Part 2 - Overcome Failures By Not Backing Down

Foreign.

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.

Talk about that, explain that and dig into that for us.

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 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 18. We would be on banners at almost every school. I Bet I've wrote 25 checks, Larry. Small amounts, 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 gotta 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, 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, then 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 Correctus, who's one of the number one Verizon guys in the country. Verizon 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. He 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 right. I don't 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.

What was your first business? You know, you say you didn't go to college, you just want a business, business, business. What did you. What was your first 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, 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.

Yeah.

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 say, dad, we've got to open a nightclub. And he's like, what do you mean, I. 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 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 Hoffman 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 townhome. 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 that. 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, you 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 ever. 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, 15, 20 hours a week. I'm working a ton of hours at the, at the time, I'm doing three, 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 had 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 bases $500 a week. You're going to live in a hotel room and you're going to make a 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 cancel 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've 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 in 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 debate 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 struggling gym, 50 instantly is a lot.

Yeah.

And so when the direct mailers started going out, we would do a thousand to two thousand at a time. And I would do. 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 for 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 tenant's 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 210s a day in Massachusetts. This place is the busiest place you've ever seen.

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So I, I picked their brains and I said, when I get home, I'm opening a tenant salon. And I got home, I open the tennis 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. The mailers was their idea. And they had like, imagine a checklist of like 20 different things that, that are kind of guerrilla 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. 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 in turn helped me make commission, but also help the gym retain a client.

Yeah.

And 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.

Absolutely.

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 evolved in, like, Adam, you know, some of his friends have evolved into. You mentioned Mike Karakis. He's the number one in 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 Coke Factory. You know, that was what you thought about Burlington, you know, or the replacements, you 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 businesses, but sure. 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. What 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 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 thousand dollars 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 have 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 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 used to be one of Ronnie Barnes gyms or this dad and all these things. Like I'm going to old gyms. We have a place in Burlington that was called Winners 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 had 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 because 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, 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 it I got about 50 members, which helped me pay the bills. And I was like, wow. And people really liked it. It was 24, seven swipe car. Like Adam could come lift at three in the morning or whatever time of day. And it was very quaint, small. 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 Rob and Peter to pay Paul type thing. 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 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, Jim, 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 08 mom and pop gyms 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 gotta 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 a piece, let's say. And I would get there and they would have more pieces and. 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 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, 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, 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, 10 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 thigh machine. I said, yes, sir. Before this, we were hand pickup truck trailer bringing it to you. I didn't know anything about shipping.

Yeah.

And he says, 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 a 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? Like, okay, we, we call a FedEx. At first we realize you don't call FedEx for stuff like this. So I did some research. We put this thing on a pallet. We set up a business account for one of the shippers. We shipped this thing to him. This is no lie. The thing. We didn't strap it down to the pallet. Good.

Oh no. Oh no, 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 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 in. 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 as 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 dreamed 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 social. The Instagram is super fitness gym equipment. Super fitness gym equipment as well. And then most of it's tagged under Stephen Harveas as well under the Instagram. Now Facebook, it's all super finish 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 feedback. 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 Underscore 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 have.

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 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, Stephen, 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. 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 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 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 big named 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 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 7810 gyms.

Thank.

You for listening to part two of this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast.

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