E14: Dion Monkivitch - How To Master Your Mind to Crush Business & Life

What's going on, everyone? My name is Matt Darts here for another episode. I've got an absolute superstar on with us today. So we've got Dion Monkovich. He's actually, for those who don't know, he was my first mentor that I helped or that he helped me with my business coaching. So he was one of the reasons why I, you know, have done some somewhat success. I've been somewhat successful in the. The business coaching space. So I'm keen to. To dive into what we're going to talk about today. So I'll let him kind of share his story a little bit, but he's got a somewhat similar background to me in terms of owning gyms and, you know, now being fully online as well. So, Dion, welcome to the show, my friend.

Hey, thanks, brother. And thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it.

No worries, man. I was just looking at your Instagram before actually, and I saw that your, your client results are now over 77 million, I think. Was. It was, yeah.

And that's in recorded results since January 2021. So that's not recording everyone's either. So. Yeah, and that's in. That's in recorded profit, not revenue. So that's our cash profit.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, very. So I suppose we'll, we'll get into, I suppose, who you are first. So do you want to give everyone a bit of a. A summary of your journey from, you know, even when you were even in a network marketing side of things to owning and what you do now?

I'll try and give you a bit of a snapshot of it then you. Obviously, if you pick up anything along the way, bro, feel free to dive in because otherwise I'll just chat forever. But I'm based on the Sunny Coast. I grew up in Ballarat, Victoria, until I was about 13, 14, moved up to Harvey Bay with my parents the moment school finished. I, I basically moved away. And I've been on pretty much the Sunny coast incident, done a little bit of time, Brisbane and Goldie, but mainly the Sunny coast, to call that home. Now, I'm an extremely proud dad of two. I've got my beautiful little Malibu, she's three, and Zander, he is six. They definitely keep me on my toes. And I'm. I'm newly married, as you know, as well to my beautiful wife Sim. And yeah, we've got a blessed life here on the Sunny coast, which is a. Like, I guess if people check me out on Instagram, it looks like sunshine and rainbows, but definitely hasn't been a Pretty ride to get here, that's for sure. Yeah, man. In a nutshell, I guess I'll just. Like most people, it's. I came from just a normal family, a very traditional family. So basically is that if you didn't get a, a trade or a university degree when you left school, you were deemed a failure in my family. So myself and my brother, we were the biggest failures to our family. And I remember my 21st birthday, I'd have landed a job in the mines and I'd been so I was, I was 19 when I landed a job in the mines. And it was back when it was the mining boom, so, you know, you could go into the mines with no qualifications. And I was on about 196 grand a year, so. 196 grand a year, you know, back, you know, this is, you know, going back 12 years ago, you know, it's probably equivalent to 250k these days, you know, so it was big money for a 19 year old. I'd been, I'd been doing it for about two years and my family was so proud of me. And anyway, I got into it about two to three years and I was like, this isn't for me. Like, I love the money, but everyone out here is just stuck. And they were all just like normal people. And I, the life I've got now had this life, even though they were earning great money. And I quit the mines and I remember at my 21st birthday, we probably had 30 of our closest family members and probably 20 to 30 of my closest friends. And I remember this like it was yesterday. So we're going on 13 years ago now. I was playing pool. It was at the beer garden in Gold coast in Cavill Avenue. And I'm playing pool and I remember one of my good friends, Jay at the time, had just landed a sparky apprenticeship. And my dad was a sparky, so he was proud of me for being in the mines, but he always wanted me to be a sparky. So when I quit the mines, my dad was not happy. And I remember Jay came over and just told my dad, he goes, matt, you know, I just landed the sparky apprenticeship. And I remember this like it was yesterday. And my dad said in front of everyone, d did you hear that, mate? Jay got an electrical apprenticeship. You're a fucking letdown, mate. And it sat with me forever. And it gave me that moment, gave me the biggest burning desire to prove that guy wrong. And from that day forward, I went into business and I've had two massive fails in Business. You want me to share them quickly with the journey?

Oh mate, I'd love to go through the, the failures. Everyone always obviously always hears the success stories but let's go through the failures.

Awesome. Awesome. Well man, is it like if I didn't have these failures I wouldn't be so successful successfully. What I do now is helping other Australian businesses because my epic fails led to epic lessons. So now I get to coach people on what not to do in business. But anyway, because what, what you would notice is like when we started our little sort of coaching journey, you did my pre recorded programs. It's a little bit different but it's cool to see you got so much out of it anyway is I do things kind of backwards and different and I'm very creative and a lot of with our, our voice notes is I do things very differently and it seems to work. But anyway, my first business was I went into business with one of my good friends Justin and his dad gave us 100 grand to start our own lawns and gardens, French like landscaping business. And I remember we got into that and we were just young, we didn't know what we're doing and I think that business lasted about two years and we just ran it into the ground. We had no idea what we're doing. That, that was an epic fail there. That was 100 grand down the drain. And then I, while I was at the mines, part of like my goal of transitioning out of the mines was I was, I was into bodybuilding back then. So I used to be, you know, one of those, you know, tatted up juice junkies. I was one of those wankers I guess you'd call us. And I was into bodybuilding. I was semi professional, you know, I had all the sponsors and I wanted, wanted to get my pro card and that sort of thing. It's a natural thing. You know what, what we all did back then was like, oh, we'll start our own gym brand. So I started like a gym apparel range. I and supplements, same thing. Had no idea what I was doing, didn't have a mentor. Trying to work it out my own on my own. And I started, I had a local supplier here on the sunny coast. We built up like a brand of like some cool hoodies and that sort of thing. Just put a logo on it. Thought we'd started a business and about six months in it was doing relatively okay. And then I took advice from someone that didn't have what I want. That was the first mistake I, I made. And they said look, you, you've got it, you've got it. Never buy stuff in Australia, man, because there's not enough profit in it. Know you've got to buy from Pakistan or China, you know, you've got to get it drop shipped in and then resell the products. I was like, oh really? An idea. I can increase my profits by 30%. So instead of me just running because I'm, I'm, I'm always an all in person, like I never leave, you know, I, I break as I'm moving that fast and I, I literally, I got a supplier and I think I had about $25,000 in savings. And for me that was a lot of money because I was spending my paychecks week to week and I threw 25 grand into a Pakistani supplier to get all of my stock done. And the stock eventually arrived and every single tag was the wrong size. It was like random colors, the logo was blurry and I couldn't sell the stuff. So that was 25 grand gone and other business down the drain. And then I was like, there has to be a way I can make more money. Like I'm not going back to the mines. I ended up back at the mines for a couple more months and I was literally Googling while I'm sitting in my dongle at the mines. I'm like Googling how to get rich working for yourself and this thing pops up. Pyramid schemes. I was like, I need to find a pyramid scheme. And anyway, I'm scrolling through Instagram or I, I don't even think I used Instagram back now. It was Facebook. And I see this young dude, he was 27 years old or 25 years old with this Ferrari. I was like, that guy definitely isn't working in the mines. He's doing something different. So I inbox him, I'm like, what do you do? I will do anything to be mentored by you. Because I'd started listening to Tony Robbins and stuff. And the reason why I got into that was when I was doing comp prep, I was doing 12 hours a day in the mines and I had to do about an hour and a half of cardio and a decent gym session every day. So, you know, like I'd be waking up at 3am to do my cardio. Just so unmotivated. So back then there was an app called 8tracks, which is like Spotify now and you could search hashtags. So I just searched motivation and Tony Robbins and start playing. So I got addicted to Tony Robbins. Still to this day, I Listen to this day. I listen to him every day anyway. But in other words, Tony Robbins said, you know, success leaves clues. So, like, I've got a bit of a, you know, I love cars. I've got a bit of a collection on the back of every one of my cars. I've got the saying, the quote, success leaves clues. And that was my first thing to go. You know, what model, what works? Find someone that's done what you want to do and cut your learning curve in half. So I went searching for a mentor and I came across Dave Nelson. So shout out to Dave if he ever watches this. And anyway, I messaged him. I'm like, I'm like, brother, like, what do you do? He goes, I'm in network marketing. And I was like, oh, is that a pyramid scheme? He goes, oh, no, no, no, no, it's not a pyramid scheme. Some people call them like, oh, I'm not interested then, because I wanted to get into a pyramid scheme. He goes, well, some people call it a pyramid scheme, but it's kind of just, you know, New age franchising online. I'm like, done. Sign me up. He goes, well, you need to use our supplements if you're going to sell them. I'm like, no, I've got sponsors, dude. Like, I'm not going to take your supplements. He goes, these supplements are a lot better than the supplements these guys are giving you for free. I'm like, no, they're not. He goes, try them for 30 days. You got a money back guarantee, no joke. Because I had a bit of an ego back then. I was like, give me the supplements then. I can't wait to take them for 30 days, use them all and get a refund. He goes, go for it. The supplements were freaking awesome. That was one thing. But basically Dave just said, he goes, the key to success is helping more people win and make money. And I was like, all right, tell me what to do. He goes, all you have to do while you're at the mines is get people in your donger, get them on a video to me on your, on your, your iPad, and I'll help you make money. So I was just so inspired about making this difference. I wasn't even selling supplements. I was selling a vision. And basically I was filling my donger at the mines every night with about 30 to 40 other mining guys. And David closed, closed them on this call and I was closing on the calls and I replaced my mining income in three months, you know, which was a big deal. You know, we broke some Pretty cool records in the company. It was a lot of fun. And I came home and typical me, I didn't know too much about life or success and my income and business was growing quicker than I was. And that was one of my biggest lessons because the reality is, is that your life, you know, this world that we experience, you know, your friendships, relationships, finance, business and career only grows at the rate that you do. And anyway, I ended up, yeah, replacing the mining income, coming home, long story short, I, you know, I got the fancy car, the fancy house and I, I outlived my lifestyle and went into like, like a midlife crisis. Come 25, you know, come came four years into the career in the business was making a whole lot of money, but I just didn't know who I was and that sort of thing. And I had a wake up call. My fiance walked out on me and she goes like out of nowhere I was like, I'm like, what's going on? I've got, you know, the cars and everything, the lifestyle, we're doing so well. And she goes, you're a workaholic and you're boring, you're not fun. And it was just a massive wake up call for me, man. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to take one month off and go and live a little bit. And living a little bit ended up partying for the next six months with friends and lost everything. I lost everything. And I was back to square one. And I was like, you know what? One of my mates, Scotty at the time had started, you know, a little PLC gym in Burley. And it really inspired me with what he was doing because he linked it to network marketing. What I loved about network marketing was it humbles you really quickly because you get a lot of rejections. So I learned really quickly with that and I love connecting with people. So I reached out to him, he goes, yeah, cool man. Let's start a gym together on the sunny coast. And that's where the first PLC came. But that wasn't easy. Basically I went to the bank to get a loan, a 30 grand loan to start the gym. They said, why are we going to give you a loan, dude? Like you've got no job and no money in your bank. And I was like, well I've been successful in the past, like I can make it work. They're like, no mate, like not going to work. So where I got extremely humbled. I went from having, you know, you know, a $200,000 BMW, a multi million dollar mansion to Back to nothing. And I had to go and work at UE Insurance, you know, so from a guy that, you know, showing off everything in the world, you know, at the age of 25, thought I'd made it to ending up back at a job and the bank said, you need 12 months proof before we give you a loan. So I went to the, went to UI, worked literally 12 months to the DOT so I could basically get the finance for the gyms. That fell through. So Scott ended up financing the gyms to a vendor finance and we, we took off with the gyms. That's how I got into the gym industry, bro.

Yeah, no, I used to work for UE as well.

Oh, there you go. How cool. Yeah, yeah. And then we got into the gyms. I'm not in them anymore, but we can, we can go into that story as well if you want to.

Yeah, yeah, I suppose that's interesting though, because you had so many values before you. Yeah. You just kept going though. So I'm curious, like by the sounds that it stem from that comment that your dad made.

Yeah.

You had so much motivation to. Or that really unlocked unlimited motivation really by the sound. So if we go to the gyms now, was if we can link that back to your dad as well, was he, was he happy that you bought into the gyms?

My dad thought I was a failure until probably about 12 months ago, still thought I was a failure. So no matter what I did, always thought I was a failure or like, and my mom and because they're like, you know, you don't like you're this old and you haven't thought of your life and I'm like, I know what I'm doing, I know where I'm going and I'll eventually get there. But you know, like when I went to ue, it was so humbling. But what I noticed is throughout my, you know, my bodybuilding career and building business, I lost almost everyone around me because I always thought differently. I just thought I was weird. I was a bit of a lone sheep. Like nobody really understood me because all I wanted to talk about was business and changing the world and helping people and motivation and Tony Robbins and people just thought I was weird, you know. And what I noticed on the sunny coast, there wasn't really other, many other people like me. So I was like, I need to get around other like minded people. And there was no one like me around the sunny coast. So I created a mastermind on meetup.com to draw more people to me, you know, to Try and create something to, to find friends. And I launched that mastermind in 2012 when I was at UE Insurance. And yeah, we run that Mastermind as a non for profit business incubator for over 10 years. So an advantage of that was is I helped over 150 local Sunshine coast businesses, you know, create, you know, some pretty cool success and I've built a really cool network from that, which is I've been able to leverage to where I am now. But when I got into the gyms, you know, I was a part of that journey. You know, like we, we scaled PLC from two gyms at the stage when I got involved to 28 gyms in two years. Like it grew so quick, like crazy quick. And you know, obviously, you know, the, the gyms are, you know, we got the gyms especially on the Sunny Coast. We built such a culture where no joke, if anybody in the Sunny coast listens to this and remembers about a couple of years ago, every third car on the Sunny coast had a PLC sticker on it. That was the black people looked at you weird if you didn't train a plc. That was the, the cult like culture we built around it. Like it was just a vibe. And I think the reason why we made them so successful, you know, we grew from especially three gyms on the Sunny coast in eight weeks. We grew from zero to three gyms really quickly, literally in eight weeks was because we built such a culture and an energy about it. And it was because we didn't sell sessions. We sell feeling. We sold feelings and emotions. Never. No one ever told you about how good our equipment was or how good the sessions were. They always told you how we made them feel. And I always said we don't own gyms, we own human transformation centers. That's why I always said, you know, it's like because everybody was selling a gym membership and you see all the other 24 hour gyms, they're competing on price. One thing I've always done in my business is I'm probably the most expensive business coach out there, you know, and it's because I've never competed on price. I've competed on my authentic, unique self and how I make people feel. And the gyms, we did that really well. You know, like I went over and above for my, I never had staff members, I had talent members. You know, I went over and above for them and that trickled down into the culture of our gyms where I was like, no joke, most days the gym shut at 7 o'. Clock. We'd have to kick people out at 10pm they just hung around like the culture was electric and our gyms weren't fancy. We literally will find a beaten down two panel shed in an industrial estate next to the pretty much the brothel. And we'd literally go in there, give it a coat of paint, we'd buy sma, you know, core bags and that was the gym and it was just electric divide we had in there. We'd buy some JB hi Fi speakers, mount them to the walls and that was the gym, you know, and it was just, we just created this vibe and culture where it was addictive, you know. We were the most expensive gym on the coast by about 20. And yeah, we never sold on price, we always sold feelings. And we do the same thing in business today. We educate all of the businesses we work with around Australia. It's like old school boss mentality. I'm the boss, you do what I do do as I say. That doesn't work in today's world. We sell servant leadership and that's what we coach into businesses in today's world. And we sell experiences whereas so many businesses. I'm speaking at a business networking event, it's called Noosa Business Collective, I believe it's called. I'm speaking for them tonight. And you know, some of these business owners in, you know, they're doing $50 million a year but they're still stuck in it, stressed out and overweight, you know, old school business just doesn't work in today's fast paced modern world, you know. So getting into the gyms, but I guess my transition out of the gyms, I love the gyms and I still miss them to this day, you know. But what I noticed is I wasn't a business owner. I was self employed. I owned a job like most people did. Most people think they own a business, they don't. They own a job. Why? Because if they leave their business for a week, it suffers without them, you know, that's when you know you've created a prison. You can't be a prison dad, you can't be a present, you know, father and husband. And that was so important to me. And my biggest wake up call was when Covid hit. You know, we had six hours notice to shut down our gyms. We had 16 staff members. So I was like, fuck me, you know, we've got about six weeks worth of what we call a war chest there of income to, you know, we're going to be bankrupt in six weeks. What am I going to do. But the biggest wake up call was I remember sitting on my balcony and looking out over the view and it was day two of COVID and there was this beautiful sunset and I was sitting there, Sim and Xander were inside and I looked at this sun sunset and it was just stunning. And I looked at, I was like, all right, that is such a beautiful sunset. Is that there every day. And this little voice out of my head goes, of course it is your, but you're never home to experience it. And in that moment I was like, you know what? I'm a relatively good partner and father, but I'm a workaholic again. I was falling back into those own traps where I was doing 16 hours a day trying to be successful. I had all the money in the world, I've always had some nice cars. But you know, my relationship and my, you know, my son wasn't getting me. And in that moment I'm like, you know what, I'm done. I'm not building brick and mortar self employed businesses anymore. I'm going to be a business owner and a leader. And that's where I basically, I became obsessed with self mastery and building business systems. And yeah, I guess the, the rest is kind of history. And like what I've got now, you know, our, you know, our, our business coaching firm is it kind of happened by accident because by this time when Covert hit, I went completely online and I started learning the, you know, the power of personal brand. I've got a pretty big, you know, I've got a decent five. I've got about 20,000 followers now. But in covert I think I had 700 followers. But I started seeing the power of personal brand. So I went all in on that and people started know, obviously knowing about my business success in a few ventures that I did because I started, you know, coaching sales team and other companies and that sort of thing and I'd have a bit, I'd had a bit of success now, you know, I was 27 and I built you know, three big sort of businesses and I'd start getting inboxes of like friends or friends of friends going, hey bro, can you give me some advice or you know, on my business? You know, and let's say, you know, for every, you know, I'd probably give out 20 pieces of advice to 20 different people over some voice notes on Instagram and one of them would come back to me and tell them the success they have. So I'd follow up on the other 19 and they'd done nothing with it. And I was like, they really don't value the advice. And that's where I say people have got to pay to play. And that's why it's like, I never give free advice now, because I guarantee the advice I give a business, you know, Noosa Business Collective tonight. You know. You know, people pay me, you know, 1250 an hour now, and when you pay somebody that much money, it stings them, so they take what you say seriously. The same thing that I'm going to give to somebody for 1250 an hour, I'm going to say, the Noosa Business Collective tonight. And maybe one out of 10 people will do something with it, you know, because they're not paying for it. They don't value it. So what I started doing, I was like, you know what? I'm doing these people a disservice by giving free advice. They don't bloody do anything with it anyway. I'm like, I'm just wasting my time. You know, the secrets to my success, you can find it in my stories on Instagram every day. You know. You know what yourself.

I was gonna say, like, when I. When I was in your program last time, you said, if people didn't listen to my stories every day and actually did what I told them every day, they'd probably be more successful than what they are right now.

Exactly. And, you know, it's. So, yeah, what happened? I ended up, you know, just charging, you know, $1,000 a call. And all of a sudden, like, my calendar, we booked. Booked out with seven to 10 calls, and I'm like, far out. I'm a workaholic again. So then I'd started charging $5,000 a call, and then that got booked out. I was like, all right, there's opportunity in here. So I got really serious. I started, you know, you know, I started charging substantial amounts for some bigger companies, you know, now. Now we attract, you know, some of, you know, Australia's leading companies and founders, you know, reach out to us and we work with them. And some of them publicly, you know, are happy for us to publicly talk about who we work with. Some of them are very private and doing, you know, over $250 million a year. And we, you know, we consult for them. But, you know, it's like, because these companies, you know, the advantage we've got now, I guess, is, you know, to this day, since, you know, since January 2021, we've worked with over 920something companies. Now, Australian companies, we specialize in Aussie companies. I haven't mastered international yet. And it's, I guess, you know, when you start seeing behind the scenes of all of these successful and not successful businesses, you start seeing patterns. You know, I'd have to be crazy not to know how to build a successful business now. So I guess my biggest advantage is, you know, we've seen behind so many successful Australian businesses. I use what I know and I plug it into other businesses now and they literally, you know, we 3X businesses, you know, in less than six months now and that these are businesses that are over a decade old. So that's kind of my story, bro. So I told you we go on a tangent.

Yeah, it's cool, it's cool. I'm, I'm keen to dive into like obviously you're obviously proud father, husband as well. I'm, I'm keen to know because my audience is a lot of face to face personal trainers. They don't have that, you know, that leverage yet. So what. Especially if the personal trainers like, you know where to cycle it. If you do a one on one pt, it's early mornings, it's, you know, late nights. So how, what's the first step? Even like mindset wise, what's the first step to you said, you know, mastering your mind is one of your biggest things these days. But what's the first step you would take if you feel like you're quite stuck in a job or sorry, you're self employed or you're, you're a prison in your, your business, what's the tip you can take?

Yeah, so I train at our Fitness Cartel every morning at 5am in Maruchido and I see the same PTS there every single time, trading their time for money and there's nothing wrong with that. But you've got to understand one day you're going to be too old to do it or you're going to get bored of it one day. Now you can't be a face to face PT till you're 80 and the challenge is you've only got so many hours in a day and you'd know yourself if you take a holiday, the income stops. You've got to save up for your holiday. Now there's nothing wrong with that, but if you've got big dreams and goals and if you're actually really passionate about what you do as a pt, you're doing yourself a disservice by learn, by not learning how to scale your business. And the reason why I say that is you're actually passionate about being a pt. It means you're Passionate about helping people get, you know, human transformations right? That's what you guys do. You can only help so many people a week, 40, 50, 60 people a week. If you really love what you do, you should be helping a thousand people a week. And the reason why you can't do that is because you're trading your time for money. So first things first, I could offer a couple of pieces of advice here. Number one, if you, if you're talking about, you know, one day I'm going to do this, pay off, pay the mortgage down, then I'm going to do this so I can have, you know, work life balance. You've got it all wrong. There's no such thing as work life balance. Me going to the gym in the morning is work. Me doing this call is work. Me cooking dinner is work. Life is work. You've got to stop calling things work because you're creating what you call, you know, a cognitive dissonance in your mind. Do your research on that. It's a really powerful thing that the mind does. It's called cognitive dissonance. And it's basically separating you from where you are now to where you want to be. And there's always going to be that gap. You'll never attain it. Because the thing is, you shouldn't be working. You should be doing your life's work. You should be doing what you're absolutely drawn to do so that your passion bleeds through it. You shouldn't be the PT in the gym charging a hundred dollars an hour. I don't know what you guys charge. You should be charging a thousand dollars an hour and be fully booked out because you ooze passion and people pay you whatever it is that you want. Okay, where I'm going with that is you need to absolutely love what you do so that when you go home, you can leave that there and come home and be completely present with your family. A lot of people are looking for this work life balance. And same thing as some things. People don't agree with what I say, but I'm going to say it anyway. And the thing is, do your own research on this. Time doesn't exist. It's a made up construct. For example, a lot of my clients are interstate, right? So for example, my New South Wales clients, they just had daylight savings for the last six months. They've been one hour ahead of me. Time doesn't exist. It's what we used to measure. You've only got now and now is learning how to be present, learning how to be present. Is a mindset shift. And so many people are working out how to optimize their business. No joke. Even the most successful businesses I work with in companies in Australia, nine times out of 10, they don't have business problems. They've got personal problems bleeding into their business. Because business mastery follows self mastery. The thing is, you are a human being. You've got your own problems and then you plug a business on top. Remember, life is a game of energy. Life is a game of feeling and emotions and experiences. People feel what's going on outside of your business. Even if you can put on a mask. The first things first is you've got to tidy up your own backyard. You've got to make sure that your relationship is great, not good. Because good's the enemy of great. You've got to be a great partner, wake up every single day and go, what am I going to do today to be 1% better today for my wife? How can I give? Stop expecting. People are always looking, oh, I don't get this. I don't get that. Shut up. The secret to living is giving. Show up and give. As Gary B. Says, jab, jab, jab, right hook. Give, give, give and you'll receive. You jump on my Instagram, I show up every single day. You talk to any of my clients, I over deliver. My clients resign year after year after year because I leave. I will move mountains to help them achieve their goals. You know, so where I'm going with this is step one. You need to master your mind. I don't care how fit you are, how juiced up you look, how shredded you are. I don't care. Are you spending that much time on your mind every single day? You need to make time every single day to go to your mental gym and master this. Because business Strategy, you can YouTube and Google it. It's the same thing. Why do people come see a PT when they can Google how to get fit, go and exercise and eat clean? It's simple. They're just coming to you for accountability. You know, they're coming to you to count their reps. Okay? So you need to go to your mental gym and work on this every single day. If I, oh, what do I go and listen? Just YouTube, Tony Robbins listen for an hour a day, Come back to me in seven days, tell me how you feel. Stop complaining about life. Stop taking life for granted. Because the life you've got right now that you are taking for granted, this sucks. Poor me. I've got to go to work. No, you get to go to work. Because the life you've got right now that you are taking for granted, somebody else is praying for. But the reality is, in today's world, especially since COVID everyone's so entitled. Go out and over, deliver to your clients. If you're just there counting your reps for your client and you're just like every other pt, and if I call it an elevator pitch, if I jump in an elevator with you, if you can't tell me why I should come to you over another PT and pay you three times the price, you're out of the game. You've already lost. You need to know why you're different. What's your edge? And the key to that is learning who you authentically are. Be you, be weirdly you, you know. Yeah, I hope that sort of helps there, bro, is that this isn't about practical tools, about how to get out of your business. You can YouTube and Google all that sort of stuff. How to get out of your business. It's simple. The only way you can scale your business by scaling you. How do you do that? Jot down everything you do and what are your edges. How do you do it differently? Circle what you love doing and what gives you energy and focus on that. Only automate, delegate system, systemize and hire what you don't like doing. How do you teach it? Write a Google form on how to actually do it step by step with a loom video Teaching them Dumb. That's a system. That's how you scale any business. Oh, but they're never going to do it as good as me. You could never lift weights as good as you did until you did at least a thousand reps. Teach them how to do it.

It's, it's a really good point because a lot of pts are obviously, you know, they're solo, but they don't have any idea of how to scale. So, you know, there's obviously multiple ways that PTs can scale. They can obviously scale online, they can hire a team. I noticed a lot of your stuff, I think on your Instagram you said a bit about, you know, building teams and, you know, making more profit. Do you think, just in terms of personal training, do you think, do you think it's more. Or do you see it's more of a benefit to more scale online, but then it's mainly just you. And you might delegate certain things to like a va, or you might automate certain things or do you think having an actual team or talent members is a far better way to go about things?

Yeah, there's a few different ways you can do it. Obviously, if you're building a team, you're building headaches. Okay, obviously teach my clients how to do without the headaches, but you're still going to get headaches along the way. Building a team is one thing, okay? But like anything is you want to master and become the best at what you're doing within a thing. You know, it's. I've forgotten what that that famous boxer's name is, but he says this quote, he goes, I don't fear the person that knows 1000 types of kicks. I fear the person that's done the one kick a thousand times. Master and become so good at what you're doing and then empower and teach that to somebody else and then build a team. That's one way of doing it. Or build a personal brand. And the reason why you should be building a personal brand. Ah, but I don't like social media. I don't care. Go to the coffee shop, tell me if they're talking to their wife or looking on their phone. Tell me if they're hanging out with their kids or if their heads in their phone. You go everywhere. People like this, they're zombies looking in their funk. That's where the attention is. Okay, so you need to build a personal brand. Because the coolest part is, doesn't matter whether you're the greatest PT or not, people buy you. So means you can pivot into any business model eventually and sell whatever you want. Okay, but what I would be doing is building a personal brand. How do you do that? Ask all of your clients what their top 10 or top 5 or 10 challenges are and then you solve those problems online every single day and you'll start adding value. Oh, but why should I give up for free? No one's going to do anything with it anyway because you for free. But add value to give them a reason to follow. Because every funniest thing is, bro, ever since COVID every man in his dogs, either an online coach for health or business. Half these people haven't even built a business, you know? And how are you going to stand out in a market that's flooded by solving more problems than anybody else? Because you've got to understand first principles of business. Business only exists by solving problems and meeting needs. Yet everybody's complaining about their problems in their life and how hard it is. The exact thing they're complaining about and avoiding is the exact thing that's going to get them to their next level of growth personally and their next level Financially. So get obsessed with solving more problems in your business for more people. And the reality is, say if you love Face to face, awesome, do your 40 hours a week there. But then how can you help 400 people online? Get online and solve more problems for people and don't, oh, like, I'll do it when I get, you know, my slr. I ain't got no slr. I got this. Be authentic. All my videos literally recorded in my car, unedited. Be authentically you unreal. Because that's what sells in today's world. It's why reality TV is so popular, because it's real, you know. So what I would suggest is that if you love Face to Face pt, awesome. But if you've got a grand goal and you've got a family, you're doing them a disservice. Because one day you will be kept for time and income. You will be, you know, if you want to be a great dad, you know, you're going to need more time. Not only is that, for example, is that building a trust fund for my kids, right? And it costs about $2,000 a week. And I wouldn't be able to do that by trading my time for money. I wouldn't have the surplus income, you know. So I'm not saying you need to do that, but that's the example. If I want to go on a holiday tomorrow with my family, I can. But the thing is, is like, if you want your time back with your family, which is why we will do this for freedom or family, you've got your own definitions of it all. Success and freedom. You've got your own definitions. You've got to find a way to do it where you can make money in your sleep. And to do that online as a pt, there's a couple of ways you can do it. If you don't want to build a team, you can build an online course, a program, you can build a subscription, all this sort of stuff. You can build an online client base and then you could hire other coaches that use your platform. Excuse me. There's so many ways you can do it. But the key to doing anything like that, whether it's through systems online or through it's building a team, is you need to scale you so you need to get clear on what is it you do day to day, how are you different, and then work out how you can scale that. The only way you can scale that is through systems. Like building an online course or teaching it to a team through systems and getting it out to the marketplace, you know, and give away so much free content online. People like, wow, give this away for free. Imagine if I paid him. Because what's crazy about it is like you could go, you could go through my old program that you did and you've still got access to it. You could go through that and you'll notice everything that's in there. I talk about it on my Instagram as well, but I've just packaged it nicely. It's like, you know, you go into Woolworths, you see the iceberg lettuce for A$95 or you see it chopped up in a bag next to it for $6. You know, it's the exact same product, but it's packaged neatly here for convenience, I just package it neatly in the back end. Okay. And it's still not even that, that neat. You know, the reality is, is that you need to over deliver on value. And I think where most people miss the ball, you know, it's a, it's the simple quote, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. Everybody's trying to like they're comparing themselves or they're like, I need to be like them. No, no. The highest vibrational frequency above love and light, which is opposite to fear, is authenticity, the real you. But I think the challenge with that, everybody's so scared to be them because they don't want to be judged. Because your whole life, you know, you know, we're all born limitless, but we're conditioned out of it. You were told what you're good at, you're bad at, you're a good girl, you're a bad boy, whatever, all this sort of stuff. And you basically, you're conditioned to not be yourself. So you're scared to be yourself because then you're going to get rejected. The only way you're going to break through in today's world is by being yourself, by being authentic and real. And it's scary, you know, and it's why, like, I don't fake it. Like, this is me. I'm in no fancy business suit. I wear a hat, I wear a baggy oversized tee. I wear runners everywhere. You're gonna find me in a suit. But the my advantage is, is people trust me so quickly because I've got nothing to hide. I just be me. I just share it. I share my life, I share what up to. I share my good and my bad. You've just got to be real and new. And I think whether you're face to face or online, you need to lean into being authentically and congruently and unapologetically. You make sure you don't harm anybody. Of course I'd be polite and respectful, but be you, because that's one thing people can't copy. That's one thing people can't duplicate. And I guess that's the power of personal brand. And I think the biggest move in today's world is personal brand. Whether you like it or not. It's like that. That's where the attention is. And it's not, it's not going to change. I can't see it changing in the next decade.

Yeah, 100%. I think one of the reasons why I was able to transition to coaching other personal trainers so quickly as well is because, I mean, I'm not, you're definitely the, the, the, the pinnacle of showing up every day. I'm not saying I'm, I'm there just yet, but I definitely showed up enough that I got a lot of attention from other personal trainers, from doing really well. So I could easily, as you said, I was, I was showing what I was doing and I was relatable to a lot of people. I showed my challenges. I showed, you know, I showed people how to solve their problems for free. And I literally learned that off you from your programs is if you, if you can solve people's problems for free, then they're more than likely willing to work with you or they're, they're subconsciously, they'll want to know more about how you can actually help them if, if they pay, because then they know they're going to take more action. So, yeah, the one thing I was going to say is with, because obviously with social media, people are super scared to, you know, show themselves a little bit more because of the, the hate. Do you, do you have any, do you have any tips to get over that? Because that's obviously a massive roadblock for.

A lot of people I'll share something with really quickly. So I'm, I'm pretty much dyslexic. I can barely spell. I'm not very good at reading. And every time. So, for example, at this networking event tonight, so that I don't get embarrassed with my writing on the whiteboard, because I'm a whiteboard guy. I always start the presentation with like, guys, I'm not an English speller. I'm a vision seller because I, I struggle. Like, I'm not very good at spelling and reading and writing. You know, so what happened is in about grade three, I don't know if you Remember this when you were a kid, it was back in the day where there was like a big blackboard in, in the classroom and they would have like a big book up on the blackboard and, you know, they go around the classroom and you'd have to read a line each out loud, you know, of the story. And I remember one day it got to me and I couldn't read it and everybody turned and laughed at me. And like, from that day forward, I was so scared of public speaking, like, I chipped me pants, I was so scared. And the thing was, is, when I got into network marketing, like, I wasn't, I didn't have a personal brand or anything. I, I couldn't public speak or anything like that. And I remember, I think it was about my third, you know, like, you know, you'd hold these little, like house parties, you know, to try and sell to your friends and family. And I Remember I had 40 people rock up in my upline, was meant to do the talk for me and they didn't arrive and I was like, far out. What am I going to do? So I had to present to them. And I was, I was shaking, like, was up. My mind, like, my body stood up, but my mind sat down. Like, I, I was like stumbling my words and all this sort of thing. And I was so nervous, but I did it. You know, I think I only spoke for eight minutes or something and by the end of it, like, I, because I did it, I. I felt so proud of doing something. I was so, so scared. Like, I was so scared of doing it. I set myself a challenge. And the challenge was on Facebook was back when, you know, Facebook lives were like the thing. And that's how we built our gyms, was through Facebook lives. Because that's. That was so engaging. I set myself a challenge. So, you know, for the next 30 days, I will shop live every single day. And that's how I got over that fear was just repetition. And you know what's funny is my wife sim, if anybody follows her on Instagram, you know, she looks so confident on, on social media. She, I met her through my gyms. I remember at the job interview, we hired her as a pt, the job interview. She goes, I wanna, you know what? I wanna help mums get fitter. I'm like, awesome. How are you gonna market it? She goes, oh, like, through social media. I'm like, how are they even going to hear about you don't do anything on social media. She goes, I don't know, like, I'll do This. I'm like, all right, go live right now. You ever done a Facebook Live? She's like, no, I might do it. She said, no, I can't do it right now. Pick up your phone right now and go live. So what do I say? I'm like, I don't know and I don't care. And you can scroll back through her Facebook. And she literally picks up her phone. Hi, guys. It's. It's sim here. Hope you're having an awesome night. To my first live. What are you grateful for the end. And hung up. You know, and now I set the challenge for her and she's, you know, I said, you. You got to go live every single day for 30. But I'm scared. Good. Like I said, the exact thing we avoid is the only thing that's going to help us forward. And if. If you're a PT listening right now, think of it this way. If you go into the gym and you don't tear your muscles, you just do two kilo weights when you could be doing 20, do you think your muscles are going to grow? No. Like, your muscles literally only grow by tearing them and making them fail. What. What do pts do? Push till failure. Push till failure. It's normal to do it in the gym, and that's why you get so strong. Push till failure. Because then your. Your body literally has to recover. Yet in today's world, I'm scared of failure. I'm not gonna love. I don't. I don't want to fail. The exact thing you're avoiding and you don't want to do is the only thing that's going to help you grow a successful business. So you need to embrace failure. And the coolest part is, I tell you what, I think why I get so much engagement online, why I get all my clients, like, online, is I'm not perfect. I'm this sort of stuff. Like, it's unedited and people respect. They're like, oh, this guy, he's no different than me. I think the more real and the more natural you can be, people go, I relate to this person because they're no different than me. I trust them. Because if you think about sales, right, sales is a transfer of emotion, and you're only going to transfer emotion highly if there's trust. People trust people that they either want to be like or are like. So I think if you're scared of doing that, pick up your phone right now and go live. Tag me in it and I'll share it on my social media. For you and just go live and do it every day for the next 30 days, do a story. And I guarantee you, like Steve, you know, one of my clients that has the dad's community, he's been working with me for, you know, three and a half years now. I said that 30 day Facebook live challenge and he's been live every, every single day. Never missed a day at 7am every day for the last three and a half years. And he looks so confident now talking. Oh, but he's a natur. He does it all the time. He was in your position once as well. You know, you've just got to pick it up and do it because it's the only things that's going to help you grow. You've got. You know, the reality is people want this life that not many people have. And the reason why not many people have this life is because they're not willing to do what those people have done. The scary things you have to do, the things that freak you out, that scare, you know, it's a typical saying, you know, you've got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. So just do it, you know, that's my advice.

I love it. That's awesome, man. That was really good. So if people want to follow you on social media, and trust me, you won't be disappointed if you do follow Dion on social media, I know you're pretty big on Instagram, but is there. Is Instagram the one to follow you on or is that.

Yeah, mainly Instagram. We do, you know, we run events every four months on there. It's just my. My name just Dion D I O N dot Monkovich. And it's, you know, it's just my face with a bright yellow background. You won't miss it. There's a few fake ones around, but it's the one with the. It's the verified one. So, yeah, you won't be able to miss it.

Awesome. Thanks again for your time, Champion.

No worries at all, brother. Thank you.