S6:E32 - How we set goals for 2024 (EF Year in Review!)

Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. I am joined today with Ari Otis. How are you today, Ari?

Just the two of us.

Just the two of us. That's cute. It is so cute. I'm really excited about this.

Dates with Mark.

What was that?

Dates with Mark.

Dates with Mark. It's the new name of the show. Welcome to Dates with Mark. Oh, my first guest, Ari Otis. Uh, so today, what are we going to be talking about today, Ari?

The year in review, and what a year it has been.

It has been a big year. There is a great— a big fan of— we're both fanboys of him, Timothy Ferriss. Timothy Ferriss, he has a process which I did for the first time last year, which is the year in review process. Have you seen it?

I have seen it, but you'll do a much better job than me of talking about it. Obviously you've done it before, so let's hear it from you.

Well, basically the year in review process that he has— so a lot of people write resolutions and a lot of people don't follow through on their resolutions. Which is, you know, very, very common. So instead of writing a resolution, what you do is you go through your entire calendar for the last year, so obviously 2023, and from January you review all the times where you felt particularly events of like happiness or actions that you had, daily actions of happiness, or you felt motivated or working towards something, and you list on one side. And then the actions or things that you had to do that, you know, kind of detracted from that, things that you felt sadness or challenge or obstacles, and you put that in a separate column. And things are kind of the hindrances of the year towards things of your own fulfillment and pursuit, and things that helped you towards that pursuit. And you do simply do less of the things that you don't want to do, or delegate and find ways around these things, and do more of the things that you do want to do. And some of that can be as simple as simply saying no. So if there's certain people in your life that, you know, if on your calendar you go through and you find that it's really negative, uh, so it could be a friend, a family member, or a colleague, whatever it is— a podcast with Mark, podcast with Mark, you allocate more time. In this case, you put that on the green column, whereas on the ones that say podcast with Serena, uh, you put that in the red column.

Wouldn't that be a sight?

That would be a sight. Um, yes, it would be.

We still, we still need Serena on as a guest.

Yeah, I think we do. It'd be very interesting. She should tell some interesting stories.

Absolutely.

Yeah, maybe wait till she, uh, completely parts from Enterprise before we put on as a guest. It might be too incriminating to put her on any earlier than that.

Yeah, she'll bring a lawyer with her.

Yeah, I think we should bring away with us. So that's basically the process. I did it for the first time last year, and some really simple stuff for me came, came out of it. You know, certain conversations with people that really were just never productive. I put that on the red column and decided I'm just not going to engage, I'm just not going to do it. And I had it on my desk every day, just a reminder, like, do more of these things, don't do more of these things. And I found it very helpful. Rather than a resolution, I started spending a lot more time on the things that I actually enjoy. And very simple one for me was like with coaching. I know for me in my own training, you know, I know a lot of stuff, obviously being, you know, a lifelong learner of physique, culture, training, nutrition, supplementation. I can definitely get in my head about what I should be doing. So one of the things I— resolutions for me was to train with a coach at all times. Because I find I just get so much more out of my own training if I'm guided and don't have that chatter. And that was actually quite a— that's something I've always kind of done, but it was, it was that affirmation of, yes, I don't have to spend negative time in, in thinking about what I should be doing. Rather, I could, you know, train with someone, actually get the most out of my training. That's the example of something. Less conversations about certain issues with people in my life who are quite detractors of what I was trying to do. That was another thing that was quite positive this year. I know what's going on my list.

Name it.

Facebook. Fuck, man.

Fuck Facebook.

So many issues. So, um, for me this year, one of the big, uh, I've been hacked like 3 times this year. It's been an ongoing battle. I don't know if there's any business owners or Facebook advertisers watching this, they probably can relate, but been hacked multiple times this year. And one of the big frustrating events of 2023 is Yeah, I set up our Facebook ads campaign multiple times only to have it hacked, and now Facebook have come back and essentially put a restriction on my ads account, which then my— at the enterprise page and my own personal business page are tied up in this ads account, which I can't remove from this ads account and Business Manager. So I can't put it on a new Business Manager ads account. So makes it very, very difficult to then market things in the business. And that's been definitely a—

no, we can't all be in your face like like we want to.

Yeah, it's been a detractor for 2023. So looking at ways around that, but that's definitely going on my detractor column. It's to figure out ways that I just don't have to deal with that because it's been a very— and the most annoying thing about it is recently, right, I was running a course, as you know, the Elite Results Bootcamp. Shout out for Elite Results Bootcamp coming up. We've got 25 people booked for that course. We would have had 30, 35 people easily for that course. There's no doubt our ads were, you know, they're crushing it. And, uh, I was like 3 weeks into the campaign and, uh, it, it just, it gets hacked and the ads account completely disappears. And that definitely, uh, you know, we had people, we have people coming for that course coming up, um, people coming from Malaysia, people coming from, um, Bali, all over. And it's gonna be an awesome course and just really, really frustrating when you're trying to get the word out, do good things, and, uh, no restrictions.

It's gonna be, it's gonna be great like it always is every year. Um, and irrespective of the number of people, it's still always an amazing experience. And anyone that hasn't heard about it yet, um, inquire within because it'll be one of the best things that you ever do if you're a trainer looking to level up your coaching or just someone looking to learn more about just training, nutrition, and overall philosophies just surrounding just having a good lifestyle. Something I highly recommend. Going back to things that you're looking to set for yourself going forward, and going back to when you did this year in review last time, having this kind of, this kind of introspectiveness can be very confronting for a lot of people, um, especially when I've spoken to clients, anyone that's done any kind of self-reflection or journaling, even if it's good things or on top of bad things, people struggle to write down their own thoughts and read back and, and hear their thoughts out loud. Is that something that you experienced? And if so, how did you confront it?

Not anymore. I think I've done it so long. I think there is that fear that you need to remind yourself that this is only for you. You don't actually have to show anyone. And also the other thing is, if you feel embarrassed about what you're writing down, you can tear around the piece, you can tear out the piece of paper rip it up, burn it, throw it in the bin, flush down the toilet, do whatever you want with it. You don't have to let it sit there if you're scared about someone reading it or something like this. But I think for me, it's a really always affirmative experience when you write down your goals and what you actually want compared to what you think you want. And there's a concept— like, I come from, you know, at school I was an art and design nerd, right? Um, I did art and design, and that was my kind of major, and I finished, you know, with a subject award in art. Designed the Year 12 windcheaters, did this, you got into airbrushing, you know, I'm wearing a Dragon Ball Z t-shirt. Yeah, I, I love that aspect of, of things. So for me, there's this concept called green line— green light thinking, which is just, you don't— it's only green lights. You only write like, you know, a giraffe walked past, you can write that. Like, you know, a booger in a, uh, no, whatever. Like, whatever comes to your head, you write it down. It doesn't matter how absurd, how stupid, how random, whatever it is, you write it down. And even if you write, oh, that's a stupid thought, that's fine. But it allows you to brain dump and then you can kind of be the conscious mind observing yourself. It's like, well, who are you? And you're almost observing who you are as someone different, if that makes sense. So you're removing. So I think, you know, if people are new to it, it's, it's coming with that almost like childlike curiosity to observe yourself. And rather than think this is how you want to be, this is how you actually are, even though it might not make sense. And plot that out. But certainly it can be, can be confronting because you can be, you know, I think what happens a lot of the time, and I'm definitely guilty of this as well— oh, actually, perfect example, right, is as a coach, you know, if you met me through doing this podcast in 2013, 2014, I wanted to identify as the coach, as the guy, you know. If there was someone going to the comps, I wanted to be the one who was training, training them. Winning. And, and that was something that was very hard for me to let go of. And that's the identity that you ascribe to. You know, I'm a personal trainer, this is what I do. And there does need to be, I think, a death of identities throughout your life if you want to grow into something else. And sometimes when we confront these things on a piece of paper, it's that— that's what we're confronting. We're confronting our own attachment to how we think we are supposed to be, or how we've been for the last 5, 6, 7, 10 years. And there is fear, obviously, in letting that identity go. But when you let the identity go, it brings in the other, the other kind of chapter of your life. And for me, you know, this is a classic kind of male, I would say, stereotypical arc, which is a lot of guys will go through. This is the warrior mindset to the king mindset. The warrior mindset is, you know, all about themselves. It's what do I achieve? It's, you know, hunting the big deer. And bringing it home and saying, look, look at this badge of honor, look at this medal that I got and how big this trophy is and whatever, and being the guy. Whereas that, you know, transformation process, that kingly mindset is more about how do you bring other people up into the kingdom, how do you look after people, how do you serve, how do you serve your people. And obviously there's shadow aspects to both of those things, there's good aspects to both of those things which we don't have to get into, but the point is there is I think The reason why people feel confronted is the death of the identity which they attach themselves to that goal, and then letting go of that, uh, can completely transform your life, at least in my experience of observing.

100%. I think anyone in my experience, anyone who's apprehensive about it hasn't tried it yet, which is how a lot of people are going to be with most things. And as someone that's begun journaling over the last couple of months it was equally as confronting to me before I started it. And yes, you're a little bit afraid of, of perhaps what you're going to put on the paper, but every time I've let something out onto the paper, I feel much better after it. And yeah, you're just not holding it in your head. And when that accumulates, when you put it down onto the paper, you realize how much of that you've been carrying with you. And You may realize how silly something sounds when you finally let it out, and just gives you— in a lot of ways, it gives you that closure, and it helps you articulate your thoughts properly. And the way that extends into other facets of life, I found it so much easier to ultimately talk about my feelings, to articulate how I'm feeling to other people. And it's just been a really good way to just remind myself of, of the good things and just taking the little positives that come from every day. And I think that ties into this New Year's reflection that we've been speaking about, because you can essentially just extend that concept and extrapolate it over a whole year in the same way that you perhaps may do daily reflection in the form of, say, journaling.

Yeah, and I think one of the things, if you do want to, let's say, result or resolve— people have resolutions right at the end of the year— if you don't want to resolve something, it's not— my friend who's a mindset coach, he will say change can happen in an instant, but it's usually the build-up to change that happens. It takes 5, 10, whatever years, but the change is actually instant. It happens in an instant. But it's the buildup that takes a long time. And if you are, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, you know, I want to lose 10 kilos this year, I want to keep the weight off, or whatever resolution you're looking for, I think one of the big things is you need to actually acknowledge the fact that it's not, it's not overnight. You know, yes, you make a decision and you stick to it. And decision, the etymology of decision is to kill off other options. Once you've made a decision, you you have killed off the other options that were in place of making that decision. And that's where the word originates from. And if you think about that as a concept, that can be very powerful because once you've made that, then you commit to it, right? That's really what a committed decision means. So in saying that, the way you're going to keep yourself on track, whether it's a weight loss goal, a muscle building goal, strength goal, completely unrelated to physique goal, is to write these things down daily, to remind yourself of these things daily until they instill as Behavioral habits and patterns and predictable patterns create our outcomes. So really, what are we trying to rewire here? We're trying to rewire the brain so that we're not struggling to eat well each day or struggling to not eat fast food and not do the right things. These become part of us. And writing, I think, really is the process of— it's the doing part of thinking when we write these things down.

Well, it's getting the reps in, isn't it?

Absolutely. And how many reps do we need to correct bad dysfunction of the body?

You tell me.

Thousands. Thousands. AMRAP. Yeah, thousands, right? At low loads. I mean, sometimes— and the thing is with change, and I think it relates perfectly to training, is that, you know, volume and intensity are the levers that we, we utilize, right? And if we have a high amount of load, like on a squat, we're squatting 200 kilos, might only do 1 rep and get, you know, a huge gain from that neurology. And our muscles are going to obviously be quite fatigued from that, right? And that's a, that's like a punch to the face. And I think the same thing can happen when we're trying to change our neurology, how we relate to things. And the example I would use is, is cancers and smoking, right? So people will think about quitting smoking for years, and they might, you know, do hypnosis, or they might do these lower things like, I'm a healthy non-smoker, or they might affirmations. It might take reps and reps and reps to get the same result, and they might eventually get there, they might not. But often when they— that punch in the face, or the equivalent to, you know, maxing out on your squat is when someone close to them dies and they pass away for the very reason that's affecting them. You know, they passed away from lung cancer and they're like, well, now it's actually personal. So you can still have the same shock to the neurology, but those things don't always present themselves if we're actively seeking change. They can, they can be, you know, in marketing, you know, there's what's known as trigger events. For example, turning 40 is a trigger event. Christmas is a trigger event. Anniversaries are trigger events. Where people go, oh shit, New Year's Eve is a classic trigger event where people go, I'm wasting my life, what am I doing? I'm no different this year. It's triggering for people. And if we want to create that change and stick to that change, we have to then decide, we have to commit. But I think we really, you know, this is where I like Tim's process, is I think what gets the reps in is also acknowledging how much your life actually sucks from doing the actions that make you feel like, you know, life sucks. And if we can correct those actions, that, that then makes it real for us on a neurological level, which then causes us to want to take action. I interrupt this podcast to give you a very special message. December, we are running an Elite Results Bootcamp. What is the Elite Results Bootcamp? It is a 3-day bootcamp where we teach our systems around strength, hypertrophy, and fat loss. It is intense. There are 6 workouts over the 3 days, and our trainers not only spill the beans on all the techniques, methods, systems that we use to get next-level results, we take you through actual workouts so you can experience in real time. If you're a client, if you're someone who's interested in Enterprise Fitness, or if you're a trainer looking to level up, check out our course, Enterprise Fitness Academy, and click on Elite Results.

100%. I think one of the best things as well to note about people setting conventional New Year's resolutions is that it's often just going to rely purely on discipline over weeks, months, or even years to fulfill their resolution. And at the end of the day, discipline is, with a lot of people, is often going to be a finite resource. And I think the best, one of the best things I've learned is if we want to look to create a change in our identity or create a new habit, rather than relying on sheer discipline, actually creating a disciplined environment around us. And not just, yeah, relying on brute force to make a new habit, but make that habit easier to achieve. And examples of this are just simply providing yourself an environment, whether it's changing something at home, or changing the people that you surround yourself with who are going to be more conducive to you achieving a resolution or any kind of goal, creating a path of least resistance to yourself is going to be a much easier way rather than having to push through things day in, day out in order to achieve something you want to achieve.

You know what I call that? Impossibility thinking. Is in whatever your goal is. Name a goal. What's a goal for you?

So say a physique goal, um, deadlift 180 kilos.

All right, so if your goal is— I reckon you've got 200 there, so let's make it 200.

Sure.

If your goal is to deadlift 200 kilos, how could we make it impossible for you to fail? And so you, you're getting green light thinking. You're green light thinking that idea, right? And you list everything that would make it impossible for you to fail that goal. So the first thing you might say is get a coach who has deadlifted, you know, 250-300 kilos before. Get your technique looked at. Do every session with a coach. Now, some of these things might not be feasible. Like, it might not be feasible for you to have a coach for every session. You might say, well, do recovery every week. Do have a physio. Have someone check your form. Record all your lifts. Write down all your lifts. Have a systemized program. Have best food, have the best supplements, and you write a list of all the things that would make it inevitable for you to achieve your goal. And when you stack those things, and some of them, you know, you put on a list and you're like, well, you know, I can't have a chef, I don't have a private chef, I don't have the means, the funds to hire a private chef who can, you know, sort out my meals every day. It would be nice and get my macros sorted and all that kind of stuff.

And I don't know if I'm blowing money on all these, on all the supplements and training, then I don't have money to spend on going out and being non-compliant.

Right, exactly. But you could also then downscale from that and go, well, I don't have, I don't have the money to do that, but what's the next best thing? I could do it myself, I could pay a friend, I could get some of our meals prepped, uh, I, I could— well, I might not be able to afford this cut of meat, but I could afford this cut of meat. So you, you can always scale down the option just because, like, you, you start— I think the thing is where you want to start is what is the absolute most ridiculous best case scenario for you to do that, right? So Um, you know, shout out to Gus Cook. He's an amazing powerlifting coach. But in that regard, it's like, well, you know, you might go, well, I do all my sessions with, with Gus, being, you know, trained some of the strongest people in Australia. All right, what's the next best thing? Training with James, right? Um, and, you know, James is no slouch. You know, he's gotten crazy strong, and he's gotten heaps of guys crazy strong. And, um, so you do all your sessions with him, for example. Um, or, and then the food-wise, you go, well, I can't get a private chef, but you can't prepare your food. You can, you know, you might not be able to afford all the supplements that you want, but you can afford some of the supplements. And you just keep going down the list until you go, well, this is now actually inevitable. It's inevitable that with time I'm going to get my goal.

I think a good example for trying to make a little bit more applicable to, say, a lot of the clients that we get and make a bit more of a nutrition-related goal is if we're looking at relying on discipline to avoid certain foods that are going to take you off plan, say, around the house in the same way that we want to make a good habit easy to achieve, let's make a bad habit hard to achieve. Let's not have those foods in the house to begin with. What are you going to do? You're going to go out of your way to leave the house, go to the supermarket, or go to a shop and, and get takeaway? Or you're not, you're not going to go out of your way to do that. And just by simple decisions like that— and this can extend to anything else— I use my phone way too much. That's, that's a habit that I'm trying to break. My phone's not in my room, then it's not something that I'm going to have to look across and say, hey, that phone looks tempting.

Feed blocker on your apps, feed blocker on your desktop, feed blocker on your Chrome. Makes it harder. Yeah, go into your feed blocker and then put, you know, suspend. And then when you find yourself mindless scrolling, it's like, well, there's a feed block. Oh yeah, that's right, I'm trying to not look at my phone. Putting locks that put barriers, 100%.

Make these habits easy, make the bad habits hard.

I used to have a really bad habit of eating nuts. Like, you see a lot of nuts, right? So I said to my deal, I can eat as many nuts. So you go on, make the joke.

I did. It's been said.

Um, and I made myself a deal. I can eat as many nuts, but I have to crack the shell myself. So, you know, after cracking the shell, you're like, you know, eating shell. It's so difficult to eat, and it's not as pleasurable. It's not as nice. It's not just, oh, I'm grabbing, I'm eating it.

So I don't know, man. You see any walk with a, with a Santa sack full of sunflower seeds and they've got the bag full of shells there, they can sit there all day. So this doesn't apply to that.

But it really— well, for me, that's an example.

I can say wog as well because I'm a wog.

Just, um, that broke my, that broke my, uh, pattern, the habit of going, reaching for a handful of nuts, because it would just put a barrier in front of me. Um, a good example, last night I have food always prepared in my fridge and I got to 6:30, I'm like, oh crap, haven't bought any meat for dinner. And then I opened my fridge and there it was, mince was already made. I'm like, oh, like, and this is one of those things that it's such a habit for preparing food that even when you think you need to go to the shop to buy food, you actually already have food prepared because that's just what you do. You prepare food for multiple meals in advance.

It's a pleasant surprise, isn't it?

It's a pleasant surprise. It kept me on track. I didn't, you know, I didn't need to Uber Eats anything. I didn't need to go, oh, I'm hungry, I'm gonna go shop somewhere. So these things can definitely, I think, be implemented into people's lifestyles and resolve the problem if it is weight loss, whatever it is. What are your goals? You know, what are your— do you have resolutions for the new year ahead?

Resolutions for the new year? Keep improving my craft at Enterprise. I'd like to be promoted to Master Coach at some point next year before I go away to Europe again next year. I'm someone that feels like I, I need to be under the pump in order to achieve something. I need a time-constricted goal. I need pressure in order to push myself to do better. Um, and I found myself in the latter half of this year sort of riding the wave, going through the motions a little bit, being a little bit more content than usual with stagnation, and not feeling like things were easy, but not pushing myself to improve too much in any way, or try, try different things with clients that are going to force me to ultimately learn. I think a lot of— bit of a tangent here— a lot of PTs can get comfortable implementing the same systems with every client. And yes, these are effective systems if you've had success with them before, but what are you learning by implementing similar nutrition strategies, programming strategies? You're not learning anything from it. So I think just pushing myself to, yeah, try different things and improving and widening my scope of expertise and practice.

How would you know what's an evidence-based procedure? So I should say into the mic, what's an evidence-based procedure that would say, yes, I finished 2000? Well, first question, loaded question. What's something that— is this something that needs to happen for you to finish 2013— 13— 2023? 10 years in the past. 2023.

Yeah, finish year 9. That's what I have to do.

Um, what, what's something— first part, is there anything that needs to happen in 2023 for you to go, yeah, this was an unbelievable year, or has it already been?

Look, it's, it's already happened. It's, it's pretty easy for me to say that 2023 has been the best year of my, my my life by a mile. I feel like I've, I've achieved a lot. Um, I got promoted to senior coach at Enterprise. I went on my first solo holiday and ticked off my bucket list item of going to Tomorrowland. I completed a photo shoot as a 25th birthday present to myself prior to that and learned a lot about myself along the way and what I was capable of, and learning something that I can better administer to my clients as well. And most importantly, Collingwood won the flag. So it's, it's been the best year, and 2024 is going to have to do a lot to top it. So to answer your question, it's anything after this is in the last 6 weeks of the year is, is going to be a bonus.

Yeah. And by the time you're watching, it's probably like 2 weeks of the year.

True.

Yeah. And 2024, so 2024 MasterCoach is on the cards. Sure. Uh, Europe is on the cards. Tomorrowland again?

Yes.

Yeah. Um, let's not beat around the bush. Yeah. And anything else on the card? Anything else that you've got your eyes set on 2024?

Um, I'd like to run a marathon.

Oh really? Yeah, you've had that goal for a little while.

Yeah, it was meant to happen last year actually, then something happened that put those plans in the bin. Uh, with my training personally, been on a bit more of a strength-focused block, so I look to hit some PBs in my big 3 and then looking to transition into running a marathon at the back half of next year. Just look to do the Melbourne Marathon. So yeah, just another— putting another challenge in front of myself, another time-constricted goal that just ultimately forces me to pull my finger out of my ass and do something cool. How about you, Mark? What do you have for 2024?

I really, really, really want to move Enterprise into the new Victoria Street building. So man, it's been what, 3 years? I bought the building 2020 December, so we'll be going up this December to 3 years that I've actually had it, bought it. And there's, yeah, I just haven't had a smooth run. Yeah, I've fired 3 builders, I've had issues with councils, I've had issues with building surveyors. I've had issues with contractors. I've had issues getting fines. I've had just— it's, it's been a rough 3 years, um, you know, trying to get this thing to life. So at the moment, there's dirt, there's no roof. I went past there just before. Uh, there's, there's dirt, there's no roof. And finally, my cousin's taken over, uh, so I'm the owner-builder now, and, um, we're, we're smashing it out together. So we've got the first part of the slab booked in next week, which is good. And by the time I get back from my US trip to see Mr. Robbins, uh, we should have the whole slab there and start building that back wall. And yeah, even the engineers, there's just so much bad advice that I was given initially and so much like incorrect planning. And you know, we had the wall, the back wall was on a lean. The engineer that I had initially said it was fine. The council came out, looked at it, said no, this isn't fine, has to come down. Sent me notices, said you only have 2 weeks or a week to get it down. And then issued stop works on it. And there's just been a lot of headaches. And the most recent one was the demolition of the back wall and the slab. Man, took 6 months to get it done. You know, really it was a 2-week job. And because the guy who, you know, took the project actually didn't have a commercial license, but obviously said that to me after I requested the commercial number to get the permit, I already paid him the full amount. So then it was a whole looping of how do I work around this? How do I get this done? And the solution was owner-builder. But these things move very, very slowly. Councils move very, very slowly. Permits move very, very slowly. And unfortunately, builders also, some builders move fast, some of them slow.

And we got to the point basically where we just stopped asking Mark about the building. We're just like, it was like Voldemort. You just, you couldn't say it.

Yeah, it's— look, it's, it's been, it's been heartbreaking. It's been really disappointing. You know, I, I've really— I thought I'd be in there with 12 months. You know, I thought 2021 would be in there, 2022 at the latest, February. And now we're heading into 2024, we're still not in there. So crazy. It's been, it's been hard. It's been rough personally, professionally, and it's put a lot of things that I've wanted to do on hold. And, uh, so that, that for me in 2024, if we can move into that, because that will really, I think, solidify enterprise and also be able to enable us to turn the next chapter, enable us as a business to take more risks. And, you know, there are, I suppose, from a longevity perspective, what we can accomplish when the business owns the actual building. I think, you know, there's a certain degree of safety, there's a certain degree of you know, you can't really fuck this up at this point, right? Uh, so, and that's what I want to, I want to work towards is that safety so, you know, we can, we can take more risks as a business. So for me, that's a big one. Um, this year I published this book. I mean, this also took me 3 years to put together, and from writing it to publishing. And, um, so I was really, really proud to get this one out this year in 2023, because that was a huge goal and has been a goal for some time. So I still got to do the audio version. And I suppose for me, it's, it's the level of projects that I've taken on in 2023 have been actually very big, and there's been a lot of them. So we did 4 new websites this year, and we redid all our websites. So there was the Enterprise Fitness website, we redid the Academy website, my personal website, which is going to be about to be released, and the book's website. And then a whole bunch of backend stuff as well. So I mean, these are, these are big, big, big projects. So there's that, there's the mentoring group that I'm hitting up. Um, so I want to, want to get that to 20, 30 people. So that's growing a little bit organically. And obviously the Facebook gods have not been kind to me on that regard at all. And then for me, I think the next thing is just I want to, I want to do, I do want to invest the money into more media and stuff that we're doing there, like with YouTube. So relaunching my, my personal YouTube, the podcast, obviously, as I said, the building, because the building does like the back and forth and that takes up an enormous amount of time. And just it's honestly like, you know, my column, we spoke about the review of the year, the amount of bullshit time that I spend on this thing, like the two bullshit items for me, if I can get rid of them in 2024, it'd be, you know, I'd get 80% of my time back. Facebook. And the building.

So if we go back in time to when you just bought the new space, what would you do differently? Or at least what advice would you give to someone who is in a similar scenario looking to build?

I don't think I bought incorrectly. I still attest to I bought at the right time. I bought at the bottom of the market during COVID And so I think I bought at the right time. But I think getting too much advice of what people thought I should do with the building you know, one of the pieces of advice was to build up and not really knowing how much actually building up would cost. And the quotes that I was given by people were if they were going to do it, and they weren't going to do it. So, you know, the quote was 4 times more than what, you know, someone who could do it themselves would be for me. And I didn't have someone who was going to do it for me, if that makes sense. So obviously it's going to cost me a lot. I didn't really know what was involved. So I think from the get-go the advice would be, well, don't dabble in building up. That would be the first thing. I think contacts— I didn't have the contacts that I have now, and obviously only got those contacts because I've been through 2 engineers, I've been through 2 draftsmen, 3 draftsmen, I've been through, uh, I don't know how many builders and interviewed how many builders. And I've got some, you know, just store— I've got a lot of stories there. You know, one guy came out to quote the job rang me, was really great, and then ghosted me. And then 3 months later calls me again, says he wants the job. Like, okay. And then he ghosts me again. Like, is this seriously— like, dude, you're like 45.

What do you block him?

Well, I left him a 1-star Google review, um, because I'm just like, man, yeah, this is just not how—

I mean, it's, it's been stressful enough living as, you know, with the whole team at Enterprise living vicariously through you, you know, seeing how, how stressful it has been. But I think it's also a testament to how much we've been able to achieve in this space at Enterprise. And, you know, the book, all the courses, all the websites, everything. And quite— and physically as well, how much we've been able to condense into this space here. And it's just, it just makes us all so excited for the future.

Classic example of this, right? So you remember when this got delivered, the hack squat, 350-kilo hack squat, right? For all the way from Canada, Atlantis. That was supposed to be delivered to new place, and I had it all set. And I'm like, dude, I don't know how this is going to fit in here. I do not know how this is going to— and all the equipment that we actually got this year, so it's been significant investment in terms of equipment that we got this year, was all supposed to go to the new place.

And we just absolutely Tetris'd it.

They, they, the companies called me, they said, dude, we can't hold this any longer. We can't hold your stuff any longer. We need to deliver it now. I'm like, uh, okay, well, another stress. So there's concept of bandwidth. If you've got a Wi-Fi modem and you've got 10 different devices, they're all going to be running a bit slow, or 100 devices. But if you've only got one device plugged into the bandwidth, then the bandwidth is able to— So for me, 2024 is getting rid of the projects or transforming the projects that have been eating up my bandwidth so I can do fun stuff. So that's a long answer, but what does fun stuff look like for you? Content. Yeah, I think at heart, um, at heart I like to make content. I like to make stuff. I think that for me at heart is I like to make stuff, whether it's a course, an experience, you know, uh, layers to the business, training, books, resources. Like, I'm, I'm my happiest when I'm making stuff. And whether it's a podcast, that, that for me, I get excited about that stuff. And especially like experiences for people. So I haven't haven't had the space and capacity. Like, you know, the program that I run, The Art of Coaching, you know, that one I ran last year this time, and people— like, everyone who actually took that course said it was their favorite course.

It was so well received, I remember.

Yeah, and it really surprised me because it was like kind of— it was end of the year, I was a bit tired, I wasn't feeling it, and it was really well received. So I want to do more stuff with that, which is more— has nothing to do with training, nutrition. It's all about— and I think, you know, there is a big space in terms of the stuff that I've done, my background around, you know, the communication psychology, leadership, all that kind of stuff. That there's so many different ideas I have from that, and I just haven't really had the capacity to explore. And that's what— because, you know, these things are— they take a lot of time. They take a lot of time to develop. They take a lot of time to market. They take a lot of time to sell. They take a lot of time to put on. Um, and that creativity process, you need, you need space. You need— you can't be constantly under stress. And if you are under stress, what I find— yes, you need stress to push you, but that stress of, oh, it's got to get out. Like, it's kind of a fine line, right? Not the level of stress you've had to— no, not, not the level of stress where, you know, people are calling you and it's like, you know, this happened and you've got this fine and why is the truck there? And, you know, you're just like, okay, this was my day and now this is my day. And, uh, it's extremely frustrating, um, but that's been kind of the reality for the last— so yeah, that's, that's, you know, if we can do a podcast this time next year in a, in a new building with a Shake Bar and all the, you know, nice things that we'll have there. It'll be, it'd be great. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Yeah, well, that's it for this episode. If you've enjoyed the episode, Ari, where can people contact you and learn more about you if they want to train?

You can find me in the four walls of Enterprise, or they can find me on Instagram at coach.ario.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. My name is Mark Ottobre. Uh, follow me on Instagram @markottobre. And if you enjoyed this episode do hit subscribe. Until next week, folks, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart. Oh, hi there. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. While I've still got you, why not check out our book, www.enterprisediet.com, today and grab your copy?