S6:E20 - Why Cristiano Left Soccer & I Tore Up Our Studio Plans

Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about how we confront challenges. We are joined by Coach Cristiano and Ari Otis. And to kick us off, we're going to talk about soccer.

Right before this, we were explaining to Mark what soccer is and how it works.

And it has like the chick balls on it.

Yeah, you got to throw it.

Gotcha.

Throw it into the goals.

Throw it with your feet.

Yep, you get 6 points.

And there's 2 balls at the same time at random innings and the ball goes in the fire.

Are we still talking about sport?

I don't know. Well, I don't know what you do on a Saturday night, but it sounds fun. Tuesdays, actually. So, Christiana, you got to tell us where that is. Tuesday— first challenge. First challenge is with Christiana.

It's not a challenge anymore.

Um, Christiana, you have a very interesting origins story, as it were. You were from Italy. I was. You was?

English.

Just hanging around you, my English is going down to the Italian English.

Mark Ottobre Italian.

49% Italian, but hanging around you, I'm becoming like 55%. So you moved from Italy at a pretty young age. How old?

I was, it was May 2018. So 5 years ago, I'm turning 30 this year. So I was 24.

You're 24. You moved from Italy. So you packed up your whole life. Right. Tell me if I'm missing anything, but you, you basically born and bred in Italy and you packed up your whole life and you moved to Australia. Uh, why?

Why? Uh, plenty of reasons. First of all, just to get away from the identity I built for myself because I was playing soccer semi-professionally. So it's a pretty, pretty decent level in Italy.

Dylan James and that, right?

100%. I wish I could play against him. So soccer is football. It's all I knew, like, growing up. That's, that was my life.

Like, when did you start playing soccer?

I was 4. So I was 4 and then play against older guys. So for like literally from 4 to 18, my life was go to school, go training, go to school, go training. That was all I knew. After 18, I got a job, so I was go to work, go to train, play. So there's not much more going on for me. I had a few friends just to hang out at my, you know, summer parties and things like that. But it wasn't— my mind was, it was never there. I was always soccer, soccer, soccer. And I got to a point that I started to feel resentful towards football, towards the people involved with football, towards the people who were supporting me in playing football. I just felt like I've lost— I didn't know who I was anymore. And then it was obviously other stuff going on outside of football for me. So what I did is, I remember it was New Year's Eve 2017, I booked myself a ticket to London just out of the blue, and I went for 5 days by myself.

When you say out of the blue, like, what was going through your head? I'm just gonna go to London. You didn't happen at it, like, obviously. I was going through a breakup and, you know, um, just out of the blue. I don't know why I went to London. I got broke up with this girl.

It was, it was a challenging year. It was a challenging year, like, um, for football principally. And absolutely loved it. I always had that in the back of my head, the fact of traveling by myself, trying out new things rather than just always thinking about football. And I came back and after 2 months I couldn't do anymore. I was thinking at first either Japan or Australia, but Japan, it was too hard because you have to learn the language. So I had a chat with my boss back then in Italy and he's—

Did you already know English?

Well, I had a good memory from high school, but I had to study when I got to Australia. So I had a chat with my boss back then. He traveled the world, he helped me out organizing stuff and he suggested to me, yeah, try Australia. There's plenty of opportunities. It's a big country. It's evolving. It's growing. I just booked a ticket and packed up everything and Didn't tell anybody until the last minute, and then I told the people there, my parents. Well, my mom was, no, you have to stay here, and all that stuff. My daddy was a bit more supporting. He, he was obviously a bit upset as well, but I feel like that was the right decision for me. I just had to get out of there as quick as possible.

So, I mean, there's quite a few things there, right? So you stopped playing a sport that kind of brought you up.

Yeah.

What was that like?

Stopping or?

Yeah, because I didn't actually— this was something I didn't know that you were so— I didn't know, like, I know we give James and Matt heaps about it because they're just soccer, right? Sometimes they even wear their— they wear their uniform. Sorry, for those who are just listening to this, my chair just clicked again. It's the famous chair click on every episode that happens. Always happens randomly. So, you know, James and Matt, they're deep— as you see, the identity is they're deep into soccer. I didn't know that you were such high-level soccer until over like 18 months you were here.

And then it's not like super, super high level, but it was like you can compare with the— maybe what do you reckon, second, second Australian league here?

Oh, honestly, the, the— I never played the fourth division in Italy is probably better than the top division here. Let's be honest.

Well, I'm not sure about that, but I don't know. No, literally, I don't know. I never played here. I think I did like—

I mean, that's the exact point. You've never played here, but it was such a core part of who you were.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you've never even thought about kicking the ball again?

I did.

I did.

That was 2019. I was getting back into training and I was playing a friendly game and I think I did my meniscus tear. So I just took it as a sign. Okay, let's do something else. Keep traveling, try out new things. That's when I started to study fitness. Got my cert 4, I started in Goodlife.

And how's the cultural change between Italy and Australia? How's that been?

Well, for me is, uh, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but I feel like when I was in Italy, there was a bit of a closed mind. People are a bit closed-minded.

Meanwhile, you just throw the whole country under the bus. Those Italians.

Or maybe it was me, but it was like, I just felt there was like something more than that. Always going to work and go soccer. I just, I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. So I was scared of traveling by myself. So that's what I forced myself to do. I've gained so much out of it.

Did you look at any of this as a challenge? Or were you like, oh, this is just what I'm going to do?

It felt the right thing to do back then. But if I look back, it was, it's not a small thing. Um, it wasn't like really big challenge because once you, once you go and you decide, okay, this is what I want to do, you actually, you know, you build, build up confidence to do it even more and to put yourself out there.

At what point did it click for you? At what point did you realize when you were here that you wanted to go down the path that you're down now in terms of your career and where you wanted to live? Um, was there a specific moment?

It probably was. Um, it's more like the buildup, but like talking to people back in Italy, like after 2, 3 years I was here, like even my parents keep me up to date what was happening in the country or just in general in life and seeing like that, especially in Melbourne, people live with a bit more like, you know, chill out kind of attitude. That's what I like. And I feel there's much more opportunities here for me to grow and experience things and career-wise, friendships, relationships.

Interesting you say friendships. How do friendships differ culturally?

From Italy?

Yeah.

Um, my, my circle of friends was again around, around football. A few around, a few out of football, of course. But that's, it's like what we do here. We with each other like almost 24/7. We got to work at 6, we leave at 6, you always see each other every day. So that's pretty much what I used to do when I was training, when playing football. What was the question?

Well, how do friendships differ from culturally? Because you said, you know, it changed when you moved from Australia— from Italy to Australia?

You mean like detaching myself from people that I left, or—

yeah.

Um, well, I'm still in touch with a few of them. Um, I think it's, it's a bit more inclusive in here. Um, or, or maybe I'm just talking about my experience.

I think the community aspect of playing in a team, having played soccer or football as well growing up, is you definitely value the, the community aspect of it, especially when you're surrounded by a good bunch of people. And once again, having played soccer, albeit not at the same level, it doesn't feel— working at Enterprise isn't a far cry from that same sensation. That I used to get from rocking up to training or on a game day and seeing all the boys and even hanging out with them outside of it. And going a bit of a tangent here, just on the importance of community. If you look at, say, the Blue Zones, so the groups of people across the world who live to over 100, on top of exercise and nutrition and managing stress, all things that we obviously are massive, massive advocate of— it's literally what we do for a living. Community is the common factor among all of them that's most conducive to their exceptional life expectancy. And I think it's just so underrated and not something that I take for granted working here, just loving the people that I'm around. And I think it's something that a lot of PTs don't get to enjoy, especially Cristiano, you can talk on this as well, having worked— and obviously Mark as well— working as a self-employed PT in a big box gym. You don't have colleagues. In fact, you're actually fighting with a lot of other PTs who are working under the same roof for clients, whereas there isn't that pressure here and we can just enjoy each other. Absolutely.

I feel like I should be saying, and this message was brought to you by Enterprise Fitness, to Put your applications in now. Um, well, awesome.

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Enjoy the cult of enterprise. Quick message from our sponsors— us. If you're enjoying this podcast, make sure you hit subscribe on wherever you're listening to this podcast, be it Spotify or iTunes. And also go right ahead and check out melbournepersonaltrainers.com, hit the resource tab, and you can actually download the digital version of this completely free. This is our user manual. It's loaded with shopping lists, our questionnaires, our how to set goals, serving sizes, and a whole bunch of stuff. Really quick, easy reference guide that you can use. And of course, if you want to dive deeper into our world of nutrition, check out the Enterprise Diet book. It's on Amazon if you're an international— right from Australia. And if you are within Australia, check out enterprisediet.com to order your copy today. All right, back to the podcast. I think Part of that is because of the way things are structured, obviously. And we spoke about this on previous episodes. What happens in big box gyms is everyone's paying rent. So it's, there's your clients and my clients. And if you talk to my clients, then why are you trying to talk to my clients, bro? Like you're trying to cut my lunch or something. Whereas here it's just our clients. It's just enterprise clients. And the example I always give new people is like when you went away, you know, every, like all the clients you were training just trained with other people. And they come back in, they're like, oh, hey Ari. And nothing, nothing changed. And it's the same thing when say Matt goes away or Christiano goes away, you train, like it's just that. And everyone's just like, and that's what makes it such a nice atmosphere is there is no, you're trying to wrong me. Cause it just doesn't exist.

Absolutely. It's so seamless when, for context, I went to Europe for a month, a couple of months ago. And obviously while I'm away, my clients are handed over. To my colleagues, and it's such a testament to the culture and community that we have here in that my clients love everyone else that's here, and we all— they all feel comfortable training with anyone else here, and we all have a great time. And when they walk through the door, they get a hello from everyone. They know all of our names. I know a lot of Cristiano's clients by name. They know who I am. And that, that love just gets shared and it's wholesome.

It's also amazing how clients get to interact with each other as well, not just with the coaches and staff, but also with each other.

It is a fun dynamic to watch on a lot of different levels because you have, because that's what I was, again, we touched on this before, but it's that atmosphere where people who are like each other tend to like each other. And when you get all those people in the same room, and there's, the thing is, there's, it is, enterprise is also about who we say no to and getting all the people of the same mindset under the one roof training, even though they're training one-on-one, the atmosphere that it creates is, hey, you're like me and I like training. And there is a connection there where people can make, and that's what forms the community. And it is kind of a really, um, it's bizarre in many ways because you wouldn't think that we have the community. And it's certainly from my end of things, people ask me like, how did you develop the community that you did at Enterprise? By accident. That's the honest answer. I never put an emphasis of we're going to do this community drive and we're going to have a Facebook group and every day we're going to post something of value. We don't have a Facebook, but we did. We've tried to do Facebook groups like so many times and they've never worked because fundamentally our client, we get here isn't really engaging with Facebook that much. This, they're on it. They're not going to sit there, but when they come here, they want the experience. I think our community is, it's very unique because it's something that we didn't really try and build. And evidence of our community being so strong, I always think, is our good friend. Like this year we raised $13,500. For the Good Friday Appeal. And that was all of our clients. That was all. And you come in and the energy of the room and you guys were all dressed up and people also, there's something magic about that day because people see the connection that we all have with each other. You know, we're having fun, we're making fun of each other, we're doing challenges against each other, all know what each other thinking. And then all the clients get involved and they just have a heap of fun. And then in the name of charity, we raise all this money. And everyone's having a good time and they do form bonds. So it is very unique. It's very special.

When did you get to realize, um, how the community plays a big role in the success of Enterprise?

Good question.

I didn't. I told you, like, you gotta remember.

Well, there must have been like, like one, one, one moment that—

I'm a purist in training. My friends make fun of me because they think I'm like a robot computer where it's like, oh, you're here to get a result. You're here to get a result. Why else are you here? You want friends? What do you need friends for? And I'm being very like honest about my answer is that community was never something that I prioritized. Never something that like, I'm going to develop a community of people that have this connection. With Wolfpack, absolutely. With the courses, absolutely. With the team, absolutely. But with the clients themselves, there's not really that many things that we do to engineer a community.

Here.

But I think what we do exceptionally well is we create the connection within the team. Like, my focus is the team. So if anything—

contagious—

yeah, that's probably what it is. So it wasn't something that the forethought was, we're going to do this to our members. It was, I'm just going to make this as good of an environment as any, anywhere, as for my team. And even like down to the word, like, people refer to their staff or as employees. I always refer to it as team because team has a different, as you say, we have soccer fields here, right? And I think that's large, like even the language that I use in relating to this is I don't think of you guys as staff members or as employees. I think of you as team members because on a team it's just a different connotation. And I think that also attributes to the soccer field. Yeah, genuinely the community aspect here. Has been largely accidental.

Yeah, so even if there wasn't a set formula for it, you've pretty much just articulated the whole blueprint for creating an environment in which there is a healthy culture and a sense of community between trainers and clients. So I think people listening and people who— trainers or people who own gyms can pretty much take on everything you've just spoken about the last 5 minutes and That's it. That's the formula, right?

I think it's modeling, right? In the sense that I want to look after you and I will go out of my way to look after my people. And I look at it like my people, and it's Russell, Russell, Richard Branson, Richard Branson, Richard Branson said, which is you don't look after your business, you look after your people. So you don't, you don't look after your client. You look after your people and people look after your client. So your only job as the business owner is to look after your people. Kind of, I'm paraphrasing, he wasn't, he probably said it a lot more eloquently than I'm butchering now, but my takeaway on it essentially is look after your people and then they look after everything else.

It's not mutually exclusive, right? Like it's a positive feedback loop. It all just helps itself.

Yeah, I think so, definitely.

I think going back to the challenges, what do you think was your one of the biggest challenges that you faced when, when you created this?

Inspired? Yeah, that's probably the current challenge. Which is the new property of the building of Enterprise. We can definitely get into that. Basically, like I'll go into the whole story essentially. I was given the advice pretty early on that if you stabilize your business and really do well from a financial and wealth perspective, you want to own the land in which your business is. So this was the advice of my accountant, shout out to Paul. And he said, you wanna own the land? And he compared a few gym owners and said, how much would they be worth if they bought their land? And I said, that'd be worth multiple million. There's my point exactly. You wanna buy the land? So I signed the lease here in 2012 and the end of 2012. So we've been here for over 10 years now. And from when I signed the lease, I think within 6 months I started looking for places to buy. And not that I had the money to buy at that stage, but I had the idea to buy. And I really probably started aggressively looking for places to buy in 2014. I even got to the point of hiring a buyer's advocate to look for me because I couldn't find anything. And I would go to auctions in Richmond and a property that would be worth probably $1.6 to $1.8 million would go for $2.9 million or $3 million or $4 million. And I was like, whoa, there is no way I can compete with this. There's like, how am I gonna buy in Richmond? It's prime real estate. I'm just getting pushed out by developers. The owner-occupier dream, maybe it's over. Maybe really what I've gotta do is suck it up and just get along with this. And I kept looking and looking and Every auction, like, here was my budget and it wasn't just a little bit outside of my budget. The properties were going for $2, $3, $4 million outside of my budget. It was ridiculous. And that was because, like, I remember one auction particularly, there was 6 developers bidding on the same property, which the square meterage went from what would be $7,000 per square meter to $10,000 and some places as much as $12,000 to $14,000. So it got crazy. At the peak of the real estate, commercial real estate here in Richmond. So I'd pretty much almost given up on the goal and then COVID hit. And on TV, as you guys know, the news, and I remember Today Tonight were going through or whatever current affairs shows is called these days, they were going through Melbourne and they were showing all the shops that were closed. And in the back of my head, Warren Buffett, that quote spoke to me, which is, when they're fearful, be greedy, and when they're greedy, be fearful. And I thought, if ever I'm gonna buy a property in Richmond, it's gonna be now. So I had made an offer on a property in 2017 and I got outbid by $50,000. And I was pretty pissed because it was the one property that I could afford. And yeah, I got outbid, never thought about it again, but I was pretty pissed. And then In the middle of COVID it came back on the market. I knew the whole backstory to it. I knew how much it sold for. I knew how much I got outbid by. Came on the market, contacted the agent. Just wrote him an email, one of my smartass emails. A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush. That's literally all I sent to him. He goes, are you interested in buying? I said, not from you. Anyway, I was pretty bitter by that if you can't tell.

A bird in the hand is worth more than two.

A bird in the hand? Is worth, a bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush. As in I was ready to buy the property and he gave it to someone else who said like they had a long settlement where I was basically saying that you should have sold it to me. Because he sold the property on a promise basically to this other guy, if that makes sense. A bird in the hand, a bird in the hand, you've got the bird, is worth more than two in the bush. You get two birds in the bush, but you've got one in the hand right now. Bird in this hand is worth more than two in the bush because you might not get any.

No, I've got dial-up internet sounds happening in my head right now.

You get it, Cristiano?

Yes.

Leave in the comments below if you get this analogy. If you don't know, if you're like Ari, yes, of course. So anyway, basically I was saying it was like a sure thing, right? You get that?

It's like you sold it to a friend, not to you, right?

Yeah, he did. He sold it to a friend, right? Oh, was that so hard?

Anyway, anyway, what was the friend's name?

I don't know who the friend was, but anyway, he sold it to this guy. I was pretty bitter about it. And anyway, I spoke to this other guy, we negotiated, and I got it for a really great price. And this was the middle of COVID so I probably bought at the bottom of COVID And I knew there was a little voice, you know, you always get voices speak to you, but I had a little voice speak to me. I didn't take my meds that day. Um, I hadn't, I had a little voice, an actual, like the, your inner voice speak to me. You need to buy now. You have to buy now. This is what you've been waiting for. So I bought and I'm not going to lie, it was pretty scary. It was a pretty big step forward, but I had been preparing from that from 2014 till 2020 was when I bought, December 2020. And then everything that could go wrong with developing and building went and has gone wrong and continues to go wrong. So like, where do I begin? So from the moment I got the property, I had a very fast settlement. That's how I got the deal that I wanted, which is a 45-day settlement. They turned it around super fast to get it on a lower price, which was fine. Didn't have any problems with the banks and that kind of thing, thank goodness. But even the first draftsman that I was introduced to, he came to check out the property 3 times and I asked him for a quote and it was always, yeah, I'll give it to you next day. Give it to you next day. Give it to me. I'm like a week later, like where's the quote? Oh yeah, I'll give it to you tomorrow. I'm like, where's the quote? Like, mate, just say that you're not interested. But it wasn't just him. This was my experience with so many contractors, so many builders. Then I had all the issues with council. And then I had all the issues with one builder who I ended up getting all the permits to build another level on. We agreed upon price of the works and then he quadrupled his quote once I got the permits because he knew he kind of quote unquote had me. And at that point I said, no, mate. I told you what my budget was to begin with. I can't just invent 4 times the amount of money to do this quick. Are you insane? So needless to say, I had to rework all the plans. And I think the other thing, the big lesson for me in that as well was I was getting caught up in what everyone else thought Enterprise could be rather than what I wanted Enterprise to be. And I think that was a fundamental mistake and lesson that I have learned along the way is that I did really get caught up in the let's make it 2 stories and let's do this and let's add this and let's add this. Whereas my vision is always about the way I operate is like simplification. How can I simplify and just be excellent at this one thing and offer this one thing better than anyone else? That's what enterprise really, that's what we're the specialists at doing.

Can you elaborate on specific examples in what people had envisioned for enterprise that you didn't agree with?

I had, it's not that I didn't agree with it, it's just, it just adds like, what do I want for my life and do I want to be operating this? So what I had planned was we're going to build another level. Put like infrared, flotation tank, extra services like myotherapy, naturopathic services, IV room. Just a lot more like accoutrements to, to the business. So people could be kind of like a one-stop wellness thing, as well as in the downstairs would be like gym and the seminar space, so to speak, upstairs as well, which most part would be dead space most of the time in classes. But it was all of this stuff was include other people. That, and then when I really got down to the nitty gritty of it, one, didn't really make sense from a business point of view. Two, like in terms of numbers and things like this, but two, I was involving more people inside of my business when like I want to simplify my business. I want to have less headaches. What this is going to create is more headaches because for the rent that the, say the Mayo pays me, is it worth the headache of he wants to put his branding in on the shop and now people are coming to enterprise? Come to here and then the naturopath or then the hypnosis person and then like all these other things and then filling those rooms. It's adding a lot of other things to the business that yes, you could say on paper makes it a better experience, makes it work, but it also takes away from core offering. Core offering is personal training. Do I really want to be servicing a flotation tank that is only to serve one person? Is it really a deal breaker in the scheme of things? Or is that the core of what we do? Personal training, having the best gym, and where I actually want to go is doing more media and doing more podcasts and doing more YouTube and growing those avenues. Do I need to have a two-story? The answer is no, no, no, no, I definitely don't. Doesn't add an exponential value to our core offering. It adds supplementary value, but they're also things that I'm able to take less risk in, far less risk. So say, for example, I'm not training the Mayo to be a Mayo. I'm not training the naturopath to be a naturopath, but yet I'm putting my label on. I'm saying they're Enterprise, whereas I am training you. I am training Cristiano. I am putting my name because I know how to be a world-class PT. And now I'm very confident if I've trained you, I can put my label on you because I know through our assessments that you can do it. So that's what I mean, is it was adding those things to the business that I wasn't that I'm not an expert in. I was getting a lot of third party and look, the people who get involved, I think are great, but at the same time, if they don't come along for the ride, which in business they may not because things change, you're having to find other people and then hopefully those people align with what you're trying to do, hopefully, and they may not. And you've created other headaches and stress. So for me, where I wanted the business to go and where I see us going is definitely more in that education space, more media space. Being world-class at what we do, which is one-on-one training, as we've spoken about creating. So the challenge has been navigating an industry, the construction industry, that is filled with sharks and red tape. That is the best way to explain the construction industry and anything is you have an enormous amount of red tape through government councils, permits, and all this other stuff. And then you have people who are either ill operators or not qualified to carry, like they're saying it's like this, but actually it needs to be done like this. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of, so at the moment where we're at is I'm actually going to build it now.

Mark Ottobre, ruffling feathers since 2005.

Yeah, that's it. So I'm just like, just. Let's do it. And there have been times I've thought about selling it and let's just move and cut ties and go forward a different path.

But if we go back to, let's go back to when you purchase this new space, if you could go back to that time, what would you do differently between then and now?

Well, I wouldn't have ever put the permit to build up, number one. I would've gone to probably a one-stop shop and spent a little bit more with that one-stop shop to do everything. So for example, a building company. But the problem is with a lot of the building companies, they don't want to know you because it's too small a job. So I would have gone in with the intent to ref rather than let's build up because that wasted a lot of time getting the builds, getting the permits to build because that wasted a year essentially. So if I had the right plans from the beginning, it would've cut a lot of time. And if I found a a good commercial builder from the beginning who partnered with the project from the beginning, it would have saved a lot of time. Absolutely. But that's a case of I went to— I've been to a lot of builders. A lot. Like a lot.

So is that the equivalent advice that you would give to someone if they were in your position? Or in that position?

Probably equivalent advice is like, how bad do you want it? Do your numbers and it may not make sense. And if it's looking like it doesn't make sense, then it may not. So I think the big mistake that I made, the big mistake, the big costly mistake in time and in money was going to build up. But then, because the impression that I got was going to be one fee, it ended up being 4 times the amount. And then anyway, I cut it and I did have a few different other builders that said, that is going to cost you a lot more. That's going to cost you a lot more. And this one guy's like, nah, nah, we can do it. We can do it. I'll be fine. We'll do it for this. And it was also because I was getting advice from a friend who has a construction company and he definitely swayed me to go, yeah, this is cheap. You can do all this cheap. And look, it probably would've cost him that much because he has all the contacts and he knows how to do stuff. Whereas it ain't costing me that much because you've got builder's margin, all these other things that I can't do myself because I don't know how. I don't have the skillset or expertise. The ignorance, I paid for ignorance with time and money, and now I have experience. It's always the exchange, I suppose, in business is experience is always earned with ignorance. Like you begin ignorant and then you trade that ignorance for experience. And the way you trade that ignorance is with time and money. Often it's through the mistakes. So now I have experience. So a lot more, I suppose, wiser for it. And I think my saving grace is just focusing on the controllables. Which has been the business. So just double down and how can we make Enterprise Fitness? How can we make Enterprise Fitness Academy? How can we get this book done? Whereas I think a lot of other people just, they focus on the problem. Whereas I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's a problem. But if I just focus on that, it's going to be big. So let's just like, let that simmer. Let's just do that, whatever it's doing. And we'll figure it out. But, you know, a business, uh, we keep our business strong. It's going to it's going to be able to ride out this wave. Let's just look at this as a speed bump. The further away we get from that, this period of time and more into the future, I think the more we'll look at that as a speed bump. Right now it's a big mountain, it's a big climb.

And once you're in the spot where you can entrust people around you with different aspects of your business, you don't want to put yourself in a position where, I know we've spoken about this before, where you're the informational bottleneck for everything that's around you. And if you can put people in a position, and your employees, where they can figure stuff out on their own without having to come to you, yes, then that's what you want.

Oh, absolutely. And that's the thing, it's what type of life are you creating? And I think that's probably the other— going back to mistakes that I made was I was trying to create a bigger business because someone else wanted a bigger business for me. Wasn't even necessarily a bigger business, they wanted a business, they thought the business would be bigger if we did these things. And that's what I was trying to please. Came down to it, no, that just makes the business more diluted. That, that just actually takes away from our core message. That now has more things to manage that we're not experts in. That's not the game that we play. That's not what brought us to the dance. And that's not what was going to keep us successful. What brought us to the dance is personal training. What's going to keep us successful is personal training. So keep the main thing the main thing. And let's double down and make that even better. And this is what we need to do to make that even better. So it's to bulletproof the business, really owning the land, the business, having all these things, as you said, getting people involved to run departments of the business. Absolutely. Make, I don't want to be the information bottleneck at any point. And by delegating and entrusting people, For me, I'm able to do other things, which then able to create more things and better experience for clients, more profit, more revenue, more products, more things to enjoy, more courses, more books, more videos, more podcasts, more media. It's been able to do more because I have that creator entrepreneurial mindset. Like I'm a serial creator. That's what I like to, that's where I need to be at the time because that's also what I enjoy.

Beautiful.

Cool. Probably a good place to wrap up this episode. It's been a pleasure joining today and chatting. Where can people find you, Mr. Cristiano?

Uh, face to face right here.

Never gets old.

And Ari?

You can contact him by fax.

Fax Ari at 1-800-HAVE-A-GOOD-TIME. And you can find me at Mark Ottobre. Now, where can people find you on Insta?

You can find me at coach.ario. On Instagram.

And I'm @markottobre, and you can find Enterprise at Enterprise Fitness AU on both Instagram and the TikTok. If you've enjoyed this podcast, want more from us here at Enterprise Fitness, go right ahead and feel free to download a free— this free digital version of the Enterprise Fitness user manual. It's on melbournepersonaltrainers.com, so you can check out a whole bunch of resources actually on that page. There's 3 free resources that you can check out. One of them is this one, which is the Enterprise Fitness User Manual. The other one is the first chapter to my book, The Enterprise Diet. The chapter is called You Don't Need a Better Diet. So check out that one. And there's also, for those who want to compete, uh, e-class, actually 3-class series on mistakes competitors make, which was done with myself, Tyrone, and Amy, who are fantastic coaches here at Enterprise. So do check out that series as well. And if you've enjoyed this podcast and gotten value from it, do share it with your friends and family, and that way we can help us get the message out and change more lives, give them— your people— with the right information for training, diet, nutrition, so they can get the results that they've always wanted as well. Until next time, friends, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart. Are you frustrated with your diet, not knowing what to eat, when to eat, macros split, whether you should do a meal plan, Well, I have the solution for you. It's called the Enterprise Diet. We have literally transformed tens of thousands of people's lives. These are the exact principles, systems, methods that we use in creating the head-turning results that we do time after time for over a decade here at Enterprise Fitness. You can check it out at enterprisediet.com. This took me 3 years to put together, and I'm very proud to share it with you all. It literally is like taking everything that I know in my— in here and just putting it on paper for you to download today. So check it out, enterprisediet.com, and grab your copy today.