Part 1 - Provide Value And Build Long-Term Relationships

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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 ready. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

Hello, everybody. We're talking with Steve Harvalious 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 100 and 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, they go off to Bulgaria or wherever.

Wherever they come home.

Yes, sir.

And so you know that that's a long way from 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 bit 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 Elements county championships for the teenage class. And I was literally just a 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. I. 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 mean, just so, you know, $7 an hour working part time at the gym. And I absolutely loved it. And I would go bartending, 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 had said earlier, you know, you, 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 going 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. 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.

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 tanning 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 Newman 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 it's not only these got the huge space and all the equipment is 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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