S1 Ep 5: How To Avoid Shiny Object Syndrome As A Business Owner

Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm your host, Richard Toutounji, and really looking forward to getting this episode today. And I've got Ev Chapman joining me. How are you?

I'm great. How are you?

Very, very good for a Saturday.

Yes.

You said not to put our days onto it?

No, you can put days onto it, just not the episode number.

Okay. Say it again. Sorry. Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm your host, Richard Toutounji, and I've got Ev Chapman joining me today. How are you?

I'm great. How are you, Rich?

Very good. We said, let's get up early on a Saturday and crank this episode out. So I'm pretty excited to talk all things. I don't know what we're talking about today, Ev. All things. I think it's a continuation. And one of the things I did want to chat on was I think the concept of, we talked about staying in your lanes. If you heard episode 1 and continuations after that, And the concept of really understanding which lanes to be in. And I think when people are going through journeys, depending how old you are or how much experience you have in business, or is it your first business or second business or third business or fourth business or fifth business or shiny object or business or idea, that's what I want to possibly discuss today.

Yes. And I think I I've internally named these episodes Richard History 1, 2, and 3. But really, I think it is, you know, I think even, even if you haven't been a serial kind of business owner or entrepreneur, I think the thread of the story that we've gotten from you is that all of life experiences add up to kind of then what you end up doing and how you end up being in your lane and staying in your lane. So I think that's something for people to take away. But I really wanted to get into, I think we left off in our last episode about, we were talking a little bit about internet marketing. You were going down rabbit holes. There was a whole lot of second shift happening and you were learning SEO. And so I want to hear a little bit about kind of how you made that transition from this big wellness company. Yeah. And you tried a lot of different things and you decided, nah, I'm going to try my hand at this online marketing. How did that happen?

Yeah. Well, I don't know where it first originated from, learning digital marketing. I think in the very early days, I did buy an internet marketing product online and that was a bit of a scary thing to buy anything online digitally. You didn't know if you're going to get ripped off or what would happen, but I'm pretty sure it was something like you know, you could write some sort of content and put it on. Yeah, that's right. You could write some content, put it on, find a website to put it on, and that was a big feat in itself. And then people would be able to advertise themselves on your website and you would get paid when people clicked on this ad. And I thought, wow, that is super cool because I didn't have to actually create a product. People could just advertise on my, they called it a blog back in the day or website. I don't know what it was called, but it was something that I didn't have and I didn't know what it was. So all those things are really confusing. And so yeah, I think it's one of the first products I purchased. But talking about, you mentioned Second Shift, I think they were the times when you decide to do something outside, let's say the normal your job and it's like either a study, something you're studying or learning or something that you want to get into. I think that's where this came about. And this is for anybody who's, I call it the second shift, anybody who's starting. And I think a big word now is hustle and find that, it's that second thing you want to do to a degree and building—

The side hustle.

Yeah. The side hustle. That's it. The side hustle. Totally respect anybody who does side hustles because it is hard to get that going. However, we've realized that we have the resource and education, but back then there was very little and it was all American-based stuff. And I went down that line and buying this product and I think, you know, you dibble, you dabble. I purchased a website or 2 or 3 or 4. I bought a domain name, understood what that was, got really excited about purchasing domain names. And then, you know what, and then I look, you know, how much you're going to sell a domain name for. It was just super interesting. And anyway, one day I stumbled upon— I always looked at websites for sale. Oh no, sorry, websites, businesses for sale. And I was at a newsagent buying a magazine. It was business for sale. And one day in this newsagent, in this magazine, it had this directory and it was called— and it said this directory's for sale. And this was probably after being on the online space for a little bit and dibbling and dabbling, not making a dollar yet, understanding all the concepts, but not making a dollar yet. And there was this business for sale. It was called relocating.com.au. And I understood the value of domain names. And I go, well, that's a really good domain name. It was just a relocating.com.au. I thought, wow, I don't know what that industry is, anything about it, but certainly it sounds good. And anyway, I called up the owner and he wanted to sell this. It was like a directory, but it wasn't a directory. And it was like an information site of how to move. across Australia and interstate and things like that. But I just love the brand of it and the logo and things like that. And I said, oh wow, that's pretty cool. But mind you, I had a lot of different domain names and I had an idea of also creating some other directories as well, one in the fitness industry. And I think at the same time, we decided to go down this path of creating a directory called Meet Your Personal Trainer. And that was a directory going to be for personal trainers. And I'll come back to that in a second.

Yep.

But yeah, this relocating concept, I liked it because it was already kind of established and I didn't know what to do or how to build it. And anyway, this guy wanted $10,000 for this website/domain name. And I was like, wow, that's kind of expensive. I understood the value of it, but it wasn't actually making any money. at the time, but it had the chance to make money. So he kind of built it, but he didn't monetize it yet. And me being the shiny object at the time, I go, wow, this is such a good opportunity. And so I decided to purchase it with the little money I had. I think I saved some money somewhere along the line. And no, I actually sold my lifestyles business. So I had some money sitting there. I'm sorry.

Yeah.

But I didn't really want to spend it all on this domain name. So anyway, I contacted him and I worked out that I could do a payment plan over, I think it was 12 months or 24 months even. And I put a contract in place and I'm pretty sure I paid him like $500 a month for 24 months and I could get this site. And so I thought, okay, let me get going on it. But soon I realized that the website wasn't really that good. I realized that the database that he had for moves was really old, and I realized that the brand was a bit outdated, and I realized it wasn't that good of a deal. But anyway, I went ahead and I decided to give it a good red-hot crack. And that's where I got into the idea of— because you're an early adopter to things like a directory, like a Yellow Page directory or internet marketing, there was a lot of people who didn't know. And in that industry, had a lot of removalists that actually were traditional-based businesses and they didn't actually know how to advertise on the internet. These guys were spending one, like they advertised in the Yellow Pages and they took up an entire page and that's how they got business. And in this time in that industry, they didn't know much about internet marketing or how to advertise online. And that's where I thought, okay, this is the opportunity to really go into that. But I didn't know the industry at all. I had no idea what the industry is. And so that's kind of where I dabbled into it. So again, I took a bit of a risk and gamble on that. And then because I did that, I studied a thing called SEO, which is search engine optimization, which is again, we're talking about timings of things. And when you have timings in life, and we've spoken about it before, like the radio or TV and internet, YouTube, podcasting, whatever it may be, TikTok, there's a new platform that means there's It's empty and you're going to be able to get fast wins on those platforms. And so I knew at the time, I knew enough to understand that I've got to be fast on this and get to the market really fast before somebody else does get to the market. And there wasn't that many big players apart from the Yellow Pages then. So again, it's about how do you see an opportunity and then go, okay, well, there's a big guy doing it, a.k.a. Yellow Pages. And Yellow Pages were kind of online, but not— they didn't really have that because they were set up as a traditional book kind of process. And so that's how I dabbled into this concept and trying to figure out how to make money in a website I bought, but it didn't have any monetization to it.

Yeah. It's interesting. And it reminded me, I think last time we might've talked a bit about this, of being on the leading edge versus the bleeding edge and how to know the difference of that. Sometimes you come in just too early in a process to get the traction and you're trying to teach people what it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Bleeding edge. I always define bleeding edge as you're too early to— and obviously I didn't know this term then. I'm only learning. But bleeding edge is something that you're way too early for the marketplace. So unless you have the cash, the money, the time behind you, most likely that the market hasn't caught up yet and it's a great idea, yet it's just too early for the market to want to pay you a dollar for that. And the leading edge is that you've made the timing right, the product is right, you're one of the first to the market, and that's the leading edge. And obviously that's where we want to be, on the leading edge.

Yeah, totally. And sometimes you have to be a bit patient. If you're, if you're on the bleeding edge, knowing that you have the right thing, you've got to wait for a few more people to catch up.

Yeah, but as entrepreneurs, if nobody's got patience, I

know,

and that's the problem, isn't it? It's, there's no patience around, you know.

Yeah. So, so how did you then, I mean, you had no idea about Really in the internet, like building internet companies. You built more traditional companies. So how did you, apart from this second shift and that kind of thing, did you go and do any courses or conferences or—

Yeah.

Yeah. How did you learn?

I think it was just a lot of just finding out how other sites ranked and then go deep onto that. And there's a concept that you just want to go really deep onto something. And so I obsessed with how to rank on top of Google only because I knew that AdWords was very complex for me. It was way over my head and I knew I had to pay money for it. So I decided, okay, there's AdWords there and there's free organic. So I went down that way. Actually, true story, I was at a Tony Robbins event. I think it was A Date with Destiny. I think it was there week-long event in the Gold Coast and you get partnered up with somebody and through the whole 2 days. If anybody's been to an Anthony Robbins event, they'll realize that you get partnered up with someone for 2 days and what happens is that you do a lot of activities with your partner. And so me and Joey went, but we weren't part— we weren't kind of like working together throughout that week

and

I got partnered up with somebody and they're I didn't know them. They were from America. And, you know, we caught up one or two times very quickly. And then all of a sudden throughout the whole week, he just disappeared. He was never around.

Great partner.

Yeah. Here I am like a Nigel Noman by myself doing all these activities, right? Feeling really awkward and looking around, where's my partner? Where's my partner? You know, you pay a lot of money to be at these events. And I'm thinking, who would come to an event and then not actually participate. I think the event was $5,000 at the time or something. It was a very expensive event and not actually participate. I thought, this is so weird. And I was so frustrated. Yeah. As, you know, not trying to be frustrated in the event, but it was a bit frustrating. Anyway, at the end of the event, you know, I got it through. I got through anyway. At the end of the event, my partner came to me. He goes, Richard, I'm so sorry, in his American accent. I'm so sorry. that I was away the whole time. I was at the back with the organizers of the event. And I go, what do you mean the organizers of the event? And he goes, oh, I'm going to speak here next month. And I go, what do you mean you're going to speak here next month? And so then I go, who are you, dude? That's just weird to me. And anyway, so he says, I'm really sorry this happened. I feel really bad. But just Google me. I said, who are you? He goes, oh, just Google me. Google you? Like what?

It's like the new business card.

The new business card. Yeah. Anyway, so I had no idea at the time who he was. And I was sort of saying to him, oh yeah, I'm just getting into this internet marketing stuff and I bought this product or something like that. I bought a whole bunch of products at the time, internet marketing, products and they're all from America and all just like, I bought them all. I had them all or everything. Yeah. I was just got everything and I was just throwing out a few names, thought I was cool. And he goes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He just goes, Google me anyway. So I got back home, I Googled him. Turns out he was the number one internet marketer of the time back in the day there. And I had no concept at all. That's how like rookie I was in this industry. And I just didn't see it. Anyway, so he followed up with a message after. He said, Richard, I feel really bad for what I did. Why don't you come over to my place in Texas and I'm going to give you access to all my programs and all my courses as a gift of apologies. My wife said I really feel bad, so I apologize. Anyway, I thought, wow, that's pretty cool.

Yeah.

So the opportunity came up and I said to Joey, let's Let's get— let's take him up on the offer there. And so what happened is he organized a big internet marketing conference with all the A players at the time and speakers. And I remember Jay Abraham was there, Tim Ferriss was there. I remember all these A-game players, which again, I didn't really know who anybody was there, but I can— I look back now and I go, oof, There was Russell Brunson there and there were some big players there if you're in that game. And anyway, so I went in and we had a mastermind around his table before the big party started. And he lived like way out of the airport, like you had to drive hours to get there. And then when you got there, it was this massive mansion with this podcast studio at the back and a pool and he had a Hummer truck and it was just like dreams made of it, right? He's got his garage and it's just like got his logo painted on the floor.

Oh gosh.

And like just out of this world stuff, like well and truly, like, you know, well and truly advanced for that time.

Yeah.

You know, being there, there was about 4 or 5 different Australians there and that was a course that they paid to come. They paid like $20,000 to come and it was a sit at the round table and learn from him. And it was like an intimate setting of 8 people, was 6 then me and Joey, that was 8. And we did that for about a week. We learned how to do a podcast and what that was. And we learned how to record and create a product and all these things that I just had no idea. But it was, you know, we were talking about mentors and, you know, it was like on a silver platform. And I took the opportunity. I went to Texas and I got it done. And then they had this internet marketing party and all these players were just coming through the door one night. And there was about 50 of them. And It was this proximity that all of a sudden I was just boom, like proximity. And it was just like, it was just insane. And I had somebody else in Australia that paid like $20,000 to be there and he was taking pictures with everybody. Like, you know, the, I'll stand with you and take a picture. And me and Joey are going like, yeah, that's not our style. And we didn't take any pictures with anybody because we were just, one, we didn't really know who they were deeply. We didn't have that with them. And we thought, oh, that's a bit random. So let's just enjoy the party, right? And talk to some people.

Yeah.

And so, you know, quick side story there is that the party was starting. And so the students, me being the student, we were kind of like facilitating and hosting, helping out hosting. And the door knocks and I answer the door and this guy rocks up the door and he goes, I go, what's your name? He goes, Tim. I go, I'm Richard. And he goes, oh yeah, my name's Tim Ferriss. And he has his backpack on and I go, okay, cool. Come on in. And then after the party, someone said, oh, Tim Ferriss just launched a bestselling book last week called The 4-Hour Workweek. I said, oh really? That's cool. And it was just, I guess, You talk about how to get involved in a new industry or something different.

Yeah.

Proximity, proximity, and being around people that are already well and truly, you know, well and truly doing something crazy. I remember there was like a, there was a musical chairs kind of thing. Like you get to meet somebody and it was like a round table, like really fast, meet everybody. It was like 3 minutes had each other. And remember, me and Joey sat with this person, I think it was Chet Holmes at the time, and like he's saying all these things he's done, he's been a presenter and speaking on stage and he's going, and it was like, how can I help you? How can you help me? And me and Joey going, well, we're from Australia and we're getting into internet marketing and we wrote a book. At the time we wrote a book Wrote a book.

Yeah. You had written a book.

That was our theme. And we said, yeah, we're going to get this book out. And so we had some substance behind us, but you just didn't— these guys were just deep in what they did. And maybe it was maturity, maybe I didn't understand the market well enough, but I think it was just holding our own. And we did have a book behind us and we were kind of launching that as well. But it was just amazing when you're surrounded with people that are in what you're doing. I think that's the answer to how to get really fastly involved in something instead of doing it the slow way. And call it chance, call it a conversation with somebody.

Yeah.

You've got to go deep. And if that's a mentor, if that's searching endlessly online for something, if that's doing something every day, But you've got to make a decision, I think.

Yeah, I think so. And I think there's a big difference. Like you can, you could have kept going deep, right? You could have done YouTube University and, you know, like every night just go into that YouTube rabbit hole. But I think there is something powerful and it kind of shortens the learning curve when you get in with a group of people, when you're kind of in that, you— it's kind of like you're like the little fish in the big sea, but there's all of these big fish around you and you're like, you know, and you want to kind of rise to their level. And it helps to kind of like fasten that process.

Yeah, totally. And you can see what the future's like. And I think when you want to do something, the I guess we saw, me and Joey saw firsthand what we wanted.

Yeah.

We wanted this. We saw it firsthand. And then this guy came around to Australia and we were on his trail. And there was about 6 of us that when he went to speak at entertainment centers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, we shadowed him. We helped him out. We were in the back of the room for him. So we kept that relationship going and all the way through. And so we got to understand when he was on stage and he was pitching a product and there was hundreds of people running to the back of the room to buy now, $3,000 product, we understood what it was like. And there was a, there was a really important lesson that, that there was a couple of important lessons here, but one of the important lessons that I heard here was that what was really happening wasn't on the stage. It was in fact in the back of the room. And it was conversations happening in the back of the room with the proximity of the speakers. What was happening in the hallways? What were the relationships forming at that point? And that opened my eyes to presenting, to seminars, to events, to how to run an event, what we should be doing at an event. And I remember one day Stephen said to me, you and Joey, we were running an event like this one day and it was like, sometimes it's just someone has to tell you something and you have to believe it. And then all of a sudden, years later, it starts to come true. It's just, you've got to be patient in that time.

Yeah.

And there's no way that I would've ever believed such a thing. We were literally over there just to learn a little bit. And And I think that's kept us on track in this space of online marketing, digital marketing, education, events. It's kept us on this track because a very early piece of what is possible. And I think that's a really key point is goal setting, dreaming, but then also too getting around it and getting your hands dirty and meeting people and communities. And we run a program called Ninjas and a big part of that is community and learning from everybody else. It's not just what we're teaching, it's what everybody else is doing. And that's, you know, you get friends for life, you get contacts for life. You do. The people that we did that whole journey with, they're still my friends for life. And it's another chapter, but they're still there and they're at the cutting edge of items and things like that. So you've got to keep those You've got to keep those vehicles in action. We might not speak to them all the time, but when we do speak to them, they're on the cutting edge.

Yeah, I think so. And I think you can't discount the power of finding communities and being in communities, even if you don't see them. It might be kind of you spend a lot of time with them for a time, but then you still always have that and you still always, every time you go and speak to them again, it's like you haven't you know, it's like you've spoke to them yesterday, that kind of thing. So I think, I think that's really powerful. But I mean, there's obviously, um, there's obviously like a time period between when he said, well, you guys are gonna, you know, do these events and speak on stage, and like gave you that kind of confidence in that, compared to like, like there was, there was a few years in between, you know, when you like— now you're doing— well, now you do Zoom events. But, um, And I think there's a few directories in there. And you— we obviously spoke about, you know, relocating and you kind of then got into Meet Your Personal Trainer.

I think, you know, what we're talking about here is how do you, how do you go down and do something strongly? And, and at the time I said I had this directory of relocating. We wrote a— we also, I finished writing my book as well. I don't know if I spoke about that. We'll talk about that a bit later. But, um, but at the same time too, I needed to continue to make money. And so So we— so I was obviously, you know, from the fitness industry and I understood that concept and how I exited my corporate wellness company was that I was starting to, you know, understand that you had to film people, film videos so people could understand who that person was. And that's— that was the kind of the cutting reason someone said to me, hey, and this is, you know, going back to corporate wellness for a second here.

Yeah.

But hey, can I get somebody to— can I see somebody? Can you film them or take a photo of them? And I thought, wow, that's so amazingly great idea. Why, let's do that.

Yeah.

And as I went to film, um, about 8 or 10 of my personal trainers at the time that I had working for me, I realized that they struggled with getting themselves on camera. They had no idea what it was for. And I literally had to— I took my video camera and I put it in front of their face and I told them what to say and And it was just like, it was a real struggle to get them to talk. But when they did, amazing on camera. And that's kind of that catalyst then go, okay, let me get this out to the rest of the personal trainers in Australia and let's get them on camera as well. And that's when I decided to launch a director called Meet Your Personal Trainer, like meeting your personal trainer. I launched it with my best friend. His name was William. And know, that's what you do. You launch a business with your friend.

Yep.

And that's how I kicked that off. I did the marketing, he did the backend. And at the same time, I had this relocating directory and I had Meet Your Personal Trainer with him. And, you know, I was running that by myself when I had this. And so I was comparing 2 different brands at the same time. I was comparing 2 different industries at the same time. And it really helped me to understand what was happening. Because I didn't have one, I had 2. And that was probably stupid but smart. But when you want to go deep into something, go deep into something. And that's, I guess, that mentality of if you're going to do something, you've got to do it because it's going to be hard and you're going to make mistakes, but hopefully we can learn faster and duplicate everything. That was my thinking behind that.

Yeah. And I think essentially it was the same business.

Same business, different industry.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting because, I mean, Meet Your Personal Trainer's, what, 11 years ago now? I think we had our 10-year anniversary last year. And so it was kind of a time like, it wasn't the time of the selfie or the Instagram story. Like, people Didn't really get in front of cameras, right?

No way. No way. People like put a camera in their face, it was like, are you serious? No, thank you. So that was a big problem I had facing me.

Yeah. And I think that, that's— I mean, because now you, I mean, you do a lot of videos, you're comfortable in front of the camera. Do you think that that was— did that come naturally to you or did you learn a lot through coaching people how to be on camera.

I didn't go on camera, by the way.

I know.

And Joey, my wife, we'll get into this show a bit later. She was always the person on the camera. She was the bubbly, the bright person. Joey, I'll get Cameron on the camera. I had the ideas and the concepts. And so I didn't want to be on that camera. I just wanted other people to be on that camera. And that's how I got along. And so But what I did is I just, I guess, yeah, I just made sure that was going to work. And when nobody wants to be on the camera, that's a big problem we have. Right. And so I launched this website, Meet Your Personal Trainer. And the whole concept, the whole selling point was that I could get 30-second videos of people telling them who they were, what they do, what they specialize in. And then I thought, well, blogging to rank in SEO, I know I needed extra pages. I needed to create a lot of pages.

Yep.

So I said, okay, let's do a how-to video. How to box, how to skip, how to do push-ups, how to do sit-ups, what to eat, et cetera, et cetera. And again, this was before the phones. There was no phones. Like the phone—

Yeah.

Right. So let's just think about that. This was video camera days, like small video cameras. Right? So what I did—

Camcorder.

Camcorder. Yeah. So I got all my, you know, and talking about launching a new product into a new market really fast. And this is a good lesson for anybody who wants to really go down fast is you've got to do a lot and do it fast. And so I partnered with, well, I got a client called Step Into Life at the time. They had a lot of outdoor personal trainers. And I, you know, that was one of the first clients I got aboard. I was like, yes, they've got so many locations. I was like, oh my gosh, it was just like, it was a big win for me at that time. But the problem with that is no personal trainer wanted to do videos. So what I did to ensure that this directory would work, I went out to Melbourne, to Brisbane, to Perth, to South Australia, to Tasmania, and I literally just started to film everybody. I said, I'll be at a park on Saturday, and all those 7 to Life guys came. And then I did seminars to say, hey, do you know what internet marketing is? Do you know what video is? This is what it is. I did seminars, I did seminars, I did seminars, and then at the end, you should buy a platform at your— it's like $20 or $30 a month. And I'm gonna film you right here. And that was the hardest part. But I think overall, I personally, between me and Joey, we personally filmed 1,000 trainers' 30-second profile videos and coached them, coached every single one, explained what the power of video was, what to say, what to do with your hair. I learned what flyaways was. I don't have any, but—

No.

All the girls didn't want to be filmed. You know, I said, you look great, get on camera. I was like, let's get the numbers out. And Joey was like there saying, this is how you do it and this is how you talk. Follow me, follow my directions. We gave scripts, we gave mini seminars, we gave presentations to RTOs, anything we could do to get 1,000 people in our directory. Because if we were going to go 1 or 2 or 3, it was too slow. So we had to go And that's, I guess, where we learn around education and how to get people talking and how to get in front of the camera and just, yeah, he had to have self-belief that this was going to work, self-belief. And that's really hard when you don't actually know it's going to work, but you just take the gamble, I guess.

That's the entrepreneur in you. We're just going full steam ahead here and we're going to make it happen.

Jump off a cliff and pull the parachute at the end.

That's it. Yeah. Convince everyone along the way that this idea is going to work. And I think people join and they come along for the ride. But yeah, I think it's really interesting because I do think you're early on in video and especially video directories. Like Yellow Pages wasn't a video directory. You could have been it. It could have been any personal trainer. But it's like, you know, like really on the edge of video and getting there. And so education is a really big part when you're on the real, like you are on the bleeding edge. You've got to really—

It was bleeding.

It was. It was. I mean, no one was used to being on camera. Like, you were on camera if you were on the TV.

Well, I searched YouTube at the time and I typed in personal trainers.

Yeah.

And I counted how many trainers actually had videos, and it was under 5 at the time.

Under 5.

And so I thought, oh, so, you know, you think this is gonna be good because the people there, but there was nobody doing it. And so I, I really had to educate, train, seminars, explain. Um, and, and in a way, you know, it was like when I became a personal trainer, personal trainer wasn't that popular. And so sometimes when you are on the bleeding edge, you've got to do, as you said, a lot of education. When, when, and that's the competition process. If you've got a lot of competition in the marketplace, like I've got another studio here, another gym or another PT, there's one opening up the corner in a way that's actually pretty good.

Yeah.

But it's also bad in a way where, okay, there's more competition, but I don't know what's worse, explaining to somebody what a personal trainer is or what a video profile is, or selling with uniqueness and brand and equity to say, hey, we're the best, we're the leading, we're the only studio gym personal training center. I mean, you're always going to either have competition or you're going to be on the bleeding edge and you've got to kind of define a market. So it's sort of like, what way do you want to go? And there's a lot of risk of being on the bleeding edge.

I think there is. And I think that I mean, there's pros and cons to both. And I think you have to know where, where you sit on the, on the, on the scale of, you know, even, even going from, you know, people knew a lot about personal trainers to like, okay, what, what's a, you know, what's a semi, semi, like a group class? Like, it's not an aerobics class with 30 people in it. It's, you know, a group of like 6 people who are you know, together doing, um, kind of semi-private personal training. So I think there's always a, an element where even within the industry there's new things that are happening.

Totally. I mean, when I purchased the, the fitness studio at 17, I was just on my 18th birthday there. I purchased it, um, well, originated from a guy called Matt Church, and he's a, um, a well-known speaker, um, one of the world's leading speakers, and He's got a training program there. I purchased it off someone he sold it to, so I was the third person who owned it. But he, uh, started the concept of small group training. Um, in fact, it was the very first studio doing small group training of 4 people. And again, that was a brand new thing to the marketplace. Yeah. And so again, you had to explain that and explain that. So I think, you know, the story here is that you've got to believe in yourself.

Yep.

And you always got to back yourself because nobody else is ever going to back you ever before you back yourself.

Yeah. I think you need a— I think to be in business, you need a level of belief in yourself. Otherwise, you're going to get knocked down too many times.

Yeah. And that comes that concept of you've got to find proximity.

Yes.

Find those people. And that's the communities, that's the groups now. That's the events, that's the seminars. But again, it's always finding the people in that that's going to help and push and guide you. And we met some amazing people in the early stages that have got very, very large businesses now because they took a concept and they were on the edge. They were on a new concept, a new style. And that's where, you know, in the fitness industry, we have so many different variations. If it's If it's Les Mills, if it's another class, if it's a 24/7, that was a new concept. If it's a small group, if it's a big box gym, if it's one-on-one, these are all new strategies to ensure that we generate market really fast. And sometimes we have those big changes, i.e., the internet comes out, i.e., a video platform comes out, YouTube came out. That was the thing. Well, SEO came out. And I think we kind of started this concept of SEO called search engine optimization. And for me, that's really how I cut my teeth in this game. And even in that space of internet marketing, digital marketing, you've got to understand, do you want to be an affiliate marketer? Yeah. Do you want to be a content marketer? Do you want to be a person that creates a lot of videos? Do you want to house a lot of people in a big community? And for me, you've got to decide which one you want to go. You can't do them all and you've got to be known for something. So I think it's start with something, work it, make it work, go deep in it, and then move to the next thing if you want to or stick with it. And the concept is that you've just got to— the thing to keep you going in the dark days, the thing that keeps you going in the dark days is When you say you're gonna do something, you tell— I mean, I do this all the time. I said, I'm gonna do something, and I tell everybody about it. Everybody about it.

Yeah.

When I was writing my book, I said, I'm writing a book, and I told every single person known to man that I was writing a book. Because every time I went to a family function, every time I spoke to someone, I said, how's your book going? Oh yeah, yeah, it's going good. I was like, oh, that book going.

And public accountability.

Public accountability, 100%.

Like this podcast.

Like this podcast, 40 Podcasts in 40 Days. I mean, we failed 2 years ago when we started. So 6 episodes and then stopped because there was no public accountability. And that's definitely worked for me. Doesn't work for everybody, but it's definitely worked for me. When you say you're going to do something, just get it done and hold— get someone to hold you accountable.

Yeah. Okay. Now, one more question. Before we end, we talked a little bit about change, and there was a big change that happened in MYPT. And I know it's still a little bit rough for you to talk about this. But, you know, talking about the internet and changes, and I think, you know, we saw like this big kind of, it was like internet marketing, it was a whole lot about SEO, but then social media was starting to come in and there was more people getting on the internet and Google made some changes that really Really affected, um, MYPT, right?

Yeah, it affected MYPT and it affected my other company called relocating.com.au. I'll just share the 2 differences quickly. MYPT, I figured it out, that is, that is a want thing. Somebody wants a personal trainer, right?

Yeah.

And relocating, I realized that was a need. You need to move. If you're moving interstate, most likely you need to get a removalist truck.

Yep.

Now, personal training is yes. And I'm probably— everybody's going, Richard, we need my services. Yes. However, unless a doctor has said, hey, you're going to die if you don't get a trainer or get fit, then that becomes a need. Now, obviously with marketing, we become a need. So not, you know, of course training is a need, but we're talking about generalized. We need to eat, sleep, breathe, That's a need. Um, and marketing helps get products in these, but we've got a need and want. Relocating was a need product. Um, personal trainers, a want product. I spent 90% of my time on Meet Your Personal Trainer, on going to events, going to seminars, doing expos, going out there and filming everybody, sending newsletters. I spent 10% of my time on relocating.

Yeah.

And at the time relocating was more profitable and made more money. It was less work, but I didn't really like it because I loved building people up. I love the content marketing of it. I love seeing, um, you know, people grow. I love seeing more content on there. And that was my industry. I, I, you know, my, my mission here was to help people get healthier and fitter.

Yeah. Yeah.

There was a thing that came out, and just to give you some premises, relocating let's say 1,000, 2,000 people paying $20, $30, $40, $50 a month relocating. At the time, we probably had 500-ish removalists on there paying us anywhere between $300 to $600 to be on the directory a month. And it was just really easy over there. And so one day, there was this thing that came out and, you know, as we've realized now, algorithms change quite a lot.

Yep.

So when the algorithm changes, like when Facebook, if anybody's used to Facebook, the algorithm changes and then the Facebook ads don't get seen, that's an algorithm change. And I didn't understand much about algorithm changes early in the piece. I thought I was on a red hot streak. I worked five hours, maybe a week on relocating. It was just hot to trot for years. It was going well. Didn't hardly do anything. I it just sat and just made money. And I thought this internet marketing thing's just red hot. It's amazing. And I was creating more directories at the time. Anyway, I woke up one day, and this I got this call. From a removalist, one of my clients. And they said, Richard, I haven't got that many leads. And at that time, we were producing probably around maybe 100 leads for removalists a month. And you can imagine we had 400 to 500 of those. So we were producing thousands and thousands of leads because of my rankings in Google. When you Googled removalist or moving or moving Sydney to Brisbane, all those kinds of things, we were number one.

Yeah.

That just came from that second shift mentality. I never paid a cent on AdWords. I never did. I didn't have a Facebook page. I didn't have social media. I didn't have YouTube. And that was around, by the way. I just didn't have it. I didn't need it. Yeah. So I had one thing, it was called search engine optimization, and I thought I was red hot. And then I got this call from Luvus and I said, oh, it's probably a bad day. Don't stress. I thought nothing of it. I carried on with Meet Your, like it was a side project over here. A couple hours later, another call, a couple more emails. Richard, leads are soft, leads are down. Oh, whatever, you guys are whingers. Keep going back to Meet Your. And I think the person that was working for me did part-time work, said, just check this out. I sent it to my developer, make sure it's— make sure the hosting's live. Anyway, I've got these, I've got more emails, and I've got— keep getting more emails. And then I was like, stuff it, let me just Google what's going on. SEO, what's happening? And I was Googling, looking at forums, and I talked to some people I knew, and there was this thing called Panda that came up. Panda.

And

there was an update that came up and it was called Panda. And what I did to rank, I basically linked my website to a lot of different other websites. I linked to thousands of websites, big websites, small websites. And what this change was meant that a lot of the sites that I linked to were actually weren't that good sites. And so they, they got rid of those sites. They got rid of like 20,000 or 30,000 sites on the internet, sites that weren't giving quality content and things like that. And so overnight, within a 30-day period, I lost 95% to 97% of my entire revenue on relocating just because of that change. And it was like, it was gut-wrenching.

It's devastating.

It was devastating. Now get this, get this. On Me Your Personal Trainer, on Me Your Personal Trainer, but we had thousands of pages and I built it up with community and websites and, sorry, videos I should say. The rankings didn't change, but they got better. Relocating dropped off the face of planet Earth. Interesting. It didn't work. I tried to spend— and the equivalent of me spending money on AdWords at the time was something going to be like $150,000 a month. And I didn't have that money and I did not want to spend that kind of dollars.

Yeah.

And so it was like, well, I tried to revive it, I tried to do everything, but it was just a little too late, you know. So it's— so it was on like bad legs at the time. But then Meet Your Personal Trainer When I put the work in and I went around and tried and filmed people and I went to expos and I built the brand and I sent out newsletters and I did all the stuff you should be doing and I was on every social media platform, it actually went better, not worse.

Yeah.

And that taught me a big lesson. Big lesson. Content is king. Community is king. Time spent in brand equity is king. Personality is king. credibility is king. And when we put these pieces together and be everywhere, we win. And so short-term hacks are hacky. And now I understand. That's the reason why I'm very much against short-term hacks. If it's Facebook hack, that's something that comes up. If it's an Instagram hack, anything that's short-term that I know not long game.

Yeah.

I see a lot of people go down those paths. And they might have a quick win here or there. However, guaranteed, guaranteed is they're always going to lose.

Yeah, totally. And I think that's why we also talk about having multiple kind of funnels and multiple things because really all you had in relocating was SEO and that was it. And so when that kind of goes sour, you don't have anything else to fall back on. Whereas with Meet Your Personal Trainer, you put a whole lot of work into other things like content and social media, newsletters, that kind of thing. And I think ultimately it shows that you have to work in business. There's a dream of— I think you had that dream of internet marketing, hang out on the beach, make the money, that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, the business that worked is the one that you put the work into, right?

And I realized that your computer in the sun on the sand doesn't work that well.

No, it's too glary. It's

hot, it's glary, the sand gets in the keyboard. I mean, who wants to be doing work at a beach?

No, exactly. Put the work in, do the work. Those are the businesses that grow, I think.

Totally. So this is, uh, I think we'll wrap it up there. That was a, um, from that, stay in your lane, but make sure you do the work. And the concept here is be around people and a lot of people, especially when you're doing something brand new. And it's so easy today because there's so many groups. You just got to search on Facebook for groups or there's so many events that you can go to and you can get, you find, it's not that, sometimes it's not the speaker at the front, it's the people in the room because they're going through the same journey as you. And that's, that's where you build that commonality. And, and, and there's a lot of wins in finding people, um, you know, the 4 or 5 people that you kind of call on to put a little group together, because that's— it's just everybody wants that same thing and everybody's willing to work for it and share ideas. And I think that's, that's so amazing that we can have that this day and age.

Yeah, totally.

All right, team. So if you've loved this episode, I have a request to ask. Just literally subscribe so you get notified on any of your favorite platforms. And if you love it, leave a review. That always helps. And I look forward to speaking to everybody next time where we might go a little bit deeper on some of these things we spoke about today. There's a few different scenarios. And out of all these conversations, it's all about how does it relate to you and what takeaway can you take from anything you hear about, and most importantly, what action you can put into place. So share your experiences in the reviews. And until next time, we'll see you then.