S1 Ep 3: How To Stop Comparing & Find Flow In Your Fitness Business

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Show. This is episode 3, and today we're going to talk about all about going behind the scenes in fitness businesses. And the conversations that are happening in the marketplace. I'm pretty excited for this episode 3. Let's try and hit the 40 episodes in 40 days. And I've got Ev joining us again. She put me through some questions the other day, so I thought I'd have her back. How you doing, Ev?

Good. How are you?

Yeah, great.

Amazing. Got over your birthday, birthday celebrations?

Yeah, birthday lockdown celebrations.

Amazing.

And, um, if I thought we'd, um, you know, really tackle some things that are happening at the moment in the fitness industry and the fitness business in regards to marketing. And I actually got the name confused, um, the, the name Marketing Muscle-Up Show. I wanted to talk about why we called it that.

Yeah, great idea. I mean, we came up with this name 3 years ago when we, when we tried to start this podcast Earlier.

Yeah. So it was a 3-year-old name and we tried to revive it and get it going. But the whole concept of Marketing Muscle Up is to muscle up your marketing. Yeah. And that's one of the big things that the big focus around this podcast, because I certainly believe that when your marketing has a bit of muscle behind it, everything works better. Sales, Client retention, growth in the business.

Yep.

So it's almost like, yes, the other day we talked about staying in your lane. And for us, it's about, well, if we can have a marketing funnel that flows, everything else sits a bit better.

Now that reminds me of, and we kind of left off the other day with you finishing up your fitness business in Neutral Bay and going for a year on cruise ships. And I don't know, but I'm thinking you probably learned a lot in that time around marketing and sales and muscling up your marketing.

Yeah. Well, let's go back there and we might use this episode to give a brief background. And to me, I love backgrounds because that's where I learn a lot about marketing, by the way.

Hmm.

So I, one of the first questions I ask anybody when we do strategy, I always ask them for the background of what they've done in the past because the past then equals, doesn't equal, but there's a big connection with the future and what you're going to need to actually add on or subtract depending where you go. But your question was what happened. Sorry. So back to our story, this is like, you know, let's go back to the story a little bit. Episode 1, I touched on asking my parents for a lot of money and taking a loan off them.

Yep.

And so towards the end, it was about a year and a half, and I said someone came in and purchased the business. And so I bought a business with my business partner, my boss at the time. I asked my parents for a loan, take money off their house. And I learned a lot, first of all, in that, in running the fitness studio, I learned a lot. My first lesson was don't rush things.

Hmm.

And it was the second day that I had the studio and I decided, let's surprise my clients in the morning when I come in and do a, you know, put a newsletter up on the wall. That's what you did back in those days. And wrote a sign to say all the improvements that I was going to be doing in the studio. I'm going to get new equipment and some new towels and all those kinds of things. I thought, I'm so excited. I typed it up on the computer that was there and I wrote it. I was probably there till 11:30, midnight, just making sure it was right, vacuuming the carpet and making sure the studio was nice. I was such a proud owner. And then the next day I had the day, the morning off. When I say morning off, instead of getting there at 5 o'clock, I got there at 7 o'clock. I had a trainer that was coming in. And then I got in the room and there was graffiti on my newsletter. Oh no. Fine.

They didn't like the improvements?

Well, they said, go back to school, learn to spell. I made a spelling mistake. And it gutted me from day one. And in that moment there, I go, okay, I've got a lot of learning to do and a lot of growing up to do to run this studio. And true story, actually, I was 18 at the time, but I said to all my clients that I was 26 at the time.

Really?

I lied about my age. And that's probably a concept about marketing. I mean, I lied about my age to, you know, everybody in those circles at that time because I didn't think anybody was going to take me seriously. Yeah. So, but, but I'll talk about that in marketing and how you can actually use your age to your advantage. If you're old or young, it doesn't really matter.

Totally.

I guess when you don't have the confidence and you're young, you've, you've kind of got to, you know, there's a word, fake it till you make it.

Yep.

I don't like that word, but when you go into a business and you've got a lot of older clients or everybody's older when you're 18, right? You feel a little bit intimidated.

Yeah.

And so, so I had that story for many years while I was there, uh, until actually the whole year and a half. I, I owned it about a year and a half, 2 years, 2 and a half years, sorry. And I lied about my age. Anybody lied about their age before, let me know. Um, so anyway, let's talk about transitioning period. And so I had that This guy came in and said, yep, I want to buy this studio. I said, amazing. Oh my gosh, this is in the flow. And one of the reasons why I sold the studio, because I actually didn't know enough about marketing, I felt, and I was a little bit afraid of where the next lead was going to come from.

Yeah. I think there's probably a lot of people out there with that fear as well.

I had that fear and I also had another fear of Will I make payday every Thursday? And it's interesting. It wasn't like a problem. I had, I made payday. However, every week on the Saturday afternoon, we had a, we had like a calendar for the week ahead. It was like one piece of paper. There was no mind body or anything like that then. And each week you had to fill Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday with all the clients. And so every Saturday afternoon. I got terrified because I wasn't sure if the piece of paper would fill up for the next week.

Yeah.

And if the clients didn't book in again, I was thinking, well, what will happen if they don't book in? This money I just invested and the risk that I took from my parents and my business partner, what would happen if nobody booked in again? And so I was almost like, I didn't know if they would keep coming back. And so I had a lot of fear around that as well. So eventually after, I think it was 2 years in the studio, I decided to sell it. I saw a magazine. I was actually—it was actually next door to Fitness Network. It was the next door. They were—they had the office there in New York Bay, and we were the gym for those who know Fitness Network. And in the magazine, that's where they produce the magazines. There was an advertisement there to work on a cruise ship as a personal trainer. I thought, well, that's really interesting.

You thought, I'm getting out of here.

So 100%, I thought the same thing. I said, I'm going to get the hell out of here because I am worried as hell and I don't know what's going to go on. And there was also talk the building might be demolished in 5 years. And I think, well, I don't know, maybe it's just all too much.

I'm going to butt in because I think it's interesting that that's normal business stuff to be worrying about and kind of fearful about. But as an 18-year-old, Not that many 18-year-olds have a business and are thinking, am I going to make payday? They're thinking, I want to go on a cruise ship.

Yes, totally. Yeah, I left school in year 10, Ev, and I decided to go down that line.

So

in a way, I just felt I had the smart— well, not about the smarts. I just had the risk. There's a saying that you're a bit green when you're younger. You're a bit naive. You don't really know. You haven't been burned before.

Yeah. You don't know what you don't know.

You don't know what you don't know. And I think that's a great thing to also do, by the way. If you do want to get into business, I think there's got to be a little bit of that about that. We take pandemic. Nobody knows how to get through this process really. There's no textbook on it. So yeah, we don't know what we don't know. And I think there's a little bit of that you need. as you progress through a business or make a business decision.

I think so.

And so then I decided to, you know, this guy came in and I didn't even really have to advertise. So it was, I mean, I was blessed. I probably didn't realize how lucky that was at the time. However, then I worked on cruise ships. So the story goes is I went to England, trained to be a— it was a— actually it was in City Gym. You had to do an audition in City Gym, but what you had to do is to work on the cruise ship, you actually had to know aerobics. You actually had to teach aerobics. Now, I learned aerobics in my, um, in my personal training course. I actually learned, um, It's Raining Men, the song, and that's why I did my aerobics too. However, I never used it, and so I was scared as hell going into that audition thinking I have to, uh, teach aerobics for a year and a half. That's one of the reasons why I nearly didn't apply. However, when I got there, there was probably another 20 guys there that were thinking the exact same thing as me. They were scared as hell that they have to go and teach aerobics on a cruise ship. So I left. So everybody did their interview at the City Gym in Sydney. And I was last. I left myself last. And I'll tell you why I left myself last because I learned that the person that was doing the interviews, I would hopefully leave a lasting impression. So I put myself last. And I don't know if that was a bit of fate or that, but I got through in the end and I got myself a ticket to London where we practiced to— we basically practiced how to sell products as well. That was a big part of the role.

Yeah. I mean, obviously you had to learn to sell when you had your own business, but was that like a bit of a crash course, like in learning how to kind of be a salesperson?

Yeah, it was, it was kind of like a proper professional crash course.

Yeah.

Crash course, by the way, you're only there a couple weeks until, um, you were told what ship you went onto. And it was really surreal. You went to, you went to UK, you did a course, you lived in this YMCA, say, a, um, little place while you're waiting. And then all of a sudden they say, yep, go fly to America and, um, jump on a cruise ship. Never been on a cruise ship in my life before. Oh no, maybe I did it as a little, as a little kid in a holiday at P&O, but it's a little bit different to the American large vessel cruise liners.

Yeah.

So yeah, thankfully, naturally, I think, and in talking about naturally, and maybe naturally is not the right word, but I understood how to sell. And maybe that came from past history. We look at that, you know.

Yeah.

So we learned how to sell, we learned the process of selling and how to do that. So we went on a cruise line, and if anybody's been on a cruise line, basically the first day you do a tour and you, you go to the gym. So everybody comes on the Sunday on the cruise liners, they do a tour, and what you do is you book in your sessions for the gym. Monday comes, it's really busy at the gym. Tuesday comes, it's half full, and Wednesday it's dead. Why? Because they find the buffet and they find the drinks. That's how it works. Totally.

Totally.

So yeah, we realized that we had to make our sales on the Monday or Tuesday. We had to fill up our calendar on those days. 80% of our work had to be on those days because otherwise the rest of the week is dead. Nobody's at the gym. So it's all about timing as well and anything. So we went cruise line for 2 years. Um, I can probably touch on that a bit later. Um, so that was a really good wake-up call and a really good practice of how to sell. Basically, we were selling Supplements and also Bath Synergies. Yes, Bath Synergies detox products to our customers.

Yep.

On a workshop called Eat More, Weigh Less. And that was a seminar that was run. Never did a seminar in my life before.

Yes.

I did a seminar to 40 to 150 people on a cruise ship. And then from there, you'd make a booking and the bookings were, um, to check your body fat levels. And so the idea was to sell a, um, like a book. It was called The Zone Diet, for those who, uh, know The Zone Diet.

All right.

Yeah, good old Zone Diet. Never heard of it as an 18-year-old, but, but I kind of worked it out really fast. And I had a great mentor, and, and the mentor I had was another person that I was working with, a colleague. It was the fitness industry. He was a— he was probably one of my greatest mentors if I look back. And he showed me how to sell and what to do really clearly. He actually also introduced me to a book called Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins. Didn't know who he was either. And by reading the book and by practicing with him, instead of selling what we were supposed to sell, which was a Zone book and some protein bars worth about $200, because remember I got commissions here of about 5 to 10%.

Yep.

We decided to sell what the spa girls were selling. And we decided to, instead of taking a 15-minute consultation with somebody, we decided to extend it for 1 hour because in 1 hour we were able to sell a $3,000 product versus a $200 product. And that's kind of the story of how we were able to be number 1 on 300+ cruise ships.

Yeah.

Just by selling the right thing to the right people at the right time. Right thing, right people, right time.

Yes. It's funny when I hear you tell these stories because I think there's so many things that as an 18-year-old, you still are doing now. You're still finding the better way, the better thing to sell or the time. Every, you know, in, in all of our programs, always trying to find, okay, like you're doing one-on-one PT, you know, forget doing that. That's not the best way to do it. That's not the best way to make money. Do you know, like, so you're always kind of, yeah. Like, and it's, it's funny to see that you've been doing that since you're 18 years old.

Yeah. I didn't think about that. And, and, and that is the key. And I think the key for stability and to growth is, and I know a lot of personal trainers and fitness professionals listening to this, when I pull out the P word, the profit word, the money word, something that I really struggled with for many, many, many years, decades in fact, is because you do the things that you love to do, you do the things that you want to do. But in fact, what I want to do on a cruise ship is I didn't want to work 6 days like you were told. I wanted to work just the sea days when you were traveling through the sea. And I wanted to take the days off that we stopped in Bahamas or St. Thomas off. But the only way that I was able to do that was I was able to make enough money to say that I've already made my targets. And that's what my mentor told me. He says, Richard, if we make enough money on these 3 days, the Monday, the Tuesday, and the Thursday, we can take all the other days off if you want to. Nobody's going to say anything. So I said, well, that sounds like a good idea.

So really the money is secondary to the lifestyle that you wanted to have on the cruise ship.

Yeah, totally. I mean, you don't— I mean, I had no idea what you were making on a cruise ship. I mean, I had a business that I could have grew. I left and I sold.

But because you really went from, um, you know, being a studio owner, um, and, you know, like having to turn— like, you— I mean, you lived in the western suburbs of Sydney. You had to drive to Neutral Bay every morning be there 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM, that kind of thing. You went from that to, hey, I'm just going to work a couple of days a week on a cruise ship, go and sit on the beach on the other days.

Totally. And I had no idea that was the case, but I think the question comes back to what's the opportunity? What's the possibilities in your situation at the moment? And especially now through COVID and through lockdowns, it's what's the opportunities? What's the opportunities? What's the opportunities? Because And I can tell you right now that when we stopped on different ports, so you'd stop at a different port and you were able to connect with the other cruise ship. And I met some people while in London that we trained with.

Hmm.

Go on a cruise ship, you don't see them again. And then sometimes you have 6 massive cruise liners in ports. And then one day I saw one of my roommates that I shared a room with in London. Caught up and, um, I went and he called me up and he invited me to his cruise ship and he showed me around. It was very similar and I couldn't believe it, but he was selling the Zone Diet. And he goes, Richard, I hate this job. I hate it. I want to get off the ship. And he was like bawling his eyes out saying, oh,

I've

got to go home. I'm homesick. I hate it. And that was the case for a lot of different fitness professionals at the time.

Yeah.

Because when you, when you think about, I'm going to go on a cruise ship, I'm going to be a personal trainer, they're thinking about, I'm going to train people.

Yeah.

But the problem was, is that a lot of people weren't training because they, they weren't using the gym. And so you're only selling Zone Diets or doing a couple personal training sessions. You only got paid 5% or 10% commissions. I don't remember what it was.

Yeah.

So that was, I think, month 2, and I was on this cruise ship and I was making money. were top sellers in all the cruise ships. And then this guy comes and said, Richard, I saw your list. You're like number 1 or 2 of revenue sales. And I said, yeah, what are you doing wrong? And he goes, I'm selling the Zone Diet. And I go, the Zone Diet? That's only making $200. You got to sell a $3,000 product. And I realized that the reason why he had such a bad experience is because he was trading a lot of time for money.

Yep.

And he was you know, he was told to sell that product and you were told to sell this product, but, but sometimes you just gotta bend a little bit as an entrepreneur and as a business

leader. Break some rules.

Break some rules. And, you know, breaking rules, it, it was a good thing because the, the rest of the cruise industry changed what they were selling based on— yeah, based on our records. So you've got to find the gaps in the marketplace. And so Unfortunately, I got to him a little bit too late. He decided to leave the cruise ships and call it a day. And a lot of, you know, probably a lot of people listening here, they may have been on a cruise ship and had a bad experience. You had a really good experience or, you know, really bad experience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, I mean, knowing you, like, I get to see up close breaking the rules a bit. And, you know, sometimes hard, like, you know, like, I'm a rule keeper. And Joey is a rule keeper, your wife. And so we, we sometimes struggle. But then what I see is that actually you break the rules and then the rules change because you broke them and you got a good result. And so we can't, we can't argue with that. We're like, okay, keep breaking the rules. But, um, but at some point you would have had— you, you can't stay on cruise ships forever, right?

No. I mean—

So we have to move on. We have to grow up a bit, right?

I moved on. And how I moved on, the only way I moved on is that you have to love something. And if you can imagine when you're 18, 19 on cruise ships traveling the world, a pretty good life. And then at that time, I was dating Joey. We took a bit of a break and I called her now and again. Didn't have mobiles back then. Said, Richard, I'm coming over to America. I'm going to come get you off those ships. It's all right. I'll meet you in America in 6 months' time. But interesting, what got me off the cruise ships Yes, Joey, if she's listening. 2, also 2 was that I discovered a new zest. And this is where we do a transition period, is that I saw a lot of heavily obese people on the cruise ship, like families, mom, dad, sister, brother, 3, and they were like 2 or 4 or 6 and parents.

Yep.

And if you've ever been on an American cruise ship, not an Australian cruise ship, American cruise ship. There's a lot of overweight, like not overweight. I should use the word morbidly obese people.

Yeah.

In wheelchairs, and they go to cruise ships because they don't have to get off. They could drive themselves to the buffet, and I mean this is the nicest way, and that's the truth when you go on cruise ships. And in that moment, I saw a family, and you know, I saw a family on the cruise ship. I was standing behind them. And I thought, hang on, this is not hereditary. This is because they're making food choices, they're making lifestyle choices. And it really broke my heart. Hmm. And so I decided at that point, it'll be a mission when I go back. And actually on the cruise ship, I already started to write a book around kids' health and kids' obesity and what you can do to help children. So I think it was month 6 or 7 on the cruise ship, I was already writing. this book. I was getting my ideas and I was creating it. And I said, when I go back home, I'm going to launch a book. And that's the transition period. And when you try to switch something, it was like I wanted to do that. I had such a burning desire. So I went home. I got stuck away in my parents' caravan in their backyard, western suburbs caravan in the backyard. And that was the extra room. I made that my writing cave, cabin, you could say. And I broke the book up into chapters, 12 chapters. And I started to write the book. It took me way too long. Never written a book before. And it probably took me about 3 years to write the book. Now, when you're writing a book, you don't get paid. And when you publish it, you don't really get paid either, which I discovered. So in that time, I launched a— I went back to mobile personal training. in a local area. And that was, you know, so I had a mobile personal training business myself and I had a couple trainers there. And we kind of launched that and we ran that and, you know, up early starts and doing that thing. And there's a lot of old school marketing strategies there. You know, I got clients relatively fast. I did some great flyers, put them in mailboxes. I did, I just kept doing that, kept doing that, kept doing that, kept doing that. Yeah. Client would call, I'd I'd close them on the phone relatively fast. And then from there, I always upgraded the client and just got their friends and neighbors and all those people involved. And so I was doing that at the same time too. At the same time too, my mom came home one day and she said, Richard, I've got a— our company, she was working for a health company at the time. Our company is doing Got this lady that came and did seated massages. So what do you mean, mum? Seated massages? She goes, yeah, they come in there and they do massage. That was interesting. So then I got— then I, then I don't know if I was Googling back then. Maybe there was Google then. I think there must have been.

Probably.

Yeah, not that old.

I was Googling in high school, so you definitely had Google around there.

So I Googled these seated massages and I realized that this was a big thing that was happening in companies and my mission Was to help more people and to really get people healthy and fitter. And I thought, wow, what if I could do this for corporates? So then I said to my mum, listen, could I, um, put my quote into your company? Do you think you can give it to your HR person? At the time, I had no idea. I didn't—

Could you do massages?

No, I didn't do massages. I learned— I just knew massage was a big thing when I worked on the cruise liner. So again, you look at past histories. And so I started to interview some massage therapists. I put a job out and I said, listen, who's a mobile— who's a massage therapist? I bought a mobile massage chair myself so I could own a bit of asset.

Yep.

And then I found a mobile massage therapist and my quote to my mum's company got through, fingers crossed. And that was how I started a company called Lifestyles Corporate Wellness.

Yeah.

That was the kind of the next progression from that. I had a company called Quiet Lifestyles Promos. We did massages, we did health checks, doctor's appointments, flu jabs. Funny that we're doing vaccine jabs. It was flu jabs back then. And we did mobile personal training as well and corporate training. And 50% of our business was mobile seated massages. Yeah. And we grew that company to you know, Toshiba, Optus, blue chip companies, Coca-Cola, because it was a, it was kind of a leverage effect. I found out that, you know, I could either go deep in growing my trainers in my mobile personal training, or I could really leverage health and help corporations in a leveraged approach through, you know, healthy seminars and like lunchtime learn seminars and things like that. And that was kind of really where I would say, you know, my first proper business, you could say, from scratch really took off, having to train staff and grow a team. We grew a team about 100 different contractors and, you know, get business through the door and stuff like that. So we ran that for a few years until I decided to sell that. That's another story. Yeah. Okay. And again, it's just an accumulated effect of, like we talked about episode 1 about staying on the— staying in your lane. And at this point here, I already switched multiple lanes. I was switching lanes like they were going out of fashion at that point.

Yeah. But you still had this— it feels like you still had this one thread through it all. And you just said it just before, is that you wanted to help people get healthier.

Yeah. It was always a thread. It was always the same thing.

Yeah. So I think you always have— it's like you've You're trying all these different things to see what sticks for you, but it really always comes back to that— maybe you call it a mission, that, you know, that it's like you, you really have this passion to make people healthier.

Yeah, it was that passion from, from— and it was that passion too to continue writing my book. And when I was writing a book and when I was doing corporate wellness, I was getting phone calls from the UK from called Steiner. If anybody's worked for those, a whole bunch of you will have. And they'll call me up and say, Richard, can we get you back on ships? Can we get you back on ships? You know, they wanted good salespeople and I was doing good when I was on there. And they switched me a few different ships at the time. And for some reason, like I just kept saying no. And I was like so determined. No, I'm writing this book. I'm finishing this book.

Yeah.

It was more the book than the business. The lifestyle's called wellness. But it's interesting then, as Lifestyle's Core Wellness grew, I finally found a publisher for my book. Probably when I started to when I finished, it might've been 6 years possibly.

Oh really? Wow. That is a long time.

I had it sitting for a couple of years after that because I thought, oh, whatever. It's done, but I can't find a publisher and I'm kind of doing corporate wellness now.

Yeah. So it just sat there for a bit.

Sat there for a bit until I said, okay, this is not cool. I need to get this published.

Yeah.

And we found a publisher called Rockpool Publishing at the time. And that was an interesting journey publishing a book. If anybody's published a book with a publisher, it's a very interesting journey.

Yeah. I actually listened to a podcast the other day that from someone who self-published a book and has gone through a publisher and they didn't want the hassle of the publisher. Like it doesn't— there's a point that it doesn't become your own and it's a thing to sell for them.

Well, yeah, the publisher for us wanted— there was a title, a working title called, I think, Healthy Families, How to Live a Healthy Family. And at the time, we were about to go to publish on that and we did the contracts and things like that. And then I said, And we were learning internet marketing back at the time that we started to go deep into that marketing, go to a lot of conferences and events, and we're going heavy in that space, me and Joey, learning about how to sell online. And I thought, the title's wrong, the title is wrong. It was like the 11th, 12th hour. And then my publisher must have hated me. I know she hated me.

Yeah. Yeah.

I literally got the books pulled off the print and I said, change the title. And she goes, you can't do that. I'm in control of the book. I said, yeah, but it's not going to sell. And I convinced her that it was the wrong title. And so we changed the title to a title called Please Mum, Don't Supersize Me.

Yep.

And some may think, well, that's a little bit harsh. Again, when you're young, you don't really see everything. But what I saw, I saw what's going to get more attention? What was the title that was going to get more attention? What was going to get more attention? And we hired a PR agent at the time. And, you know, he was in our ear and said, listen, I want to get to America and I want to publish this over there and I want to take over the world with this book, On the 12th Hour. And so that's the name that we're going to do. And so we launched that name. Yep. The book, and the book got a lot of media attention. And it's probably a whole story in itself, but the book got a lot of media attention. We were picked up on A Current Affair, Today Tonight. We did 2 episodes of A Current Affair. Yeah. Probably just heaps of publicity everywhere. We were in the front of the bookstores because it was a, you know, we had the belief with our publisher then and she pushed it heavily. And, you know, we were using some internet marketing strategies as well. to ensure that message will get to the world. Because remember, I had the idea for America, not Australia. And so let's get it to the States. So yeah, every journey connects with the other one.

It does connect. Absolutely. And I just see, I mean, working with you now for 7 years, there's so many things that just connect now. It's like, yeah, I've pulled many things off the shelf at the 12th hour because it wasn't right. And then And, but I'm always grateful for that because you have a conviction about what's right. And it, I have to say, it's usually the right thing.

Yeah.

The gut. Yeah, it is. It comes back to the gut instinct. And I think it was interesting that during that time, it's kind of like the internet marketing world, you know, and you're starting to get into a lot more kind of like, you know, how can we get attention? Not like, because I think like a lot of the stories that you told is like, you the cruise ship, or like in episode 1 where we talked about, um, I don't know, did we talk about the lawnmower story? I think we did. Um, or no, we talked about the paint numbers.

Yeah, another day.

And I think you, uh, like, and even like in your mobile PT business, it was like you, you got attention offline, you know, it was like hustle mode offline. And then now you're kind of trying to switch around through the book And corporate wellness. And then kind of, you know, where you're kind of coming into now in your life is this whole internet marketing world, right?

Yeah. Well, I think also too, you have stages in life and this is really important when you're starting a business, especially when you're holding off starting a business, you may be looking at what's happened. And that's a big problem because someone started a business and I don't call it— there's key times in this universe what's happened. You know, the TV in the 1950s came out. You had 3 stations, 7, 9, 10, and there was attention only on 3 places. Then what happened? Radio, or maybe radio first, sorry, then TV. Yeah. And then what happened? You had this thing called the internet that came out 1990-ish, '95, very early '95-ish, '93, went a bit more viral in 2000. And the internet changed a lot of items. And then, you know, you fast forward another 10 years and you have more faster stream internet, you've got more platforms that you can use, things like that. You've got TV now on lounge room desktop— lounge room TVs, I should say, which weren't there before. And then, you know, then we had a product called Apple that came out and able to now start to listen to devices Instead of not just being sitting on a home desk computer. So in those critical times, what happens? You have opportunities.

Yeah.

And you have opportunities that come out. And in that time, there was internet marketing time, was fresh, was young. You know, you probably get, you could probably pay, you know, a couple cents, 1, 2 cents for a lead on Facebook. Google was the same. It's like a golden era. Yeah, it was the early days. And so everything has a space and we'll get to digital in a bit. But as we go through digital platforms, you know, Facebook, everybody go, oh, Facebook doesn't work. Facebook tells hard. I'm not getting results on Facebook. Well, Facebook's been around for 15 years. Yeah, absolutely. Very good run. And so when we talk about getting attention, it doesn't really matter where the attention is. And we, you know, we have a company called ComMarketing. It's all about marketing. We do a lot on digital marketing, but actually we changed the name back to ComMarketing instead of Complete Eye Marketing because we know that sometimes it's digital, sometimes a billboard, sometimes the hat, sometimes a flyer. at the moment is where is the attention, where is it cheap? Where is the attention, where is it cheap? And that's what you want to focus on with marketing is figuring out, well, where is it going to get to and what do I need to do? And so in those days, internet marketing was new, was the latest, it was the hottest thing. And so I had the belief that if we call it this name, Please One Day Suicide Me, it will sell more copies. And I had that belief to give to my publisher who wasn't in that space, but it was something new and something fresh.

Yeah.

So as you progress through, you've got to realize that you can't copy somebody if they've been doing it for 10 years because they're on the end of their cycle.

Yeah.

So you've got to be careful of the stuff that you look at if you are going to cross paths and realize, okay, well, I mean, look at podcasts, for example.

Yeah.

I mean, podcasts have been around forever.

Yes.

And here we are, you know, getting into a podcast. How long do we know podcasts are going to be around for? We don't know. It's not the start. I wouldn't say it's matured 100%, but it's definitely maturing. And so every device that you're on, if it's Facebook, Instagram, podcasting, TikTok, and we've seen all those trends that come out, they don't always have a lifespan. What has a lifespan is your secret sauce, is your authenticity, is your brand, is your name most importantly. And that's the only thing that we can bank on to a degree. And so as I switched to different businesses and industries, and I think now read the book.

Yep.

And as I switched that, I still took my knowledge, but I applied it to a different market. And when I launched corporate wellness, one of the ways that I did get into large corporations was twofold effect. It was one, was brand. I used the internet really well. I bought a domain name called corporatewellness.com.au. Though you can't get those domain names, as you know now, Ev. They're hard to find. I bought that for $20.

They cost a million dollars.

Yeah, $20. And I learned a thing called SEO, search engine optimization. I stayed up late every night for probably 12 months. It was called the second shift. Everyone else at the second shift. Second shift happens after, after 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. For me, it happened after about 9:30.

Yeah.

You go from 9:30 to about 1:30. That was kind of max for me. And I can, and I can function the next day. Okay. And I did that for 12 months learning the art of search engine optimization. And so when I launched Corporate Wellness, what happened, I launched in a space where other businesses were still operating well before me. But they did not have the knowledge of digital marketing at the time. So I was outbeating very established brands. I was getting the leads and inquiries in while other brands were just traditional. They were still struggling with what is a website, where I was ranking for every search domain name when people typed in corporate wellness, seated massages, all those kind of things. Now obviously it's saturated, but it's a cycle of everything. And so when you start to understand, can I switch should I switch? You've also got to look at maturity of where you are as a person, also maturity of what's going on to next and can you execute relatively fast. So when opportunities do come up, you've got to have that gut instinct that, yeah, I can just move across to here and I'm good to go instead of thinking and guessing too much.

Yeah. So I mean, talking about opportunities and kind of transitioning, obviously you don't have, you're not running corporate wellness anymore. So Yeah. How did that, like, is it another sense of like, you know, there was some fear around it? Like, you know, that's kind of what got you out of being at the studio?

Yeah. A couple of things. Like in every business, you have staff that you've got to manage and sometimes they're not that good. I'm sure everybody that has staff can relate. Yep. A couple of quick stories there. I took a massage therapist on and they went to visit, I think it was like a Toshiba company or something like that. And they went on site. And then the organizer, the Toshiba HR lady called me and says, Richard, your massage therapist is lying on the ground asleep with their legs on our photocopier. Okay. And I got—

That's the call that you want to get as a businessman.

Totally. Those calls. And then I was managing You know, someone was sick and it was a— it was an event for like 20 therapists was working at once. I had 5 people sick. I had to go and figure out how I cover that. And I didn't do massage on purpose. I never wanted to go down that. I did, I did nearly once. I tried to fill in for somebody, but I didn't. Um, and so I think it was just a combination of— I think it was one of the greatest businesses. And I think today Corp Wellness, wow, it's— Yeah. On, on fire. If, uh, if you, if you have one of those companies now. Yeah. I call it the leading edge, not the bleeding edge. And a little bit impatient for me, I would say, is that I love the leading edge. Sometimes I'm on the bleeding edge, but mainly leading, but sometimes bleeding. And when you're on the bleeding edge, you need patience. If you get into markets really early, you need patience to ride it out all the way through, and then you'll be number 1, number 2 in the marketplace. I don't think I had the patience at that time because here I was maybe 27, 28, 26. I think me and Joey got married around that time and I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try this internet marketing thing in a big way. And I guess the quick story of that is that when I had corporate wellness, somebody caught up and said, can I see a picture or a video of one of your trainers? So we can know who they are when they're coming in the door and things like that. And so, yeah. And so what happened, I said, that's a good idea. So I went around to film my, my PT, my personal trainers at the time, was about 10 of them. And I filmed them all and I thought, oh wow, how am I going to get this file to the person? Like, what would I do? Like, how would I get it on? And it was at YouTube and— There

was no Dropbox then?

No Dropbox. And it was like, oh, I don't want to put it on YouTube because then they can, you know, I was So then I said, oh, let me just— so in that time then, that was the idea. I created this website called Meet Your Personal Trainer. So I said— Meet Your Personal Trainer, sorry. So I said, if I can do it for my 10, I'm thinking everybody needs this help. Everybody wants to see their trainers or their potential trainers. And that's how we launched another business called Meet Your Personal Trainer. So I think I had more drive for the art. And I think that's the transition period here. Yeah. I had more drive. And again, my mission was the same. My concept was that I hated seeing personal trainers that are so good at what they do not being recognized for their craft, their art, because they just didn't know how to market themselves. And it frustrated me. And so I did something about it because I wanted to launch a directory. And then I— and then basically we sold Lifestyles Core Wellness on because I just— there was a couple of things. It was staff that was just—

Yeah.

Over it, want to try something new. I was hadn't yet thought that was a thing, you know, and I sold it. Yeah. And that sale was a little bit harder, but it was still a very good sale. And I was really proud of being able to start a business, grow a business, and then sell a business at that part. And that was something, you know, that was something that was the second sale that I had, but it was the first from when I started from scratch. And so it was a really good moment in my In my career. Well, I wouldn't say, I don't think it's career I call things, in my life where, you know, somebody wrote a nice big check and I banked it on a Friday and I was like, wow, this is so cool.

It's not bad. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it got me on the process that things can last a long time if you want them to, or things can last a short time. And it just depends on what you want out of life. And I don't think I found yet what I really, really loved.

Yeah.

And that was leveraging and ensuring that people could be great marketers in their business, specifically fitness, because I had that passion for fitness. I had that drive to ensure that we could still have a healthier nation, a happier nation. It sounds a bit warm and fluffy, but it's the truth. It's like that was the burning desire that way. And to me, if I could go then market 1,000 trainers, this directory, well, that would reach more people that way.

Yeah. And you see that through the book. You see, you know, like you want to create healthy people. You see that kind of then come into, like, even when you helped your friend on the cruise, like you wanted to help him be a better salesperson to kind of, you know, sell more and make more people healthy. And then it's like, now you've got this, you know, this site where you've got hundreds of trainers getting leads through MIPT. And you kind of see everything just come full circle. It's really crazy.

Yeah, it is a crazy world. And I think it comes down to endless opportunities.

Yeah.

And I don't think— and I think the concept back then, it wasn't like a scarce mentality. It was a flowing mentality. And I felt that I just could just keep creating and keep flowing and stay in that zone. I think in the early parts of that, it was really easy. But I can tell you right now, and maybe I don't have time this episode, but next. But I can tell you right now that once the thing called comparison and comparison and comparing starts to set in, it's not as flowy that it once was. Hmm. Once you have a massive hurdle that comes your way, or once you have the first kind of hit in regards to like something doesn't go right your way, your mind starts to look at things differently. And that's probably where maybe I can leave off because that—

I think so.

That kind of takes us into a state where when things don't go right in your business, when things aren't flowing, for me, first few years are really flowing. When things aren't flowing, what happens is a few things can happen. One, you just freeze. you stop growing, you stop learning, you start listening to people that you probably shouldn't listen to. You stop reading books and information and tapes. And because there's a loss that's happened, there's something that's dramatically happened in your life. And in that moment there, there was me and Jo on a reality TV show. We got kicked in the guts pretty hard. Yeah. I think from that moment there, we started to— something changed and adjusted in what we did.

I think so. I'd like to explore that in another episode, I think, because there's whole stories around that. But I think that, you know, you look at like, you know, like you sold a really big company, Lifestyles, and, you know, you're really successful on the ship and you had this book. And there's a sense of like in your teens and your 20s, You're like, everything is golden. Everything I touch is golden and I'm a success. And then you're right in that, like, yeah, you're on The Amazing Race and you had some stuff happen there. And then even with MIPT, you know, like there was a point where, you know, SEO was like the golden goose and then suddenly it's not.

Yeah.

And then you're like, okay, I've got to— there's kind of a sense, I think in the next episode we'll talk a little bit about maybe growing up. And like, you know, like, okay.

Thanks for reminding me that the pain stuff with a thing called Panda. So let's talk about Panda and SEO and when things go your way, because there's a whole bunch of those stories as well. And I think it balances it out.

It does.

And that's, yeah, that's the growth of a business or an operator that's running different businesses. There's got to be a growing somewhere in that.

There has. And I think that goes on to like how, you know, pivoting and And knowing how, you know, when things don't go right, how to actually then keep going and keep kind of moving forward. So I think that'll be a fun episode.

Yeah, let's do that. I might bring Joey into one of those episodes. Yes, let's do that. Hear the other side

of the story as well. Love it. Well, this has been a really fun episode. I learned— I know a lot of your stories, Richard, but I learned just little bits, surprising parts.

Totally. Me too. I forget about half these stories. But team, if you are listening in, definitely what you want to be doing is subscribe. Go down to subscribe and subscribe for the next episode so you get notifications that they're on their way and then you get first dibs on that. If you love that, leave us a review because that's going to help to show that you are giving your impact back to somebody else that can also go, oh, that was cool. And you've also got influencers that are watching your every move too. So that's going to help people to— to really get clear in that way. So if you enjoyed that, definitely subscribe, leave us a review, and we'll be back next time. Might get Ev back on here. I think Ev's starting to squeeze some stories out of me.

So— I am.

Let's get Ev back on a couple of episodes. But in this podcast series, you're going to hear, we're going to drop some behind-the-scenes content in, some strategies that I've done. So you would've heard some of those already. And so there's going to be a whole mixture because everybody learns in different ways from interviews, From conversations, from you know being that fly on the wall, and that's what I love about these podcasts is you're going to be able to fly on the wall behind strategy sessions, client strategy sessions. So that's you know probably that's one of my highlights that's going to be having this podcast. So yeah, thanks for tuning in team, and I'll I'll speak to you next time.