Follow Your Passion And Success Will Follow

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Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

Hello, everybody. We're talking with Steve Harvalius from Burlington, North Carolina, Alamance County. And he's built an incredible business in a very difficult field and that is the bodybuilding world. He's built a fitness company, the Super Fitness Club, and we're going to hear that story. But right now, you know, he started in bodybuilding, he went into selling some fitness equipment, experimented, seeing if he could make that work. And now he's got over 150, he's got a facility, 150,000 square feet, selling equipment all over the world. Adam tells me, Steve, that you've even shipped, you're even at the point where now you're shipping containers around the world, just opening up gyms. They just call up and say, send us a gym sometimes.

Yes, yeah.

Put them on these ships and they go off to Bulgaria or wherever, wherever they come on.

Yes, sir.

And so, you know, that's a long way from, you know, selling a few treadmills in Burlington, North Carolina. So we want to hear that story. So how did you get going in fitness?

So I was bitten by the bud, Larry, just being the overweight kid at around 12 years old and I started going to the high school gym. That led me to a place called Edwards Fitness Zone at a young age. My cousin married a man who owned the gym and I started going there and working there as a young boy and just was bitten by the bug of fitness. And I'd done my first competition at, I think I was just turned 15, I might have been 14 turning 15. And I won the Alamance county championships for the teenage class. And I was literally just the young boy that my father grew up in the restaurant business. And I was used to hard work and going after what you want. And I was just raised to work hard. If you work hard, everything will come to you if you're willing to work for it. But you're not going to get anything if you're not willing to work for it. Nothing was given to me. Everything was earned. And so I applied that with my fitness and I noticed results and changes within my body and I knew somehow from a financial point that I could do that with fitness. But I truly didn't know how I was going to do that or what I was going to do. And I went to the restaurant business with my father, because that's what I thought I should do because I wanted to be like my dad. But I realized really fast, Larry, that I did not love the restaurant business. I could make good money, but for me, and I had talked to a lot of successful people who ate frequently at my father's restaurant that they would all tell me, you know, Steven, always follow your passion. And the financial will come if you're passionate about what you do. And I still preach that to people who come to me today. I tell them, do not open that gym if you're not passionate about it. Because I'm very passionate about what I do. And I'm. And I don't just do it for the money. But at that young age, you know, when you're 15, 16, 17, 18, it's really hard to know what you want to do. And at that point, I knew I loved fitness, but how do you monetize that? I made just so, you know, $7 an hour working part time at the gym, and I absolutely loved it. And I would go bartend, wait tables. I was one of the assistant chefs at my father's restaurant, and I made really good money, but I knew really fast that that's not what my heart is into. I did it for the money at the time, but I wanted to figure out how to monetize that. And to be honest with you, Larry, at that point I wanted to really evolve in the fitness world. And so that's when I knew if I used my brain to go towards fitness, I would figure this out. And things just started happening, if that makes sense.

Right. And so you talked about running into successful people at your father's restaurant. You had to be a personable, outgoing kid right from the beginning to be having these kind of conversations with people. You had to also be thinking about your future. Where do you think that came from?

My father, if you met him, is one of the most high strung people you probably will ever meet. And my father is, especially when he was younger, was another level of like intensity and hyper. And he expected excellence. And he was just one of them people. He never made me work, Larry, but he instilled in me that anything, anything you want. One of the, one of the funny things my dad always told me growing up, he said, steven, we're going to work 100 hours a week, but we're going to drive whatever we want to drive. And my dad was always into cars. So when I was a young boy, I always wanted a nice car. And I knew from that statement at a young age that I've got to work for it. And so I applied that to my bodybuilding, for instance, to my business, what. Whatever I'd done, Larry, if it was football, playing football, baseball, I knew I may not be the most talented bodybuilder, the most talented baseball player, but I knew if I outworked whoever I was up against, or my team, whatever, that I would get better. And typically, hard work beats talent every time. And so I just have always applied that. And still to this day, if you had an easier way to do something, for instance, or a better way to do something than myself, that applied to my own business, I'm all ears. I feel like we still learn every day. Maybe in this conversation right now, me and you are going to learn something from one another. And so that's why I'm excited to do it. And I think the world, especially people who don't have an open mind, they're not willing to learn as much as they should. Because even when I've had no money or nothing, I would meet people and they would always tell me, like, Stephen, you're special, or Steven smart. I have zero college education. I honestly had. I didn't even put in for a college application. I wanted to go business. And I always tell people I grew up in the college of hard knocks, and that was the restaurant business. And coming from a Greek family background, that expected excellence. And honestly, I'm so thankful that I grew up that way because it made me who I am today.

Well, Adam told me, I'm going to get Adam to go through this thing. You know, I think your approach that you have and you kind of got from the way you grew up in that environment that informs how you've attacked everything, opportunities and challenges as you've come up the ladder. And it's great to hear how it got started. But the thing is, I want to point out the importance of competition. At an early age, you had the chance to compete, and that's a little scary. You know, your, your first competition and getting up, but the competition brings out the best. What, what was it like going through that first competition? Like you'd said earlier, you know, you started with a little bit of a weight issue, like a lot of us do, you know, and that forced you to start thinking about fitness. And then you get in there and all of a sudden now you're going to be a role model, you know, and get on stage with the lights and, and everybody watching. That's. That's got to be a little intimidating. What was that like going through that and then to wind up winning.

So in. Adam will probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Back in the day, this is before really the Internet times, or the Internet's out, but it's very slow. We read bodybuilding magazines and we read the Arnold Encyclopedia, bodybuilding and all these things. And I'm going to be honest with you, Larry. I'm not a big reader, but I'm a big researcher. And I loved researching about the body and the way things worked and the way creatine monohydrate worked or protein powder worked and all these things. So my knowledge at probably 17, 18 years old was the knowledge of somebody much, much older than me. And so I'm gonna be straight up with you. When I, I was so nervous to do that first show that first of all, you're, you're, you're. We're all usually our worst on critic. There's nobody harder on me within my business than me. Every single piece that goes out of my business, I look at. So back then, I was very hard on myself. I don't think I'm ready. I'm. I may not be good enough, but I just applied those same things that if I keep, keep going, I'm gonna get better every time. And I remember I walked on stage and, and I won my class and I couldn't believe it. And that was just, I think, a sign that if you put your heart and soul into something, you may not be the best at any show, but you may be the best that day. And so for me, when I won, I was bit by the bug, but I knew that's what I love to do, because as Adam knows, it costs money to do shows. Nobody's paying you to do it. The mental strength, though, Larry, that I think the competition gave me, or when you're 15 years old, to not go and eat the cheeseburgers or ice cream with your friends. Yeah, if I can do that and apply that to, to my business, for instance, even now, to this day, that sets you apart. I've always told people if you work this much more than everybody else, you're going to be this much ahead of the rest or of most. And it just applies to everything in life. And as you know, I know you're very successful. Nothing comes easy in life. And I love to do, to, to get back to the full swing of things. I love to do hard, hard stuff, Larry, because I know doing the hard stuff, everything else is easy if you can do the hard stuff right. And I start my Day off with wins. So even back then I would have a checklist of 20 items and okay, we're going to start off on the treadmill this morning. 6:00' clock in the morning, 5:00', clock, 7:00'. Clock. That's going to be win number one. Okay, we're going to eat oatmeal and eggs. That's win number two. And I just keep going down the list. And every single day, even now in my business, I have a little checklist. I put everything, notes in my phone. And there is still key principles that I do today that I've done for 20 years. And it may just be sending you a text message. Hey, you're. You're mean. You do business, let's say, right? Hey, Larry, how's everything at the gym? I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I'm keeping your me on top of your mind. But I'm also reaching out as a friend. And a lot of times that person truly cares. They're like, thank you for reaching out. Hey, Steven, do you have this piece or that piece or. I'm opening gym number seven. I think just going above and beyond in life, then the call of duty, or what someone's paying you to do propels you to the next step.

Well, Stephen, you know, the thing is, I heard a long time ago that everybody's got a goal of greatness, but what they lack, where it falls apart, is they don't have daily achievable goals. Like you said, you know, the thing that is, you're going to have millions of disappointments. But when you line up those daily achievable goals, you say, yes, I got that done. Yes, I'm getting closer. Yes, I did that. And it's a way of kind of convincing yourself when you run into those millions of disappointments that you're getting there. And if it's any consolation, Arnold's not a big reader either. You know, when Adam was growing up, we would make, you know, a lot of trips out to Los Angeles and Venice to, to the Goals Gym and the World Gym they had out there at that time. And Arnold trained over at World's Gym. And so on a Saturday morning, I was on a recumbent, recumbent bike sitting next to Maria Shriver he was married to at the time. Yeah, yeah, he came through. He goes, she was reading a magazine, an article about him in a magazine. The way he kept up with her. He walked by, hey, what do they say about me?

Oh, my God, that's hilarious. And that's super cool though, that you did that.

Then she'd read it, read off and he'd go and then he'd walk off.

That sounds like him because I've been around him at the Arnold classic many times. I've never met him, but it sounds like him.

Yeah. So I don't think he was a big reader either. Adam, tell. Tell everybody about how. I don't know if it was on the TV or there was a special about how Steve expanded. You know, he started in Burlington and started small and moved on the other side of town and hit some of those high notes, if you remember that.

Yeah, he actually. You can go to his. I don't know what the name of your YouTube channel is there, Steve, but he's got a whole video of how he got started from start to what he's currently doing now. A fantastic story. And I actually knew him during that time. I had no idea all the stuff he was going through then. But yeah, ever since day one, ever since. I think he probably got his driver's license, he was a major. He was the biggest club owner in Burlington for years. He had his own nightclub and then he had a nutrition store, a cannon bed store. Then he's got a. Had a gym. He's still got the gym. Started selling equipment and eventually bought out. This was it, Steve. 167,000 square feet. You got over there.

The new one, Adams. 178. 178, yeah. It's bigger than mo the way I normally tell people. It's bigger than most Walmarts to put it in perspective.

Yeah. And I mean, yeah, like he was telling earlier, he started selling pieces to a couple people here and there. And now he literally ships containers all over the US and all over the world. I mean, he's. I'm not in that space as far as buying and selling equipment, but is there anybody in the U. S. Bigger than you, Adam?

I get asked that a lot and there's a lot of people online that tell me that I'm the biggest under one roof.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

In the world. Adam, I'm gonna be truly honest with you. I don't know if I've had people fly in from overseas, Dubai, all kinds of places, almost every state in the United States. And all of them tell me that they've never seen nothing. Like my warehouse has 4ish thousand pieces, typically under one roof. It's overwhelming. And. And you know, gym equipment very well. This stuff's not small and it's a. It Takes a massive amount of space to store this type of equipment. And so, you know, I'm going to be honest with you guys, it, it overwhelms me daily. But like I said, I like doing the hard stuff. So I also like, love it when I walk through the warehouse and I see all these pieces. And here's the crazy part, people literally think I'm nuts. I, I continue to buy every day because I'm, I'm convinced if you don't have it, you can't sell it. So I'm, I'm, I'm always buying.

He's got that warehouse and over 4,000 pieces of equipment in there. But the thing is, you don't. He just doesn't have 4,000 pieces of equipment in there. He's got 4,000 of a pieces of equipment laid out in rows and lines. Super organized, super neat. You can see everything. You don't have to look behind four or five things. It's not piled on top of each other. He's got areas in there that are already set up, kind of like a rooms to go. We can set your gym up. Here's how it would look. We got this piece, this piece, this piece. So the guys will come in and say, okay, I want that section. And they'll box it up and ship it away. So not only he's got the huge space and all the equipment, it's not piled up on top of each other. It's laid out, it's clean. It's easy to see every piece. You can sit on for a minute, check out for yourself every single piece in there. You don't have to wonder. You can jump on yourself real quick and test it out. I mean it's, I haven't been over there, but I've seen the, again the YouTube video and we'll make sure try to send people to that too. See your channel. But I will be over there soon to check it out. But it's, it's mind blowing how big that place is and how neat and organized it is.

That's a, that's heavy, heavy stuff.

To be neat and organized and shipping around all the time.

How many, how special do you have to be to have people flying in from Dubai to look at gym equipment?

You know, Larry, I am humbled every day that something like that happens. I had a Mr. Olympia winner. He was my client. He drove 12 hours from Florida on Monday to come see me to check out the facility. And he wants to open a gym in Florida, but he wants to send some pieces back to his home country every single time. I literally sometimes have to pinch myself or blink and I'm mind blown from it because I never intended on that. It all came from a place of wanting to help others and a place of just, you know, helping the fitness industry and helping people. And do not get me wrong, I learned a long time ago you have to make money. Like yes, we all need money. But when I started giving more than receiving and giving back my knowledge and how people, it's like it tenfolded me. If that makes sense.

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Talk about that, Explain that and dig into that for.

I always tell people I have a lot of people older and younger who will come to my office and they'll ask me under closed doors. I don't know if they need mentorship. Larry, I'm not exactly sure. It seems like everybody's going through something. I had a 57 year old in my office the other day and it was just me and him in my office and he was telling me about his hardships and without telling his business, he was doing a lot of things wrong. And it wasn't that he was doing anything really, really bad. But I explained to him like this. I said, I said buddy, I said, I walk the straight line. And let me explain to you what I mean by that. I said, I'm a faithful married man. I'm faithful in my faith. So I just always tell people because it makes me emotional if you're doing the right things, I just truly feel good things will happen. Now here's the funny thing. Bad things will still happen all the time too. But it's nothing that really that we can't handle. But when I started really committing to not only myself but to others years ago, before we ever had children, I was giving money to schools. I would be super fitness business or my wife's the A team. We would be on banners at Almost every school, I Bet I've wrote 25 checks. Larry. A small amount, nothing crazy. In the past two months, I'm on every ball field from Greensboro to Raleigh. Cheerleading uniforms. Sometimes I donate and tell them, don't. You don't even got to put my logo on there. And me and my wife just do it out of place of helping, giving to the church, little things like that. People are so tunnel vision. They want to control their finances themselves. And they are like mine, mine, mine. And I was always the first to be like, we're out to dinner and pay for everybody, even when I was broke. And people remember things like that. But I also think just doing the right things, like for instance, I don't ride in a car with another woman without my wife. You'll usually always see my wife. And it's not that I would be worried at all about another woman or myself. I just don't put myself in the line of fire or in any kind of temptation without my wife. I don't even want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so I've been talked to many successful people and they always apply little things. And I think this honestly just comes from my fitness background of Larry being so disciplined. The mind is so strong that if you put the bad things in the mind, then so many other little things can start going wrong. So I keep my. My mind. Your. The mind is so powerful that if you keep that rock solid, you can propel yourself so far in life.

Yeah. And the thing is, people will say, yeah, I would do that too if I was super successful. But they don't understand if you don't do it on the way up, you're never going to get to be super successful. You know, you can't. There's never that moment you say, okay, I'm super successful, I'll start giving back now.

Hundred percent. I told a guy yesterday, I said he had said a comment to me and, and he's a good friend of mine. And I said to him, I said, you're think you're doing all this wrong. And he looked at me like a deer in headlights. And I said to him, I said to him, I said, when you start doing stuff out of a place of want to help and want to give from a place in your heart of free giving, you, you're probably going to be prepared, propelled to the next level. I said, until you do that, you are not going to go no further than you already are.

Yeah.

And he really thought about it and appreciated what I said. Because I, I'm not one. I'm actually kind of like Adam. I'm not one that's going to give you the warm and fuzzies, Larry. I'm the one that's going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. And some people like that. Some people don't, for the most part. Most people can't take the truth. They want someone to make them feel warm and fuzzy. Whereas I'm going to tell you what you need to hear.

Yeah. Adam, where did you. When did Steve come on your radar? You first took notice of Steve?

We got a real good mutual friend, Mike. Correct. Who's one of the number one Verizon guys in the country, rising cell phones. But he and he and Mike are friends. And when Steve was running his clubs up there in Burlington, that's when he came on the radar. We went up to there, to his nightclub a few times and then found out he did the bodybuilding, had the gym, had the tannin studios at that point. So from there we just kind of hit it off because we both had the bodybuilding in common. But that was probably know how long ago? 20 years ago, Adam.

It's got to be approaching 20 years. Yeah, it's many years because I used to watch you at the shows in early, early 2000s, before I even knew who you were.

Yeah, yeah.

Long time ago. Right.

It. What was your first business? You know, you say didn't go to college, you just wanted business, business, business. What did you. What was your first business? Business success. And then after that, I'm going to ask you, what was your first business? Belly flop.

Okay. So you'll get a kick out of this. 17 years old, turning 18. I'm in the restaurant business with my father. We would throw two to three parties a year, Larry, and these would have been like, you would have loved these parties. You to bring your whole family. My father and me would throw like a New Year's party locally in Burlington at our restaurant. And you would come eat dinner with your family and then stay for the party. And it was all like a customer appreciation event, very high end clientele. And we would bring in a basically dinner and dance, either DJ or live band. And we would set it up in the middle of the restaurant. We'd go all out with ice sculptures and all kinds of things and we would do all the hors d' oeuvres and everything for free. But it would be open bar, like cash bar. And Larry, we would make more money at those events than we Ever would at the restaurant. And I used. So on my 18th birthday night, my friends at the time, I'd never been to a nightclub in my life. My friends took me to downtown Greensboro. And Adam, I know, knows this in club was the biggest deal at the top. And I'm talking a thousand people on a Wednesday night. And my friends took me up there. I walked inside and I'm dead sober. And I have this epitome that, oh my goodness, this is it. And I literally come home. They were charging $20 a head for underage, $10 for overage. I'm doing the mathematics because I'm a big numbers person. And I came home and I told my dad. This by the way, is like 3:30 in the morning. My dad's waiting up on me just to make sure I'm okay. And I said, dad, we've got to open a nightclub. And he's like, what do you mean? I said like, we throw the parties at the restaurant. We've got to do this for a living, Larry. We didn't know nothing about it. Few months goes by, we take over an existing bar nightclub. We call it Club Kryptonite. The tattoo on my arms, a Superman logo. It was my logo that we turned it into a K. And within the first two weeks, there was nothing around Burlington at the time like what we had within the first two weeks. We were doing 500 people every Saturday. Absolutely insane. We were making a lot of money. And to answer your question of what flopped.

Yeah.

About nine months after we opened the doors, there we were inside of a hotel and we were. We were doing so many people that we. They were parking across the street on the busiest road in Burlington, which is Huffman Mill Road. We were getting a lot of complaints. So we hired the police officers to do security because the cars were going everywhere. Well, the hotel pulled the plug on me and my father and we literally basically lost our nightclub within a year. So it's like we didn't know what to do. So we went from like huge success to don't have a business. And during that time, my father had sold his part of the restaurant because, Larry, we thought that we had just knocked it out of the park and hit a home run. And I had just bought my first town home. I did not want to rent. I've never had a roommate. I was trying to be smart. So I had a. Not a big mortgage, but a car payment, motorcycle payment. All these things at 18, 19 years old. And me and my father are both jobless. You talk about not Knowing what you're going to do. But if you want me to keep going, I'll keep going.

Keep going.

Okay. I.

Because you're still. Here's the thing.

Yes, sir.

You're still the same person. You still got all this, you know, history and experience. You still got that core DNA. But know, when you run, you know, it's like if you'd had super success and this was a super belly flop or tragedy, you still got to do the same thing. You got to keep on going.

100%.

I tell you, I would tell you, you probably would not be here today if that had not happened to you. Because the hardest thing to do is to handle that success, especially in a nightclub business. And it's like, you know, I'm just. I'm better than every. Pretty soon you start to get a little arrogant, a little, you know, a little too much money coming in and probably it opened up clubs around, around, you know, all over. And that could have got, you know, it's real easy to see how that could have gone bad.

100%, Larry. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'll tell you why. Yeah, during that time period, if you remember, I'm still working at the Gym part time, 15 hours, 20 hours a week. I'm working a ton of hours at the. At the time, I'm doing three or four different jobs. But the nightclub is where I thought was the future. And yet, well, it gets shut down. And me and my father, because we know so many people, we were like, oh, we'll just find another building and build it. Sure, Larry. That took about a year to get done. I'd saved up a little money, but it was not going to last me long at all. And I told you I made $7 an hour at the gym. So I don't think that's going to go very far either. So I actually tell people this story because I always tell people, you got to turn a hardship into a positive. You're going to get nailed in life. Every a big business owner, something happens every day, and you got to take it in stride. And so at that point, though, a good friend of mine who I waited tables with before, he calls me out of the blue and he says, are you still working at the gym? And I was like, yeah. He was doing gym promotions in Mooresville, N.C. and what they did, they would take a struggling gym and they would do the marketing for the gym and. And then split it with the percentage of the gym owner. So the gym owner, it was zero cost to them. And they would put a sales guy like myself in the gym to sell the memberships.

Okay.

And Larry, I have never done this. I had just worked at my, my cousin's little gym selling. But I was always just a natural salesperson and I was good with numbers and I understood business from my father, but I had, I had never worked for a corporate gym anything. And he says, I'll never forget, he says, Stephen, base is $500 a week. You're going to live in a hotel room and you're going to make commission. And I said, how much is the commission? He says, zero, if you don't do well because you had to make enough to pay expenses of the promotion. But he said, you have the potential to make a lot of money. And so I said, sign me up. I went the next week to Mooresville and I was there for three weeks and learned the gym. And the gym didn't do that well, Larry. It just didn't have the clientele coming in. We'd done okay. I maybe made a little commission. But on the third week of that gym, they killed the promotion because it was not a, it wasn't a home run for them. It was wrong location. It was nothing I'd done wrong or they'd done wrong. And they said, we have another one in Massachusetts. Worcester, Massachusetts. I had never been out of Burlington, North Carolina in my life. Mooresville was a long way for me. And at that time I was much.

Less even know how to pronounce Worcester.

Larry. I was scared to death. I had a girlfriend, I'm 19 years old. I had a girlfriend who I'm in love with at the time. You know, you don't want to leave your girlfriend. But I literally had no choice and I had no, I had to pay this mortgage that I just got and I was willing to do. I was raised, you do what you're going to do. I still clean the bathrooms and suite in my own business every day. I'm not too good to do anything. And so I take it this was a 60,000 square foot gym, double decker with a subway, a tanning salon and a gym. And I go up there, I walk inside, I'll never forget it. And the lady says, who are you? And I said, and she's talking like with the Boston accent and I'm from southern North Carolina. And she says, I said, oh, I'm here to do your gym promotion. She said, we're not doing a gym promotion. I canceled it. Get out. Wow. I said, ma', am, I just drove 14 hours. I said, excuse me, And I went outside. I called the people I was working for, one of them, my friend, and he said, she's the manager. She does not want this happening. You're good. Go inside. And sweet talker. I'm like, what? What? I walked inside, and I remember, I said, ma', am, I'm here to cause no harm. Your gym, from what I hear, is going to shut down in the next six months. I said, I was brought in. This is a free service to your company, to your gym. I said, I'm just here to work. And I looked her dead in the eyes, and I said, ma', am, I am broke. And I said, our business, mine and my father's just got shut down, and I'm here to help you and help myself. I said, please, just give me an opportunity. And she kind of talked to me at that point and realized I was not there to cause any harm. And she basically told me, I'll give you a few days to sit up and see if what you can do. So what the gym promotion we'd done there, they had told me they were going to do direct marketing or mailers back then. This is just so everybody knows. This is the start of 2005. This is 2004 into 2005, and we're in January, like, right at the peak season. Adam, you know, and I, Larry, printed flyers on my own till the direct mailers went out. We set up a credit card terminal and our own phone line. That way we could process. Process our own agreements. And I went to every pizza place in the area and I printed 5,000 flyers and traded out a gym membership for the owner if he would just put our flyer, our promotion on each individual pizza box. Pizza is huge there. So I then, in turn, started going to each individual business and said, larry, I'll give you a free gym membership if you sign up, at minimum, 10 employees. Well, a lot of them took the bait because back then, that gym, I think, was like 50 bucks a month. Well, Larry, we're going to give it to you today for 29.99amonth. So it was a too good a deal to pass up. Yeah, I instantly got the gym, probably 50 members, which for a struggling gym, 50 instantly is a lot. When the direct mailers started going out, we would do a thousand to two thousand at a time, and I would drop them in the mail every day. And you're only going to get a small percentage of the direct mailing market. So I want to. Just so you know, my best day at that gym, I signed up 47 people in one day. Wow. Which was unheard of. I ended. I was averaging, I think, 10 new members a day. And I was in Massachusetts for, if I remember correctly, about seven or eight weeks, which was the longest I've ever been away from home. And the reason I tell you this story, I had. I think I had brought in the gym $288,000 at the time or something like that. It was a substantial amount of money, and I made a percentage of that money. So it was the most money I'd ever made in my life. And at that point, I knew I need to do something within the fitness world. And the funny thing about it, there was a tennis law. And I told you, I think in the gym. Well, during the slow time, I was there about 16 hours a day. I would bring my meals or eat whatever, and just. I had nothing to do. I was living out of a hotel room. So I had become friends with the owner and his son. So imagine you and Adam, y' all own a tennis lawn in Massachusetts. They had kind of. I had kind of just from being around them for a few weeks, kind of learned the tanning business. And y', all, they're doing 200 tens a day in Massachusetts. This place is the busiest place you've ever seen. So I picked their brains, and I said, when I get home, I'm opening a tenant salon. And I got home, and it done great. And it just kind of. I'm so thankful that that original nightclub closed, because I would have never took this prom, this job opportunity to go there. And I'm still thankful for the guys who taught me how to do the promotions, because it really set me up to help me do my own gym and gyms around the country. I mean, you know, I've been working in the gyms now almost 25 years, so it's crazy.

Now, are they the ones that gave you the ideas about the mailers and, you know, the pizza, things like that?

Yes, sir. They. The mailers was their idea, and they had, like, imagine a checklist of, like, 20 different things that. That are kind of guerilla marketing. Go pass out flyers, pizza boxes, all these things. And so they had gave me the ideas, but I was doing a lot of other things, too, like a referral program. Hey, Larry, if you bring me three people, I'll give you another free month. But what I had done, the manager in me, she loved me by this point, right? So at that point, I had formed a relationship with her that. Because it's her business. I'm leaving. It's at the end of the day.

Yeah.

So I said, listen, let's do something for you. So if I brought a new member in, she started, which helped me. She started giving them a free protein shake or whatever for referrals, which helped me make commission, but also helped the gym retain a client.

Yeah.

I'm so thankful for those opportunities. So you're right. Every hardship you're going to have hardships, you've got to make the best out of it. I truly don't think I'd be who I am.

Well, the thing is, you got a chance to meet some people who had some skill sets that. And you're in a situation where they could pass those on to you and you can use those the rest of your life. The thing is, a lot of people, you know, like, I don't know how to do this. Yeah. But there are people out there that know how to do it. If you find them and you can pick their brains, you can use those ideas the rest of your life.

Sure.

And as you came, you came back, you know, full of energy and, you know, kind of you saw a way through the tunnel. And Adam, when you you. One thing I want to point out, Adam, you know, this comes up from time to time. You know, the. Who you associate with and people. You know, Greensboro was never, to us, a high profile. You know, there's supposedly a million people in Winston. When we went there, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, Winston, High Point, Greensboro, and then Burlington's kind of a little further down the road. You don't really think of that as a world center. But now what's involved in, like, Adam, you know, some of his friends have evolved into. You mentioned Mike Korekis. He's the number one in. And Verizon in the country. A friend of his, changi is number one with FedEx. You know, they've got that FedEx center out there at the airport, and Changi is like the number one guy there. You built the number one equipment, gym equipment business by far, it sounds like. And there's others that have come out of there. But, Adam, isn't it interesting that you don't have to be. It's not pretty much the place you're at, but it's the person you are. And you can turn a location. Like, to me, people around the country should be thinking about the fact that here you have somebody in Burlington, North Carolina. You know, it was like the Burlington Coat Factory. You know, that was what you thought about Burlington you know, or the replacements, you know, know, you know, that, that they built a nice business there. But, you know, you're not thinking about the scale that, that you're on. But, you know, you're only limited by, you know, people. People make a place special. I guess that's what I want to bring out here. And you don't need to be limited simply because you're not in New York City, not in Chicago. It's a matter of what you turn it into. And so, you know, I want to get into these other business. But Adam, what, what stands out to you about what Steve's done and what, what is he. What do you think he knows that, that we should dig into?

Well, I mean, just the fact that he has turned that his hobby and his passion into basically the biggest new and used gym equipment supplier in the world. Because there's a lot of big ones, there's a lot of companies. But he is basically the. I mean, for the most part, he's basically Amazon for gym equipment. You know, he sells all the different. Anytime, anything gym related, he sells. And I was watching the video, I didn't even realize it, but it makes sense. But he not only sells equipment, but he sells all. Do you sell. You sell mats, you sell lockers, you sell floor?

Yeah, we're a huge distributor, Adam. I don't even hardly advertise it, but it kind of just comes with the territory. Huge rubber floor dealer. Because every gym needs rubber floor.

Yeah, I saw that on your YouTube.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I mean, he, he's basically created, I mean, literally the Amazon of the fitness equipment industry right there in Burlington, North Carolina.

Yeah. And how did you. Was this just a natural evolution? Like, we need to add this. You know, how do you learn what you don't know? You know, how. How do you know, like with gym equipment, how many lines do you carry? You know, there's a lot of lines of equipment, but, you know, it's not an unlimited number of high end lines.

No. To answer your question, Larry, I'm going to go back a little bit because I think this would help you understand me a little bit. When I opened my gym in Burlington, I'll tell you a little backstory. I didn't have much money. I had about 10 to $12,000 and a motorcycle. And I treated a former Mr. Georgia, my motorcycle, and that money for the start of my gym. And it's a crazy story and I won't get into it, but when I opened the gym, this is during I Opened in 2006, the gym and very little. But I had big desires and aspirations and I'm going to do big things. I just don't know how I'm going to do it. And during that time I realized real fast I don't have enough money to do what I want to do as far as like open a gym. And I started out one on one training and in 0708 the, the economy started crashing if you remember.

Yeah.

And I had just went through all the nightclub stuff and you know, a few years earlier and that didn't really scare me. And I think I had nothing to lose at that point. And I was so into bodybuilding. I'm traveling to any hardcore gym there, there is around, I'm going and I'm an equipment nerd and I'm researching Nautilus by Arthur Jones from 1970s and I'm going to the gyms and talking to people. Oh I, I used to be one of Ronnie Barnes gyms or this or that and all these things. Like I'm going to old gyms. We have a place in Burlington that was called Winner's Gym and I'm thinking his owner, that owner's brain and who I've become friends with, he now lives at my gym. And so during that time when I opened my studio, a coffee shop next door to me had closed. And I November December hit and I'd lost most of my training class. And I went to my landlord and I said sir, what are you doing with that space next door? And he said nothing. And he had had three people pull out of my complex and he says, he says how's the gym doing? And I said not good. And just so you know, this man's name was Tom Lindley. He was in his 70s and he gave me my first lease off. Cause he knew my father, very wealthy in my town and great, great man. I learned a lot from him. And when I asked him about it, I said not good. He said what are you going to do? I said I'm going to go bigger. He said what do you mean? I said I'm going to open my gym now to membership. I'm going to do the first 247 gym in Burlington. He looked at me and Larry, I think he saw himself in me, but years younger. And he said here's the keys when you open the doors. He said pay me my first month rent, but till then don't pay me nothing. No contract, Larry. No nothing. He just, I don't think he had nothing to lose. And I didn't have Nothing to lose. And he knew my background. My family's never not paid a bill or anything like that. So he knew he would get paid.

What gave you the instinct? What gave you the instinct that that was the move to make you lost, you know, you were on a losing streak. And obviously, you know, if you'd known before how to turn it around, you would have. So what led to the losing streak, would you say? Man, Larry, Just economy, things like that.

Yeah. At that time, I just literally think I. I thought I just had to keep going no matter what. If it took 100 hours a week, if the business was going to fail, I was going to sleep at the business. I'm going to sell everything. I'm not going to have a home to live in. I will live at the business to make it. Because failure in my eyes is not an option, Larry. Right. It is not an option. I grew up. Second place is the first, last. There was no participation awards. So I was instilled that whatever you do, My father never once told me, hey, Stephen, you got to do this. He just said, do what you love, but be the best at it.

Yeah.

So at that point, I opened up. I'd done all this research and opened up my gym, and I got about 50 members, which helped me pay the bills. And I was like, well, and people really liked it. It was 24, seven swipe car, like Adam could come with at three in the morning or whatever time of day. And it was very quaint, small and. But I didn't have enough money to buy equipment. So the equipment I had. Larry. I started selling a treadmill to go pay for this over here. Kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul type thing.

Yeah.

And I realized without trying to start an equipment business, there is a huge need for commercial fitness equipment. Prime example, my dentist, who is now retired during that time period, I think in 2007, he came to me and he said, stephen, I'd love to buy that, an elliptical like you got right there. I said, his name's Dr. Patterson, good friend of mine. I said. I said, Dr. Patterson, I'll get you one. I went and found him an elliptical like mine and sold it to him. But in the meantime, what I'd done to make the money, I sold him that elliptical and replaced it in my gym. And I'm going to be honest with you guys. Gym equipment started out. I wasn't doing it to make money. I'd done it. I realized if I could use the equipment in my gym and sell it, even if I broke even And I trained on it for six months. I used it for free.

Yeah.

So it's kind of a win win for me. So I started going around during the recession, whatever you want to call it, the crash of, oh, eight mom and pop Jim's were going out of business everywhere. And I went around and pick up truck and trailer. And I remember still to this day, I was by no means a rich man. People think you got to have be rich. I would have three to $5,000 cash money and I would go to somebody's gym to buy two pieces for $800 apiece, let's say. And I would get there and they would have more pieces and I would make a bundle deal, Larry, and say, oh, Stephen, we'll give you those 10 pieces for 5,000. I'd buy them all, take them back to my warehouse, or, or I didn't have a warehouse, take them back to my gym, use them in the gym. And if I had three bicep curls, I would go sell one. And that's how the whole business started. And then shortly after that, social media came along.

And how did you, how did you see that opportunity?

Okay, so during the nightclub business, I was doing MySpace, Adam, if you remember MySpace at the time. And I was one of the biggest guys on MySpace, Larry, which was like Facebook before Facebook. And I was doing big promotions, I was good at marketing, and I was doing huge parties at the nightclub. And I said, why don't I apply this to my, my gym equipment? And Larry, I'm going to be straight up with you. Craigslist was huge at that time. So when I started to acquire more pieces, I started putting ads on Craigslist. And let me tell you what I did. I feel like a story paints a picture. I would much myself. I would much rather listen to a podcast like this and hear someone's story. It resonates with me.

Right.

Versus just hearing other things or when you can feel somebody's energy and passion.

Right.

It just makes a difference. And so during that time period, I went and I'm like, oh, I'm going to start Craigslist. And I start putting one ad, one turns to two, two turns to three. Well, I had it in my head that I had to do 25 every night, Larry. And I would write out a detailed, detailed, like everything about a piece, where it came from. This came from Larry's gym. He bought it brand new during the recession. I went and purchased the whole gym, whatever it may be. And those stories resonated with people. Well, I would start Waking up and pray. I would pray for one phone call. One phone call turned to two. Ten Craigslist ads turned to 25. Now I have 500 at all times on Craigslist. I had 12 accounts at one time because it started flagging me. So I would stay up till like 4 o' clock in the morning doing these Craigslist ads. Well, during that time, I had no website. So I created a Facebook, Larry, to send people to from the. I started tagging the Craigslist with the Facebook. I created Facebook for super fitness gym equipment. Six months, Larry goes by, not one person called on that Facebook. And it kind of, you know, when you don't see the results and you're putting in work, it sucks.

Yeah.

And I'll never forget this. This was like the aha. This is probably two. 2011, 2010, somewhere in there, many years ago, I get a phone call off the Facebook. My first one, I'm so excited. He says, hey, I'm looking at your Facebook. So I got it all the time. I'm looking at Craigslist. I trying to, because I knew Craigslist may fade out. Facebook was the new boom, right? And I said, I said, yes, sir, can I help you? And he said, I saw you posted that inner outer thumb machine. I said, yes, sir. Before this, we were pickup truck trailer bringing it to you. I didn't know anything about shipping.

Yeah.

And he says, how much is the piece? And I said, $1,000. I'm just using this as an example. He says, okay, I'll take it. Can you give me a shipping quote, Larry? I don't even have a clue. I said, sir, I've never shipped. He said, well, can you put it on the pallet for me and ship it to me? I don't have time to come down there. He's in Pennsylvania. While I'm looking, he's like eight hours from me. I'm like, oh, God, how am I going to get it to Pennsylvania? I'm like, okay. We. We call a FedEx. At first we realize you don't call FedEx for stuff like this, Right? So I did some research. We put this thing on a pallet. We set up a business account for one of the shippers. We ship this thing to him. This is no lie. The thing. We didn't strap it down to the pallet.

Good. Oh, no. Oh, Larry.

The thing falls over. He sends me photos on the pallet scratched up over all this stuff. He calls me and he said, stephen, I'll never forget it. He said, stephen, I Turned it back on its side. I've fixed it. It's got a couple stretches, but it's okay. You saved me $3,000. He said, I'll call you again. I'm going to need more pieces. And Larry, the light bulb went off, and I said to myself, if I can sell pieces, if I can sell pieces locally, north and South Carolina, if I can ship around the world, I can create something here. But I gotta find the inventory. I need the infrastructure. I need box trucks, I need the warehouse. I need forklifts. I had nothing. And that's when I went gung ho. I'm talking more Craigslist ads, more Facebook. Created the website in two. I got a screenshot the other day, and this was a big deal for the time. In 2017, my Facebook hit 117,000 followers. That was a big deal for a little business in Burlington, North Carolina.

Wow.

People before this, locally, they would make fun of me. They would say, what are you selling that junk for? What are you this for? And. Or they would just say, oh, he owns the gym. Like. Like you're just a gym. And I'm sitting here making more money selling gym equipment than I'm doing, than I've ever made at the nightclub. But what I'm doing, If I made 5,000, 10,000, Larry, I'm going and buying 10,000 of inventory. I took nothing, just enough to live. That's it. And I kept investing back, investing back. I bought my first box truck for, I think 10 or $12,000 many, many years ago, was a POS. And. But it got the job done. Like, I have so many stories of, like, the high road. Robin, Peter, to pay Paul. Swiping my own credit card, putting cash in the bank, off the credit card, going and getting the cash to buy more equipment. Like living life on the edge, but at the same time knowing deep in my heart, Larry, that I'm not going to fail. Because failure is not an option. I'm going to make it. And during that time, I started getting more. More people recognize me, start getting more phone calls. I start getting, oh, you got this. And I was getting such good deals. I was taught years ago to hit singles.

Yeah.

Never rip somebody off. Be a man of your word. Nobody minds a man making money. That's fine. But nobody, especially rich people, nobody wants to be ripped off. I don't want to be ripped off. I can't stand when somebody says, oh, you're rich, Steven. Here's a fu price. I think that's crazy. So I always was very fair And I sold equipment many years ago to a man at my warehouse. And he said to me, Larry, he said, he looked at me and he said, stephen, never feel bad for how much money you made on me. And I said, what do you mean? I didn't make that much money. And he said, I don't care how much you made. And I said, okay, why'd you say that? And he said, steven, you saved me over $2,000 that I was about to purchase that elliptical for my wife. He said, he said, I don't care if you made $200, $500, you saved me X. Yeah. And I realized real fast, you make money on the buy in a real estate investor, if they buy right, they can sell. Right? So I buy now in such bulk that some people still question, like, Steven, how are you? How are you doing this? And that's where the research from a young kid helped. I knew the old pieces from the new pieces. And just like Adam, Adam knows the good pieces from the bad, Meaning he's trained on it. He knows, oh, this kills your knees. That piece sucks. Well, my clientele, they know too. And the only reason, Larry, I know because I was a competitive bodybuilder. I trained on it too. So I just think years and years of the research of this or that literally propelled this business to something I couldn't even have dreamed of, honestly.

Unbelievable.

Adam, you.

Do you have something you want to jump in with.

Steve? I want to make sure you give them. They know what. What's the YouTube channel they can go to to hear the whole story? Because I watched that on the plane the other day, actually. But the. Yeah, What's. What's your YouTube?

The YouTube is super fitness gym equipment. And the soc. The Instagram is super fitness gym equipment. Super fitness gym equipment as well. And then most of it's tagged under Steven Harveas as well under the Instagram. Now, Facebook, it's all super finished gym.

Equipment on the Instagram. Did they ever get rid of the fake account or is that still out?

Unfortunately, not really, Adam. But it's become much better. I think they're almost disabled now, but I haven't heard anything in about three months, meaning I haven't heard from anybody saying that I'm getting fecked. So I hope so. I don't know.

So there was, there was an account. There was account for years set up. I guess it's still there. Spelled everything almost look identical. And this guy was selling gym equipment. People were giving him money and never getting the equipment, claiming to be him or not. So how can they. What is the Instagram to make sure they get the right one and don't, don't get swindled by the fake one.

Pull right up. But it's super fitness underscore gym understore equipment. That's the way it's worded on the Instagram, Adam.

And on that fake one, there's about.

Two Rs or something. Usually, usually there's always like two underscores, two Rs where it looks almost the same, but it's not spelled the same.

And then if they want to, they want to get in touch with you, the only number they call you has the area code of what?

336.

If it's not a 336 area code, that's not you. That's a scam, correct? Yeah.

How much did it piss you off and how did you get yourself adjusted to that mentally when, you know, you got scammed like that?

You know, Larry, I had a lot of big name people call me that was like, to protect me. They, they were, they were like, what do you we. I did, I'll be honest with you, Larry. I didn't know what to do. I was like, do I voice my reason of concern on Instagram or YouTube? Do I? Don't say nothing. I said nothing at first till I got a call from a person who knows me who had my cell phone that says, hey, Steven, when can I pick up that standing lateral race? I got the text. I instantly called. I said, what standing lateral? I haven't had the one that they were talking about in probably five years. They said, the one you posted on your Instagram. I said, I didn't post one on my Instagram. And Larry, I kid you not. They had bought this piece for like thousand dollars that probably would go for 4 to 5,000 too good a deal. And they had zaled a Muhammad. I'm not a Muhammad. And I, I was blown away at the com. Lack of common sense. And they had my cell phone. So long story short, this was over a year ago. I went to Instagram at that point and I started making videos and putting it under the highlights because they were not just doing it to me, they were doing it to many other companies. Facebook, faking these companies, faking influencers, faking all kinds of things. And I just addressed it says, listen, if it's not my voice, we bank at first bank in Burlington, North Carolina. I just gave people the, the, the tools they needed to hear so that if they use a little Common sense. And I basically just said if a piece, you know, is supposed to sell for $3,000 and somebody tells you 800, it's too good a deal to be true. Right. So hopefully it's gotten better. But I'm going to be honest with you, Larry. I think things are probably going to get worse in that, in that regard. Not for me, but there's just people faking stuff all around the world.

Yeah, it's just too easy to cheat.

Yes, sir.

And so as you, you know, you are robbing Peter to pay Paul and putting everything back into business. How long did that take before you got your volume up? You know, there's a lot of times in Greensboro where, you know, we live for, where I lived almost 30 years, Adam's still up in the area that, you know gyms, you know, they'd open up a few. There was the Ronnie Barnes gym, you know, and then there was here, you know, pyramid of one or two others. And then they would kind of flatten out and then go away and get stale and, and then it was kind of like the gym business is fizz, fizzling out. But I mean, there's gyms everywhere now. I mean it's unbelievable. There's like super, super gyms everywhere. And how, how convinced, how did you know or what were you just betting on the come that there'd be an explosion of gyms like this?

Larry, I don't, I don't know if I had like an inclination or if I'm just that hard headed or if I'm just that crazy. Some very beginning people in the world like that follow me now. Millions of followers on social media. Yeah, that like one for instance, he's, he only follows like 200 people and I'm one of them. Just crazy to me. And he asked me through Instagram messenger, he was like, he was like, you got to be crazy to do what you do or have balls of steel one. And I was like, I think I am a little crazy in a sense, but I'm, I'm just so passionate about fitness and I'm, and I'm so, I'm so happy to see so many people taking fitness and seriously, if that makes sense, old or young. I just truly feel like you don't have to go to a gym. But I feel like fitness should be somewhat of a foundation. If you woke up in the morning and you go for a walk around the neighborhood, things like that are so important and people miss the boat on that. But with the gym equipment side of things, I kid you Not I just started focusing on what I could control. Larry.

Right.

And I think in business sometimes I knew I did not need every gym in America. I just needed my old customers. People used to say to me, well Steven, how are you going to compete with the, the manufacturers? How are you going to compete with corporate America? This, that. And I always said I'm just going to be me. I'm going to provide the very best customer service. If something goes wrong, I'm going to take care of it. And I truly feel like honesty goes such a long way and it's a lost art form. And loyalty goes such a long way in life. I'm still doing business literally over 15 years later with some of my customers that were nothing at the time. And now they own Larry 7, 8, 10 gyms.

Let's just talk about that. Looking back, what is, you know, bad things happen, but also good things happen. What was the almost scary good thing? Can you remember something that was almost scary good where somebody came in and they wanted this, this, this, this, this. And it's like I can't believe this is happening to me.

So I'll tell you a one, not make no money, that turns to something else, which is a good story. And anybody who's kind of in a rut, I tell this story because it's 100% the truth. I used to buy Life Fitness recumbent bikes. Just the old, everybody knows what these are. I bought him Larry, for $250. They used to be between 2 and 3,000 brand new. I would buy them not beat up, but older for 250. I would clean them up, sometimes have to put a battery in them that costed $20. And I would sell them for 299. And people, you may ask, well Stephen, how was you making any money? If you factor in rent or this or that. So it was kind of a loss leader Larry, to bring people in the door. Well, what ended up happening, I'll never forget this many years ago, guy comes in an old Bronco and I had no clue he was. And he says to me, hey, I'm here to get that recumbent bike. And Larry, it wouldn't fit in the Bronco. And I'm like oh God. And Larry, it's like 8:00pm at night. I don't know, you know how this is. I'm starving Larry. I'm just ready to go home. I'm making no money on the recumbent bike. I'm like hey bud, it won't fit type deal. And he says oh, no, we'll take it apart. And I'm like, oh God. I'm like, I don't want to take it apart. But I kept my game face on because I used to think about it when I used to go to Olympia and Arnold and I would wait in line to meet an Adam, for instance, or people. I would never want somebody to think I'm a. I'm. I'm a bad person. So we got this thing to go in the Bronco. He came to my office to pay me and we're just sitting here chit chatting and he says to me, he says, steven, you have been so great. I cannot thank you enough for helping me today. I'm going to tell my buddy about you. And I didn't really think much about it, Larry, to be honest with you. Yeah, and you're going to tell my buddy. And a lot of people at the time was referring me, right? So this was a $300 deal, I kid you not. This is months, maybe even upwards of a year goes by. Many years ago, 40, $50,000 deal to me, Larry, was a lot of money at the time to do that. I had never done these big deals. Like now I do big deals all the time. But that then is different. Larry, this man had an appointment, set an appointment with me, told me he was referred to me. I have no iq. He referred, comes in, we're doing a big deal. And I want to say it was around 50, 45, $50,000. And Larry, we're sitting at my desk, he's writing me a check. He's blown away by the business. I'm kind of sitting there in shock that I'm doing a $50,000 deal, to be honest with you. And Larry, he says, man, my buddy told me y' all couldn't fit that bike in the Bronco. Larry, look, if you can see me, I got cold chills talking about. I look at him and I had this aha moment. Like, oh my goodness. You never know who the other person knows. And I kid you not, I was always trying to be a good person. But at that point forward, I. From the guy who wanted a pair of dumbbells to the kettlebell to one treadmill. I treat everybody the same. If somebody comes to that warehouse, they look around, they don't buy anything. I treat them the same because they may come back. So that was like a. I want to tell you this too. I got so many stories. I go under contract for my new building, which was very expensive, 20, 19. And I had to do $100,000 hard deposit, Larry, on this, and rent back for. Don't quote me on this. 12 or $15,000 a month rent back from you. Because they had to get everything out. That was the only way to do the deal, that they would do it.

Yeah.

So I can't put nothing in the place, but I can start renovations. But out of my own money, and I've got a couple lines of credit at the time, I've got a little bit of money. I'm selling my old warehouse, and it's under contract. So I'm going to take the money, the equity that I had at the old warehouse. I'm going to apply to get my down payment for the new warehouse. And I'm thinking in my mind, Larry, I'm going to be good. I kid you not. And I can't make this up. Covid hits, and I think I'm going to lose everything. Like, gives me cold chills again, talking about it. And I'm like, oh, my. They shut my gym down. I don't know what to do. And. And the deal falls through, Larry, on my old warehouse, that I'm using the money to apply for the new warehouse. And the bank calls me, Larry, and says that we're not going to be able to do financing for the new warehouse at the time. You talk about a scary moment. So, Larry, at this point, just so you know, this is 2020. I'm a big deal in the gym equipment world. And now things are crashing on me again. I'm like, what am I going to do? And I kid you not. And Adam, you asked me about this on the. On the. On our phone call, Larry. I'm coming to my warehouse, my old warehouse one day, and I'm driving down the road, and I'm not in a great mood. I don't know why.

And, well, because you thought you're gonna.

Lose everything, probably, Adam. Yeah, literally, you know what I mean?

Everything's shut down.

Exactly. I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I kid you guys not that they're in the middle of the country. And Adam, you've been to the old warehouse. You know where it was at?

Yeah.

There's a traffic jam, Larry. Like. Like, I'm like, what in the world is going on? So I just keep creeping up the hill. Keep creeping up the hill. And I look and, Larry, there's a line to get in my building to buy gym equipment. People were driving from other states to come to get gym equipment from me. And I'm like, what is Going on. And so I kid you guys not, I buckled down. We were working 100 hours a week. I had two children at the time, under three years old. And we would take them to that warehouse every day. My wife would be running credit cards, and we and a few other guys would work all day long. Sometimes the lines wouldn't stop till 10, 11pm like, it was the most craziest thing. But I always tell people, for every bad thing, hardship, sometimes there's a biggest blessing that happens. And during that time, I was blessed tenfold. And I knew I was going to make it. And so my wife got. My wife got that building back under contract. My bank, I had so much. I was doing so much business at the time that my bank went ahead and went through with the deal. So a year later, everything worked out. But you talk about scary times, and honestly, Larry, I'm sure in your life, maybe. I know yours, Adam, too. Just like your arm situation today, I'm sure there's going to be something else that happens along the way. I'm going to get hit with the hardship, but I'm just a firm believer. You just. You just take care of the problem, you take care of the issue. You buckle down, you just keep going. Sometimes somebody so close to winning, but they stop right there before the finish line. They're right there. And that's the test to get to the next level. And I'm going to be honest with you guys. I don't know what my next level is. I've been praying about it and all kinds of things, but at the end of the day, I'm at the point now I want to be a good father, good husband, and I just want to help other people. The money just seems to come with. The more that. The more information that I seem to put out and give the world, the more people seem to want to do business with me. And so that's what I preach to a lot of people is, you know, make sure you're just doing heartfelt things. It's. It's so. Life's so simple in the sense that it cost us nothing to be kind. And I think a lot of people miss the boat on that. I mean, Adam, you've called me before. I remember years ago, maybe.

What?

Adam. Seven years ago, I knew Adam was in Greensboro, and I knew where some gym equipment was that was a nightmare to get out. You remember Adam? And I said, adam, I don't know if you need this, but I know where some free treadmills and ellipticals and bikes are. You're welcome to do it. I didn't have to call Adam. He was just my buddy. I knew he was in Greensboro, that he's in the gyms. Go get it. That's just a nice gesture. And Adam is. Sent me business through the years and done business with me. It's just what you're doing.

I want to jump in.

Hey, let me.

I want to jump. I want to jump in real quick and just reiterate so it didn't get lost. Covid hit, which can't. Which was basically canceled the deal on his warehouse and canceled the loan from the bank. But it's because Covid hit, and he had all that gym equipment in place. All the gyms in the country were closed down, but he had such a big following and reputation out there. That's why those hundreds of people from all these other states were driving to Burlington to buy gym equipment, because all the gym equipment, all the gym places were closed. So his reputation was already out there so big that as soon as they shut down all the gyms across the country, people were driving from all over the country to his warehouse to supply their home gyms and whatever they were going to use. So the fact that he already had that reputation out there is why so many. Basically, the lord sent, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people into you because you were able to. They were bailing you out, but you were bailing them out of a bad situation.

I'll tell you another funny story that ties in with that. At the time, Larry, nobody could find olympic plate and dumbbells anywhere. And you couldn't buy it online. You couldn't. Nobody had it. Well, my wife used to get mad at me. I was the hoarder of olympic plate. I was the guy that, Larry, if you had £1,000 in your basement, I would buy it from you. Even If I had £100,000 at the warehouse, I'd still buy your plate, Larry. And so I was known, people would just stop by the warehouse, and I would keep cash on hand. I would buy plate literally weekly at times, and all this stuff. And I kid you not, I would be made fun of because a lot of the plate was old rusty york plate. And, you know, people didn't understand, but I would have. For years, tractor farmers come to weight down their tractors, and they would want 500 pounds of Olympic plate. I didn't just sell olympic plate to bodybuilders or gym people, Even though every gym I opened, the. They might need 5,000, 10,000, £15,000 of plate. So that's why I always had a lot of plate on hand. Well, Larry, when that. When Covid happened, I had £330,000 on hand of used Olympic plate, plus an arsenal of new bumper plates and new Olympic plate, brand new. And I went through all of it. Literally all of it. Wow. I was probably the only person in the country with that amount of stock on hand.

100%.

It was just sheer. I don't. I don't know if it was luck or just I'm that crazy to stock that much plate, but it ended up being a huge blessing. But I didn't have a clue. And y' all want me to hear the funniest thing about it? I was selling it dirt cheap in fear because I didn't know what was going to happen in the world. And so about three months go by, and all the plate that I had sold start skyrocketing in price. People was coming to me. They would buy my plate, Larry. And then I would see the same plate photos of my warehouse back online for double or triple what they bought it from me for. So all these people start reselling my product. And I didn't knock anybody's hustle. I just couldn't believe it. I'm like, I guess it was supply and demand.

Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, Steve, you know, this has been phenomenal. And appreciate Adam being on. We always let the guest have the final word. If there's any last thing that you want to pass on to people out there looking to make their mark, you know, they're.

They're.

They're wanting to move up. They might already have a business, but, you know, might be on the verge of getting one. But any one last thing you want to pass on, we. This has just been incredible.

Sure. First of all, I want to thank you guys for even asking me or thinking to ask me to. Come on. I had a great time. It's been an honor. I would love to do it again sometime and tell more stories or just have dinner with you guys, but let's go. I tell anybody, Larry, always go for your hopes and dreams, but be the always. So I tell this. If you're sweeping the floors, be the best floor sweeper. If you're the janitor, be the best janitor you can be, because somebody's going to look at you and hopefully move you up or give you a raise or move you to the next position. A lot of people lose insight. I was told, Stephen, you're going to be the dishwasher in the restaurant. You're going to Learn that first. Be the best dishwasher you can be. So I advise anybody out there listening at your job, you're an employee, whatever. You don't have to be a business owner. Always think positive first and then keep, keep moving. Just become better by the day. It goes such a long way, but as far as myself goes, you can find me at Super Fitness gym equipment.com is my website for my gym equipment business. Super Fitness NC is my gym and there's a lot of videos on the YouTube which is the same thing. Super Fitness Gym equipment. About my story and I'm starting to do, I'm going to start doing a lot more personal stuff of me and my wife and just about marriage, life in general business. I just think we have a lot of people, a lot of things to say to people and we want to give that free content out not just for motivation but just for positive day to day vibes for everybody. Absolutely.

Steve, real quick, give your wife, give her a quick plug too. In the real estate. Anybody in? I guess in North Carolina. She's one of the number one real estate agents in the state is my understanding. So give her a where they get her information too if anybody's interested in buying or selling in the area.

Absolutely, yes. So my wife is Amber Harveas. She is the 18 and she is one of the top agents, I kid you not. Amber is one of the hardest workers I know and that's why I think we go good together even though we butt heads because I push her and she pushes me. But we also don't do it for the money. We don't just need more money. So we just love to grind. And she loves business, loves gym equipment, loves real estate. She's passionate about real estate. So anybody just look up Amber Harvey or the A team, she should pop up on social media. She's doing YouTube and all that. And Adam or Larry, I do think Amber gets asked to be keynote speakers at a lot of exp events. She's been keynote speakers at Keller Williams events. I think she would be great for y' all to have on the podcast.

Okay, well, thank you very much. We will, we'll keep that in mind.

Absolutely.

Look forward to that. So thanks so much. It's been great.

Thank you, Larry. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Yes, sir. Thanks, Steve. Have a good day. See it.

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