People miss the obvious all the time

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. I'm here with Jerome Ruruca. And Jerome, do you. Jerome is one of the most knowledgeable and successful people in the fitness industry. He's the most highly respected. He's doing clinics all over the country and has for decades. And who goes to these clinics are people who have their own practices. So he's a trainer of the trainer, coach of the coaches, a, a teacher of the doctors. And I know for a fact they talk about behind your back. I don't know if I've told you this, but we've heard through the grapevine, you know, like if when they're doing their zoom calls they'll say, well, Jerome says this and Jerome says that. But you guys, I mean some of the guys who have won like huge awards and this, that the other that are in there and some of the biggest experts in their field and they're talking in, you know, the arenas like these books that you put out and they said, well, Jerome says this. That's.

Yeah, yeah, that's a compliment. You do you try to hold yourself, you know, there's a lot of people you use as examples before you try to get to those points, you know, and a lot of it is you just keep your ego in check. If that's the outcome from people, that's great. But you, you know, confidently do what you do. But there's a lot of unique things I was able to think of to really bridge that gap. I learned so much in elite strength and fitness and, and that's just not philosophy. You know, in academia there's so much philosophy or hypothetical and you don't get to compete to prove it. And so there's a lot of people that think I'm right and I'm doing this and that and I'm like, well, you don't compete against anybody. Like, how would you know? Like if into your clinic, like your patients look horrible to me. That isn't necessarily. You're the rate limiting step, but whatever. So the thing I really got from athletics is it has to work. Why are you doing this? You can have all these great ideas in your head, but you have got to put it into application. And then we are going to go compete whether you're coaching other people or you're coaching yourself and we're going to find out and, and I think that is so valuable. And even to this day, the, the clinicians that are influencers and teachers, but they have this unique background of competing in athletics and they put everything into it. They're better teachers because of it, because they can process information in a different way of application. And I do think that's incredibly important. Yeah.

Because with, you know, that's really how the weightlifting, the powerlifting has given you an incredible advantage because it's basically makes you come from the real world, the performance world, rather than just drift into becoming an egghead who sits in the classroom or sits in there and does, you know, circles the country and does these lectures and these, these training things and talk shop with people. But when you go home, you go back to this incredible gym that's got all of these things and you're, you got a few clients you're working with and your knowledge and insight is, continues. Has continued to develop. And plus, when you, you come up with these ideas and nutrition things or supplements or some of the laser treatments and even the acupuncture treatments and everything, you're using them. How you live. That's like when, when I wrote my book, I would tell people, like, that's just how I do. That's how I live. You know, it's like, that's how I've used that. That's how I got through today, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. There's no doubt you're. You're that person. There's no smoke and mirrors with you. The amount of hard work. I mean, in your case, even as we're jumping back and forth from athletics to healthcare, I mean, you are such an expert yourself, knowing what's out there, and you've done that from a patient standpoint. But you have always aggressively taken the initiative. I mean, you've looked and asked me questions, but then you sure the heck didn't start or stop with me either. Like, I mean, your library of information from you just driving and finding people, it's like, hey, this person needs help with this, or I need help with this. And you're not getting the answers you want and you just don't take no for an answer very well. And even if the person in front of you doesn't have that answer, you know, you just keep searching. And you're a testament to this as well, where even the huge success you've had in your life in many instances, and you don't have a professional health degree. But, you know, I say this as a positive. I'd say, you know, 80% more than the majority of clinicians I've met over the years, it's because you have such a broad base of experience for yourself and helping others, trying to get people to these gurus. And some of them are specialists. But, you know, when they need this person, even though they're not a very dynamic practitioner, it's like, hey, this, this is going to help you. Like, this person's the best at what they do here. But then you also know those people that aren't one trick ponies, they're not specialists with one things. You know, they really can put some pieces together. And it's. I've seen how hard you've worked over the years because what, we've known each other probably 8, 18 years or something like that, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, something like that. And. Well, I appreciate you saying that. But on the other hand, it's this, it's a sad statement on health care, on the state of health care. You know, most people are, you know, it's like, why so many of, you know, the people I wind up seeing now at this level are all at the top of their, their worlds and they don't like to talk to each other most of the time because they, when their experience in talking to other healthcare professionals is they talk past you. You know, they like, you know, and it's just like, no. In fact, I got, I would get burned for years with trying to go from one to the other and say, well, you know, they say this, that and the other and then the take it into another office and the guy's rolling his eyes and everything. Finally I just started recording it. I said, hang on, let me record this. And then I would play the recording. That way he could, he could dump on the recording rather.

That's great. I love it, I love it.

But because, you know, of course I'm going to say it wrong. You know, I'm not going to be fluid in medical lingo.

And there's just a lot of people, a lot of people don't stay up on certain things. And, you know, once it's been around, people are like, yeah, you know, as we mentioned, the laser originally, so I was not with Erconia, and I was just always a subcontracted hired gun. So I wasn't formerly employed by them. I'm just a, a speaker who used their products a lot, proved myself to be competent and excited about that as well as lots of other things. But seeing where they came from too, and the challenges in between, like, even people would go, oh, zirconia. They had A great idea and it just worked out for them. It's like they bled through the eyes. The amount of knives that got stuck in their back in their process of where they're at right now, it's like they'll probably never write that book, but I saw a lot of it and it's just. Yeah. However those things end up working out, there's a lot of dips in the road, to say the least. And it's pretty much like that for everybody.

Give an example of that kind of thing that you saw that company go through, you know, because it's not you personally, you know, because, you know, it's because people wouldn't imagine a company, you know, they got financial problems, they got, you know, they have people problems or they have a supply problem. You know, it's all generic and sterile type. Okay. That's how, you know, this is how you handle that. But I'm going to try to leave out things.

Yeah, I'm going to try to leave out anything that, you know, there's certain lawsuits back and this person stole from them. So we're going to try to avoid all of that.

Well, we can just be in general terms, you know. Yeah.

So, but, but even just the idea. So if people aren't familiar with it. So these are cold lasers, they're not hot lasers. So hot lasers are used for surgical precision. Yeah, Cold lasers are used for healing precision. So they've been around these healing lasers since the mid-60s. Literally probably every racehorse in Europe has had one. And so people knew they worked, they just didn't know how they worked. And so the founders of Erconia, it's still a family owned business, it's not traded or anything like that. They had a personal miracle. So a family member of theirs was in a really bad situation, they tried all sorts of things and then they traveled how many states away to this guy who's doing lasers and their family member had this miracle and it's so safe and non invasive and they're like, oh my gosh, how come more people don't know about this? And you know, one thing led to the other. They just kind of learned that these things were only made in Europe and they're these ugly, God awful, big dysfunctional looking pieces of equipment. And the best friend growing up happened to be a naval engineer. And he was like, well, I could build a handheld, one of those. And, and literally the doctor that treated the person, they were like, hey, we're thinking of starting and doing this and making a handheld because this thing's this huge thing on a cart. It's just got one itty bitty little dot laser beam on it. You know, the guy was like, no one's going to buy that. But it triggered something in them that they heard nothing but negatives. But they were like, I don't know, I just can't turn this off in my brain, you know. And so as they progressed forward, so now they have a product and I got with this, I'm always looking for cutting edge, you know, again, not being an overly talented lifter, I always had to be smarter, look for different advantages in order for training recovery. So I already had quite a bit of experience already. So I was graduated chiropractic school and they were just coming out of the garage necessarily. So as we started doing seminars with them like, you know, lasers don't exactly fit into straight chiropractic philosophy. So you go to these trade shows and flat out you'd have people walking by you, you should get out of here. That's not chiropractic. You should just get the hell out of here. That doesn't belong here. And then the medical community, it wasn't very well researched at that time. So they threw even bigger spears and negativity and just totally flushed the product down the toilet. But they did tap into a group of early adopters and as it just very consistently made its way out, they took a certain percentage into a research study that they created. And it took a long time but lo and behold, it was a rare, rare occurrence that a non pharmacological device actually ended up getting an FDA clearance for chronic neck and shoulder pain. Now that did not hit the lottery. Like that was a huge accomplishment and thinking, oh my gosh, we arrived like we're going to get all this notoriety. That was a very important step and it's a very research driven company. So from everything that happened early, early on and all the negativity that was put on them, you know, now they have, gosh, I don't, I think they just hit like 20 FDA clearances. These are all level one random site, double blind clinical trials. The top of the line research they do to provide to prove their, their devices. But it was not started out easy at all. And then you know, they have products in the plastic surgery world as well as the orthopedic and pain world. Whether you're a natural healthcare practitioner or a, or a allopathic practitioner. Oh my gosh, like yeah, a little bit of the slimy practices that occur like in the, the cosmetic and plastic Surgery world to be noticed in that. It's just. It's complicated, to say the least.

Well, and the thing is, it just shows that, you know, it's the old thing we talk about a lot and that is nothing works until it does.

Yeah.

And nobody wants it until they want it. You know, and I've talked about, you know, it's like when they. They came up with the first fax machine is like, well, who are we going to sell this to? Nobody else has the fax machine.

Right. Yeah.

And, you know, my cousin actually invented the first.

He.

I won't get into all that, but he invented the first laptop, you know, it just as a project, you know, and after he sold the Altair computer company, you know, and they kept him around to come up with new ideas, which is what he liked to do. And so, you know, he lived down the road in Concord, you know, so he said 30 days later, after selling the company, he walks across the parking lot from this. This building, like, much like what you've got there today, they built for him to come up and gave him a little crew. So he carried the laptop across the parking lot. This is 76. And they said, what's this? He said, you know, it's a desktop computer in your hand.

Okay.

And they said, well, who would want that?

I mean, you look at hindsight, but those are common stories. You know, the thing that people. Some do and some don't realize, it's like that's normal. When. When you're. When you start off where you're at and you want to go where you want to go, it's going to be. In most instances, it's going to be brutal and painful, and there's going to be a ton of people tell you you can't do it and try to tear you down. And what you need to do is you need to go, I'm right where I need to be. Because that's like 90% of anybody and everybody went through.

Right. And it just shows how important marketing is. You know, the greatest myth in American business is build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. No, you're going to build a better mousetrap. And unless you market the crap out of it, it's going to gather dust in your garage and you'll forget about it. You know, and.

The.

You have to take. I used to tell people in our. In our world, because when we started, we were young, upstart company with different type of concept, and the. The industry hated our guts it was, you know, against us. You know, the regulatory, Everybody was against us. And so I told, I used to laugh with our guys and said, don't be surprised because suppose you and I, you know, you got an idea, I funded it and you came. We came up with a cure for cancer and we really had it. We've got the cure for cancer, we got it. We put it on our friends and everything. We bring people back from the dead. We've got the cure for cancer. Now what, you're going to walk into a doctor's office and say, we got the cure for cancer? They'll go, yeah, you've got the cure for cancer, right? Yeah. It's like the Wright brothers when they flew. But it was like getting people to like take them serious after that, it was, you know, the rest of their lives, you know, so. And people stealing their ideas too. That's the other thing that happens, you know.

Yeah.

But if you keep fighting, you can get the, the encouraging note in this little thing about is if you keep fighting, there are early adopters. Yeah. And you know, keep fighting out there till you get, don't try and convince everybody. Don't even, don't even be depressed when people don't respond. Everything say, I'm going for early adopters, people are a little bit sharper, a little bit more driven and they'll be worth it because they'll do more with it and they'll be bragging to everybody about it because everybody will tell them they're idiots for doing it too. And when they get results, they'll be shove it rubbing at everybody's face. So just get yourself, you know, put it in your mind. I'm going to fight to get the early adopters and get my, you know, toehold on the mountain type thing. And when did you get the idea you wanted to be, you know, rather than a practitioner in chiropractic, just in an office, you wanted a business of your own, you wanted to do more, you wanted to expand.

You know, truthfully speaking, I grew up in such a small town, but uniquely, like being from Nebraska, it's very similar in Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota. You get these very small towns. The chiropractors don't advertise at all and they're hugely, insanely busy in many instances. And you don't need to advertise because small town people talk to each other. So there's really a lot of non important conversations that go on constantly. And so people do talk about their knee pain and their headaches or this or that. So you know, when they just talk about that normal day to day dabble, all of a sudden the chiropractor's name gets passed around a lot. So like in the town I was from, you know, if you had hormone problems, you went to the chiropractor. If you had knee problems, you went to the chiropractor. If you had plantar fasciitis, you go to the chiropractor. You have headaches, you go to the chiropractor. If you had some weird disease, you go to the chiropractor. Not saying they didn't try the medical doctor, but they were very physical, chemical, emotional. They weren't a one trick pony. Like they would think, they would take a history think and they would rebuild you through nutrition, through adjusting through soft tissue, like they did a lot. And so that set a really good tone with me, you know, that's what inspired me. I haven't met very many people like them. There's other people out there and I'm not saying they're the greatest thing ever, but they made a huge impact on me just being themselves, you know. And there was lots of people that got to witness it. It just didn't have the same impact on them because I was really trying to push it hard. And so I kind of had a different measurement of how this was affecting me in a positive way. So just, you know, you look at those types of things and how it applies to other parts of your life and people miss the obvious all the time. You know, that's another thing I'll just point out, you know, you don't. You're always looking for a better way, whether it's health, it's mental training, it's financial outcomes. And so your antenna is always up. And you've met a library of interesting people, but everybody does, they just generally miss it. They don't recognize when that person who's a little odd and unique and they're not driving a Lamborghini, but they're walking in front of them and it's like that's one of the smartest, most driven people you're going to meet and who knows what they're going to do and they just miss it, you know?

Yeah. And they, it's like what they're doing, you know, this person is doing that they could incorporate into their own life just goes right over their head.

Yeah, absolutely. They don't take advantage of what's right around them or.

And they don't really pay attention because they start with an assumption that, you know, it's kind of like these, you know, these assumptions. We talk, I talk about, wind up talking about quite a bit. It's like everybody, when they go to a party, thinks everybody else knows. Everybody there.

Yeah.

And everybody there thinks everybody else knows. And they think everybody there feels like I'm, you know, I'm a little awkward here.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you that if I've told this story before. Sorry, but I just think it's hilarious. It's like Ringo Starr goes to John Lennon and says, you know, I'm fed up. He says, everywhere we go, it's you, Paul, and George. And he said, I always feel like the odd man are out, you know, and I'm sick of it. And so John looked at him, you know, like, perplexed. He said, I thought it was you, Paul and George.

Yeah.

He said, I always felt like the odd guy. So Rigo says, that does it. And then he got on a plane and flew to India or something for six months.

Right.

But everybody feels like, you know, you know, other things, but one, it affects your assumption. Like, other people have it, you know, they got a business, they figured it out. They've got this track record. Rather than trying to unravel that and see, what can I learn from that?

Yeah.

And I did.

I got completely distracted as I do what I talk. So, okay, so how did I do? So. So I did. So growing up the way I did, like, literally the only thing I wanted to do is just have a successful clin. And they did not implement the gym, like real training into their clinic. And that was it. That was my original goal. I just wanted to have a clinic and implement more of the gym concept to help people who wanted that to go to a whole nother level. So that was it. That's all I wanted. And then soon out. I was always good at speaking, and I was even doing some strength seminars even in college, to high schools and through the connections.

How did you get into doing speaking and strength seminars to high schools and all right.

Because there's a need. I mean, even at that time. So, you know, being from Nebraska, Nebraska is ground zero for the professional paid strength and conditioning. So if nobody knows this, a Boyd Epley was like the first paid strength coach in the entire world from a college perspective. Now, of course, there was the meathead gyms, the bodybuilders, the power lifters before. Even though he ended up having this enormous ego early on, you know, he was just an innovator. And I mean, what a great story there as well. So you know, Nebraska's in the middle of nowhere, so, you know, having that in your backyard, I still didn't want to go there for different reasons, but. But what he even overcame, and it's a true story. So when he was kind of working on people on the sideline, I mean, now we look at training and you look at the enormous facilities and all of this. Well, all of that started at Nebraska, and it started very humbled. Like, I can't even quote what they paid him per hour. It was hilariously cheap. But he was a track athlete there. Then when he graduated, he kind of worked with some different athletes and had this idea about weights and training. And Bob Devaney was there when he was doing it on his own. And they kind of found out some athletes were on their own coming to him. And it's like, hey, this person was pretty hurt.

Hurt.

They came back. They looked really good. Okay, and your name keeps coming up. So when they listened to what he wanted to do it, like, they gave him minimal money to buy some extra equipment. And the phrase was, if one person gets slower, you're fired. And he's doing this for, like, literally $3 an hour back in 1970, you know, and it was like, if one person gets slower, you're fired. Like, they were not fired up about it at all. But anyway, obviously, the rest is history. To where, you know, the joke was, I mean, man, Boyd Epley made way more money than Tom Osborne when he was a coach there. His desk was a lot bigger because he was involved not just in strength trading there, but he had his fingers in everything that was being sold through power systems and all sorts of things. He was very entrepreneurial and. But he deserved it. You know, he. He was the guy that broke through those barriers and.

And so that gave you a role model or. I mean, that type gave you the idea of you can just than just see people all day long, every day for the next.

And that still is what I wanted to do, you know, personally, it was. But yeah, so how did I teach strength seminars? You know, I mean, to this day, like, people need help. I mean, as advanced is, strength and conditioning is. It is so pathetic generally at the high school level, let alone less. Like, generally at the college level, people go and they're clueless how to lift. It's very rare. So, you know, there's such a big difference between passing your CSCS test and you actually competed in a strength sport. Like, there is no doubt competing in a strength sport, you still may not have the IT factor to Actually be good at coaching other people, even though you know a lot of things. But if you're that person that just kind of has that coaching personality, there is no class, there's no book, there's no magazine, there's no seminar you're going to ever take to learn what you will learn if you just train yourself to compete and get that reality check.

And when you got, you know, in the business world, like, how did you get to the point? How did you find the time to write all these stinking books? You know, these are complicated books with the laser.

I've got so much stuff written that it's cost me so much money. I own 17 registered trademarks on proprietary things that I hope to get to one day. But, you know, we'll see. I'm sure I'll die with a huge list of unfinished business. And I would consider that success. You know, that you just stayed engaged and you just keep going, but in between, you got to do that. So, yeah, you know, when I always had to be, everything always took me longer that, I mean, nothing was easy. So, I mean, I've had some fun in my life. But even when I graduated chiropractic school and, you know, most people were running around having fun, going on vacations, I was not. None. Zero. You know, I mean, working 50 hours a week in a clinic and you're sitting there writing papers for 20 hours a week and, you know, you're just grinding.

Yeah. But you have a. As a result, now you. But the thing was, you're grinding and creating things that you own and that now you have. I mean, you can use the rest of your life like you, you know, and make contact. So this. I don't know what will go from Dan Stanberry, but I know that he's a incredibly influential person out in this universe and he's all fired up about it, you know, and so one. One thing leads to another, and it's going to be fun to see how your business expands. And if people do you. If people are in a health crisis or some kind of crisis and they feel like I gotta, you know, I got. I gotta get somebody to help me. Do you want them to call you?

Yeah, I mean, I always have a mentality that I will help anybody that wants to be helped. Now when I say that, there's some people that think, well, I want help. I called you. And all they want to do is lie face up and lie face down, and they want me to fix them. And there's some very unique things I can do. To help other people. But, you know, you're going to have to be responsible, you're going to have to have accountability. You're going to want to have to learn how you can take care of yourself, because it's a two way street. Like, I will always put one level of effort in greater than my patient will. Yeah, there's a lot of people, if they put no effort in, it's like, look, I just can't see you. Like, I need you engaged, I need you to eat better, I need you to do minimal. Like, we're not putting you on our competitive powerlifting team. That's not the goal. Unless you want to do that at some point. You know, our goal is as simple as independence of activities of daily living, if that's where we start. And we're going to invest in your health and the knowledge of health to the point you're going to empower yourself three years, five years, ten years from now. And, and with that, we've taken people with some pretty serious incurable diseases and they're totally off any medication and they have an incredible quality of life.

And the reason you do that, you know, you're not running a standard practice, but the reason you do that is like you say you're learning all the time yourself, you're seeing these things and.

It keeps you engaged. You know, even like our apps, if these things just explode and go great, you know, it working on people and trying to help them, it always keeps you grounded. It's like, hey, prove it. Like, okay, you think you're good at what you do, Prove it. You know, and there's some people, there's some things that might be incurable and there's, there's generally no incurable diseases. There's only incurable people, you know, and if you get your mind focused in a direction, boy, it is incredible. Humbled all the time with the potential of people. It's not hard to find inspiring people that were destitute and sometimes not to their avail at all. You know, bad things happen to good people and it, you don't have to look real hard to be inspired.

Well, so this is a lot like Caesar the dog whisperer in the sense. It's no bad dogs, it's just bad owners. Yeah.

And it starts that way, you know. Yeah, that's a very gifted person with, with what he does.

It's like if you, if you want to get better, you can get better. That's, that's the thing that you have been able to prove in your lifetime. And it's going to be fun to see how you continue to evolve and how this goes. A lot of people will want to follow you. And so to get on your mailing list and to get on your website, where would they go again?

So one of the websites is performancepractic.com and then where we have now, the information is focused to doctors, but depending how we're going, we're getting some pretty good relationships coming up here. So a lot of it is going to be geared to doctors, but I always wanted to lecture to the general public and really further empower them. So hopefully we're still going to have more of an opportunity here in the future to even get more general information out. Another real powerful website of ours is because these apps are a complete standalone business. And there's already a lot on performancepractic.com so that's bbfnutrition.com and so these are not consumer apps. You can't go to the app store and just download the app as a consumer and say you want to do re requires professional supervised coaching. So one of my jobs is, yes, I work on clients doing that. We even have clients around the country. The scanner is necessary. Nobody's going to buy the $10,000 scanner just for themselves in most cases, you know, to send that scan in. But even if people aren't doing the app, because we are really new to a lot of people, the scanner is a separate company, but we do, ideally, people should walk into my clinic and we work with them there. And my job is to find and TR Train other professionals to do this. So that's ultimately what we want to do, whether it's clinicians or gyms, people who can really, you know, benefit from training people. So bbfnutrition.com they can get to me that way as well. Just a little FYI, the information on there is directed to how this fits to a professional, but consumers are absolutely welcome to reach out to me.

All right, thanks so much. There's been a lot of fun, Jerome. Look forward to seeing you in person maybe in the next month or so.

Yeah, absolutely.

We'll. I'll get a chance to see your new facility in person.

I look forward to that. Always great spending time with you. Thanks for having me on. I know there's a lot of exciting people listening on here, and hopefully I get to meet or talk with some of those people at some times, too. And it's always a pleasure, Larry, thanks for all you do for others.

Yes, sir. Thank you. And the same to you, Jerome. Thanks for listening to the Million Dollar Mastermind. If you felt there were any valuable takeaways from this episode, please take a minute and leave us a five star review. Your feedback is important and really helps us get the word out to a wider audience. Remember, we have a valuable webinar. This is absolutely free. Register for it right now@whiteownwinning.com thanks for listening.