? Do you mean I'm lucky because I lost my father? Do you know, I go through some of the challenges and they're like, why didn't. I didn't really realize that. But you know, you're still lucky because of some of the advantages you have in life. But one of the great quotes I recently heard was know if you're successful. This was Dave Smith, he was on Joe Rogan podcast. He said if you're successful, you overcome one thing, self pity. We all face challenges, we all get down in the dump sometimes. So what can you tell people, Bryce, that are going through challenges? You know, you've talked about kind of building that mindset. But how do you sustain that when you go through challenges in life today?

That's an incredible question, and it's interesting. And we all go through adversity as part of human. That's just part of the human condition. Chris, you've gone through adversity, I've gone through adversity. I actually take it. Love taking a step back and realizing that practicing gratitude is one of the best opportunities for you to reframe your current situation. And no matter how hard you have it right now, just think to yourself, what if, for example, you were born 500 years ago? Okay, Think about what your life would look like then. How about if you were born in the Republic of North Korea? I'm using an extreme example, but there are millions of people born in the Republic of North Korea. I. I don't care what sort of, you know, background that you came up with, the hardship, the challenge you had compared to someone in that particular situation. If you reframe that, you are lucky. And that's something that I've really, you know, taken. Taken to heart. And Chris, how I've been able to do that in, you know, a strategy in terms of reframing adversity, if you will, into your advantage is actually travel. It's perspective. And really travel has done for me is it's given me massive perspective on the world. And really to. To give you a backstory of how this all came to, I shared with you. You know, growing up, we started money before we run out a month. Very challenging situation. But I put myself through college. I used to donate blood plasma. I had 17 jobs from the time I was 11, just to kind of beep. Put it together right? So that was kind of my vision. And I decided to enroll myself into a study abroad program in my senior year. Which, by the way, I was the guy. It's so embarrassing. Bryce 1.0. When I went to college at the International center and there was a bunch of kids that couldn't speak English, I was. I was the guy that get out of my country. What are you doing now? I sit back and I just laugh at myself. And I cringe, actually at that. But it shows me the growth because I just didn't have that experience. So when I was a senior and going in my senior year, I decided to enroll myself in a study abroad program. Initially, there was only three programs that fit the criteria. The first one was going to Greece. The second was in Argentina. The third was in Asia. My initial mind was like, I'm going to Greece. Mykonos beaches, etc. But the complications in terms of logistics, the course credit, the credits I needed, I would had to invest an extra $2,000, which is a lot of money. It was a small fortune for me at the time. It just didn't make sense. Same complication with Argentina. And then I decided, you know what, there's, there's an opportunity in Asia. I wasn't sold on it. It was the first year we're going to Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. And it never really attracted me. But I'll never forget, I was out to dinner one time with a friend and at college we were talking about it and he had traveled a bit and he said, bryce, well, can you imagine yourself ever going to Greece? And I said, yeah, I can at some point. I mean, I was hoping to go, this is not in the cards. He's like, well, how about Argentina? I was like, well, I can see that as well. And as it turns out, fast forward, I've been to both countries. He's like, bryce, can you imagine yourself Hong Kong, Japan or Singapore in your life? And I turned, his name is Charlie. I was like, I know I have no actually appetite or vision for that. He's like, bryce, that's where you want to go because you're going to unlock a different part of life, perspective. And Mark, I'll never Forget, actually, actually May 18, 2004, myself on a flight with 15 other college students from Michigan State to Japan, which the program was grounded in Hong Kong. And then we visited Singapore. And Chris rocked my world. It gave me perspective. It gave me something that I will always travel, which is, you know, learning from people perspective. And I think from a leadership lens. Leadership is perspective. Perspective is leadership. So to kind of bring this all full circle, if you're having a hard time, you're going through adversity and the woe is me. I think, number one, it's okay, you know, take a little bit of time, whatever bad things happen, it's okay to process that grief for yourself. But then once that grieving is done, suck it up, cupcake. Move forward. And the best way you do that is to reframe gratitude and then constantly seek perspective. I promise you, even though both of us have experienced a lot of hardship, my friends, if you're listening and watching this, you've also experienced a lot of hardship. But I, I promise you, no matter how hard it is, there has been people that have went through harder things than you. And by reframing that perspective, that's really what all the difference for me. So hopefully that helps in some value to your audience today.

I love that. And actually put. I wrote this down on my paper. I said, leadership is perspective, and perspective is leadership. I did a big circle. So I love that. That's. You gotta. You gotta trademark that, Bryce, and put that in your. In your materials, for sure. And I love. I love what you said about gratitude and reframing that story about North Korea. I read a book several years ago, over a decade ago, called Escape from Camp. I think it was Camp 17, might have been Camp 13, but it was an odd number. And there was this. This gentleman, this North Korean. He was born in one of these prison camps. And he tells his story. He escaped from the camp, he came to America, and he talks about Bryce. He had a dream. And the dream that he had which drove him to escape was the dream to be able to eat grilled meat. So his whole dream in life, because he'd heard about, like, being able to have, like, a steak because the only meat they got, because they. They basically got to eat rice, the only meat they would get was from the rats that they would kill and that they would cook themselves in this camp. So he's born in this camp. He's eaten rats and rice. And there was someone that was imprisoned in the camp, that came from outside the camp that told him these stories. That gentleman ended up helping him escape from this camp. And the way he helped him escape was that as they went through the electric fence, this other gentleman that was in the camp and was imprisoned fell on the fence, was electrocuted, and died. And the guy that escaped crawled over his body to escape from the camp and ended up in America. So, again, if you think you have it tough, think about, like you said, Bryce being in North Korea, not having the options that we have in this country. And the fact that if you just live in this country, if you make 35, $40,000 a year, you're in the top 1% in terms of affluence in the entire world. I think we forget that with what we have. So thank you for that. And one other thing I wanted to add. David Meltzer, who I've mentioned before on this podcast and hopefully will be joining us in the future. He has a great community. He's a real philosopher. And one of the things he says is that happiness comes from three things. One is gratitude. But he also talks productivity. So if you're listening to this podcast, you're a productive person. But he talks about being productive, accessible, and grateful. So if you're struggling, if you're in a challenging time. Put that gratitude practice in place, continue to be productive and make sure you're going out and helping other people and sharing your message. Which is, which is our intent in this podcast. Bryce, you know, you've had, you know, starting I love the trailer park story, man. Starting in a mobile home park. And we, I don't know, we'll have to find out where that is. We may be maybe looking at that park to buy, if we haven't already bought it, but you're now CEO of Fit Body Bootcamp. So tell us how you came to be a part of Fit Body Boot Camp and ultimately how you rose into the, the position of CEO because you have some phenomenal lessons in terms of leadership. So you're not just a CEO by name, but you, you truly embody the, the, the life of a leader.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I guess I'll just pick up where the story finished off in terms of my foundation moving to California, going through my fitness journey, and that was the foundation. And even so, after I went through that transformation, I never thought that I would go into the fitness industry. In fact, my sales career, I went from the lowest performing sales rep in the company all the way Chris to the highest performing sales rep in the company in 12 months through my transformation. It wasn't the sales script, it wasn't the follow up strategy. It was one, it changed. It was the way I showed up, the confidence, the enthusiasm, the energy, the gift of what fitness gave me. So I was high on life. I was living my best life. But until one day some guy walks up to me at the gym and he's like, hey, I want to introduce myself. I was curious how you lift weights. I've been seeing you here. How do you. What's your nutrition protocol? And Chris, this light bulb went on like me. Wait, me. I thought to myself for the first time this identity shift could happen that give this gift of fitness back to others. So that was really my big aha. So at that point, I didn't think I could make it a full time focus, but I thought, you know what, get certified and train some clients in the nights and weekends. So I did the most logical step. I ended up enrolling in a National Academy of Sports Medicine, which the gold standard of personal training. I got my accreditation. And then I started, you know, on the journey to train some, you know, clients in the nights and weekends to give the gift back from a fulfillment person to make, you know, some extra bucks, you know, the nights and weekends and shortly thereafter, I think I updated my Facebook profile. A personal trainer. And I started receiving ads from this gentleman called Bedros Coolian, who some of our audience might know to be the founder of Fit Body Bootcamp, who. Fast forward. As it turns out, that's how I. Craig Valentine, who they've been business partners for years, and ultimately Bedrooms, was talking about how to launch a business, how to grow a fitness business, how to get clients, and I was interested in that, so I opted in to learn more, and I ended up being on his email list for a couple years. But it wasn't at that point that I decided to take action. Speaking of travel and perspective, kind of bringing this full circle throughout my, you know, journey of, you know, in my adulthood and the. The confidence of fitness and also study abroad program, it really opened my eyes to travel the world, and I started to gain this desire to live in another country, learn another language, and setting my sights on a little island in the South Brazil called Florianopolis. So I ended up moving there for a period of two years. I met my wife.

How did you decide? Yeah, I was gonna say, is that how you met Tatiana? That's phenomenal. Wait, why. How. Why did you pick that island?

It's a wild story. I'll get you.

Okay, cool. Oh, let's. Let's tell it, man. Let's go.

Let.

Let's go.

So I start traveling the world. By the way, Kobe Bryant was a huge mentor of mine from afar. I loved his winning mentality, his championship mindset, the Mamba mentality. What people, many people don't know is Kobe Bryant spoke fluent Italian, you know, when he was younger in life, from the age of 6 to 12, his father played professional basketball, but not good enough to make the NBA, so moved his family from. To Italy. So I thought it was the coolest thing. This legend would dominate in the court, and then he would sometimes give interviews to the Italian press afterwards in fluent Italian. So I was like, man, this is amazing. I had this in the back of my mind. I want to move to another country. I want to test my metal. I want to challenge myself, want to grow. And I wanted to learn. Learn a language. I didn't know what it was until I ended up visiting Rio de Janeiro in 2008 for Christmas. And as it turns out, I live in Los Angeles for the last 20 years. But the.

The.

The latter part of my childhood is I grew up in Michigan, and in Michigan, in Christmas time, I'm shoveling feet of snow. So, like, I still have PTSD. So here I am, 2008, arrived to Rio de Janeiro. It's the opposite hemisphere, so it's blazing summer, the equivalent of like end of June. Here I was like, this is amazing. So it was love at first sight with the culture, the people, influence. I thought to myself, chris, I want to go learn Brazilian Portuguese. So I went back to the States, start, you know, enrolled in a class, ended up reaching out to a few I have. And I liked Rio, but it was this big urban swallow, like Los Angeles. And I wanted something a little bit more quaint. So I started asking around. Hey, Priscilla was my friend's name at the time. Priscilla, if you were to move to back to Brazil, what island would it be and why? Or excuse me, where would it be and why? She's like, well, Bryce, I'm from Rio de Janeiro. You already went to. I've never been here, but there's a little island in the very south of Brazil, has 47 beaches. It's like the San Diego or Miami of Brazil. It's called Florianopolis. And Chris, I never heard of Florianopolis before. So I start Googling, though. And it was like, I liked what I saw. 47 beaches. It's the vacation destination, not only Brazil, but all of South America. So I started doing a little bit more research. And then it's kind of. It got in my reticular activating system. Kind of like if you never heard of a Tesla before. But then someone says, hey, have you heard about this company called Tesla? You see, Tesla's all over. So I started hearing Florianopolis all over. And the crescendo moment was ended up going to sushi dinner. Hadn't seen my friend. He was actually from North Carolina like you in a long time. So we ended up going out to sushi. And he worked for America for like 10 years. So he had traveled the world, you know, on American Airlines dime, and traveled, got brought up and Brazil got brought up. And I was like, oh, my God, I just went to Rio here. I kind of gave him the whole story. I'm learning Brazilian Portuguese. I want to move back, but I just don't know where. He's like, Bryce, he's like, rio is great, but.

But.

But there's this little island in the south of Brazil with 47 beaches. And I'm like, don't even say it. And Chris, like out of the movie, both say the word Florianopolis.

Wow.

So that's the reason I decided to move there. How I met my wife to put. To put a bow on the Story was, yeah. Then I was inspired. I ended up reaching out to my boss if I work remotely before COVID and virtual thing was a thing, he let me go. So I ended up sending an extended email or an email to my extended family and friends, letting him. I was doing in one. And if you believe a week before I leave, I get a call. Wasn't even a direct friend. He was a friend from friend. He's like, hey, Bryce. He's like, this is Steve, Mark's buddy. Oh, what's going on, Steve? He's like, mark forwarded me an email. He said, you're moving to this island called Florianopolis in the south of Brazil. He's like, is that right? I was like, I'm going next week. He's like, this is crazy. But me, I grew up in the east coast in Ohio, but I went to college with a girl from there. If you're interested, I'd be happy to put you in touch. Well, as it turns out, long story short, he put me in, and when I arrived Florianopolis, my wife Tatiana was the girl he introduced me to. Wow. That's how I met my wife and moved to Brazil.

Goosebumps, man. I love that. I love that.

That's the story.

Brazil. Such a good story, man. Oh, that's such a good story. I love that. I'm glad we got to tell it live on this, on. On the show, because I met Tatiana virtually when I've, you know, I've talked to the two of you, but that's the first time I've heard the full story. So that's. That's absolutely phenomenal. And look, I, you know, there's. We got it. We still got to get the leadership and all this stuff, man. I feel like we haven't even started the podcast yet, but there's been so many things that I think are so important that we've. We've talked about in terms of, you know, your quotes, adversity is your advantage, blue collar work ethic, white collar mindset. Leadership is perspective. Perspective is leadership. You know, how you went from the worst sales rep to the number one sales rep through how you showed up, through your mindset, through your perspective, through travel, through gratitude, all these things and what you just mentioned, I really, truly believe this. And it's not quite as a dramatic story as yours, but I met my wife in a yoga class at one point, and I was like, man, if I ever run into her again, I'm going to ask her out. And. And this is tremendously paraphrasing the story, but late on a Friday afternoon on college, on college campus at Virginia Tech, I was thinking about her looking at the architecture building, and I'd found out she was an architect. And she walked out, almost like manifest manifestation of my thoughts out of the building because nobody was on campus. 5 o' clock on a Friday, who's on college campus? Right.

And you had already known her from the yoga studio. This was the time.

I'd only met her once. Once, yeah. I'd only met her once. And my point in telling that again, it's a different story. But when you put something into the universe and you have that energy that you're sharing with others. And what's interesting is my wife gave me a book. It was the first book she gave me called the Alchemist. Have you read the Alchemist?

I have, yes.

Yeah. And Paulo Coelho says, if you believe something with all your heart and all your mind, the universe will provide you with a path, with the resources to do that. So I really think, you know, as you mentioned, how you show up, the energy that you put forward is really the true secret in all of these things. I'll let you pick up if you want there.

Oh, love it. And Paulo Coelho, one of my favorite authors, is Brazilian, from Rio de Janeiro, actually. So he's world famous. And that was actually the first books my first mentor gave me. The gentleman who I just kind of paraphrased when I asked, hey, if you could let me move remotely to Brazil for a year. He actually introduced me to alchemist. So there is something magical about creating a plan, creating manifestation. The universe will conspire if your intention is there.

Yeah, I love that. So, look, I think, you know, I think it all begins in your mind. It begins with the energy that you present with. But throwing another quote out there from one of my virtual mentors is Tony Robbins. And he says, you know, once you, once you believe something, once you have a vision, you need to take massive action. And I think that that's super important. Bryce, how did you get through and how did you steer your organization through Covid, which has got to be one of the darkest times that the fitness industry, or maybe the darkest time that the fitness industry has ever faced? Are you a high income business owner or professional earning 2, 300, 000 or even more a year, but still feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck? Are you comfortable working until you're 65 or 70 to retire, or do you want to achieve financial independence and live life on your own terms. You could join myself and Matt Foer and learn how we both became financially independent in our early 30s. We will teach you how to make, keep and grow your money, teaching you strategies to maximize your earnings, keep your income that you've earned through tax strategy and legal structures, and ultimately teach you how to grow it it by determining your personal investing strategy as well as teach you how to analyze investments so you can grow your passive income to the point to live life on your own terms. Our coaching clients reliably do this in seven years or less. To learn more, check out our coaching program at nextlevelincome.com forward/coaching. That's nextlevelincome.com forward/ coaching.

Oh yeah, well, it goes back to adversities which is interesting. Interesting when that happened at the time I was actually not the CEO of the organization. I was the vice president, although I got appointed to the CEO on still while CO is raging strong in early 2021. So it was a very chaotic and hectic time as you would imagine. But I will never forget in March of 2020 when the governor of New York initially, then California started putting ordinance down. It was very eerie as you'd imagine. And a lot of people were impacted specifically, specifically the gym business, the fitness business, the restaurant business. Brick and mortars were, were attacked the worst. Also too you know, other certain states like New York and California and Illinois and Michigan were impacted way harder than others. So yeah, it was a very challenging time for humanity to begin with. But also too from a franchising perspective because we're dealing and navigating with different local jurisdictions which generally speaking have differences, but then they became very, very different. So from a franchi franchise system that posed an additional level of challenge because not only provide and coach our franchise partners to, you know, make sure they can keep their business off the ground and afloat, but also too we had to have specific protocols for in that state. So it was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. But it forged leadership, it forged mindset and I would never wish something like happen again, although it will. If you look at, you know, human history pandemics, this is actually a very small pandemic in the grand history of time. So I think there's a lot of value in perspective in, in terms of leadership. But in at least in our lifetime it was one of the biggest black swans event events. But it actually created challenge and growth and it was good for it. So this all to say what we did very, very quickly and we made decisions very Very quickly we pivoted our brand within 24 hours to virtual training. And while it was a big challenge having a franchise system, there was also some adv. We took some of our two of our most successful and actually one of our most successful franchise partners. His entire team has great energy on camera and we started streaming live virtual workouts for the entire brand so we were able to leverage. We took a step back and thought to ourselves sucks. Okay this is not a fun situation but there's a lot of things outside of our control. But what are things inside of our control? We actually have a brand of hunt locations. We have, you know, editing team, etc. What if we can hand pick one of our best owners with the most energy enthusiasm hire his coaching team to produce sessions that we can leverage and then be able to provide that, you know, content to our brand. So very within 24 hours we're able to provide a platform in live streaming workouts for entire franchise system. Additionally we took that model and not only executed that but then we repackaged it and we also taught our franchise partners how to do that within seven days how to run and set a zoom workout, what equipment you need need to have. So on the back end we were managing from a solution perspective. What are things that we can add value to our franchise system and then we leverage those points and overall those are just two strategies of many but when you bring it back and this goes back to my leadership philosophy which is adversity is your advantage but it's routed in and what I love about stoicism and stoic thought which is the fabric and the foundation the philosophy of strong leadership. There's a lot of ways you can look at it but to finish my here. One of the things I love about stoicism is it takes inventory of all the things in your control and then all the things outside your if you want to be really anxious and an effective leader then you should focus on everything outside your control. That's not my recommendation but that's if you want to be anxious and you're nervous all the time if you actually want to be successful in clear headed then disregard everything outside of your control. This is my friends easier said than done but focus 100 or what are your controllables affect those control balls and if, if you were to ask me within five minutes how we were able to manage and get through Covid that I love that.

I love that. Like Craig says, work beats worry, action beats anxiety. And yeah that's that's one of the things when things are challenging. You say, okay, you know, anxiety comes from fear of the unknown. So I was just having this conversation with somebody earlier today, Bryce, which is if you're facing a challenge, face it head on. The worry, the anxiety about what may or may not happen is, is the worst when it's in your mind because it's all the worst possibilities are going to happen. If something bad happens, okay, then you can face it. But face it head on and move forward and ask yourself, and you said this, what can you can control? And then focus on those things you can control. Are you familiar with Ryan Holiday? The obstacles, the way you mentioned Stow Man 100.

He's been foundational my leadership around. So I'm clearly. You're a fan as well. Actually I, I have. You can't see on the, the video, but I have a necklace that says memento mori from Ryan Holiday. Memento mori.

Which.

It can sound cold at first, but the, the Italian, excuse me. The Latin translation is remember your death. And if you remember your death, what actually shows urgency, it shows the fact that you still have one more fight. Today is the day, now is the time. And I love that. So I'm glad you brought Ryan up, man.

Yeah, dude, you're like, you're like a quote machine and you're, you're, you're popping inspirations in my head. So I can see how you, you're really a leader of leaders, Bryce, with, you know, your, your philosophy, your life experience and your knowledge and, and this is one of the things that Malcolm Gladwell talks about. When I'm on podcasts, a lot of people ask me about my story. They ask about how I face the adversity of losing my father, losing my best friend, and going through different things. And Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers talks about desirable difficulties. And I think you have certainly illustrated this and talked about adversity as your advantage. I think that's another way to put it. But Malcolm Gladwell talks about the propensity of leaders throughout history that have lost a parent at a young age. And it's, I forget the, the percentage, but it's a, it's a massive number of like presidents and leaders and successful individuals. And I'm an analytic person. So I gotta, whether I'm an engineer or not. I got a P and I got my, my engineering degree hanging on the wall. So I think kind of analytically, right, and we talk through numbers in, in real estate. So I, I try to put this into an equation. So when we're young, we think we're invincible. Right? We think we're invincible. So if the value of time is time itself divided by the number of days that we're going to live and that number is infinite, we think we're going to live forever. The value is effectively zero if we think we're going to live forever. As soon as you quantify that and you whether know when you're going to die or know that you have mortality as your, as your necklace states, the value of time becomes, becomes infinitely more valuable than it was prior to you realizing that. And that's what really, at least that's what drives me, you know, deep down, fundamentally being aware of my mortality and the fact that every day is precious and having the ability to do that. So I absolutely love that. Can you say that one more time? Momentum? Is that. Am I saying that correctly?

Yeah. Momento Mori and Chris, this is I, you are my advanced investment advisor to actually quantify my vision and actually put it into equation because you articulate a very different than I think about it. But that it's so true and also just highlights your zone of genius, which is I love, which is the reason I love working together.

Oh man. No, this has been. We could, you know, we, we have, we have time a time limit on the podcast. But I feel like we're just getting started. Bryce and I really, I really want to make sure that we get to share with the audience all the resources you have because you have, if you go to Bryce Henson.com it's, it's got a ton of the resources you have up there. Maybe you could share some of those that the audience can find there and some of the other things that you, that you're working on that can, can really help others that are looking to be better leaders, whether they're looking to be a leader in their community, whether to be a leader in their family, as, as a husband, as a father, as a wife, as a mother, or a leader in their business.

Well, I appreciate that. Me, I just love leadership. The reason I love leadership is leadership for me is always the problem. It's always the solution. I love building teams. I love working with people. And you break it down. That's the core of leadership. And so if I can continue to help your audience on would love to. There's a few you can find me@bryce henson.com My podcast is a free leadership resource. It's the podcast episode of the show is called CEO show with Bryce Henson. Be a great free resource coaching group which the coaching group is designed to, to help Men and women transform their lives through mental professional transformation. So you can find more information there if you're interested to, you know, inspire fitness, change lives, have an awesome coaching program that you can impact your local community. You can also find about find more about Fit Body Boot Camp there. So go to my site bryceensa.com and.

You can find all the other more no, it's awesome. I'm looking at right now. You got the CEO podcast, you got the Legacy tribe, Fit Body Boot Camp, your mastermind group. You got so many amazing resources up here. Bryce, this has been just such a pleasure having you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge, your story and your wisdom with our audience.

You guys, it was a pleasure is mine. Thanks so much and have a great one.

Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can click get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.